Legend of the Five Rings Rpg Fantasy Flight Review

The country of Rokugan get-go burst onto the scene in 1995 in the grade of the Fable of Five Rings Collectible Carte du jour Game. But the Emerald Empire was first thoroughly explored two years  later (in Oct 1997) with the release of the get-go edition of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game (it turns out that there is a whole lot more room for flavour text in a volume than on a card). Based on the "Roll and Proceed" system, the L5R RPG was published past Alderac Entertainment Group through a fourth edition released in 2010. When Fantasy Flying Games caused the Legend of the 5 Rings universe and games from AEG, it seemed inevitable that they would launch a 5th edition of the roleplaying game to go along with the immediately-announced living bill of fare game.

Xx years subsequently the initial launch of the L5R RPG, Fantasy Flight fabricated good on that expectation when they dropped the beta version of the Legend of the 5 Roleplaying Game (Fifth Edition) in Oct 2017. One year on, we've got the published version in our hot lilliputian hands.

The Quick Take: To my mind, the most distinctive aspect of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game is the use of the five rings equally the basic attributes, forcing players and GMs to think about the characters in a radically different – and very flavorful for the setting – way. This utilise of the elemental rings provides a fresh have on the Curl and Keep system, and makes the new L5R RPG well worth checking out for old fans and those new to the setting. Too L5R is even so awesome.

The World of Rokugan

Legend of the Five Rings presents a fantasy take on samurai drama, drawing heavily on Japanese history, philosophy, and mythology, but besides including concepts from other Asian cultures. Rokugan is ruled by an Emperor of divine heritage, and is served past the samurai of the 7 Great Clans (whose ruling lines are generally also of divine heritage), a multitude of Pocket-sized Clans, ronin, and those further downward Rokugan's strict caste system. Just the current Emperor is weak, supernatural threats are becoming more than pressing, conflicts between the Great Clans are heating up – and some wonder whether the Royal line can concord the throne.

Of slap-up significance in Rokugan is Bushido – equally they say, Rokugan is the land where Laurels Is Stronger Than Steel.  In addition, Rokugan is a state of great spirituality, where the spirits (kami) inhabit all objects, should be treated with respect past all, and may be interacted with past a chosen few (the samurai priests known equally shugenja).

None of the seven Great Clans is a monolith. Each Clan has multiple families and multiple schools. However, there are certain themes that animate each Association:

• The Crab: The Crab stand atop The Wall and guard Rokugan from the horrors of the Shadowlands. The archetypal Crab is burly, tough, heavily armored – and does not especially intendance for social niceties;
• The Crane: The epitome of culture in Rokugan, the Crane are elegant, poised, and take a broad network of allies fostered through positive social interactions;
• The Dragon: The Dragon have ofttimes stood apart from the residuum of Rokugan, secure in their mountain strongholds. Their ranks include tattooed monks, their clan is more permissive of individual choices than others, and they are probably the most philosophical of the Clans;
• The King of beasts: If the Crane are the velvet-gloved Left Manus of the Emperor, the Lion are the steel gauntlet of his Correct Hand. The Lion are the epitome of the honorable martial samurai;
• The Phoenix: Blest with many, many more shugenja than any other Clan, the ranks of the spiritual leaders of the Empire are swelled by the Phoenix.
• The Scorpion: The Scorpion are the dirty Underhand of the Emperor. Lies, blackmail, toxicant, ninja – the Scorpion use all of the tools bachelor, regardless of the cost to their honour.
• The Unicorn: Wanderers 'recently' returned to the Empire later centuries of wandering, the Unicorn find themselves strangers in their own lands, tugged between a desire to stay true to what have get their ain traditions and the demand to accommodate to Rokugani standards.

For Classic L5R fans, note that when FFG caused Legend of the 5 Rings, it rebooted the setting as compared to the AEG days. Temporally, that ways rewinding the lock to just before what would accept been the Scorpion Association Coup. Apparently, things diverge from that point in fourth dimension. But additionally the past is non exactly the same either, in means that continue to be revealed. The broad concepts and thematic strokes of the world remain the aforementioned (although in that location are eight peachy Fortunes now).

What Practice You Do In This Game?

Characters in the Legend of the V Rings Roleplaying Game are samurai of Rokugan, typically members of the Great Clans.

• Balance their personal desires with their duties to their lords;
• Determine between expediency and upholding Bushido;
• Attempt to navigate the social complexities of Rokugan while co-ordinate themselves accordingly (for instance, without displaying emotion), earning celebrity and status;
• Seek to accelerate the interests of their Clan;
• Investigate mysteries both mundane and supernatural;
• Defeat foes in deadly combat;
• Engage in complex social gambits;
• Fight duels of honor with katana;
• Importune the kami to assistance them.

In a typical game of Legend of the Five Rings, the players should look to appoint in investigation, social conflict, and combat.

Notation that, although groups of samurai working together in Rokugan would "realistically" tend to be all members of a unmarried clan, most games of L5R feature characters from many dissimilar Clans.

The Core Mechanic

The Fantasy Flying version of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game incorporates the familiar "Roll and Keep" concept from editions past, but pretty much everything else is new.

Characters are rated in each of the eponymous 5 rings – Air, Earth, Burn down, Water, and Void. These are the 'attributes' of L5R – in that location is no statistic that direct corresponds to something like forcefulness, dexterity, or intelligence. Rather, the applicable Ring is determined based on the approach the character takes to the chore.  The Air ring represents grace, cunning, precision, and subtlety. The Earth ring represents patience, resilience, retention, and at-home. The Burn down ring represents passion, invention, candor, and ferocity. The Water ring represents flexibility, awareness, efficiency, and charm. The Void ring represents mysticism, intuition, instinct, and wisdom.

They also have ratings in detail skills. Skill are divided into v groups – Artisan, Social, Scholar, Martial, and Trade (with 4 to vi skills in each group). These 5 groups are significant because the skill grouping provides more than concrete pregnant to the Ring's approach. For example, restoring an existing work of art is an Earth approach to an artisan skill, while the Earth approach to a martial skill is to withstand an attack. Inventing something new is how Burn down approaches an artisan skill, while in martial disharmonize Fire seeks to overwhelm its foes.

The style that rings work means that there is no simple 'dump stat,' although some characters will favor particular rings depending on the type of character. The Scholar grouping, in item, has solid uses for all of the approaches. However, one imagines that many players will exist more interested in the Fire approach (invent) than virtually of the other Artisan options (restore, adapt, refine, modulate), but the Fire approach in social setting (incite) is less broadly useful than some of the other options (reason, amuse, play a joke on). In combat, the effect of stances (discussed below) will be a major gene pushing what sort of ring a player might want to emphasize.

When a character attempts an action that requires a check, the histrion rolls die based on the applicative ring and skill values, and so chooses a number of those dice to go along equal to their skill. Depending on the Target Number (TN) of the chore, a certain number of successes are required. Rings and skills each use their own type of die – rings roll six-sided die, while skills roll twelve-sided dice. Every bit one might look from a Fantasy Flight RPG, these are custom dice (although there is a table included to translate normal d6 and d12 into the custom results). Skill dice are firmly better than ring dice.

As one might also expect from custom FFG RPG dice, these dice have more than but "success" or "not success" on them. Rather, there are four symbols (three positive, one negative) – success, explosive success, opportunity, and strife. Successes are self-explanatory. An explosive success counts every bit a success, but and then allows the histrion to roll (and, if they wish, keep) an boosted die. Opportunity is used to generate a diversity of furnishings – some are e'er available, some depend on the chemical element being used, some depend on other characteristics of the check, and some are specific to certain weapons or techniques (a good place to start is pages 328-29, which is a two-folio chart of possible uses of opportunity). Strife represents the grapheme'south loss of emotional command. When enough strife has been accumulated, the character is compromised – they can no longer keep any die with a strife symbol showing on any check. The character tin purge all strife by "unmasking" – allowing their calm face to sideslip, displaying emotion (the exact nature of which will vary depending on the circumstances, just may well result in the loss of celebrity or honor).

Basic Character Creation

Character creation in Legend of the V Rings is done in the form of a game of twenty questions, but most of these inquire for the creation of some groundwork for the character, then give a mechanical aspect. Only for these purposes I'm going to focus on the mechanical basics (we should have a more detailed wait at how to make an L5R character, including a discussion of the clan families, posted in the near future).

The most fundamental choices for a character in Legend of the 5 Rings are clan and role. The Clans, discussed above, are the primary political and social units of Rokugan. A character's clan defines much of their being – fifty-fifty if a character departs from the stereotypes of their association, the clan however forms the backdrop they stand up out from. Additionally, from the beginning thing a player should have a general thought of whether they desire to be a bushi (warrior), courtier, or shugenja (priest). The artisan schools are also somewhat mutual, while the monk and shinobi roles are rare.

Mechanically, a character'due south Clan gives bonuses in two rings (characters start with a 1 in each) and defines starting Status. A graphic symbol'due south family within that clan (each clan has at least four) gives another ring bonus (out of a choice of two), gives two skill bumps, and defines starting Celebrity and wealth. Families do a lot mechanically, just they are much less of import as far every bit character creation goes. While the default tends to be that members of a particular family unit go to the school for that family, the setting allows for easy cross-pollination, players can use this to go their own unique concept (or to become exactly the rings they want, as the case may be). All the same, the same is not true of family – except under highly unusual circumstances, a samurai of the Lion Clan will attend a Lion Clan school, and so forth.

The biggest packet of mechanics is tied up in a character's school (each clan has iv schools roofing bushi, courtier, shugenja, and something else).  Schools increase two rings, increase five skills, gear up starting Honor, provide starting techniques, define what sort of techniques are bachelor to the character, grants a starting schoolhouse ability, awards starting gear, and guides on the character will advance over the form of play.

Techniques are divided into 7 categories, although nearly characters will only use three – kata (martial techniques), shuji (social techniques), and rituals (everyday spiritual practices). In addition, shugenja may use invocations (spells), monks may get kiho, shinobi get ninjutsu, and if a character later goes the way of evil they may learn maho (evil magic).

Even later setting school, the character has lot more individual bits to fill out on the page. Characters get a free heave to any band and a free boost to whatever skill they didn't already take. They can get a heave to award, or forego that to become a skill increase in a less-respectable skill. They get a free piece of gear. There's also a die roll to nudge glory/honor/status a bit and (normally) requite another skill (although, if you lot know me, you may recall that the chances of a game I'chiliad running really involving randomness during character creation are almost zippo).

The character will also receive a distinction, an arduousness, a passion, and an anxiety. Each of these is a mirror image, mechanically. Distinctions let the histrion to re-coil two die when applicative. Passions permit the character to recover strife when applicable. On the other paw, adversities require the player to re-roll 2 dice that showed success, while anxieties grant strife. Each of these characteristics has a flavorful title, a circumstance under which the mechanical benefit/drawback kicks in, and some other upshot tied to the flavor. For instance, the adversity of Jurojin's curse forces the player to re-curl when making a cheque to sustain themself (resisting a critical hit, or trying to live in nature), and besides doubles the recovery time for diseases. The Brushwork passion, on the other hand, allows the character to automatically recognize schools and individual artists, and to remove strife after activities such every bit examining a painting or writing calligraphy.

The player must also cull a giri (a duty) and a ninjo (desire) – a character's responsibilities (assigned by their lord) and their personal desires may or may not disharmonize (but traditional samurai drama has them conflicting quite a bit).

Graphic symbol Advancement

A character's school shapes advocacy by provides a list of options at each school rank. While a character may spend xp on annihilation – rings, skills, techniques, etc. – the character'southward power to rank upward in their school is enhanced when xp is spent on items on the school list. For example, at a given rank the character might get enhanced credit for buying whatever martial skill, the command skill, any kata, or one of two specified techniques. Note that rings arenever on a schoolhouse list, and so (while they are probably attractive to buy) they do not get enhanced xp credit.

Conflicts

Although at that place are reanimation and narrative scenes in L5R, conflict is where the rules get heavily involved, so let'south talk about those. At that place are four kinds of conflict – intrigue, duel, skirmish, and mass boxing. Each type of conflict has some structural components in mutual, only there are (of course) quite a few differences.

For all conflicts, characters outset make an initiative check (the exact roll for initiative varies based on the type of disharmonize). This check is meaning non but for initiative, but because the ring the grapheme chooses for the initiative check defines the stance (Air/Globe/Burn/Water/Void) the grapheme volition begin the disharmonize in. The Globe stance protects confronting the utilise of opportunity (such as critical strikes), while the Air stance makes it harder to issue the grapheme (either with martial or social rolls). The Burn down stance rewards passionate aggression, generating success from strife, while the Void ring prevents the character from gaining strife from their own die. The Water ring allows an actress action (then long every bit that action does not require a check isn't a repeat of some other action). Characters then take turns until the conflict has concluded (a graphic symbol can change their stance when their turn comes up).

Intrigues are (unsurprisingly) the least mechanical of the conflicts – in that location are a handful of basic deportment, only in no pocket-sized part this comes down to the utilise of social skills to generate successes and so using those successes to assess whether and how effectively NPCs have been influenced.

Duels pit samurai against each other one-on-one. While there are variations in what sort of duel the two will have, the rules here are really designed to simulate the classic iaijutsu duel (either to first blood or to the death). The primary rules framework that makes duels different is the staredown and the finishing blow. The staredown is a constantly escalating imposition of strife – one in the outset circular, two in the second, three in the third, so on. And then the very instant that a character is compromised by their strife (or unmasks), the other character makes a finishing accident (interrupting any activity the first grapheme was taking; thus it is possible for a character to learn strife in the middle of a ringlet, trigger the finishing blow, and never get to have their action). A hitting with this finishing blow is likely the end of the duel. While waiting for their opponent to accrue too much strife, a character tin can utilize deportment to slightly reduce their ain strife, eye themself to store upward good die rolls, predict an opponent's stance to inflict strife, or strike – inflicting a disquisitional strike on this assail ends a duel to fist claret as surely as a finishing blow, just the disquisitional strike is not automatic. Exterior the realm of iaijutsu, duels generally still feature the mounting tension of the staredown – even if the characters are actively battling, the possibility of a finishing blow hangs out there.

Skirmishes are standard, small-calibration conflict. On their plough, characters tin move a trivial (like FFG's other recent RPGs, L5R uses range bands, where shut in the divergence betwixt bands is very small, but gets progressively larger every bit the characters separate) and become one action. Striking is the nigh obvious choice (standard TN of 2), of form, but characters can also guard (themselves or others), make another motility, or challenge an enemy. Challenges are a powerful fashion to tie down an enemy character (who must lose honor and celebrity to refuse) – but they also prohibit the issuing graphic symbol from doing anything else while the challenge is ongoing. A clash is substantially a mini-duel in the middle of combat. One time in combat, a character tin can exist downed in two ways – through fatigue or through critical strikes. Fatigue works as i might be used to damage working in many RPGs. When struck by a weapon, a character takes damage based on the weapon, any extra successes by the aggressor, and reduced by the character's armor – whatever backlog damage inflicts fatigue, representing the attacked character getting out of the way but becoming more tired. When fatigue exceeds endurance, the grapheme is effectively out of the fight.

Characters accept critical strikes when the attacker gets to use ii opportunity on a Strike action, or when the graphic symbol is otherwise unable to defend against incoming damage (perhaps the grapheme would adopt to suffer the critical strike rather than suffer fatigue and become incapacitated; note that this cannot be done for free – instinct typically prevents a character from simply standing at that place and taking a blow without even trying to dodge). Even after taking a critical strike, the character can brand a Fitness bank check to reduce the severity of the disquisitional strike. Critical strikes of low severity pile up atmospheric condition like damaged armor, lightly wounded, severely wounded, or haemorrhage. Higher severity disquisitional strikes are more often than not diverse forms of "y'all're dead."

How likely a loss due to fatigue or a loss due to a critical strike can depend on the weapons being used. The traditional katana versus the traditional lacquered armor is even on damage rating and damage negation. Bonuses successes inflict impairment, simply critical hits have a deadliness loftier plenty that (if the severity isn't at least somewhat negated by the defending character) a permanent injury will result. On the other hand, the tetsubo (a very large war club) has a base damage iii higher, merely a low enough severity that a flesh wound is the nastiest issue.

Mass battles, which are less mutual than the other disharmonize types, are based effectually assignment of strategic objectives, each of which is achieved by a particular combination of deportment and outcomes. Typical actions include assault, rally, and reinforce (the challenge action can besides exist used here, typically to endeavor to tie down the enemy commander). Weaker armies are likely to have their morale broken but accept what's left go out relatively all right, but an elite group of samurai may stick around until it is crushed and routs, which is much worse for those involved (stronger armies may also have special modifications to the bones deportment).

GM Tools

At that place's some basic GM advice, but the more interesting L5R-specific guidance covers treatment bushido, honour, condition, and glory; and ensuring a good in-setting approach to the supernatural (virtually importantly the nature of shugenja every bit priests asking the spirits for aid, not wizards slinging fireballs).

NPCs (and also Shadowlands monsters) are carve up into two categories – adversaries (who function similarly to PCs) and minions (who are, well, minions). There are a prepare of sample NPC blocks with rings, social stats, skill grouping ranks (e.g., "Scholar 2, Social one"), and advantages and disadvantages that apply much more than roughly than a PC's. Most NPCs have an ability or two. They as well take two conflict ranks, to represent their anticipated difficulty in either a military or political conflict. In addition to these basic NPC stat blocks, at that place is also a page of templates, so that Seasoned Courtier can too be an Artist.

Other Thoughts

Adding opportunity on top of successes effectively requires a player aid, otherwise a lot of time will exist spent trying to expect upward what all the possible uses of opportunity are. There'due south a nice two-page chart in the book, but this does non encompass all of the possible uses of opportunity. Players are strongly recommended to have that nautical chart on paw (or the pertinent parts of information technology for their character) as well as a list of all of the possible opportunity uses for their techniques, spells, or other options.

Fantasy Flight inherited a lot of art from AEG when they acquired L5R, and they've commissioned a lot more for utilize in the LCG, so the roleplaying game comes with a lot of built-in fine art assets (this will be familiar to fans of FFG'south Star Wars products, where the same images are used across games). This broad base of operations gives the roleplaying game an virtually universally high quality, and they were well-deployed by the layout team. The cover art (by Shawn Tan) is excellent and, although I'm non going to claim that this is a big deal, I actually like the vibrant red spine, because it makes the new L5R stand out on my shelf.

I really like the elemental ring approach. Game mechanics warrant customization for the setting, and FFG'south willingness to just throw out the traditional sort of attributes is swell for the Legend of the Five Rings settingand creates something to distinguish the L5R RPG from the other options on the market (forth with the setting, which makes for gameplay that'southward a lot different from a typical fantasy RPG). The book mostly ties down the approaches, merely it volition likely warrant some monitoring from GMs (for instance, keeping in listen that depending on the NPC and situation, the TN to reason with the NPC may be much different from the TN to charm the NPC) – I've played enough roleplaying games to know that in that location will be players who want to pour as much as they can into a couple of rings and so try to justify why everything they do uses those two rings.

I come up into any Fable of the Five Rings game already loving the setting. Combining that with the elemental ring approach actually sells me on the new edition of the L5R roleplaying game.

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Source: https://www.strangeassembly.com/2018/review-legend-of-the-five-rings-fifth-edition-by-fantasy-flight-games

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