Way of the Dragon

"I see nothing more than you do. You look the wrong way."

Way of the Dragon was the first supplement/splatbook published for the L5R rpg. This post will be based on my 1st printing copy, so it may not apply to any other of the three printings. However I always try to find clarifications and errata and will make note of that in text.

As an aside I will make a small comment on the publishing order of the "Way of..." books.

It was awkward. I mean Dragon, Unicorn, Carb, are hardly the meat and potatos of Rokugan. I suppose that by starting with the aberrant clans they might be giving themselves the time to hit a stride and focus they were confortable with, but Crane and Lion are pretty much the clans that define Rokugan.

Having said that, the Dragon clan is my favorite clan and I'm sure this book had much to do with that.

In tipical RPG fare it starts off with a piece of fiction, which is actually pretty good, altough to say it starts with a piece of fiction is a bit misleading as 1st edition material had a strong narrative focus and much of the setting material was presented from an in-world point of view.

Case in point, the first chapter, an oerview of the Dragon Clan is mostly presented through letter annd anedocts by characters.

One thing that jumps to the eyes is how something aren't yet defined or might have been writen in isolation. As John Wick is listed as the primary writer with the contributions by other writers well defined in the credits page I must assume it was part of the "biased history" angle JW claimed to be aiming at.

Still, particularly as this isn't outright stated, it is a bit awkward to see Agasha being adressed as a male several times, or the points where Mirumoto is said to have no sons and then being treated to Yojiro. This one is more telling because the source cultures put a tremendous emphasis in lineage so this kind of mistake doesn't seem very realistic.

The second chapter goes more in-depth on the specific families, starting with the Togashi. Another thing I found here, and dearly miss, is the existence of family mon. Currently I'm not even sure all the clan mon have been printed in the books (Oriole, Bat and Ox might be missing), but family mon, other than a showing in Death at Koten have been completely absent.

Mind you though that I'm not particulalry fond of Dragon mon. They're based more on a chinese aesthetic that clashes with what I expect a mon to be. However most family mon are a bit too complex for my taste. Dragon mon just more so.

Oh, there are also rules for non-Togashi to have tattoos. Yeah it's a sore point for me that this was the last place where this has been considered despite the fact that, in fiction, many characters outside the order have been shown to have received a tattoo.

After the Togashi come the Mirumoto.The initial portion is a discussion on the Mirumoto armies structure and organization. This has largely been superseded now (altough, only on a web supplement, if I am not mistaken). Frankly I somewhat prefer if over the structures proposed in Way of the Lion and Masters of War as it seems a bit more feudal (not much mind you).

I was somewhat amused by the notion that the Mirumoto daimyo's income is a mere 20 000 koku per year. To put it in perspective, if Rokugan had the kokudaka system, he'd have to supply 400 samurai and 4000 Ashigaru. Far from the 200 000 samurai the Dragon armies are supposed to number.

Chui are supposed to lead 700 men with an income of 30 koku.

I must now remind myself that Rokugan is not Japan. Too bad it often doesn't make sense either...

The rank names which range from the modern to the gibberish also rake a bit. For someone who claimed to have 3000$ of books on samurai in his shelves it a bit disconcerting to not see John Wick use the ubiquous Kashira. It was fun to see Nikutai used. It does mean corporal, just not as in the military rank but rather as in body...

From then we move to history, and a discussion on Niten, with excerpts from the text. Here it is atributed to Hojatsu rather than Mirumoto. I need to check if this is recurrent because I was convinced it was from Mirumoto himself, despite the fact that this way it actually makes more sense.

Niten is clearly inspired by Musashi's Book of Five Rings, and I found it awkward that Kijome's commentary reads as tranlator notes, including word choices. Considering Kijome is suposed to be a near contemporary he shouldn't sound like he was translating from one language to another.

After the Mirumoto we move on to the Agasha. Finally I start seeing Agasha refered to as a she, which had me worried for a while.

For the most part it isn't a very interesting section other than the fact that their history is quite entwined with that of the Kitsuki (something I'm alway fond of because it creates context), and the description of the Agasha "foundries".

The Kitsuki section closes the chapter. It's agood read but there is nothing that truly stands out. It might be the origin of the idea that Rokugani only value testimony though.

The third chapter is the chapter on new mechanics and character options.

Six new skills are introduced. Ichi Miru, Nazodo, Mountaineer, Kagaku, Craft: Tattooing, and Craft: Mitsugusuri.

Frankly I'm of the opinion that skills should be wide, mostly available to everyone, and I'm very critic of expanding skill lists beyond corebooks, so I'm not very fond of this section. Mountaineer just dilutes Hunting, Ichi Miru should be a fucntion of the Kitsuki school and otherwise dilutes Investigation, Nazodo has the same problem being another form of Investigation, with some Divination thrown in. Kagaku and Mitsugusuri are adictions that make sense, but Kagaku shouldn't be restricted and be a craft skill, while Mitsugusuri (actually Mizugusuri) should probably be a function of the Agasha school. Unfortunately the Agasha school had already appeared in the corebook, and paths are still a long way from being created.

So all in all, Tattooing is the only skill I don't have a problem with...

There are also new advantages, Elemental Attunement, and Noble Birth. Remember, in first edition Ise zumi are not automatically samurai, they needed to take Noble Birth to be so.

As for Elemental Attunement I think it should either be open to any character, or be a function of the Mirumoto School.

There are also three new disadvantages, Ascetic, Enlightened Madness and Vanity.

Vanity is a roleplaying disadvantage, basically being a free point.

Ascetic is a disadvantage I have mixed feeling. It's a obvious take for ronin, but I'm alaways leery of how it is supposed to work in other situation. I suppose it might work as some sort of temple membership...

Finally the Kitsuki and Ise zumi schools are detailed.

The Kitsuki school is quite cool, in particular because it is a dramatic departure from the schools in the corebook. It has issues. Rank 3 and 5 are automatic sucess techniques with Rank 3 being more worrysome because there is no suggestion on how to deal with opposed rolls. Rank 4 is a technique denial technique, which I alaways find too fiddly for my taste.

The Togashi school is harder to grasp. On one hand it is quite versatile, but on the other the tattoos are generally weaker than techniques, or at least have significant drawbacks, and the Ise zumi will need to spend 16 points to get two extra tattoos beyond those given by the school. Frankly I don't remember how tattoos felt in play. They don't seem overpowered (far from it actually), but a few seem no-brainers in relation to each other. Ocean and Crane come to mind and Mountain seems a better option than Bat.

The chapter finishes with the Heritage Tables. On the positve side only one entry which grants 3 extra Void points per day seems overpowered altough there are a few other entries that might be strong depending on the interpretation, but the dishonorable past table will fuck you up if you're unlucky enough to roll there. Quite flavorful though.

The following chapter, the Who's Who, details a few NPCs, and introduces Ancestors in the sidebars. In my opinion Ancestors should have been in the character chapter and here should have been some of the gneric NPC stats that were put in the sidebars of the second chapter, but what do I know.

As for the ancestors themselves their backstory is very good and for the most part they are not abusive. With one exception.

Mirumoto.

Priced at 15 points and it is still a bargain for a Mirumoto bushi PC...

The NPCs are writen in the crisp, vivid style of John Wick. They are quite cool just with an hint of special snowflake here and there. I could lie without that, but surprisingly I'm not in the least bothered by Yokuni lack of stats unlike others. Gaijutsu's, Hitomi's and Tamori's tattoos bother me a lot more because they are a lot better than PCs can get. Yokuni being a god and working by GM fiat is small potatoes compared to that, in my opinion.

After the Who's Who there is a sample of 5 example characters. Supposedly they are ready made characters for players to take, but I suspect they were more fodder for GM ideas than anything else. Hell, the 5th character is nigh impossible to fit in a party.


Finally we have the Appendixes. The first is on Dragons (the creature), the second is on Kaze-Do, expanding unarmed combat rules.

The third appendix is on Agasha magic, with a new spell, Transform, which I was always wary about, a few Kagaku items, including black powder, a few nemuranai, of which the Agasha seeds and the Twilight lanterns left me very impressed, and Mizugusuri recipes.

The fourth appendix has a few adventure hooks, including Togashi Okkio which seems a proto-Kokujin (at least I think he pre-dates Kokujin), and a rough description of the Dragon provinces.

Between this and the next appendix there's also a map of Mirumoto Castle. I still haven't taken a look at the other maps, but this one actually disappointed me.

Finally we have appendix five which is a couple of CCG decks...

I would seriously like to know if anyone found this section useful?

Because for me, as a roleplayer it certainly did not, and I suspect it wasn't that useful for the card floppers either, but why waste a good synergy for network externalities...

Closing the book there is a reference sheet summarizing the new options and some clarifications, as well as a few character sheets.

All in all this is a solid first supplement.

Game Master's Pack- The Hare Clan

The first GM screen I bought was actually the 2nd printing with the Shadowlands scene, so I'm reviewing this screen from the PDF on sale at Drivethru RPG.

I assume the screen itself was thin card like the 2nd printing, but had, on the outside, the 1st Edition map of Rokugan and the Great Clan mon (as seen on the left), and on the inside a combat summary, the mass battle table, a TN table, skill roll and maneuvre summaries, Hit location tables, which are explained in the booklet along with rules for intant kills, but are actually wrong (were switched with one another), weapon damage, iaijutsu rules. All in all a very complete package, and in my opinion nicer to look at than the 2nd printing.

As for the PDF I will warn that while searchable it is not bookmarked nor hyperlinked. AEG seems to have revised their policy on PDFs with the new edition, but it is a shame that the legally available older edition PDFs don't have better fucntionality than those of a competent pirate.

As for the booklet itself it starts of with the Karma Rule. It's just a way to start with an experienced character based on the players previous character. Nothing much to be said, altough If I'm reading it right a character created with this rule might end up significantly more powerful than the previous character particularly if said character was insight rank 1 or 2.

It's followed by further elaboration on the GM advice from the Corebook. Again, I find the advice to deal with power players, well, Ill considered. Passive agressive behaviour won't make for good group dynamic.

There's also errata for the corebook.

Then come the new rules, Shadowlands Taint and Maho. Maho rules are interesting, being  quite different from the current incarnation. It is however yet another different sub-system and one that clearly was developed as an afterthought. Considering the importance of the Shadowlands in the setting it seems strange that Maho and Taint weren't part of the core rules to begin with.

The spells included are mostly ok. Oni summoning though as no suggestions on how to be used so it feels like it's mostly a way to taint someone.

Finally we have the adventure itself. I don't want to give much away, but I quite like it even if it feels a bit disjointed at times. The weak link in my opinion is that while the setup lends itself to a court/intrigue game, a third of the adventure is spent on the Shadowlands with a plotline which is completely tangential to the interests of the PCs. There is also little advice on running mass battles which could come in handy for the last part of the adventure.

Personally I would fork the Hare Sword recovery into an independent adventure, and focus more on Lion-Hare-Scorpion-Kolat politicking.

However I usually love Greg Stolze's work, and this is no exception. He created the Kochako family for this adventure, a poison, put the proto-Usagi technique, there are floor plans for both Hiruma castle and Usagi castle. Other interesting thing is that the Hare general Takeshi seems to have a variant on the Crab technique.

All in all this is worthwhile product.

Previews at AEG

I've been looking at the Emerald Empire previews at AEG.

Interesting, altough it didn't made me want to buy the book. There's too much stuff there that is unlikely to fit my taste. I'm afraid they might have just reintroduced Dojo rules and Way of the Daimyo was a mixed bag for me, so I'm not that psyched about it being updated.

There's nothing hinting of vassal family content, either.

I was however pleasantly surprised by the preview of Enemies of the Empire. I had discounted it as being an expendable book, but the preview made me reconsider my opinion. I may very well come to buy it.

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Musings

These are just a few strings of though that came to me while reading the first core book, but didn't quite fit in the section read throughs:

• For a game based on the Five rings, they have actually little impact. Only Earth and Void have specific purpose in the rules, with Insight and spellcasting making sure the other rings must also be considered. Water would be tied to movement from 2nd Edition onwards. Air and Fire still don't tie to anything, although the Stance and Kata rules can be seen as covering this. I personally think  that tying Air to Initiative instead of Reflexes would have been a good start. Other thing that could have been done would be to do away with traits altogether and use the Rings, but this would raise the question of skills being considered even less useful. Hard-linking rings to skills migh solve this but it become an extensive re-design.
• No movement rules. They were only added in Clarification/Errata. Personally I'm not overly bothered by it as I took a more narrative aproach, and in situations where movement is important we have the Athletics skill, but for those more interested in a tactical or gamist aproach to combat this would be lacking, in particular because there are no rules for multiple actions.
• Honor. On one hand I found that the book decidedly wasn't that focused on honor being an integral part of roleplaying in Rokugan, so the vagueness of the Honor rules isn't that bad. On the other hand the honor system is lifted from the Passion system of Pendragon (where BTW there is a defined Honor Passion), and badly lifted at that. Unfortunately this is something that would become a bigger sore as the line grew.
• No multiclassing. Considering that there are only two classes, and that shugenja are supposed to be taught, not born, it's a bit annoying, more so if you consider that these are supposed to be religious prayers. But I guess much could be said of the non-handling of religion in RPGs.
• On a related note. spellcasting being class based, in a system that is otherwise very heavily skill based.
• The use of a supplement threadmill approach. I'm not exactly against this business model, but AEG was being rather heavy handed in its use.

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Book of Void

We now reach the last chapter of the first L5R core book, the book of Void.

Again we begin with a small fiction, now with the twist that partway the POV changes to that of an ongoing game session.

There is a short campaign construction discussion. It is interesting that from the start it is assumed that the GM will limit the campaign compared to the stance taken in the 4th Edition.

Then comes the advice on actually running the campaign which is actually pretty good for the most part, and clearly aimed at the beginner.

However, John Wick has the stance of punishing a player in-game, for out of game actions. See page 170 for example. The irony is that the GM in that first example doesn't even need to cheat for the player to suffer the exact same consequences, and by cheating it's probably making sure what we are told in pages 167-168 (having fun is the most important) doesn't happen.

A disruptive player is disruptive regardless of the in-game consequences you dump on their character(s).

After the campaign and game mastering advice there are a few non-stated out NPCs, a few magical items, and information on the ninja.

Frankly the ninja section seems a badly though out bolt-on, if not an outright comercial to the Way of Shadow supplement (nevermind that the Way of Shadow didn't exactly include what they tell us would be included herr). Way of the Crab and Way of the Lion also get the same treatment.

Oh, yeah, the insistence that Rokugani characters are absolutely convinced without the shred of doubt that ninja don't exist is also boring as well.

And unnecessary.

And not helped by insisting on making a ninja section, firmly putting an elephant in the china shop when he wasn't there before...

After the much to big ninja detour we have a small bestiary.

This section aslo includes several adventure seeds in the Challenge-Focus-Strike format, and a complete adventure.

I found the CFS seed fine, but the adventure while interesting has some flaws.

For one, it forces players to play pre-gempukku characters.
It also puts a Fortune immediately as a patron of the players.
Considering it is an introductory adventure and the characters are supposed to be children it also is very heavy-handed in the consequences for some failures.

If you fix these aspects it is a very fine introductory adventure for both the system and the setting.

After Ceremony of samurai we are treated with something I've come to realize we are sorely missing from 3rd Ed. onwards.

Maps.

Castle maps, geisha houses, temples, villages, you name it it exists.

Finally there is the actual map of Rokugan and a travelogue of locations.
One thing I liked here, and that returned in 4th Edtion, was how the great clans had borders that left large gaps of unaligned lands.

There are also some roads marked, which is a nice touch, as well as sea lanes, which we probably could live without.

There are a few mistakes, some key numbers are repeated, others are missing (or migh be in the creases of the pages), but nothing otherwise obvious.

My main impression here was how mind-numbingly long and baroque the toponyms are you won't find any Osaka here. Hell, you be lucky to find an Okinotorishima....

And with this I ended reading the first L5R rpg book ever. There were a few tables adds, reading suggestions, and the usual author notes, but nothing noteworthy (pun not really intended), but there is no point going over that.

I will do a small post-read analysis of somet hings that came up while I was reading but didn't fel right to post just yet, and then I'm going to start on the 1st gamemaster pack.

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Book of Air

First things first, I should start with a disclaimer:

Magic bores me to death. I suppose that which attracts me in fantasy is what could have been or maybe the what if.

Magic though, at least the way I've seen it done in most books and games, just plain bugs me, in particular when conbined with historical stasis.

Sometimes I'm surprised I'm not that much of a fan of science fiction either, considering it usually handles these aspects much better than fantasy.

This little rant only means that I'm reading the Book of Air, aka the magic chapter, and, well, it feels like work, and not just any kind of work, but the mind-numbing, wage-slave kind of work.

Almost at least...

 Like the previous chapters it begins with a small piece of fiction. Again, utterly forgettable.

It moves on to religion. A lot of what's in this section as been superseded by changes in the setting, and it's not very deep to begin with, but the only thing that annoyed me was when we are told that because spellcasting looks like maho peasants fear shugenja...

Right, so religious ritual looks like ilegal sorcery, which makes priests feared, but still very important because of their social role.

If you thought that phrase makes no sense, that's no coincidence. Mind you that they started off as if shugenja were scholars, which would make this distinction much more sensible.

One thing that was changed, to my pity, is that in 1st Edition, shugenja were clearly taught rather than having innate ability. This made their religious nature far more believable without sacrificing any other interpretation.

Following this overview we get the spellcasting mechanics proper and the spell list which finishes the chapter.

 The first thing I noticed is that I really liked the streamlining that was made in 2nd Edition.

That's right, I'm praising 2nd Ed. for something.

The main problem, for me, and this is something I've already mentioned about my personal preferences in 4th Edition, is that Magic is not very transparent, particularly when compared with the rest of the system. There are a lot of fidly bits here, with mastery level being a major culprit.

At this point I'm remembered that 1st Edition magic was overpowered, but I've got to wonder if they noticed one small detail:

In first Edition rest only recovered 1 slot per element. It could take many days to recovel all spell slots.

Now, this is a rule that I don't like, but I would like to know if those thinking Magic was too powerful took this into account, because it makes spellcasting a much bigger trade-off.

 One thing that might also escape notice is that alot of these spells were lifted directly from the Bushido RPG. This is something about which I have mixed feelings. A problem I sometimes have with RPGs, is that they become somewhat self-referential. Take the proliferation of elves and dwarves just because Tolkien did it, but as codified by D&D (which means they are not much like Tolkien). Something appears somewhere, and all of the sudden it appears everywhere...

This is not necessarily bad, there is something to be said about familiarity, and I'm certainly not the type that defends the mantra that new or different is always better, but at times it feels just fucking lazy and unimaginative how these thing get repeated, and in this case they don't even credit any kind of inspiration from the original.

Curiously, I found no traces of D&D, the usual suspect, being copied...

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Book of Fire

Moving on to the Book of Fire which is the rules chapter.

As you probably can guess by now we continue to be treated to Ginawa's adventures, now with Lion and Crane caricatures and Turi name-changing Gohei getting killed (He got better), before we get to the mechanics proper.

For the most part there isn't much to talk about here. The game was clearly rules light so there isn't much verbosage being spent. It is however very concise, amd it definitely make the system seem very intuitive.

One thing I've noticed is that the Void rules contradict the Meditation rules on recovering Void points.

The dichotomy between skills and traits is also adressed, altough it read a bit like rationalization. It does however mention the wound penalties that are on of the strong balancing factors in 1st edition, and that were dropped after it.

Interestingly, this seems to reinforce the idea I had that 1st Edition was more transparent than 4th Edition L5R in its mechanics. I suspected it might have been a consequence of the time I've been away from the game, but now I'm not so sure...

Another thing I didn't remember was that unarmed attacks were rated at 1k1. I want to see how Stone Hands works with that in Way of the Crab...

It is also interesting how there are more than a few exceptions spread through the system which is a bit at odds with how simple and intuitive it otherwise is.

For example, Initiative is merely rolling 1 dice and adding Reflexes. This may very well an atempt to reduce the importance of Initiative, and minimize the death spiral:

• It means Initiative is not affected by wounds.
• It means the synergy between Defense and Initiative isn't as big as in later editions.
• High Reflexes characters can't depend as reliably on Initiative, more so as it is rolled in every round.

Another such exception is the Defense skill. Again I suspect the different mechanic might be an atempt to prevent the death spiral, however I think in this case it fails.

Under 1st Edition the standard use of the Defense skill was that in full defense the attacking character add to drop all dice that rolled lower Reflexes+Defense skill, which were probably the dice the attacker was already going to drop. Even after errata that changed full defense to become a Defense skill roll (no trait, just the defense skill) keeping a single die, that was added to the normal target number, which averages 11.49 at Defense 5. Not much considering you lose your attack, and very little once you do get multiple attacks, so there is very little incentive to enter Full Defense.

Mind you, this is not necessarily a fault, in that samurai swordsmanship did tend to favour striking first and in a way that the opponent could not retaliate, but gamewise it would probably better represent this by making attacks simultaneous, or pure and simply make full defense a viable tactic.

After the combat mechanics are explained there is a sample skirmish, that is quite enlightnening, showing even things that aren't directly stated in the rules. I'm going to re-read all equivalent examples in the later editions to see if they are as effective.

The next section is on mass battles. Nothing outstanding here either, I do think the 3rd edition adaptation is more "complete" so to speak.

Finishing the chapter we have a guide to Glory rewards and losses, and the catalogue of weapons and armour.

Again I don't have much to say about this section, other than the fact that no guide for honor is given should be seen as an ominous sign.

And I also have to admit that the bit of armour porn at the end did manage to arouse me a bit.

Seriously the writers did want to show a bit of armour for the sake of armour...

Don't loose the book of air on the next installment.

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Book of Water

The second chapter is the book of Water, which is the character creation chapter, and like the book of Earth, begins with fiction depicting the continuing adventures of Ginawa. Again there is nothing memorable here.

With that out of the way we get to the meat of this chapter, character creation.

It starts out with character concept using the Game of 20 questions. Now, I don't have anything against the 20 question per se, it's just that they don't necessarily have much to do with character creation.

Sure, it can be helpful if the player has no idea whatsoever on what he is to play, but even then they don't give that much aid to a newbie player or to those with little knowledge of the setting.

Now if all the question had direct impact on character creation, in a similar way in which most FATE variants do, it would be worth it, but this way it is just encumbering the player at the creation phase with thing that aren't really needed. or that arise organically from play. I would probably cut down the Game to 5-6 question and let the rest come from play.

Following the 20 questions, a few archetypes are described, with their benefits and pitfalls. Bland, but useful.

At this point the mechanical information starts to be more substantial, with an explanation of the elements on the characters sheet, but before going into that I will point out the sidebar on pages 54-54. Now start a drinking game on how many official character names break those rules. Or rather, don't. Results can be disastrous...

Returning to the issue at hand, it is given an overview of the rings and traits folowed by a shorter overview of skills, clans, families and schools.

Only after this overview do we begin with actual character information.

One thing that surprised me me was how Honor loss was handled. Every time a character fell bellow a rank he'd go to the halfway point in that rank. So if Isawa Shigeharu was Honor rank 3.1 lost 2 honor points he'd go to 2.5 Honor rather than 2.9. Apparently when gaining Honor it reveive a bonus of 3 Honor points altough the writing isn't very clear here. So if Mirumoto Naomasa had 1.9 Honor and gained 1 Honor point, he'd be at 2.3 honor rather than 2.

I don't remember ever using this rule, and I'm a bit surprised at it. I'm also surprised on how Insight and Glory are described in so similar a manner.

One thing I do remember, and I'm very glad was changed was the difference between character points and experience points. Traits and skills had different cost depending on wether you were upgrading them on character creation or in play, and as I prefer to view CPs as XPs for the character's life before play, the different currency wasn't much to my liking.

However I've also noticed something. Much has been said of how inportant traits are in relation to skills, but looking at the costs this seems overstated. Relatively speaking Traits are actually cheaper in 4th Edition than they were in 1st Edition. Character creation does favour raising traits instead of skills as does the the Insight system, but for advancement skill are much more effective unless compared to Void which is a ring that is valued as trait. However as Void's main bonus are the Void points this might not be too bad.

Thematically this is interesting as a optimized starting characters will probably have a good dose of natural talent, represented by traits, but will then develop skills, and their attunement to the universe, as represented by Void. Considering starting L5R characters seem to be teenagers this looks appropriate.

After the character creation overview we have clan outfits, an example of character creation, and the equipment section.

If you went hum?! there, it wasn't an accident.

The character creation example is great, but for the love of God I don't understand why it was crammed between two equipment sections, particularly when the clan outfits are redundant.

As for the equipment section I must give props to art direction again. Almost every equipment item is illustrated.

After the equipment section came skills. It's a list tipycal of the period, mechanically light. The only thing that caught my eye was Herbalism and Medicine being specifically stated has being the same thing. An attentive GM can take care of that, but it felt redundant.

Same deal with the Advantage/Disadvantage sectio. Sensei, True Friend and Ally feel redundant, altough this might be a case of hindsight. On the Disadvantage side, Compulsion, Phobia and Chemical Dependency suffer a bit from the same problem, as does Black Sheep and Social Disadvantage. Other than that I found no obvious problem, altough I'm coming back to this section once I read the Fire book in more detail.

Following the Disadvantage sections we find the Clan spreadsheets that are awesome, in style at least if not in content (Who am I kidding?). Each two page spreadsheet (1 page for ronin) has a stylish illustration, a summary of character creation, clan overview, clan mon, opinions on the other clans, bushi and shugenja schools for each clan, outfits and three families.

 This is where I find most to criticize though. Like I said above the outfits are redundant, and, as per errata, when they differ, the correct outfit is the one in the clan sheet, so the space used before the character creation example was a waste of space. More important though is that only 3 families per clan are included when the space used to describe them is about one line. This is made more egregious by the fact that at this point all the missing families with the possible exception of the Moto were already defined in the storyline (and several are mentioned in the clan overviews).

It gets worse if, like I did, one goes through the trouble of reading through the PR stuff, clarifications, and whatever else can still be found. Many of these things were not left out by lack of space or some other reason , but clearly as commercial/marketing strategy.

Very disappointing.

I'm not commenting on the schools themselves, as, due to the several iterations they have gone through, I don't remember how they feel in play.

It's clear shugenja shouldn't be unbalanced as there isn't much variation between them, but I can't really remember the bushi schools.

Bayushi being initiative based probably ruled alongside the Mirumoto vorpal blender.

Ok, I'm going to open an exception to talk about the Dragon, as both the Agasha and Mirumoto school and families are potentially abusive.

Both schools allow choosing the trait bonus, and the Mirumoto family does as well. This invites trait optimization as I've mentioned above. More inportantly, the built in control is that the Mirumoto school only gets 6 school skills, and the Agasha school 5. I'm not sure when did the Agasha got their 6th and 7th skill, probably sometime during the second edition, but the Mirumoto only got the 7th skill in the 4th Edition, long after they lost their trait choice.

Finally, on what would be the ronin's spreadsheet second page there is a listing every skill, advantage and disadvantage.

Next up, we'll move to the Book of Fire.

John Wick

One of the things I've been doing while reading the books for this blog is going through the internet in search of old clarifications, interviews and errata for the RPG. Get a pulse of development and fandom, so to speak.

There's been a lot of archive binging.

One thing I'm surprised is how John Wick's online persona came across as being as complete asshole.

And I don't mean by that that he had a strong authorial voice.

I mean that he came across as being a complete bastard. Hell, those that think him annoying today would probably go batshit insane at his posture back then. The 2010 JW is a completely mellowed out version of 98-99 JW. If I had acess to the internet and was into L5R he'd might be able to drive me away. I'm not even sure I'd find him more palatable than one AEG's current moderators, Dace, which I can single out as being strongly responsible for me to decide to completely drop out of L5R nearly 3 years ago.

I won't even compare JW's online persona with his writing persona...

I am however going to put some of the archives I've been going trough in the Links sidebar.

Legend of The Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Book of Earth

The first chapter proper, the Book of Earth is the setting chapter.

It starts off with a competent but forgeatable piece of fiction featuring Ginawa, with sidebars repeating part ofthe Introduction's Glossary, which in my opinion makes it even more expendable, and the disclaimer that Rokugan is not Japan.

I suspect I'm going to have a lot of fun with that disclaimer...

After the fiction snipet begins the Gaijin's Guide To Rokugan proper, in narrative format starting with the creation myth.

The initial part of the myth is clearly identifiable from chinese and japanese creation myths but with the twist of the Three Sins, that forms the basis of Nothing's origin for those familiar with it.

It's also simplified in that Amatersu and Onnotangu directly replace Izanagi and Izanami. Nevertheless, so far, it seems closer to the Japanese myths than the more recent retellings.

It begins to differ significantly with the introduction of the Naga, and, more importantly, with the introduction of the Olimpians, with Hantei taking on the role of Zeus.

Young Fu Leng

Incidentally there is a nice illustration of the celestial family on page 18.

If you ever wondered what Fu Leng looked like as a kid, search no more. Ain't he a cute little tyke?

At this point we start moving from creation myth into historical narrative, with brief overviews of the clans being given as well on geography.

Incidentally, Shinsei is awesome. Check page 20 if you don't believe me.

The next big section of the guide is on culture. The celestial order is explained, with the different castes detailed.

Now, I have a problem with the Rokugani caste system, because their cosmogony doesn't doesn't really justify how strict it is, same as the blood taboo. It's one of those things were the designers changed one element of the source material without really thinking on how it would affect those that stayed the same. I can think on ways to reconcile these discrepancies, but it's still a sore spot.

Women's roles are also discussed. In this edition there is a stricter definition of roles comparing with later edition, altough not as strict as the inspiring societies usually were. I tend to prefer it this way, but again it is a place where the changes in mythology can justify it going either way. I tend to deal with this in family by family basis. I do have an extreme distaste of the marriage customs as they were lifted wholesale from japanese culture and are very hard to reconcile with Rokugani history.

After women's role the lifes of samurai and farmers are detailed. There isn't much to point out here, but it is a good place to note on how effectively the sidebars are used, at least in this chapter, always full of small cultural detais.

Then we have on of the favourite subjects of L5R, the economy. It's actually not too bad, just very incomplete and unusually focused on carpenters...

The food section is other that it isn't as restricitve as I remember. It could have done with better editing and I had to smile when they say that milk is more valuable than the cattle's milk (let's just say that if Rokugani are human, or even merely mammals, there is a high probability they are lactose intolerant as adults), but there are some allowances for the eating of meat by samurai.

Considering Rokugan is far more landlocked than Japan, and that some of the cultural taboos against eating meat don't make sense in this context, this allowance should be bigger, but it is stil better than I remember.

Clothing and housing are up next, and here I find something I've been missing in newer editions of L5R, or other RPGs, and hadn't even noticed. Art that isn't character or action oriented. I understand why AEG took to recycling card art, it makes sense, but for the CCG it's usually important that the art be dynamic and/or character focused, and I've noticed that many RPGs have had their art focusing on characters and actions, maybe in attempt to establish some kind iempathy/dentification with the prospective player, which is all fine and well. However, I think this come at the price of leaving the setting "shrouded in mist" so to speak. The black and white drawing of houses, castles and people in this section lead me to imediately imagine busy streets full of peaple and rows of houses.

Those pictures helped the setting come alive.

This leads us to the Bushido section.

Now the Code of Bushido as the Rokugani know it was not defined at this time. That happened either with the first travelogue, or with Way of the Lion whichever was published first. Here we have something which shows more of the societal effect than scriptured dogma.

I suppose either way is ok, and they aren't mutually exclusive,but since Rokugan's brand of bushido seems to have been largely lifted from Tokugawa's household code it's a times... "iffy".

I particularly like how Sincerity and On are treated here which put's it in stark contrast with the later assertion about Rokugani judicial system that it is completely testimony based. None of that silliness here.

So far this has been a breeze to read through, but I've already hit two facepalm moments. One was a bit on sword etiquette on how katana are kept in the obi blade down so that the saya does not dull the blade. The other, more problematic, in my opinion, was the revenge section, which highlights the anachonism stew approach L5R takes. Again it is not something that can't be reconciled, but it was clear that the writer wanted to include the revenge theme in the setting, but didn't want give carte blanch to the potential abuses that might lead.

By the end of the chapter we have additional information on the political and justice system, including how much magistrates should earn. I was quite surprised to find an Imperial Magistrate should have a stipend of 2-4000 Koku, and a clan magistrate should have a stipend of 700-2000 Koku. Also it's mentioned of karo actively leaving their lord due to lack of reward.

The last section of the chapter is a quick rundown of the game system. Personally I think this should have been part of the Introductory section.

Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire- Introduction

"We tell tales of heroes to remind ourselves tha we can also be great."

The book that started it all, or it would be if my copy wasn't a 2nd printing. I'm not sure what are the differences between the four different printings (and in fact I was told that they could be quite substantial), so I won't claim any of my observations to be universal.

Starting with the physical object, L5R is a 256 page perfect bound hardcover. I got my personal copy 2nd hand in late 2001, early 2002, and I must say it withstood the ravages of time quite well, only the glossy clan sheets have become detached (which is apparently a common complaint), but otherwise it is quite intact.

The cover itself is... Well, atrocious, as you can see to the left. I have a hard time finding a better example on how to fail in conveing what your setting is and being at odds with it. Fortunately the inside artwork is far, far superior.

There is a very good table of contents, which makes up for the lack of an index (which could have easily taken the four pages devoted to adds at the back of the book).

The book starts off with an small introductory section of about five pages with the usual "what is roleplaying" section, followed by a small primer on the "Rokugani" language (which then is usually ignored in the game and fiction...), and then ending in a glossary of "Rokugani" terms and stock phrases.

Personally I'm a big fan of translation convention, I'm a Portuguese guy, playing an american RPG about fantasyland samurai. We should assume that the characters coming from a shared cultural universe are capable of understanding each other, so I don't see much point to the waste of space in stock phrases for the sake of a supposed brand of flavour. Common loanwords, and names are of course exempt, and anybody knows that some jargon will inevitably seep into the language, but that's it.

Next up I'm going to take a look into the Book of Earth .

The Steel Throne

The Steel Throne serves as a bridge between the Clan War saga and the Four Winds saga.

This will be the last novel I will review for a while as I still don't have Wind of Honor or Wind of Truth.

The setting of this novel is the War of Spirits, a period which I was always very interested in but never got much development because of a lawsuit. Apparently, though, next year AEG is going to release a sourcebook, Imperial Histories, which will detail this era among others.

I'm actually a bit pissed off I completely missed this. I don't know if I had any chance to get selected or at least be a running candidate, but I would have liked to try...

As to the novel itself, I was very pleasantly surprised.

Characterization is very good, Hantei XVI, Toturi, Hida Tsuneo and Akodo Kaneka being particularly well done. Tsudao was the only character which got altered substantially from her traditional depiction.

In this novel she's dumb as a brick... And I don't mean in the Good is Dumb kind of way, but rather the Full Retard kind of way...

Incidentally, Kaneka is awesome in this novel. Too bad he ended up in Jesse Lebow's hands, then fell prey to AEG's "Rokugan must have a Shogun" fever, AND then had a bridge Khan dropped on him. Alas poor Scrappy...

It is not without problems though. The novel spans 20 years, roughly one per chapter, which means that the action feels disjointed at times, and some plot  are left underdeveloped or unexplained. The Dragon clan involvement is also awkward with Tamori's power seeming to be a bit too widespread.

Then there is Kitsu Motso's death... I'm still undecided if self-beheading by spinning no-dachi is awesome, or just really dumb.

All in all is a fairly enjoyable book, and if your interested in the War of Spirits it will still be the only source for a while.

The Lion

The final novel in the Clan War, The Lion wraps up with the Day of Thunder.

This update took a bit longer than usual because of the usual holiday rush, and because the novel itself is not that interesting.

Mind you I don't mean it's bad. It's just so incredibly average you don't really want to keep reading other than to ocupy your time during a commute or something like that.

You can also do a drinking game with it. Drink every time lion-headed katana...

It does get better towards the end, during the Day of Thunder proper, but up until that point it seems as nearly every moment of character development must come during or after a fight which make the first two thirds of the book a bit disjointed because it looks like battle scenes are being thrown around just to set the mood.

Comparing it with the other books in the saga this one is probably the middle of the pack. Undoubtfully better than the The Unicorn or The Phoenix, it struggles with The Crane depending on the readers particular taste, but definitely worse than The Crab, The Dragon and The Scorpion.

Sullivan seems to have completely overcome his fascination with natto though.