Killjoy, I'm really confused why are you so vocal and invested about this game which you don't play, don't like the setting, and are opposed to the basic premises of (which is a fantasy samurai society focusing on honor and duty to the community - which, in turns, heavily emphasizes collectivism of culture; I can understand why you are alienated by it, because it's a pretty classical clash of western individualistic society values clash versus eastern collectivist society values and expectations clash) What keeps up your interest in L5R?

What are chances of 4th Edition being lincensed out to some 3rd party, like Green Ronin, simply to keep up some materials coming out? Adventures would be best, but some new books *could* be good, although 4th Edition became progressively worse in mechanical aspects due to incompetence of people writing mechanical tidbits in them; maybe incompetence is too harsh, but most of that stuff lacked understanding of basic 4th edition design and in turn worked rather bad with it.

Like, I don't know who thought that a relatively low level Air Spell should be able to add up to twice your Air Ring in flat bonus to all Awareness and Reflexes roll, and increase your ATN by that number too, for the whole day, was a good idea.

Killjoy, I'm really confused why are you so vocal and invested about this game which you don't play, don't like the setting, and are opposed to the basic premises of (which is a fantasy samurai society focusing on honor and duty to the community - which, in turns, heavily emphasizes collectivism of culture; I can understand why you are alienated by it, because it's a pretty classical clash of western individualistic society values clash versus eastern collectivist society values and expectations clash) What keeps up your interest in L5R?

There are things I like about the setting, some of them a lot, that just haven't much come up here, yet. I ended up with some of the books unintentionally, and there are some things that sucked me in.

I think Rokugan is a big place, with room for a lot more than just the most constrained and refined of "courtly samurai drama"* -- the source cultures and fictions were a lot more varied and colorful than just that one slice.

(* Which is in many ways based on an after-the-fact romanticization that combines the battlefield conflict of the true warrior days of the samurai with their later days serving mainly as highly refined courtiers and bureaucrats. See also, how later writings about King Arthur transposed the culture, armor and weapons, and so on of their own time into the stories they were adapting.)

So, one of iconic elements of the L5R that has actually nothing to do with Roll and Keeping.

Insight.

Insight is very iconic and I enjoy it a lot. It's one of things that I woud love to see included in any L5R RPG.

Looking at Edge of Empire...

You buy Talents from Talent Trees using XP. What if, in our little thought exercise RPG, Insight was the resource used to buy Techniques and nothing else?
(Techniques being somewhat similar to Talents and Talent Trees)
This way, you have XP pool that helps you make your character stronger, and Insight pool, which helps you refine your techniques and special abilities.

Greetings from the Sands, Evil-Smelling Brother-in-Law of a Camel!

I hope we will have *some* news from the people of FFG about their plan for the RPG soon.

There won't be any new stuff for quite some time but it would be kind from them to let us know what to expect.

See you in the sands.

I loved the L5R RPG and ran more than a few campaigns in my time. Some wonderful memories. But my issue with every edition after the 1st was bloat. I liked that there were 5 ranks and you got 1 technique at each level. Granted the schools were horribly balanced but by 4th edition there were so many extra bits and bobs you could add to a character that it felt heavy and lethargic.

Now, I know FFG is a creature of habit and this creature loves crunch and loves unique dice/tokens so any game we get will hopefully be in a comfortable middle ground.

We'll see.

I loved the L5R RPG and ran more than a few campaigns in my time. Some wonderful memories. But my issue with every edition after the 1st was bloat. I liked that there were 5 ranks and you got 1 technique at each level. Granted the schools were horribly balanced but by 4th edition there were so many extra bits and bobs you could add to a character that it felt heavy and lethargic.

Now, I know FFG is a creature of habit and this creature loves crunch and loves unique dice/tokens so any game we get will hopefully be in a comfortable middle ground.

We'll see.

I like fourth Edition, sure there is still room for improvement, but they got there already rid of most of the useless bloat they implemented in third edition and mostly kept what was useful. Sure, you might still enjoy an even more simplistic game, but in my opinion the fourth edition is the best we had so far for the game. So, in the end it is a matter of taste, and no gaming company can make everybody happy, since people will always prefer different things.

What are chances of 4th Edition being lincensed out to some 3rd party, like Green Ronin, simply to keep up some materials coming out? Adventures would be best, but some new books *could* be good, although 4th Edition became progressively worse in mechanical aspects due to incompetence of people writing mechanical tidbits in them; maybe incompetence is too harsh, but most of that stuff lacked understanding of basic 4th edition design and in turn worked rather bad with it.

Like, I don't know who thought that a relatively low level Air Spell should be able to add up to twice your Air Ring in flat bonus to all Awareness and Reflexes roll, and increase your ATN by that number too, for the whole day, was a good idea.

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What spell was that?

And yes, RPG Design was *not* AEG's strongest suit. Especially the arbitrary way they decided what was supposed to be essential for the game and what wasn't, so you left all the good stuff that made sense to upgrade behind.

Add the uneven doling out of Advanced Schools and Paths, you can find the biggest issue I've had with the game for many years.

And keep Green Ronin out of my Rokugani cornflakes. They've clearly demonstrated that they won't dedicate proper time to a game. ASOIF is a very good example. The dice system breaks down, and fast at that.

Essence of Air. Air Kami's Blessing.

Another problem of 4th Edition magic was that it offered zero counterplay. If Shugenja wanted spell to go off, it went off, and you had literally zero way aside of killing him before he completed it, to do anything about it. And in case of spells that were shortened to 1 round casting, you didn't even had this much to say. Combine that with spells having powerful, combat warping effects tackled on them, and unavoidable damage that was on par or better than Bushi's attacks. You didn't need "Broken" Shugenja or "munchkin" Shugenja to leave rest of the party behind - you simply needed Shugenja who casted his spells when they were naturally useful.

Pretty much only thing that could help you against Shugenjas was stealth and line of sight breaking, but good luck doing that without grid and things to break the LoS with .

These flaws probably came from the basic assumption that spells should be powerful than anything else, because they are limited resource per day, and other characters can do their things infinite times. Which is a terrible assumption, because you had so many spell slots available, and usually needed only one spell to decide the encounter, that you would run out of the steam only if

a) your GM was GMing some kind of Dungeon Crawl Gauntlet Of Battles, or other kind of attrition game

b) your GM forced artificial ways to expend your spell slots ("you cannot bless these crops without using up 3 water spell slots!")

c) your Shugenja was using his spells on right and left

Starting character has at least 10 spell slots. This only get bigger as the game progresses. Using "but you only can cast 10 Nukes per day!" as a argument to making Nukes super-powerful is bad design, imho.

I'd love FFG to stick with the R&K-System as it is. I think it pretty much depicts the really realistic part of getting killed with one or two sword strikes. IMHO it is pretty boring to have the small and pretty much expactable outcomes you get using a d20-System. And the dice-system used for WHFRP-3rd Edition is part of the reason why I didn't buy it.

Then, I love how L5R depicts the stiff samurai-setting, where everything is about not only your personal Honor but also about not stain the Honor of your family and your ancestors. I always viewed the different clans like the different races in most RPGs, therefore the schools somehow resemble different classes. And I really can't remember that in for example D&D a Fighter has the possibilty of casting Magic Missile...so why should a Bushi be able to do that? There are many ways for Shugenja to support their Bushi. And a ghost has always the option of deciding to show itself to everyone, so yes, it is the specialty of the Shugenja but a ghost can show itself to a Bushi or Courtier too. And there are also invisble opponents in mostly every other Fantasy-RPG and there is almost always a way to make them visible.

I love the way how the schools show that some clans emphasize with duels, while other clans emphasize with skirmishes. I think this gives more variety to the different Bushi. The same goes for Courtier, Monks, Ninja, Artisans and Shugenja. For me it is pretty boring that the only difference between for example two Sorcerer in D&D are the race and the chosen spells. And this goes for almost every class in similiar games.

One of my characters for L5R is a Shoruso Actress from the Scorpion Clan, yes she could fight pretty good with knives, since her school emphasizes these weapons, but I chose to highlight her artistic education. She is sort of a cliche Scorpion, but at the same time she is not. One can always highlight one part of the personality with fitting advantages ( Clear Thinker, Dangerous Beauty, Precise Memory, Sensation, Voice) and highlight another part through fitting disadvantages (Consumed:Perfection, True Love).

I also love that magic is somehow overpowered, how would one defend against something one doesn't see coming? So for me it is fine.

The only thing I'm missing are more varied Advanced Schools, for example there is no Artisan-Advanced School for the Shosuro Actors.

If you want to keep the RPG alive, are looking for people to play or talk with there is a g+-community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104174099357148700553

My ideas about what FFG could do with the RPG are:
Wait for a while and then reprint the 4th Edition with the Errata incorporated in the various books and maybe also the rest of the Imperial Archives (I think most of the IA fit into the Emerald Empire) incorporated into the other books. Keep the design of the covers, but use some new artwork and as for example the elemental books rework the layout (especially make the chapters designed in the same way in all the five books and make the table of contents looking the same).

Publish some additional adventures and a new free adventure, since "Legacy of Disaster" is already a few years old and some new pre-gens and a new adventure may help get the attantion of new players and the "old" players in the change, without really changing anything.

And if possible talk to "Uhrwerk-Verlag" about the German translation...they failed so much, that there is only the corerules availiable and none of the additional books...

Then wait for a while to see how everything sells and start with working on a 5th Edition. (My timetable would be: autumn or winter 2016 reprinting and publish some new adventures, 2017 publish another one or two new adventures and start working on 5th Edition).

If I'd make a 5th Edition I'd clear up on the storyline. Maybe restart at the Clan Wars-Era or something ( I like Iweko I., but for me it is kinda disturbing that there are 4 wars in the 10 years after Iwekos assencion and the Spider-Clan joining Rokugan doesn't feel right too) and stop letting the card game influence the storyline. Or stick with letting the card game influence the storyline, and pick the story up on where AEG left, but that mostly depends on how the LCG is designed.

But that is just a fangirl talking.

Essence of Air. Air Kami's Blessing.

Another problem of 4th Edition magic was that it offered zero counterplay. If Shugenja wanted spell to go off, it went off, and you had literally zero way aside of killing him before he completed it, to do anything about it. And in case of spells that were shortened to 1 round casting, you didn't even had this much to say. Combine that with spells having powerful, combat warping effects tackled on them, and unavoidable damage that was on par or better than Bushi's attacks. You didn't need "Broken" Shugenja or "munchkin" Shugenja to leave rest of the party behind - you simply needed Shugenja who casted his spells when they were naturally useful.

Pretty much only thing that could help you against Shugenjas was stealth and line of sight breaking, but good luck doing that without grid and things to break the LoS with .

These flaws probably came from the basic assumption that spells should be powerful than anything else, because they are limited resource per day, and other characters can do their things infinite times. Which is a terrible assumption, because you had so many spell slots available, and usually needed only one spell to decide the encounter, that you would run out of the steam only if

a) your GM was GMing some kind of Dungeon Crawl Gauntlet Of Battles, or other kind of attrition game

b) your GM forced artificial ways to expend your spell slots ("you cannot bless these crops without using up 3 water spell slots!")

c) your Shugenja was using his spells on right and left

Starting character has at least 10 spell slots. This only get bigger as the game progresses. Using "but you only can cast 10 Nukes per day!" as a argument to making Nukes super-powerful is bad design, imho.

-

You wanna talk insane.

I had a siege going on in my game, and the Isawa Fire Tensai decided to take the entire western flank by herself.

Fun fact, with a Fire Ring of 8, a "Rise, Fire" spell, combined with the Inferno Guard Path? Cue an invulnerable juggernaut of a Fire Spirit with a Fear Rating of 8 and a 8k8 to everything. She then fortified it with a Fire Shield and Bob's yer uncle.

That thing soloed Legions. No samurai or ashigaru could deal with a Fear 8, and there was only a handful of enemies able to do this, and those guys had plenty to worry about with the other characters charging their lines. Fire Gojira waltzed through the armies of the Shogun like a scythe through grain.

For a samurai fantasy game, that really blew my mind.

Actually the book of Fire introduced counterspelling options so you basicly can counter a spell and prevent it from happaning.

And yes the fear 6 Rise fire Giant is nothing to laugh of so easyly. But hey I bet the player had fun and this is what counts the most or not? Also if he truely was alone let the soldiers ignor the giant and go for the caster cause the giant is only there as long as he can maintain concentration.

Also the Fear effect from INferno guard goes for the spell mastery not for the Ring that means the giant has fear 6 not 8. In addtion to that only people who are effected by it get the fear (at least thats how my current Gm rules it) so only the people who got punched at least 1 trime fro him get the fea effect on them.

Yes this is still possible but not unbeatable so if you go for good tactics like distract the giant with a big enough untit that it is threatining to the shug and than go with a little unit behind him and attack him from his blind point it can work as counter to this tactic.

I think you have more problems when he goes for multiple destructive waves which doe aoe dmg and fear 5.

And just to be clear this is a magical Samurai fantasy game which a larger than life approach. That 1 samurai or Shugenja can defeat an entire army is not a bug it is a feature.

I don't think that "but Shugenja can counterspell another Shugenja!" is a good argument against "Shugenja actions offer next to zero counterplay to non Shugenja".

Actually the book of Fire introduced counterspelling options so you basicly can counter a spell and prevent it from happaning.

And yes the fear 6 Rise fire Giant is nothing to laugh of so easyly. But hey I bet the player had fun and this is what counts the most or not? Also if he truely was alone let the soldiers ignor the giant and go for the caster cause the giant is only there as long as he can maintain concentration.

Also the Fear effect from INferno guard goes for the spell mastery not for the Ring that means the giant has fear 6 not 8. In addtion to that only people who are effected by it get the fear (at least thats how my current Gm rules it) so only the people who got punched at least 1 trime fro him get the fea effect on them.

Yes this is still possible but not unbeatable so if you go for good tactics like distract the giant with a big enough untit that it is threatining to the shug and than go with a little unit behind him and attack him from his blind point it can work as counter to this tactic.

I think you have more problems when he goes for multiple destructive waves which doe aoe dmg and fear 5.

And just to be clear this is a magical Samurai fantasy game which a larger than life approach. That 1 samurai or Shugenja can defeat an entire army is not a bug it is a feature.

-

(You're right btw. Fear 6 was what we used. It's been a while. Fear Effect takes hold when in sight of the thing. Preferable before Initiative rolls.)

No one could hit her. A -6k6 is pretty much a death sentence to anyone below rank 4.

Fun? Yeah, I suppose it was. But it was making a lot of the other players feel... less than useful.

But, hold on for just one minute.

Yes. Cool. Bug, not feature. Errrrr...

If this was a feature of the setting, *any* conflict involving a big amount of shugenja would be moot. Which is not the case. Seriously, the wizard aspect of Shugenja is not all that conductive to the written setting. They are supposed to be priests, and when the priests are the settings tac nukes, I'm not sure that the mechanics are talking to the setting and vice versa.

I have found... no real example of *one* shugenja destroying a freaking army unless there was a major cost to him.

If you got one, I'd love to see it.

The biggest issue is actually that the bushi and shugenja arrives at those "army-wrecking points" at very different insight ranks.

A bushi can kill, perhaps four men per round if he is *really* skilled at Rank 5. A shugenja? Rank 5, he can lay waste to castles, armies and more.

I have no clue when a bushi is supposed to be able to kill an army by his lonesome. Are we talking Hida Kisada levels?

That D&D'ism just has to bloody go. Seriously, why do we keep on doing that? And with all the trap options placed in almost all of the Editions, we should **** well be able to kill at least this undead horse and stop beating it like a war drum because it has always been like that.

Not everything needs a counterplay from each class in the game. Most of the time a stone, paper scissor, triagnle of strengh and weakness if mroe thna enough. Also as far as I know most of my groups inlcuded at least 1 Shugenja cause most of them care about the range of abilities we have with us.

For a Bushi there is acounterplay to them too it is called be faster and hit harder and this is totaly possible cause a Shuigenja (excluded earth Shugs) most of the time have no real defense in the first turn of combat an Arrow or a fast Samurai can make it more difficult for them to cast and if you have a otehr shug with you he can do the counterspell method.

So in the end I don´t see a big problem in them.

Also not all of the Shugenja are equaly priestlike. I would say that while the Asahina are the one swhich could go for a priest the Isawa are the wizzards of Rokugan this is even backed by Isawa himself who was clear a wizzard and not a priest.

If players feel useless cause of the might of the Fire Shugenja thats uncool but maybe they have to talk about this. For most of the gorups I participate in we talk before we start about the role each one wants to take so that no one is useless and all have their part where they excell in. Actually I also don´t understan these feeling of dam iam useless cause he is better, each time I find a better build I think cool thing how he pulled that of lets see if I can get a better one next time.

At least for the normal Samurai Army a Bushi can kill the whole army with one fight. He simply goes out and duels the general for a end of the bloodshed and if he wins the army is defeated.

Why we do this is simple cause people like larger than life games and favor magic over sword play. Thats why you get more powerful mages in contrats to sword fighters.

If you are playing using movement rules, Bushi can kill infinite amount of people as long as he has Simple Action Attacks and they don't. Still, this is usually shunned as either a bug, or abuse.

Shugenja nuking that room of people in one round is just "working as intended" .

EDIT

Shugenja not having good defence is funny, because they are literally the best users of Defence stance and Defence Skill - all their stuff can be used from Defence Stance, which naturally leads to Shugenja having quite non trival "free" ATN from it that does not impact their abilities at all.

As for counterplay, I wonder how fun would you consider being target of unavoidable stunlock that lasts until you are dead and cannot be contested or resisted in any way, for example.

Spells mechanic is badly designed, because it deals in absolutes, and very rarely there is any way to not suffer horrible consequences of Shugenja casting her spell. Spell TN has nothing to do with you, too.

Can you explain the Bushi example a bit more. Never heared abou this actually but I need to know how it works to evaluate if it is a bug or not.

During your turn, you can take two Simple Actions, or one Complex Action, plus Free Actions. Each Free Action can be used only once per turn.

Simple Actions allow you to travel distance of Water x10, and Free Actions allow you to travel distance of Water x5. No matter what, you may not move more during a round than your Water x20.

People without Simple Action Attacks make attacks as Complex Actions. Which means, that in order to be attacked by them, you must be no further than one Free Action move from them.

Bushi with Simple Action Attacks (so, Rank 3 or 4) can make attacks as a Simple Action. Which means that they can not only attack you from up to Simple Action+Free Action worth of movement, but also can move after attacking you.

So basically, if Bushi attacks you once and uses his remaining Simple Action to footwork away from you, your Free Action move needs to cover distance equal to that Bushi's Simple Action move in order for you to attack.

Simple Action Moves are literally twice the size of Free Action Moves. Which means that they can attack you once, disengage, and they are just beyond your counterattack range. This effectively allows you to slowly chop down whole armies as long as they won't go "hmm, let's grab bows".

And this was why Unicorn bushi and Matsu Berserkers were effective in games that kept track of such things. Unicorn fought from horseback (meaning greater movement), and Matsu Berserkers just dropped into Full Attack, and start with a Strength of 4, so usually have a Water of 3 or 4 out of the gate.

Lioness Legion also laughs at such cowardly tactics! As do enemies who have the sense to use their full movement for the round to take up positions where you can't get away from all of them, and/or force you to back into a corner of some variety where you have to fight. It's definitely a neat trick, but not an auto-win against intelligent enemies.

During your turn, you can take two Simple Actions, or one Complex Action, plus Free Actions. Each Free Action can be used only once per turn.

Simple Actions allow you to travel distance of Water x10, and Free Actions allow you to travel distance of Water x5. No matter what, you may not move more during a round than your Water x20.

People without Simple Action Attacks make attacks as Complex Actions. Which means, that in order to be attacked by them, you must be no further than one Free Action move from them.

Bushi with Simple Action Attacks (so, Rank 3 or 4) can make attacks as a Simple Action. Which means that they can not only attack you from up to Simple Action+Free Action worth of movement, but also can move after attacking you.

So basically, if Bushi attacks you once and uses his remaining Simple Action to footwork away from you, your Free Action move needs to cover distance equal to that Bushi's Simple Action move in order for you to attack.

Simple Action Moves are literally twice the size of Free Action Moves. Which means that they can attack you once, disengage, and they are just beyond your counterattack range. This effectively allows you to slowly chop down whole armies as long as they won't go "hmm, let's grab bows".

Seems totaly ok for me since it is not a bug or exploit but good rules knowlegde. If you keep track of it why not go for such a tactic. The onyl thing what comes into my mind is that if you get to IR3 (whereyou get the SAA) you opponents will be there too and also have the SSA but if you don´t do it this way I would say it is ok cause I like powerful things and game actions so if I go for shugenja powermobves are ok I also go for Bushi Powermoves are ok as long as they do not violate the rules.

Whatever happens, I'm hoping that the dice system stays the same. Roll and Keep is one of my favorite systems, and I think it'll work best for L5R rather than the Narrative System for Star Wars or the d100 System for Dark Heresy. It's really solid and I enjoy how the dice pool is formed from a mixture of Attributes and Skills.

There isn't much counterspelling in the game unless you happen to be an Asako inquisitor who go around hunting for maho practitioners, they end up having a skill that functions as a counter spell. It starts out as a complex action then goes to a simple action. It would be nice if there were more counterspell stuff instead of going to bash the shugenjas face in. As for insane feats look at the rank 3 ability for the Elemental Guard, it lets you cast a rank 3 or higher spell as a simple action a number of times a day equal to your void ring.

I do agree with MHW ..somewhat, that there is a flaw in 4ed that doesn't stop that (other than missile attacks, why every crane warrior carries a spear!). Basically, no outnumber rules, and no "blocking" mechanic. Many systems have a mechanic in place to let someone intercept you if you get into their "threat" range, and I think that an important one to have, so you can corner that bob and weave Bushi. As for Shugenja being able to nuke, and unless you can counter spell (Book of Fire), there is nothing to do about it, maybe 3ed is more to your liking? Bushi were far more powerful there and could cut a shugenja down on one action, generally before the Shugenja went.

Things I'd Change About L5R-

-Bring back some of the more 'adult' setting concepts: There was this huge push in 3e and 4e to make L5R more 'family friendly'. While I'm alright with that, some of the stuff that got watered down really bothered me. There was less emphasis placed on the caste system. The Shadowlands went from being a legit scary nightmare realm to goblins, zombies... mostly the generic evil you'd fight in D&D. Questions about culture dealing with anything remotely controversial were left entirely unanswered.

In my opinion, this is something that could/should change. The community is mature enough to handle a frightening Shadowlands and/or some talk about how, for instance, homosexuality is treated in Rokugan. While AEG had no problem with card art portraying naked women, apparently they felt these other concepts were just too offensive to deal with. I disagree. Roleplaying should, of course, be fun. But it should also encourage us to enter situations and answer questions that we wouldn't in real life. And when someone can easily just cut out the parts they don't like/are uncomfortable with, I see no reason to refrain from including them.

-Get rid of insight bonuses: I'm all for there being an insight system. That said, I dislike seeing a ton of character sheets that look exactly the same because everyone went for that Etiquette and Courtier of 3 to get the extra insight. This was mitigated some in 4e where Etiquette and Courtier were the only skills giving insight bonuses, but it was still an issue. I know the intention was to encourage people to take these skills, and I certainly applaud their use. That said, there has to be a better way.

-Balance out Advantages/Disadvantages: Similar to the insight bonus issue, I often saw characters taking virtually identical packages of advantages and disadvantages. This is because, while some of the disadvantages were crippling, others could easily be played around. While some of the advantages were meh, others, often at similar point values, were really solid. I can only see so many courtiers with Lame/Permanent Wound and so many bushi or shugenja with insensitive/failure of compassion.

-Changes to Traits/Skills: There's a lot to be said here. For one, there's too much emphasis placed on certain traits. While a lot of skills are based off of Agility or Awareness, for instance, there are some traits that do very little mechanically. We could do with more balance there.

Also, I'd like to see trait rolls do a bit more. While a thorough skill system often makes trait rolls unnecessary, a few more uses for raw trait rolls would be nice.

Lastly, the importance of skills needs to go up. It is currently too easy to be good at a ton of stuff by neglecting skills and upping a trait or two to 4. Fixing this may require modifying the r/k system; I'm not entire sure.

More Modules and Less Core Books- While I appreciate the fluff of the element series, at its core it was a way to make people by 5 books to get the whole shugenja play experience. The same spells, techs, etc. could've easily been released in a single book. We had Prayers and Treasures/Walking the Way in earlier editions and that worked just fine.

While we saw too many books that were required to get the full play experience, one thing I found lacking was decent modules. Many of the adventure hooks were subpar. The couple of adventures we got were decent, but I've certainly seen better. At one point, the AEG staff at Gen Con promised the community more modules. Nothing ever came of it.

Less Emphasis on Schools in Character Creation- Right now, your school determines a majority of who you are. It gives you your school bonus, your skills (with 2 or less chosen by the player), all your techniques, your gear, etc. While some of this is great, I think a bit more focus could be put on individual character backgrounds. Perhaps make use of archetypes within each clan or something similar to give people more options in regards to skills/abilities.

Flesh out Honor, Glory and Status: What does Glory/Infamy do? Why does it need to be massive before 90% of people can recognize me? Why does picking up Fame barely put a dent in that? What does honor mean? What's the difference between being honorable and being nice? What does my status allow me to do? What can a status 4.0 samurai get from their clan that a status 2.0 cannot.
AEG tried to flesh some of this out, but they've always kept it rather vague. I don't think it needs to be turned into a bunch of mechanics, but giving players more of an idea about what their ranks in these mean would certainly be useful.

Oh, and while you're at it, turn Glory and Infamy into two separate stats. It's common sense that a person can have both.
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Things I'd Keep

Lethality- Its always been easy to die in L5R (aside from 2nd Ed, but lets just ignore that mistake). This is an aspect of the game I'd like to see stick around. It's a samurai's duty to die. Death is an issue that can, and should, come up in game. Whatever modifications are made to the system, I think it needs to stay rather lethal.

4th Ed. Standards for Courtiers- Prior to 4e, people tended to ignore courtiers in game. Whenever they'd try their social machinations, folks would try to work around them, or simply ignore them, stating that 'courtier is not mind control'. In 4th Ed, AEG apparently got sick of this and gave courtiers techniques that allow them to socially manipulate people into specific actions. That definitely needs to stick around. It puts courtiers on par with bushi and shugenja. It also keeps people from just dancing around them as if they do not matter.

Strength of Maho- This was a nice touch in 4e as well. Maho isn't meant to be fair and balanced. Its mechanics should accurately continue to reflect that.

Ancestors and Heritage Tables- While I know a lot of pbp games don't use these, I would definitely like to see them stick around. Some may need to be balanced out but, for the most part, both are very solid. Anything that encourages players to take their character's background/lineage into consideration is a good thing in my book.

R&K: While I suggested some tweaks to it above, I do really enjoy the RK system. It's different from your d20, d100, Narrative, Success-based systems. It lets players roll a bunch of dice, and we all enjoy that. Also, it's super-easy to modify with techniques/abilities in ways that don't completely break the game.

Honor, Glory (and Infamy), and Status: While, again, I suggest some changes above, these should stick around. They're another core aspect of the game and I think they do a nice job laying out people's standing. While what people can actually DO at certain ranks has always been rather nebulous, the idea that someone with Status 2 should show some respect to someone with Status 5, for instance, is simple and effective.

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I could keep going, but I'm going to leave it at that for now. Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing where the RPG is taken.

The only problem I have with the Heritage Tables is that they are not balanced.

Give me some balanced, in depth Heritage Tables? Then I will gladly allow them in any game I run. The 4th Edition Heritage Tables were better than the 1st Edition ones, but there was still a long way to go on them.