I think if they are going to the extent of making their own generic RPG system then it's a pretty safe bet to assume any new L5R RPG product will use some variant of this system. Also I guess it's no surprise the system uses custom dice considering that's how their current big RPG system (Star Wars) operates. They've put out other RPG products in the past that don't use custom dice though so it's not a sure thing. The End OF The World series uses D6s. The Warhammer 40K RPG used percentile dice. Though they do seem to as a company favor custom dice systems. It does help further obscure the math, which is a good thing in my opinion. On the down side it forces you to use their dice instead of all the cool dice you've already collected.

I guess it doesn't matter to me either way. I wasn't in love with the roll and keep system. I do prefer systems where the GM doesn't roll at all (like in the Cypher System). Unfortunately FFG's Star Wars game is definitely not that. I also prefer systems where the players feel like they have tools to mitigate luck. I don't recall how FFG's Star Wars system was in that regard.

Just now, phillos said:

I also prefer systems where the players feel like they have tools to mitigate luck. I don't recall how FFG's Star Wars system was in that regard.

There are two Talents that let the player pull minor stuff out of nowhere, and there is an option to spend Destiny Points for the same result, but the other options are superior unless the players are up to some abuse, in which case it is game-breaking.

2 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The problem is not working out the result of the dice, but translating it into narrative action. Sometimes, it is completely crazy because there are results that simply do not fit the narrative at all (navigating through a desert only to bomb your roll with Threats... but you are in the middle of nowhere, what exactly can threaten you?). Other times, the result is nonsensical (my personal favorite, rolling one or more Despair into a bunch of Advantages for maximum confusion). Then you have the LULRANDUM result that breaks the story with some ill-fitting result. The possibilities are pretty much endless here. And the best part is, after all said and done, the end is usually "you gain 1 Strain" or some other cutting of the Gordian Knot as your GM gets fed up and goes full mechanic , killing the whole point of rolling narrative dice.

Another fair point. I perhaps once again have a little edge in this regard, as I spent all of my high school and college experience as an actor who dabbled in comedy improve. It is extremely demanding on the GM, who has to be much more able to create a new dynamic in an instant. All the same, I'd say this very same quality makes the issues people who are primarily players have a bit more confusing...

I need to play more of this system before I completely form my opinion. There are some parts I love about it and other things that hold me back. That being said I am more convinced than ever that L5R is going to be a supplement to this system

As long as there is some way to escape the randomness of the dice like the Savage World bennies, Cypher's spending XP to reroll or the Fate points in 40K RPG. When the players don't have some limited resource like this I feel like they tend to despair at the randomness of the dice.

Destiny Points work a tiny little bit like the 40k Fate Points. They are, like, Diet Coke Fate Points. They can't manipulate dice results, but allow the players to add tiny details into the narrative. Depending on player creativity and willingness on breaking the game, any of these "tiny details" can be ground breaking.

25 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The problem is not working out the result of the dice, but translating it into narrative action. Sometimes, it is completely crazy because there are results that simply do not fit the narrative at all (navigating through a desert only to bomb your roll with Threats... but you are in the middle of nowhere, what exactly can threaten you?). Other times, the result is nonsensical (my personal favorite, rolling one or more Despair into a bunch of Advantages for maximum confusion). Then you have the LULRANDUM result that breaks the story with some ill-fitting result. The possibilities are pretty much endless here. And the best part is, after all said and done, the end is usually "you gain 1 Strain" or some other cutting of the Gordian Knot as your GM gets fed up and goes full mechanic , killing the whole point of rolling narrative dice.

By the way, I'm having a deja vu. Somethingsomethingorientaladventures .

Ugh,

Yet another point in favor of ,funky dice or not, L5R getting its own corebook.

On the plus side maybe they'll finally do an Android RPG product. If any of their current properties is crying out for an RPG product it's that one considering how much world building they are doing for it.

I actually saw a preview of the preview and thought it was going to just be an Android RPG.

16 minutes ago, phillos said:

On the plus side maybe they'll finally do an Android RPG product. If any of their current properties is crying out for an RPG product it's that one considering how much world building they are doing for it.

I have a hard time imaging what anyone would do in an Android RPG.

The world already has Shadowrun for it's dystopian hackers and troubleshooters fighting against corporations, and the focus of Netrunner I just don't see as translating into very compelling tabletop experiences. Maybe I'll be proven wrong if it ever comes out, but I don't see it.

2 minutes ago, Teslacrashed said:

I have a hard time imaging what anyone would do in an Android RPG.

The world already has Shadowrun for it's dystopian hackers and troubleshooters fighting against corporations, and the focus of Netrunner I just don't see as translating into very compelling tabletop experiences. Maybe I'll be proven wrong if it ever comes out, but I don't see it.

A lot of people don't like Shadowrun's system. We have never played it because the system has significant flaws in balance. That being said, it may not be their best selling product either.

To be fair, why would you buy a new L5R RPG when there is a perfectly good one already (Beyond that books are going out of print)?

I mean we already had Cyberpunk from Talsorian Games when Shadowrun came out. I think they'd need to figure out how they would differentiate themselves, but I don't think just because Shadowrun is a thing then Android shouldn't be a thing as far as RPGs go.

As far as how to structure it Android has both the private investigator slant with the board game and the cyber crime hacking slant in the card game. I'd be interested in either.

I have several editions of Shadowrun because I love the setting, but it doesn't get to the table as often as I'd like and that has a lot to do with the system.

Does this mean the end of threads having to do with the 4th edition of L5R rpg? I hope so.

7 minutes ago, Kubernes said:

Does this mean the end of threads having to do with the 4th edition of L5R rpg? I hope so.

Nope, because then people will just compare this to 4th edition.

PS: I'm probably just going to play 4th Edition.

11 minutes ago, Mirith said:

Nope, because then people will just compare this to 4th edition.

PS: I'm probably just going to play 4th Edition.

Comparisons are not necessarily the same as posting threads about 'new' 4th edition material.

I have a metric fuckton of homebrewed L5R 4e material in my Google Drive with your name written on it, Kubernes. Don't you worry.

No. Just No.

29 minutes ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

I have a metric fuckton of homebrewed L5R 4e material in my Google Drive with your name written on it, Kubernes. Don't you worry.

Throw some up. Even if it's got guns

So are we looking at Genesys as the "core" book with the L5R setting as a "supplement" possibly?

I played the Star Wars RPG for a bit and, on the whole, was not super impressed with the "narrative" dice for many of the reasons that other posters have brought up here. But my playgroup already has the Star Wars dice, and as long as the faces are the same other than the flavor of the triumph symbol (I think it's a lightsaber/Jedi symbol in SW) that would make it easier to get my group into L5R. While I think roll and keep is fine as a system, I'm not particularly wedded to it. The real question will be if FFG can use the narrative dice system and still make the game "feel" like L5R mechanically.

But if I'm running the game, I'll probably modify the system a bit for my tastes (I'll probably make Triumphs and Despairs cancel each other, for example.)

12 hours ago, Mirumoto Saito said:

Well, good thing I started working on my own L5R game. If L5R really becomes a setting to this game, which was already being speculated and would be really stupid if they don't do it, seems I'm out.

I hate the guts of any system that demands specialized dice and for all I have read and heard, even from people who really liked the Star Wars FFG RPG, this system is specially obnoxious.

Sounds like you're suffering from a bad case of selection confirmation, then.

Allow me to give counter data then: of everyone around these parts, the FFG RPG system is considered the best Star Wars RPG system to ever come out (although there's some fond nostalgia still for West End Games' pile of d6s), and most people are listing it among their high picks of general favorite game systems.

10 hours ago, Teslacrashed said:

I have a hard time imaging what anyone would do in an Android RPG.

Same thing anyone does in any RPG setting -- have adventures, tell stories, create fun.

If you aren't interested in it, that's fine, but that doesn't mean other people aren't intrigued by the setting.

11 hours ago, Kuni Katsuyoshi said:

The GM pretty much HAS to roll.

He's essentially rolling against you.

Actually, that's a no. In fact, the books explicitly call out that the player rolls all the dice, both good and bad. It's a player-fronting system. You add your positive dice pool and the difficulty dice, roll them together, and then resolve the opposing symbols. (The GM does likewise for their characters.)

1 hour ago, Gaffa said:

Sounds like you're suffering from a bad case of selection confirmation, then.

Allow me to give counter data then: of everyone around these parts, the FFG RPG system is considered the best Star Wars RPG system to ever come out (although there's some fond nostalgia still for West End Games' pile of d6s), and most people are listing it among their high picks of general favorite game systems.

I also saw that a lot of people who don't like doing constant math see symbols as a blessing. For a lot of people, roll of "10" or "+5" has no inherent meaning. I think it's just that a lot of people think that number-driven dice systems are more clear and easier to read simply because they have years of translating meaningless numbers into some kind of meaning trained by all the previous games.

So I hope they will ditch the 4th Edition and all it's legacy baggage, start with a clean state, and remind everyone that if Henry Ford listened to his customers base about what they want, he would spend his entire life selling horses.

12 hours ago, Teslacrashed said:

I have a hard time imaging what anyone would do in an Android RPG.

The world already has Shadowrun for it's dystopian hackers and troubleshooters fighting against corporations, and the focus of Netrunner I just don't see as translating into very compelling tabletop experiences. Maybe I'll be proven wrong if it ever comes out, but I don't see it.

But there are a noteworthy number of people who think that Shadowrun is an abomination, on account of getting magic and elves in their dystopian hackers. Equally, the clones and bioroids offer an interesting part of the setting that have no analogues in Shadowrun (that I'm aware of).

Heck, you could just recreate the original Android game as an RPG adventure!

23 minutes ago, WHW said:

I also saw that a lot of people who don't like doing constant math see symbols as a blessing. For a lot of people, roll of "10" or "+5" has no inherent meaning. I think it's just that a lot of people think that number-driven dice systems are more clear and easier to read simply because they have years of translating meaningless numbers into some kind of meaning trained by all the previous games.

Some people are better with numbers than symbols (well, non-numeric symbols, since after all numerals are just as arbitrary symbols to represent a number as the advantage/threat symbols on FFG dice). But on the other hand, some people are the other way. I noticed this in our FFG Star Wars game, actually. One player, who was always a bit slow to add dice pools in old L5R (or even adding his d20 result to his skill value in D&D), could look at a pool of a dozen+ dice in Star Wars and sum up the symbol negations nearly instantly. We were quite amazed at how quickly and authoritatively he did it, but he was always right as us more number-minded players crunched the negations a few seconds behind him.

It was very cool seeing a system in play that actually rewarded his form of information gathering for once. Doesn't mean that it's an inherently better system, but it was very nice to see one in which that one player finally could quickly suss out large dice pools effortlessly.