New to L5R and

It's straight up Wick's style. Actually, that might just be a direct quote from the guy.
Wick's the kind of GM who sees one of his players having a disease immunity and decides that means he can get diseased anyway, but is immune to the cure.

So for somebody new, what's the story with John Wick then?

Confrontationalist asshole DM and game developer. Good on the crunch but his fluff is ASS. Made L5R into Ken-Sama the RPG, fired a guy once for sneaking a jab at him into a book. Very convinced he's a good DM and offers 'advice'. Spoiler: he isn't, and he does shit like OP's pic.

DM and Game designer who supports being an absolute cock to your players. He's got a book of his various exploits and the weird lessons he's learned from him. Calling "Dirty GMing" or something. Some of the stories are pretty interesting, but most are him spitballing these absolutely toxic methods of GMing. Things like fudging dice to kill PC's who's players cheat. Or making murderhobo characters mysteriously disappear in a riot. Or having a character's Secret ID be revealed to their Aunt May expy and having the shock render her dead of a heart attack (though he notes that consequently, people stopped bringing those kinds of NPCs to his games.)

There's just a lot of dumb, bad, stuff in there and I'd wouldn't trust a GM who pulls the kind of shit he espouses.

Play Dirty? Or Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier?
projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/alien-rope-burn/john-wicks-play-dirty/

>Things like fudging dice to kill PC's who's players cheat.

It wasn't even for players cheating per se. it was "powergaming".

>Now, the next bit has to how to deal with powergamers and system abusers.
>What you do is use a GM screen, and then arrange some dice as a powerful critical hit. Then, after giving the powergamer a tough fight against a combat monster you've designed, you sigh, shake your head sadly, and reveal the critical to kill off the character.

Which is somehow even worse than the no-roll death because it's outright lying to them that randomness was involved.

John Wick is this notorious passive-aggressive Alpha-Nerd wannabe asshole, and having actually been GMed by him twice in person I can attest that he’s pretty much exactly the kind of person you assume him to be when you read his preachy game design shit.

It IS a quote from earlier editions actually.

Haha, so I was right! I knew it sounded like Wick!

Carman was the death of L5R.
His story writing is absolute shit tier.
That was Wick. He didn't write OP's pic, that was Carman. But I don't wholly disagree with what he did. You don't get to be a shit player without consequence. Too many players have the mentality that their fun is all that matters and fuck everyone else.
Wick believes fire should be answered with nukes. Again, I don't entirely disagree.

Where in which edition? I'm having trouble finding it.

Please regale us with stories about those games, kind gentleanon.

>having actually been GMed by him twice in person I can attest that he’s pretty much exactly the kind of person you assume him to be when you read his preachy game design shit
You can't just say this and not storytime.

this desu

>Carman was the death of L5R.
I always got the impression Rob Hobart brought the stuff I didn't like about l5r 4e mechanics.

>Good on the crunch but his fluff is ASS.
That's not John Wick. His rules are strong in so far as they mesh with his worlds, but I wouldn't say any more than that. His storytelling is generally pretty good (but for the longest time he felt that when GMing he was storytelling and woe betide anyone who got in the way of his story), world-building is OK.

Dude's mellowed with age and GMless gaming, though he's still pretty cranky.

>Carman was the death of L5R.
>His story writing is absolute shit tier.
To be fair when everyone was pissed about the Daigotsu and the Spider going full Gary Stu faggotry Carman pretty much came out and said the story team doesn't have as much control over things as people think they do and they get handed a lot of decisions and told "write this into a story."

>You don't get to be a shit player without consequence.
Look, when your kid is misbehaving, you don't wait two weeks to give them an asspaddling, you do it then, you do it there, otherwise they won't learn better.

This. It was pretty much marketing who had the wheel, and the ccg tournament structure that decided the shape of the story. You could see it whenever the story team were let off their leash to write about something outside that.

He's still a bad writer who can't really imagine scenes and relies on borrowing stock phrases. I still remember Carman insisting that a bow really can be fired "from the hip".

>But I don't wholly disagree with what he did.
You should.

Bumping for Storytime with Onna-bugeisha.

>But as the story threads were coming to a close
GM doesn't have to spell it all out. Player got to play until the campaign was over. He's got nothing to complain about when his murderhobo PC gets just deserts.

Every other tg thread and murderhobo would be ridiculed but in this one people are criticising the GM for dealing to the murderhobo in a clever and comedic way.

The only place the Spider came into their own was the alternate Space setting.

Their they did mad science experiments to benefit the Empire and line their own pockets.

That was their niche as weirdos who made stuff useful yet dishonorable stuff with the rest of the desperate who had come to join them, as otherwise they tread on the Scorpions' loyal traitors niche.

>The only place the Spider came into their own was the alternate Space setting.
The player base has always been their own worst enemy when it comes to contributing meaningfully towards viable long term story arcs. There's rarely a sense that payoff can be anything but immediate - and given the way AEG did tournament prizes (or didn't), that's understandable. Still a fail.

So, should we still make this into an L5R thread?

Why not?

Does anyone have advice for building a Shiba Bushi? The 4e game I'm playing in has a large focus on social interaction, so I'm not looking to minmax, but just figure out what skills and rings I should be prioritizing.

With the high focus on social interaction, I'd go for the big three Etiquette, Courtier, and Sincerity and push your Awareness up to four. Throw in the dueling traits and skills (Reflexes, Void, and Iaijutsu) and you'll be golden. Another thing to consider is taking the Asako Mediator path at Rank 2 (Sword and Fan page 207) if you want to play up the pacifist angle of the Phoenix.

>a clever and comedic way
It was either of those things?

You need to boost Air and Void, forget the other Rings. Agility 3 and Perception 3 are also nice, but aim for Air 3 and Void 3 from the start.

For Skills you need Etiquette and some Sincerity then boost Iaijutsu into oblivion. That way you can give quite a lot of breathing room to your Courtier by duelling shitheads into dust for him.

Magic Resistance might be a good Advantage here. Touch of Meido too.

I'm trying to get my group into l5r, what are some good selling points?

It's a very detailed setting if you dig into it. The system is pretty well tailored for the setting as well.

I'll tell you what isn't a selling point though. Realism. This is not a historically accurate nip nong setting. It's its own fantasy setting with its own ideas that do not conform to authentic Japanese history or myths. You play L5R to play in Rokugan. If you don't want to play in Rokugan, you're better off finding a different system.

Ignoring the card game and board games for now, and just focusing on the RPG...

1) Lethal, meaningful combat. It's not guaranteed that getting hit is going to kill you, but with the exploding dice system and the way injuries work, getting hit has a good chance of seriously ruining your day.

2) The setting. It's a fantasy country under siege by demons. It takes inspiration from Japanese, Chinese and Mongolian culture and history and turns that into its own unique thing. If you like old samurai movies, and you like fantasy, this is the game you want to play.

3) Not every game has to be like this, but L5R provides an excellent medium for games that are roleplay heavy, and social interaction can be as dangerous as combat. People will duel to the death over perceived insults, and disobedience to your lord is punished by forced suicide, if they're merciful. The tension between duty to your masters/bushido and your character's personal desire makes for really intense moments where you have to decide which is more important to you.

Why is killing someone you tortured shit playing?

Making an enemy and setting him free is great role play bc modern sensibilities? How about leaving evidence alive? Or 100 other rational reasons to finish the job?

Literally nobody I've ever met who has read that sidebar has ever thought it was a good idea.

I am dumbfounded that it found its way into the finished product.

>If you like old samurai movies, and you like fantasy, this is the game you want to play.
Until you want to play it like a fantasy old samurai movie, then weird setting conventions get in the way and some smug shithead on the internet scoffs “Rokugan is not japan” at you and you’re just left wondering why did they sell it to you as fantasy japan then.

>Until you want to play it like a fantasy old samurai movie
Except that's wrong.

No, it isn’t.

Yes it is.

I don't know why you were sold on it 20+ years ago, but that's the last time it was sold as fantasy Japan. Gotta get on these things quicker than that, you old fart.

I'll be fair and say I've done something similar.

It was a new world of darkness game, just bog standard humans not hunter or anything. The players had caught on that a nearby cult might be a bit more sinister than death by kool aid, one character decided the best way to find out was to infiltrate the cult, all well and good, thing is...... He signed an application form, with his real address.

Anyway the game progresses, they find out there's an internal sect of the cult who are trying to bring 'something' into this world, one of the players is a cop and some firearms go missing from the evidence locker on the night they raid the compound.

Knowing that not all of the people were bad they basically let anyone who flees and they don't immediately ID as one of the inner circle go free, then they straight up butcher the cult leaders.

Thing is, some of the circle slipped out, and they'd seen the infiltrator arm up with the raiders during...... And then he went back to the house he put down on the register.

Anyway for a few sessions any time he went home I made him roll checks to see if he caught on that he was being watched, in fairness I gave him about 5 chances to catch them, until one session he wasn't there IC, he didn't know why. The players went to his house and found him dead, his corpse dismembered and arranged in ritual fashion and a note saying 'we know' with the cult symbol drawn in the PCs blood.

Now at the very start he was irritated, not so much by the death but more "bullshit how the fuck did they get me? How'd they find me" so I passed him the printout he filled in when he joined the cult, with his character address highlighted, and he calmed down a bit, said 'oh..... Fuck, okay' apologised for losing his cool and cracked out his back up character.

So fellas, how's the new RPG rules beta?

Divisive, and not in a good way. Most people don't like the special dice that aren't the same as FFGs other special dice.

When the players have the world around them as a reflection of their characters the only winning move is not to play.

What's different about them? Is it just the iconography or is it an entirely different system?

I know they're keeping exploding dice, somehow, and theoretically I like the idea of narrative dice. I think it could be neat, but I haven't read the rules.

Last I saw, the ffg beta forums were dead af.

It's an entirely different system that tried to keep Roll and Keep and sort of managed to, but I personally don't really like it. At its core, it's still roll and keep with symbols instead of numbers, but it's just... lackluster.
Frankly, they should have just made it a Genesys splat or something. At least then it could be more easily tweaked, and at worst, mined for bits to steal for other settings.

They should have worked on a dual system 5e, fixing things like 4e having lists of weapons when you only really need a few weapon traits to mix together, martial maneuvers/martial kiho/martial arts/kata all being different sub-systems, etc.

>martial maneuvers/martial kiho/martial arts/kata all being different sub-systems
Eh, these are all completely different things, so I'm fine with them being different subsystems. Kiho is monk magic, kata are specific non-supernatural stances and special moves, martial arts are either not a true factor (Because at the end of the day, most practical strikes and blocks are similar) or something you've spent enough time in to take it as an alt path and gain a real Technique for.

>Kiho is monk magic
Not all the martial kiho are particularly magical. Some are just combat maneuvers with a cost and requirement. That's what I think all maneuvers should be.

>kata are specific non-supernatural stances and special moves
Special moves should be maneuvers. Kata should be static adjustments, and have a bit more uniformity in usefulness.

>martial arts are either not a true factor or something you've spent enough time in to take it as an alt path
Previously they were more like a mix of all of the above. You could train in a martial art without being restricted to a handful of schools.

Question. Has anyone made any good custom katas?

I'm looking through the rules, and fuck me i have no idea what to make.

In my current campaign, i'm a rank 3 hare bushi, and well it's looking like i'm about to basically outclassed by everyone else due to the rank 4 and 5 abilities kinda being meh, and only having 1 alt path.

So I figured maybe some custom katas can keep me up to par.

Rank 4 is better than you seem to give it credit for. Rank 5 isn't quite so amazing as some others, but it's considerably better the more you can arrange to lower your opponent's ATN.

You might consider 'retiring' to become a traveling monk, if it really doesn't work for you. Simple attacks with unarmed is in your rank 3.

Bump

you guys and your assumption that pc's are gods and that player autonomy is sacred should seriously rethink your lives

Who said anything about it being about pc's being gods? If you follow the setting, it's really not that hard to inhibit player autonomy, either.

This is just about reflecting player choices back at them, albeit with a shitty, passive aggressive example that's never relayed to the players.

Why air and void?

Void, Awareness, Reflexes are the Trinity of dueling. In decreasing order of importance, besides the iaijutsu skill itself (rank 5 asap).

Hey you at least explained a direct in-universe causal relationship between action A and consequence C, and gave five different rolls of, I assume, Wits + Composure (at least 5 dice)? and every time he rolled zero successes.

Way better than the random pettiness of the rogue's fate.

I'm currently rank 3. But rank 4 seems, alright. like the jumping is amusing as hell. But still it just seems underwhelming when compared to like.... every other clans rank 4 anything. My Monkey fellow players rank 4 makes me so envious.

... Monkey make just about everyone jealous. They're better than they have right to be on any comparison, just because.

Also, you might not be the guy that charges in and deals lethal blows consistently like a Matsu, but you can leap around and soften up the best two targets per round; handing out wound penalties and being threatening. That's better than just amusing.

Yeah they do. And fuck they are super toned by compared to 3rd edition as well. it's batshit insane how good Monkey is. The only saving grace is that after rank 5 they basically have nothing left while all the great clans get shit like the White Guard and others.

Even that is covered by their Mary Sue "everyone loves the Monkey" thing. I'm sure they would have a much easier time swinging a Multiple Schools deal than other minor clans.

Anyone got examples of real shit L5R GMing?

>Topaz Championship
>Play Akodo Swordgirl
>fall in love with Scorpion contestant
>She's forced to commit seppuku because Lion's can't love Scorpions
>K, I'll sit out for a bit
>Finale of second season is a long drawn out fight where a NPC murders random mooks while the PCs get murdered by the boss with a no-daichi
>GM says politics are never done well in L5R and then makes court for the next two story arcs
>PvP politics as well
>GM starts burning out because players begin complaining and telling them they're shit
>'Okay we'll finish up with a quickened finish'
>GM never shows

>>She's forced to commit seppuku because Lion's can't love Scorpions
>>GM says politics are never done well in L5R

There are two kinds of shitty L5R GM. This is type 1, the kind who completely overblow the political and etiquette systems. Falling in love is literally not a problem. Acting on it is not a problem. Getting caught acting on it is. Forgoing your duty to marry for gain is.
The second type of bad GM are the ones who ignore or are ignorant of setting conventions entirely.

Spoony's experience was actually both, since basic hospitality is not a gift, failing to uphold gift etiquette is not a lethal mistake, and even if it was, it wouldn't be the place of a third party to declare it a transgression beyond the pale.

>with his real address
> I passed him the printout he filled in when he joined the cult, with his character address highlighted

Wait, did you have players fill out their character sheets with an address, in case it comes up in play later?

I want to make Miyamoto Musashi. Not necessarily a guy who uses two swords, just a murderhobo who's strong enough to kill 60 people in a row in duels. How do I go about this?

Play 3e. The Mirumoto Bushi are basically blenders in that edition. Become a ronin and try not to get killed when you murderhobo.
And just to clarify, I mean L5R 3e, not D&D 3.0 Oriental Adventures.

What about 4e?

4e is mostly balanced and the things that are unbalanced are underpowered, not overpowered. Even the best duelist schools can't bridge a skill gap.

If you meant "how do I play Musashi in 4e", the answer is still Mirumoto Bushi. They practice the Niten two-sword style and can get pretty blendery at high insight, particularly with Mirumoto himself as an Ancestor. Focus on Agility and Reflexes, and in battle Feint like a motherfucker. Strength of the Dragon is a good kata for keeping your ATN up if you want to cheese around in Fire Stance a lot, too. You might also consider Great Potential in Kenjutsu if you don't want to raise Void.

I'd suggest Yoritomo bushi. They still do a variation of two weapons without penalties, but they're more about kicking ass than the Mirumoto.

I'm trying to find art for a game of L5R set in the Empire of the Emerald Stars. Any art or inspiration for it would be welcome. (I wasn't sure if I ought to do an other thread or just bumping this one would be fine.)

...

Now that you mention, the Yoritomo rank 4 Technique is exactly the kind of thing Musashi got up to.

If you take a kama, you're almost equivalent to a Mirumoto bushi, albeit with one less available attack per turn, and less duelling / shugenja proficiency. And it's not like Musashi was working with shugenja or performing literal iai duels anyway.

Unrelated to who you are talking to but some time I would really love to play a throwing weapon specialist using Yoritomo Bushi. Few others are much good at knives.

>Mary sue every one loves the monkey shit

It turns out user, that if you aren't an asshole to everyone, and genuinely act without ulterior motives, people like you. Even people who try to exploit you

I like monkey because it reads exactly like done practical fellow looked around the Empire, went "nah this is shit m8', and went on to be so practical and based nobody could fuck with him

Anyone running a game of L5R and need a player?

I have a mighty need for this.
Gran Rabbit God#9036

I don't see it getting far off the ground.
I think it's Carman's pet project ever since he got his gig at FFG and made them some money with the Star Wars IP.
Problem is, Carman is a fucking SKR level moron and will turn the IP back into the steaming pile of feces he was converting it into back with AEG.
You could honestly sell the IP to GW at this point and they'd do a better job with it.

>1 on 1 4e L5R tiem!
>GM wants me to play a ronin, so I make a dishonored, drunk, ex-Crab duelist.
>start game passed out in an alley in some minor clan province. Maybe Rabbit.
>group of provincal guards approach and wake me up.
>give them some verbal shit
>one of the guards pokes me in the chest with his yari.
>Rolls 3 10s.
>exploding criticals.
>gentle poke, becomes Vlad level impalement.
>spearhead goes through me, into straw wall and through some noble guy's dango on the other side.
>is end.

And that, lads and gents, is why you don't roll damage unless you mean it, or have some way to drop dice.

>1 on 1 4e L5R tiem! (take 2)
>playing Miya Herald, named Miya Harold.
>GM already throwing shade
>investigating some Crane Maibatsu kolat guy suspected of having gaijin pepper.
>figure gaijin pepper is probably paprika.
>track Maibatsu down to peasant hut on open field.
>sneak into hut but nothing inside, only huge pile of gaijin pepper
>oh noes! it's gunpowder.
>Go to escape
>Thunk!
>Door blocked from outside.
>suddenly paper wick burning into pile of gaijin pepper.
>roll 50 checks to finally put out paper fire before I get boom boom short time.
>Phew!
>see 5 more burning papers.
>pic related

He had done a whole thing about going to and from his house a lot, when they made their plan to join the cult to spy on it from the inside I made some registration forms and personality quiz type stuff for the cult, printed it out and passed it around when they encountered it.

The player that decided to infiltrate wrote his characters address on the register for the cult