Just curious about your L5R background. Are you a newcomer brought via fantasy flight, did you or do you now play the card game, which edition did you started with.

Not a topic to argue but more to introduce each others and exchange good memories. As most of us will work on making that beta what it deserves to be, lets start by being courteous.

I'm Nintenman, of house Mirumoto and I have lived in Rokugan for 15 years. I served only once in the RPG as a samurai of the Moto and stupidly spent all a fight on a boat donning armor below deck to emerge fully equipped on the deck where everyone had been captured. I died.

I got reborn a while later as a Mirumoto samurai in the card game. Though I made my musha shugyo and served many clans during my card gaming time (Mostly Lion and Scorpion) I always come back to the Dragon. In the meantime, I had climbed a mountain and met Togashi. He tattooed me 10 green D10 and gave me scrolls: The 2ed edition rulebooks , Time of the void and the GM survival guide.

Since then, I keep tattooing my body with living scenes of Rokugan for my friends and my own enjoyment, adding new tattoos at each edition.

addendum: Since early October, I've also joined the LCG scene as a Dragon again.

Short form for me is that I ran a campaign starting with City of Lies that ran through Tomb of Iuchiban.

I got to go to AEG headquarters for a tour once, though. After that I was lucky enough to get a slot at a L5R LARP ran by AEG.

I'm Kinzen, aka Togashi Kinzen, aka Marie Brennan. I never played the card game in any form, but got into the RPG in fourth edition. Fell for it hard -- to the point that I started freelancing for AEG in the latter half of 4e (beginning with the "Togashi Dynasty" AU in Imperial Histories 2 , mostly writing monk and courtier stuff after that), and I'm writing fictions now for FFG's reboot. And I'm two sessions away from wrapping up a campaign that started in June 2014 . . .

I was playing Pokemon ccg for a bit, but had just given away all of my cards. I wasn't actively playing any games, but walked into my local game store anyway. There were a pair of guys playing a game I hadn't seen. They didn't say "tap" but instead said "bow" and i was like OMG! WTF IS THIS!

They told me a bit about the game, and I decided to buy a starter. I was huge into anime, and samurai so it was a perfect fit. They explained the different clans to me, and Scorpion was an obvious match. Unfortunately, this was Pearl - Scorpion clan had 2 personality cards in the set, neither of them that great... it was not an easy time to be Scorpion...

I played the CCG until gold released. By that time I had acquired all of the 1st ed books, and 2nd ed was released. I got the players book for 2nd ed, but they switched to an awkward d20 split system... and I didn't buy anymore. From then until now I have only used the 1st ed books, and my imagination. I didn't keep up in the fiction, but as I read samurai books, and watched samurai movies they all became transposed into the L5R world for future RPG missions. I even did an episode of Cowboy Bebop as an RPG, the one where the kid kidnaps the old guy and lives forever. It was great.

Now I'm back in the LCG with a passion, and anxiously awaiting the new RPG release. I haven't bought any new RPG books since the 2nd ed core book... so its about time I get some new rules to play by lol. I hope FFG does well, no matter how they've designed the system. I do have a decent amount of trust in FFG as I've play LotR LCG and Arkham LCG, I also played Conquest while it was there... They aren't perfect, but FFG learns from everything they do, and they bring that knowledge forward into everything they do after. Whether the new L5R RPG uses the same system as SW, or not, I guarantee it will only be better than what we've already seen.

I typically personify the secretive, noble Scorpion. The one who serves his lord but doesn't think anyone else should know how or why things get done. Not a Junshin by any means, but not a villain either. Definitely with an "untrustworthy" disadvantage - not you can't trust me, but you won't feel like you can. You'd probably think I was a villain if we were in a game session together, even though I would end up being your only true ally.

I'm probably one of "the old guys." I started playing the CCG early in its life cycle, it coming out when I was in high school shortly after Magic took off. So at least 20 years ago. Played through the Scorpion Clan Coup expansions, then either my interest died out in CCGs or the game died out in the FLGS. Therefore I was gone long before the game went wacky with the later player-influenced storylines. Amusingly, because I used to be a pack rat, I have most of my old cards and eventually inherited several other collections. As a player, I was first Lion Clan (knew nothing about the game when my friends tried to talk me into it, but lions sounded cool). Picked up Scorpion at some point after they appeared (they had a zombie champion and were basically the polar opposite of the Lion). Dabbled in a few other decks (Dragon, Shadowlands, Toturi's Army, maybe others, it's been a long time).

Played/ran the RPGs a few times (mostly 1st Ed) too. Own a ton of hard-copies I picked up over the years jut because I used to collect RPGs (my Twilight 2000 collection is killer, lol) and I always liked the fundamentals of the Rokugan setting even if some of the details were wonky or silly at times. Kinda clan ambivalent, though I guess I have a little bit of a soft spot for the Lion simply because they were my first, and they're one of the clans that do samurai-ing right. Don't care about the LCG at all aside from passing curiosity, but the announcement of the new edition intrigued me enough to pitch L5R as a "down the road" campaign. Fortunately, the group I'd want to play with was intrigued by the idea so it is probably a "Go." As a writer (I've also freelanced in the past), I love going back and re-writing/updating/fleshing out old adventure booklets, so it will either be a string of re-done L5R modules or my de-Tolkiened Shadowrun rewrites that we play with when the current game's campaign wraps up.

I’m ancient.

I started playing the CCG before the Scorpion Clan was even a thing, and played up until about 12 years ago.

But the RPG is where my heart was. I’ve run every edition since the start (except d20). I even own a signed, limited first edition of the original RPG. I’ve run multiple campaigns including one set in the City of Lies. I’ve played several L5R characters through multiple campaigns but mostly just GM’ed the game. I haven’t played much in recent years, but was hoping beyond hope that FFG would come up with an RPG of their own.

Roll and Keep was great, and I understand the design philosophy underlying it (all or nothing), but found it created very wonky results. I am looking forward to the new dice system and from what I’ve read, the FFG design philosophy seems to be tending more toward role-playing the aspects of Bushido (instead of finding ways to ignore it).

I've been playing L5R RPG since 1st ed, and the CCG from Jade to early Ivory. I've run the City of Lies campaign in 3 different editions, ran a monthly LARP in the Castle of the East Face for over a year and played a Dragonfly Magistrate from before Way of the Minor Clans came out.

Old timer reporting for duty here. Started to play around Pearl Edition with the Unicorn and thought I am a Phoenix now (go Fire Chickens!) the Ponies have a soft spot in my heart.

Played for a while and even made to a Kotei hehehehe but eventually left the CCG, however I never left the RPG, mostly GMing. I simply loved it. Curiously the main RPGs I played were Star Wars and L5R, who knew that decades after they will be under the same company.

Now I can hardly wait for the Beta. Will start playing the rpg in HoR4 pretty soon with my friends to take my rust away.

Oh gosh. Well, another elder from way back in the day with 1e. I've played every itereration of l5r (suffering through 2e and the WotC era). I was introduced to the setting by friends who liked this new-fangled L5R thing (it was actually around 3 years old at the time), and fell in love with the lore, the tragedy, the drama. It was great.

Friends knew I loved elemental magic and spirits and so gave me my first character, an Isawa Air Tensai. I was the yoriki to one of the other PCs, a large, gruff, unappreciative Moto Emerald Magistrate. And that led to the sessions that truly drove home the game for me, as a small long-suffering Phoenix yoriki who, in the parlance of the now was ever so much "Notice me senpai!"

Now, 18 years later, I've playtested two editions (about to be three I suppose), and my love for Rokugan hasn't diminished. And I remain as devoted as ever to my Phoenix Clan. You know....because we're the best.

Oh, also played the CCG, but only casually, and was never really good at it.

I started with the CCG in Emerald Edition, and played it until about Diamond Edition, when the local scene disappeared. I started as Dragon, and played it competitively almost exclusively (I dabbled in Crane for a summer, so that I could learn how to win). I followed Lady Hitomi down the path of insanity head first, screaming to my ancestors.

When they announced the RPG was coming (1E), it was a squeeeee moment. I convinced several of my non-rpg friends to try it when it came out, since we all played the ccg. The group morphed over the years, but we played about twice a month until early 4E. I generally GMed, except during a stint when college classes prevented it and during a sabbatical between campaigns. I always liked to play, but I never found a GM I felt good enough (I was by far the best L5R GM in my group, and convention GMs were generally trash). I eventually left do to time and distance, but they still play a combination of 1E and 3E.

In general, I've mostly run Pre-Coup timeline, because I felt that the Clan Wars were not a good time period to run the RPG, except for Single Clan campaigns. The Hidden Chicken Emperor storyline started pretty good, but ended up being crap IMO, so I try to forget most of it (when I run Post-DoT, I have Empress Hantei Yoroshiko on the throne) The Saga of the Four Winds was interesting, so I've stolen many ideas from it for campaigns (such as Prince Consort Hantei Daigotsu). I don't really know anything after that, because the story started to go off the rails, and I wanted to stay to pre-coup or homebrew.

Let me say that I've never touched the L5R CCG, and only heard about the RPG from other people. I'm curious about how the game works, and I feel the beta may be the place to start.

Only played the CCG a few times and never collected any of the cards myself. It was played so infrequently in my area that stores stopped carrying it.

The rpg I bought as soon as it came out. I didn't really get to play during 3rd much, though.

Played a few pickup games of the RPG, and I have read some of the available online material both past and present. I'm a big fan of Martial Arts movies too.

From the other side though I played FFG WFRP from the beginning, it was actually what fuelled me to bring together a mostly dads group of friends back in 2009. Warhammer has been in my blood for 25 years and the Narrative Dice was a real draw card for us. We have had fun with WFRP, though we moved onto Star Wars when Edge came out. We own basically every book in FFG has released for Star Wars. With a game session perhaps every 2 months on average since 2009 we don't game a lot in person, but we talk, and I have been in a few PBP games too.

I'm usually fairly active here on the FFG forums too, although the last few months have been up and down with RL.

Oh, good old L5R. Let me just get my rockin' chair and corncob pipe, maybe some hand made lemonade...

I was introduced to L5R when I was 13. I had just moved to a new town and found some roleplaying friends (previously did some Robotech and also was getting into Rifts) when one of them brought up Legend of the Five Rings. I had the whole thing described to me without ever being informed that it was Asian-esque at all, so when I first saw the book I was pleasantly shocked. Things rolled on from there.

I have played the RPG since 1st edition and that for a long time. Only once I got to college and a friend made an off hand comment of "The GM owns your soul now, Ninja Boy!" did I find other people who knew what L5R was. squee. At that time i got into 3rd edition and then later 4th. I met the girl who would later be my wife through RPG's (specifically Star Wars D20 edition) but we got to L5R in short order where she was quickly duped into using blood magic by a most vindictive GM. I ask you, what kind of jerk boyfriend would do that?

She also eventually asked about the CCG, which we played with some old cards I had grabbed back in, I wanna say, Jade Edition. Then we caught the tail end of Celestial Edition, played several Kotei in Emperor, and kind of flagged interest in Ivory.

I don't know that I can really express how happy I am that there's a new RPG under FFG's auspices. I really REALLY hope it is a decent system.

Started during college with three starters crane, phoenix, and unicorn given to me by the owner of my local gaming store back in 1995. Played through gold then quit. Played the RPG from release and still play 4th ed. so I have been playing for a long time.

So when I was 13 and realized Yugioh wasn't as cool as I thought at 12, I was at my FLGS and the owner handed us a promotional Crane vs Scorpion. I took the Crane, my friend the Scorpion. And when he decided he wasn't into it I took the Scorpion too. I was hooked. Spent time over the next 10+ years with various clans, playing off and on through gold all the way up to the A Matter of Honor box set. Also been playing the rp off and on the last 15 years or so, I played like 2 sessions of 1e before getting my own d20 Rokugan. Dabbled with my 2e way of the Nezumi. And have had L5R be one of the top rp games in our group since 3rd edition. When I quit the CCG I'd said "if they ever make this an LCG I'll come back to it, because I just don't have the time to keep up with card games like I used to" and well, FFG has. And now a new RP too? I'm so hype I can't contain myself.

Started out shortly after a Scrye had the Toshimoko line (fun fact i thought the Crane were the underdog.) Played Crane till I found the Moto in the Way of the Unicorn. Played Unicorn until I picked up a Crab deck in gold. I am commonly referred to as the worst Crab player ever!

In RPG terms i have been running it ever since i could get my hands on the books. My greatest L5R achievement was taking a perfectly good Sparrow duelist and failing to do anything of significance in Winter Court Four.

I have been in the hobby of L5R for over 20 years, starting with the Shadowlands expansion way back when. As a member of the community, I first became active during the time that L5R was owned by Wizards of the Coast, as I was working for their website at that time. I have been a part of the community, if not an active player of the CCG, since then. I actually have an entire article about my history with L5R here: http://www.cardboardrepublic.com/articles/dave-of-the-five-rings/dot5r-chapter-one

As for things I have done of note within L5R, I have been a player of the RPG since early in 1st edition, and have consistently run every edition (I am now running my fourth 4th Edition L5R RPG game). Aside from the Dave of the Five Rings series I write for Cardboard Republic (http://www.cardboardrepublic.com/), I have participated in both Winter Court IV and V. In Winter Court IV, I played Susumu Naishi, who was added to the official L5R canon and appeared twice in official fictions.

As a member of the L5R RPG community, I am a vocal proponent of the idea of the Three Pillars of L5R Storytelling, which the Playtest Survey seemed to make actually explicit: Action Adventure / Combat; Social Interaction / Courtly Intrigue; Environmental Investigation / Supernatural Fantasy Elements. I am looking forward to this playtest, both to examine the current rules set and to see how well it captures the "spirit" of L5R. I expect that there will be some growing pains, but fingers crossed on this one.

I've played a lot of RPGs in general, but I've only played a couple of L5R games, using the 4e ruleset. A shame as it seems pretty interesting, and I'm really interested to see what FFG is going to do with it. I hope the minor clans will be available for play, because I'm Fox Clan at heart, though I did have some fun with my sickly Crane duelist. I might reroll her in the new version if the minor clans arn't available till later down the line.

I was never interested in the CCG though I am planning to get in on the LCG.

Having said that, I have been in love with the RPG since pretty much the day it was released. I have GMed and played in virtually every incarnation of printed L5R RPG, yes even an attempt at Oriental Adventures. The first book I remember purchasing besides the 1st ed core was Way of the Minor Clans and that has set me on a path ever since. For PCs I have played, my highlights have been: a Falcon ghost hunter out to redeem the spirit of his ghostly mother, a Sparrow bushi poet who served time on the Kaiu Wall in an attempt to impress the Crab and learn forging from the Kaiu to create a new ancestral sword for the Sparrow, a Yogo shugenja that had a fantastic, poetic death betraying the thing he loved the most; himself - he volunteered to rear guard the other courtiers and shugenja as an oni rampaged through the court, the oni killed him but the others were able to gather help and defeat the monster, a Bayushi guardsmen that was killed in the first session due to an arrow to the eye during a battle dramatic effect (1k1 that exploded into something like 65 damage), a Mirumoto swordsman that married an "ugly" Montaigne sorceress that was trespassing in Rokugan, the marriage being for the good of the Clan to learn her secrets and to save her life. The GM worked out how L5R and 7th Sea could be the same planet and decided to spring it on us which turned out to be a lot of fun back in the day (tm).

When I run games, they are almost always in pre-Coup, 1st edition setting. I don't like having the metaplot invade my games too much so I like to use a "neutral" timeline. I have a feeling the FFG reset is going to suit me to the ground in this respect.

I have my weekly game group on tonight, I have been running L5R 4th ed for them for about 6 months now and we are having a lot of fun with it. In particular I have been really enjoying introducing a player that had never heard of L5R to the setting and after only a few weeks, after telling her about Scorpion lore and her Soshi's background, her happy exclamation of "I love my clan!". Passing the spirit of a great game world that I have enjoyed for so long to a new player is really satisfying, plus I can make them endure meeting a version of my Sparrow bushi just so I can play him for a few more minutes.

I played several campaign in the past. Well, real past...
We started with 1rst ed. Our party died in the shadowlands before clanbook came out, then we played another party with all clanbook
Then 2nd edition came out, we disliked the history setting post-scorpion clan coup, and we coninued playing in the "1000 years of peace" era.
When 3rd edition came out we had just stopped playing. And so long we never played again
Recently, 4rth dropped in my hand, so i started reading it, and i like very much, and i'm planning a short adventure/campaign.

What i really like of the game is the feeling, the pre-coup setting, the idea is a fantasy, even an high and epic one, but it feels like there is low level. I disliked what came after (and with "disliked" i mean "i think a game with this setting should never be sold nor given free because is plain awful and a huge pile of s***")

I can put some hope on this new edition, but also i don't think system similar to Star Wars one would be even close to what i loved from this game, so i've also a huuuuuge fear

I've been playing L5R since First Edition. As a GM I've run two smaller campaigns, one carrying my players through the Scorpion Clan Coup, and one carrying a group of Rokugani samurai on a Burning Sands/Arabian Nights adventure with a dash of Student-Led Revolution. As a player, I've played through 2 different 3+ year campaigns run by my husband, one running the entire length of Clan Wars to Day of Thunder, and one, currently ongoing, running in the Onyx Empire. My husband is an extremely accomplished GM and Game Writer, and has authored a number of books for multiple game companies. He generally prefers to make home-brew game systems.

I've also been in a variety of shorter campaigns of just a year or so, Pre-clan-coup, and one shots, LARPS, and Winter Courts. I have tried to play clans other than Crane, but it usually doesn't go as well, so generally I stick with what I know.

I wrote the intro fiction for the Way of Shinsei in First Edition, and written way too much fan fiction too. In 1999 I wrote my first fan fiction for the game, after only having read the Way of the Crane book at the base handbook. My husband had dragged me to a CCG tournament and I was bored sitting in the back room of the gamestore waiting for them to get done. I started poking around online and found http://homeofhecraneclan.com. On it, a leading Fox Clan player had posed a note the Fox clan players had received from Ree Soesbee, purportedly from Doji Chomei, inviting the Fox into an alliance with the Crane. Even though I really had no idea of what was going on in the game at the time, I came up with the idea for a story about two young messengers (here: http://craneclan.weebly.com/a-letter-to-the-fox-clan--makoto---complete-sincerity.html ) that I wrote while I waited just for fun. It...sort of exploded on me into a full scale blowout and I was taken very much off guard. But I've enjoyed the game ever since.

I enjoy L5R as a setting for epic action fantasy with a Japanese twist. I have lots of opinions...I think that shugenja should be toned down a bit and bushi and courtiers should be bumped up a bit. It's OK to have characters with larger than life powers when your enemies are larger than life. I'm not crazy on the style of play that has people rolling up new characters every three sessions, and struggle with Roll and Keep because of that. I prefer that dishonor has consequences. But I do like clever tactics, creative applications of skills, and the ability to find the unexpected solution to a problem. And after way too many Court Games, I'm eager to test the Influence system we're currently working on For 4th Ed to see if has application here too.

Looking forward to what FFG has to offer.

My first exposure came from the d20 Oriental Adventures book (ducks). On my first flip-through, I kinda ignored the L5R stuff. It was just more character options next to the crazy monkey-men and Eunuch Warlocks (which, mechanically, I think was a pretty lame class, considering the sacrifice you have to make). I read it more and more, and realized that there was a heck of a game lurking in there.

Now, I'm gonna say it: the problem with d20 L5R was not the d20 system. The system wasn't ideal, but whatever. The real problem was that the vision of the setting presented in OA was total garbage. It was a teaser. I read through every bit of that, thinking, "There's something great here, I can feel it!" AEG obviously felt the same way about their new relationship with Wizards, because they took one look at OA, said, "Oh this is BS!" and promptly published Rokugan, which was the real d20 guide to the L5R game, but you still needed OA for the base classes, and of course the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual and the DMG.

Or you could just pick up the L5R core book, which I finally got around to as soon as 3rd Edition released. I believe it was the first RPG my wife ever played, and I still have the drawings for both characters in the game, as well as the haiku they wrote, and the CCG cards I threw together in Photoshop based on their drawings.

We didn't get far in the campaign, even after a Savage Worlds reboot, but it was the first game I ever ran that really focused on story and character, completely changing the way I run games. Reading the scenario, Code of Bushido, I found several ways to twist it to make the story much more personal, and hopefully heart-wrenching. As soon as I wrap up F&D, I'll be trying to reintroduce my wife to her character, Shinjo Zoya-Ool, and we'll see where we can go.

31 minutes ago, KakitaKaori said:

I'm not crazy on the style of play that has people rolling up new characters every three sessions, and struggle with Roll and Keep because of that.

This. I appreciate that the setting is supposed to be deadly, but "100 XP point buy" systems generally mean that character creation takes much longer than it should, especially for new players (This is by far my biggest criticism of the FFG Star Wars games, although it's not nearly as bad). Losing such a character very suddenly can be aggravating, especially since it's largely a story-driven game. This plus the overspecialization of the Clans are what led to my Savage Worlds conversion. Relating it to A Game of Thrones is pretty easy. Each of the great families has traits for which it's known, but it's pretty easy to adjust any character concept to fit as a Lannister, a Stark, or a Frey. Yes, having to duel a Kakita should make you nervous, but it shouldn't be a death sentence.

2 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

When I run games, they are almost always in pre-Coup, 1st edition setting. I don't like having the metaplot invade my games too much so I like to use a "neutral" timeline. I have a feeling the FFG reset is going to suit me to the ground in this respect.

I also run every game in a pre-coup era, and basically ignore the metaplot. How many other people don't involve the main plot in their games, using a base L5R world instead?