Anybody sad that L5R is dead as an RPG setting? How do we make Rokugan great again /tg/?What was your favorite clan back in the day? And has it changed over time?
>>98312916Honestly not really. L5R was getting worse as time went on. The last hurrah was the Reign of Blood/New Gozoku. After that it was all hot garbage. FFG shat all over L5R and kowtowed to idiots like the guys at Shit Up and Shit Down. The field needs to remain fallow to recover. Maybe in a few years Asmodee will sell the property to someone that can make it good again.Back in the day I played Unicorn, Shadowlands Horde, and Scorpion in the CCG. The best I ever did competitively was I qualified for Worlds at Gen Con with a Unicorn Honor/Military Switch Deck via the qualifiers there. I washed out in the first round at the big table.In the RPG I have played most of the clans, my last PC was a Moto Death Priest. A member of my group went to work for AEG back in the day and our PCs all got their names on cards. Sadly my PC's namesake was kinda shit. Probably the most fun I've had as a PC in a game was with a Hida Pragmatist, who went from an absolute bum to winning the heart of the Matsu Daimyo's youngest sister. Sadly he did not consummate that relationship, he faced down a mad Kenku and both of them died in a simultaneous strike. On the other side of the screen I ran a multi-year campaign that ended with an alternate take on the assassination of Toturi. One of my PCs took Dark Fate, completely misinterpreted the answer the Oracle of Void gave him to his question, and became the Herald of the Shadow Dragon (who I had be more of a manifestation of the Lying Darkness than a minion of Jigoku) with his first act as Herald being to slay Toturi. The other players had not put two and two together until it was too late and arrived just in time to see the new Herald's blade fall. The PCs tried to stop the new Herald but only succeeded in severely wounding him before he escaped. I had other plans for the group, but two members ended up getting new out of town jobs within two weeks of what became the climax.
>>98314331Fully agreed. I was Crab back in the day.
>>98312916When I was a kid I liked the more ‘martial’/pragmatist clans but as I grow older and revisit the setting, I kind of like the more introspective, mystical, clans like Dragon and Phoenix.
The L5R 5e Starter Pack was my first foray into DMing. It defined my growth going forward.
>>98315357I'm the opposite, now I can't help but glance over at Lion and Unicorn from my Phoenix/Crane enclosure I chose when I was young.
So is the current version of the RPG still frozen in pre Scorpion Clan Coup?
>>98312916No. It was mid and you couldn't create Mussshi Miyamoto or even play out the average plot of a chanbara movie. Tsuruchi.
All I want is a Scorpion Waifu.
>>98312916RPG's not dead quite yet. We're supposed to get the Scorpion sourcebook later this year. Once that comes out THEN the RPG will be dead.
>>98312916I never got into the RPG, but I own the 3.5e Oriental Adventures setting and Rokugan splat books. I love reading them and love the world building and stories. I still have the complete set of Clan War Novel from the WotC era. I mostly played Crane but dabbled in Yoritomo's Alliance/Mantis, and Dragon. I was big into the CCG and played up until the a little after Lotus I want to say? i cant recall exactly. Best I ever did was win the local Season of the Crane and Season of the Shadowlands. Winning that foil Clan Sword was a real high point for me, even though I knew we would never get to keep the Yasuki family. Im not interested in the revisionism in the LCG. I recently purchased a box of the Emperor (?) edition tcg for my game group.
>>98316922>complete set of Clan War Novel from the WotC eraI read those too, I remember the Unicorn book had a Lion diplomat named 'Ikoma Hentai'.
>>98312916Favourite clan was CraneFavourite clan is still Cranefuck I love iaido and duelling
>>98317612Was actually quite a cool AU.
I both love and hate the Mantis clan. I think they're neat and interesting, I just don't like how they started gobbling up every other minor clan and turning them into pirates.
Has anyone here actually played the Legend of the 5 Rings adventure modules? How are they?
For me it's the Otaku Horse Maidens.
>>98317664I loved it. But it is where they started monkeying with the game to "prevent gold screw" with Gifts and Favors. While i do not think G&F was particularly bad, i think they went a little to far with stuff like border keep and whatever the other was. I think they were just trying to prevent feel bads when you flip 4 personalities turn 1 and have to flush your cool dudes out of the provinces.
>>98315357I actually think Phoenix have the most interesting inter-clan family drama with the Isawa vs Shiba and Isawa vs Asako tensions.
>>98312916>Anybody sad that L5R is dead as an RPG setting?We have a local scene still, game's only dead if nobody plays it. It's next in the group rotation. It might be Burning Sands instead, which I have never played.The guy running it is actually THE guy who famously had his Shiba Tsukune crab'd turn 1, good dude.>How do we make Rokugan great again /tg/?Going to have to be aquired by a different company. FFG caved to zero pressure from noganes on Banzai! before a tournament, a tradition from before they had the IP, and had an asian culture consultant from China who introduced a neighboring country to Rokugon that was "Rokugon +1". I can only wonder which country they based it on. It will have to be a company that embraces the setting instead of trying to make it palatable by removing what makes it interesting. All the Wickisims are trite, but the setting is lesser without them. The classisim may not be to everyone's tastes, but that's the way it is. It's not supposed to be familiar, it's supposed to be strange and foreign, exotic.>What was your favorite clan back in the day? And has it changed over time?I played Mantis Money Magistrates and abused the shit out of Yoritomo Kanahashi, played a fun Yoritomo courtier in 4th for a while. When the LCG hit there was no Mantis, so I played Dragon splash Crab. I probably played less than a dozen games before interest petered out locally. Last I heard they freed the roles and banned Charge!, then radio silence. Due to the nature of an LCG I tried my hand at Scorpion splash Crane for maximum cancels and political tricks and Lion splash Phoenix to get some hard defense and political strength to go with the military offence. Scorpion deck worked, Lion deck didn't. I have never known a time where Lion was Good or Crab was bad. As far as favorites now I'm just less of a Mantis fanboy. Turns out I was more a fan of Naval than the clan it's attached to. Now I'm a fan of the whole pincher alliance and Dragon.
>>98312916>Anybody sad that L5R is dead as an RPG setting? How do we make Rokugan great again /tg/?Its not dead until Im six feet under anon. That much I can assure you, and I have spurred my friends to give the TTRPG a try with some success.>What was your favorite clan back in the day? And has it changed over time?I only started in 2017, and played a Mantis because I wanted to have someone who felt as alien to Rokugan as I did. I loved the chip on the shoulder, underdog, fight for every small victory type of social position being a Mantis yojimbo for a Magistrate brought me.As time went on and Covid royally fucked up my playgroups/friend groups, I joined a DnD 5e group and wrote my character as a disgraced ex-Scorpion ronin, and man that campaign made me fall in love with the Scorpion. Not even for the edgy pragmatism and ninja shit, but the sheer expression of love and sacrifice their clan philosophy pushes them toward. I was in a pretty deep depression at the time, losing my mom to cancer, and I sort of coped through burying my head in the stories, sayings, and histories of Rokugan as a whole. A couple monthes later I also really developed a soft spot for Crab when I played a dude that got Samurai Jacked when he was fighting in the Shadowlands.It's funny; so often I hear L5R fans approach the clans with the same sort of team-sports mentality akin to 40K, but I have grown to genuinely love every clan and their outlooks on life, duty, and humanity.Even though the original jumped the shark, and I know there's contention with some of the FFG rewrites, I still love the game and think it may be one of, if not the best, settings ever put to paper.
>>98316003Yep, all we can hope for is some material if the Scorpion Clan book every comes out.
>>98317997FFG caved in for theD&D 5E vrsion of Rokugan, the FFG Dice version didn't have the Not-China.
>>98316922Don't know much about the setting or proper, but the d20 Rokugan books are amazing. If I recall it was Fortunes And Winds that had tons of hengeyokai, shugenja and inkyo goodness.
>>98317850Honestly with how much internal strife the Phoenix have it is a wonder they get anything done! It is also a shame that they never really got a win militarily speaking, I feel like they loose a lot.
It just seems like a hard sell these days. There's a lot to learn about the setting for a new player and having enough people to do an in-person campaign in 2026 feels like a pipe dream. Even in the 2000's when people still had attention spans my groups would always be a 50/50 ratio of people who loved the setting vs people who would rather be playing 3.5 DnD and just wanted to see their friends. I really developed an autistic fixation with Rokugan from Y2K to 2011. There was always more stuff to learn and clear reasons for cultural quirks in the setting(cremation is mandatory because of Iuchiban trying to overthrow the empire with necromancy etc). The system was deadly enough that it incentivized fighting intelligently or trying to talk things out first. We had multiple long campaigns where we'd game late into the night. We had a dangerously weaboo moment where a player was stuck working at Hot Topic and one of the other PCs died so we all jumped in a car and went to mall so we could announce his death to her with a rolled up scroll. I found more stuff that bugged me as I got older. Names that sounded like gibberish now that I'd actually studied Japan's history and language. Really bad arcs of the metaplot based on CCG tourney results(Hidden Emperor etc). I think if I ran it again I'd have the game take place like 200 years before the official storyline so I had a clean slate. There's a lot of other tweaks I'd make to the setting too. EG having a not-Korea and not-China in the world instead of having ancient Egypt, Rome, and medieval Baghdad, all north of Rokugan. Also always felt there should be way more minor clans, like maybe you'd be in the woods somewhere and trip over an Owl Clan and their small castle.
>>98316019Mirumoto bushi, possibly ronin. They're philosophical and fight with both swords. Sworn enemy(Sasaski Kojiro). Some kind of social disadvantage(he refused to bathe). Done. If you mean terms of just freewheeling and kicking ass with no consequences then yeah, L5R doesn't really cater to that. >>98317674I really hated how they'd have minor clans get destroyed or absorbed constantly to make the world seem dynamic. It felt like they were afraid of pissing off the fanboys of the great clans.
>>98317690The 1e Boxed sets were essentially mega-modules that were amazing. I have had a couple of games set in Ryoko Owari that were absolute bangers. One I did was Minor Clansmen in the Big City where everyone played a Minor Clan character. I had two Sparrows (rivals that constantly fought unless someone picked on their cousin then it was blood is thicker than water), a Fox, a Wasp, and a Hare. The other was more the standard Emerald Magistrates get into fucked up shit and Ryoko Owari is perfect for that.I played in a game that eventually did the Scorpion Coup (the main thing in the Otosan Uchi Boxed Set) and I was playing Scorpion. He was an Emerald Magistrate and had the Yogo Curse so he ended up siding with the Emerald Champion. He wasn't aware of the Curse but those above him in the clan were and predicted that betrayal. He saved Doji Satsume from an assassin the first night of the seige and killed her. When he unmasked the assassin and saw it was his sister and felt the resolution of the Yogo Curse it was cathartic. He eventually got his confrontation with Kachiko and she pretty much blew him off, saying he was just another piece on the board. She said if he wanted his "justice," he'd have to earn it and strung him along all through the Clan War.I own the third boxed set The Tomb of Iuchiban, but never used it but it looks cool, just not the kind of game I'd run or want to play in.
>>98318509way of the ninja is one of my favorites.
>>98319563I'd have to give it a better look, don't remember much. I was just thinking of the "Twist the Knife" feat the other day.>>98318823>We had a dangerously weaboo moment where a player was stuck working at Hot Topic and one of the other PCs died so we all jumped in a car and went to mall so we could announce his death to her with a rolled up scroll.Haha that actually sounds awesome>I found more stuff that bugged me as I got older. Names that sounded like gibberish now that I'd actually studied Japan's history and language. I've been reading more about oriental stuff and I realized the more over-excited weeabooish flavor of these stuff from back then endearing. I like to imagine actual japanese people having a laugh about all the gibberish.
>>98319819The silly weeb shit is part of the charm imo
>>98312916i dont, i still use 4th edition and its tons of fun.house rules are minimal.fcking love l5r 4th ed.
>>98312916started a big crab clan guy (still kinda am) but now im more of a dragon clan enjoyer.
>>98317612Lord Raiden?
>>98320253Bad future Phoenix thunder tadaka
>>98320319Well not really tadaka. He blows himself up. I wish I could find the story pamphlet in my l5r stuff. 1kYD was a really cool alternate time-line set.
>>98318857>Mirumoto bushi, possibly roninIf he's a Ronin he mechanically cannot be strong enough to step to the Great Clan samurai. Hence L5R sucks.
Would you prefer a Bushi, Courtier, Monk or Shugenja waifu?
>>98320768shug waifu by far.
>>98320768Courtier wife seems like it would cause a lot of marital strife and potentially end my familyMartial wife sounds fun but also likely to result in doomSo I'm gonna go with Shug Wife over Monk wife. I don't think the monk lifestyle is for me
>>98319384I'm slightly confused as to which is which. Is there a web page or link somewhere, where someone explains which adventure modules are which?
>>98320768What about Shinobi waifu?
>>98312916Fuckin love me some L5R. Bumping the thread. My campaign's almost finished so now trying to think of my next character build.
>>98317690I have. They vary wildly in quality. 1st Edition ones can be straight up used in 2nd 3rd 4th edition however difficulty might be a bit all over the place. Majority of the modules for L5R are either 1st edition ones (which are old, janky, vague and just ugly as shit to look at, but mostly play well and have cool stories and lore behind them) or 5th edition (newfag casual trash but easy to read). 4th edition is basically the standard game mode But it only has 2 or 3 modules. Legacy of Disaster is a 1-shot which can be stretched into a 2-3 parter that's a great way to start a campaign for new players. The Second City is 4th Ed's attempt at a huge D&D-style epic module that takes place in a city but apart from having lots of maps and shit with it, not very good. Could make a good base to start building a "takes place entirely within a corrupt city" campaign though.
>>98320891Problem with L5R modules is they're pretty disorganised. When I downloaded the pile of them from the archive I had to manually go through, read them, figure out what edition they were intended for and rename the files accordingly. Good news is 1st~4th editions are all fairly similar enough that you can use them interchangably but might just have to edit a couple rolls here or there. Someone who knows 5th ed really well could probably adapt 5th ed ones for 4th but itd be a lot of fucking around. At that point you could just steal the story and figure out the mechanics/rolls/statblocks on your own really.
>>98320768Matsu snu-snu
It's weird, it has been ages since I played L5R, and I don't have any likelihood of playing again in the future, but I really enjoy writing homebrew in L5R. I think it has a really nice balance of hard setting rules and facts along with plenty of space for yourdudes-san.
>>98319384City of Lies is great. Immersive local setting the PCs can really get to know. Mysteries to solve. Realpolitik(everyone tolerating the opium trade). Criminals pretending to be ninjas to cover their activities. Rank 1-2 characters don't feel totally outmatched. (L5R's core rulebooks always stressed morally tough choices about your loyalties but doing earth-shaking battles against oni etc really precludes that sort of thing and encourages everyone to optimize for combat.)>>98317690A lot of people have nostalgia for the Topaz Championship and they've made versions for at least two different editions of the game. It's a good excuse to throw multiple clans together and highlight some of the setting lore. The non-boxed 1E modules were pretty bad. Night of a Thousand Screams had way more battles than characters of that rank could handle with no rest and recovery time.
>>98317709That's Utaku to you, pervert
