Not 100% sure this is a Proofreading topic, but it felt more Proofreading than Rules Question to me.

This is my first experience with an L5R RPG. On reading the Game of Twenty Questions for character creation, I was left somewhat confused when going through Questions 18 and 19. 18 mentions being named after an ancestor, as well as referencing your family name being chosen in Question 2, and 19 talks about choosing your given character's name. At first I thought that the ancestor naming was like some sort of third/middle name or title that the character held. It was only after discussing with my friend who introduced me to the beta (who has played L5R in the past) that characters generally only had given and family names, that upon rereading the Questions that I realised that the "being named after an ancestor to honour them" is just fluff, and the crunch of the Question is in the traits generated on the table.

With this in mind, would it potentially make things clearer for new players if these two Questions were swapped? I.e. think of a name and then introduce the idea of your name coming from an ancestor or being a slight variation on an ancestor's name after that. Perhaps introduce the idea of being named after an ancestor/variation of their name within the choose your name question and use it to lead into the ancestor trait generation question.

The issues here is that FFG took an players aid for character creation from the previous editions and made it a core mechanic.

20 questions was never meant to create a character, it was designed to help you ask the questions that would help you visualize your PC.

As such, there are many holes in the questions and issues with how it is presented.

These undefined areas where meant to be filled-in by the player with his starting XP.

FFG turned it into a restrictive character creation system with little change, so there are many areas that make no senses because of this.

I'm not sure if they plan to fix this but I doubt it, since they seem to have ignored most of our complainants during the beta.

48 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

I'm not sure if they plan to fix this but I doubt it, since they seem to have ignored most of our complainants during the beta.

Yours, perhaps, but mine mostly got addressed.... The rabid dog approach doesn't work well with FFG staff as a rule.

On 2/10/2018 at 9:38 AM, HakushiGomusukome said:

With this in mind, would it potentially make things clearer for new players if these two Questions were swapped? I.e. think of a name and then introduce the idea of your name coming from an ancestor or being a slight variation on an ancestor's name after that. Perhaps introduce the idea of being named after an ancestor/variation of their name within the choose your name question and use it to lead into the ancestor trait generation question.

I think they should be combined, really, and reworded: "What is your personal name, taken at your Gempukku, and whom do you honor by taking it?" Names like Ichiro, Daichiro, Hachiro, and such are literally ordinals "first son, second son, 5th son" etc... they honor the nuclear family by subsuming one's identity to one's parents. Naming after distant heroes is saying, "I will bring you more honor by reminding people of you." (Keeping in mind also: prior to gempuku, almost all children are literally just numbered.)