As a clear rpg junkie I’ll no doubt be purchasing at least the core rulebook for this game. My problem is going to be “selling it” to my group.

To me it feels too restricting. It seems as though the options for characters are limited based on the initial concept. Reading most campaign descriptions posted by GMs they opt for storylines where the characters are all essentially samurai cops (letting them be characters from different clans) or just forcing them to be all from one clan.

From the outside looking in, there’s not much freedom in either of those. Now I know that a good GM can figure out ways around the big two “easy way outs” I just mentioned, but it would be pretty easy for my players to figure out the limitations being presented here from a story point of view. It really comes off as restricting. My players will hate that.

But they would love clever ideas and amazing individual/team accomplishments. The easiest way to sell them on anything is to give accounts of what other people have experienced in rpgs.

So yeah, what have any of you really experienced while playing previous editions of this game (or even the beta of this edition)? Give me some examples of excellent events that any of you as players have experienced that I can share with my players as shining examples of the things they can do in this game.

(Note: I don’t need any long form fiction that includes verbose descriptions of how the winter winds blew through your character’s hair while they looked on at the blossoms caught on the breeze. Give me some action and intrigue).

Finding rational for getting samurai from different clans together to adventure is been an issue in every edition of this game. The fourth edition of the book gives a lot of options for doing this, I doubt this edition will be any different.

So your right about samurai cops, Imperial Magistrates, seeming to be one of the most popular ways of doings this. The option I used in my one and only campaign was to make the players Arbiters. They were sent as a team by their respective clans to negotiate a peace between two minor clans that were at war with one another.

The Otokodate, Band of Brothers, campaign seems like a good option too. I always wonder what happens when a daimyo ends up with more samurai than he can feed. Maybe they set their samurai free. "Go find your way in the world" The samurai are clan samurai who are released from their duty to their daimyo and become Ronin, at least temporarily. A group of Samurai like this get together and travel and adventure. There is a lot of wilderness in Rokugan.

Honestly, I think the setting works better if there is a bit more social mobility and the default culture disdain for Ronin kind of hurts the adventuring possibilities. Samurai, especially non-gentry samurai, should be able to leave their lords service to hire themselves out temporarily to other lords, just like in real Japan. Even Musashi was a vassal, a ronin, an artisan, a teacher and a monk at different times of his life and served many different lords.

1 hour ago, jeremysbrain said:

Finding rational for getting samurai from different clans together to adventure is been an issue in every edition of this game. The fourth edition of the book gives a lot of options for doing this, I doubt this edition will be any different.

So your right about samurai cops, Imperial Magistrates, seeming to be one of the most popular ways of doings this. The option I used in my one and only campaign was to make the players Arbiters. They were sent as a team by their respective clans to negotiate a peace between two minor clans that were at war with one another.

The Otokodate, Band of Brothers, campaign seems like a good option too. I always wonder what happens when a daimyo ends up with more samurai than he can feed. Maybe they set their samurai free. "Go find your way in the world" The samurai are clan samurai who are released from their duty to their daimyo and become Ronin, at least temporarily. A group of Samurai like this get together and travel and adventure. There is a lot of wilderness in Rokugan.

Honestly, I think the setting works better if there is a bit more social mobility and the default culture disdain for Ronin kind of hurts the adventuring possibilities. Samurai, especially non-gentry samurai, should be able to leave their lords service to hire themselves out temporarily to other lords, just like in real Japan. Even Musashi was a vassal, a ronin, an artisan, a teacher and a monk at different times of his life and served many different lords.

The Band of Brothers idea is really good, especially when coupled with letting the players decide why their characters are ronin. That could lead to more options and interesting dynamics down the road.

The world rejecting ronin can be used in this case as well. It’ll help to solidify the group and overcome their individual beliefs and loyalties (at least initially until it starts to get revealed why some of them are ronin that might cause in-group strife). Eventually their reputation as a group could sway most people into overlooking their status as well.

You’re right about the need for social mobility in this setting though. A more sensible fluid nature for it (within reason) could make for some good stories.

Part of the fun is the clan rivalries and the chance for drama of the party member's clans giving them conflicting goals. Overthinking the why they're together is a bit of a trap imho. Samurai are people, and can totally be friends with members of other clans, including ones that are at war. Have them all sent to the same place, maybe a few know each other from a previous posting or their youth. Then write your story so honor and duty compel them to work together (or in some cases the potential favors/glory/blackmail). Especially at a table, the party knows they're going to work together or the story falls to pieces.

If the Shadowlands is still an option, you can have a party start by serving or being near the Crab Wall. A break in the wall can get the party together and work from there. Winter Court is always a good starting point, as are any of the tournaments.

Any joint exercise. I've had a story we're characters of neighbouring clans (and some who were just visting) being sent out to destroy a organized and entrenched band of bandits, get captured and then have to find their way back to warn their CO about a plan. Planned to follow that up with court-drama where the band now had to try to maneuver between demands of their clans and lords while staying true to their friends.

Another way to get around the clan thing is to have people be related through marriage ("I'm visiting my sister and now my in-laws and I need to fix this") or just have them gathered for a social event ( winter court, tournament, marriage etc.).

You also wanted examples of what can be done:

1) the group started a war by insulting someone at a dinner party.

2) same group got the local governor to get them into his inner circle while kicking out anyone who disagreed with them, then took control of the city.

3) a monk beat-up a newlywed husband in his sleep, got a unicorn blamed for it followed with the unicorn killing him in a duel with a club (very long story really)

4) During a competition a Scorpion insulted every other participants clans, leading to two of them issuing duels and nearly killing him.

5) one character having to execute his lover to keep the clans honor and save his own ambitions.

6) a poem that freaks a warrior out to the point of getting ready to fight his way out of a castle.

One of my favourite books (I actually prefer it to Game of Thrones) is The Tales Of Dunk And Egg, and it'd make for an interesting style of campaign. I wonder if anyone in my group would catch on if they get a young, bald attendant called 'Tamago'?

As noted, the game can easily tolerate an all-same-clan group, or even a predominant clan with a couple of relatives-by-marriage/allies/neighbours, but when everyone wants to be something different, then you're either stuck with some variation on 'met on the road' (Ronin/topaz championship), 'met in a tavern' (winter court/wedding at Khotei), 'ordered to work together' (Imperial magistrates/imperial garrison).

I guess them all being graduates of the same school could work, but then you're allowing multiple clans at the expense of only allowing a single school, so that's just moving the problem, not addressing it.

Party composition : I think it seems like lots of folks are going the magistrate route because lots of groups started their campaigns with the adventure provided in the beta, in which the PCs were yoriki of an emerald magistrate, and could be from every clan. I don't see anything in the rules that makes it inherently harder to have non-magistrate, multi-clan groups than 4e.

Some more reasons non-clan members may be together:

• A family member of each was killed by the same person; they were tasked by their lord to find the killer, and discover that they're all looking for the same person (a friend is launching a 4e campaign using this premise
• The PCs are betrothed, but the wedding has not occurred yet (works well for a 2 PC party, or a 4 PC party with 2 PCs from the same clan, and two fiancés from other clans)
• A monk had a dream about all the PCs, and has asked their lords to borrow them for a supernatural quest
• The PCs are cousins from different clans who got a lead on an ancestral item last held by their common grandparent, but since lost
• The PCs are all the (adult) children of diplomats who have long term positions in a bustling city. They're kind of in Samurai limbo; haven't gotten their own "career" assignments, but are tasked with assisting their parents for now. This gives them lots of time with each other.

"Selling the players" on this edition: here are some features of this system (admittedly, the beta) that I like over 4e:

• New dice system makes investing in skills worthwhile (without the laundry list of mastery abilities)
• Meaty custom dice; they do a lot
• Clear meaning/level of ring & skill ranks (beginner, professional, expert, etc.)
• No more awkward insight system; 1 XP = 1XP
• Modernized disadvantage system (PCs are compensated for disadvantages in proportion to the problems they create, rather than some small, arbitrary point value assigned at character creation that seemed like more trouble than they gave points)
• Unified technique system (all techniques are purchased with XP in a similar way, whether they are kata, spells, kiho, or social techniques)
• Similar conflicts structure across different types (Intrigue/social, duel, skirmish, mass battle)

We'll see if those hold up once we get the core book

Another reason to stick together: The Wandering Year. During peace, some freshly-adult samurai are blessed with a priveliege to wander around Rokugan for a year, learning all they can (though technically they are Ronin during that time). These wanderers often form groups, for safety and to create bonds of friendship.

An advantage of the new custom dice system is that it actually makes the choosing part of Roll & Keep meaningful much more frequently. In 1e - 4e, the times when you would choose anything other than the highest dice were few and far between. In the one game I ran, I saw people picking different levels of success and opportunities over successes.

Our most recent 4e campaign was started by "You are all sent as representatives of your clan to a festival, then something weird and terrible happens at the festival. Now you have to deal with the problem". That was followed up with turning kind of into the Samurai Cops sort of thing, where we were assigned to work together to deal with this new supernatural threat.

I would agree that there it is easy to stick the group together, but maybe not so easy to keep them together without some sort of hand of god explanation. Though the hand of god explanation is actually quite valid in this game, either figuratively, as your respective daimyos basically say "Deal with it", or literally, in our case, where a fortune came down and said "Whelp we need you to look into this. Congrats!".

Its really hard to say no as a great clan samurai in L5R.

I would also say one of the big selling points to this game is that it forces you into a completely different mindset and set of moral values than what most western cultures are used to. The whole is greater than self, and life being worth very little is very different than what you'd see in other RPGs.

23 hours ago, Flavorabledeez said:

Give me some examples of excellent events that any of you as players have experienced that I can share with my players as shining examples of the things they can do in this game.

We frequently start using a magistrate arrangement and inevitably the PCs become friends and trusted allies and that's when we move away from magistrates being a mandatory part of the glue and into much messier arrangements. We have spouses, siblings, cousins, retainers, yojimbo, children, lords and ladies...every convoluted connection we can make.

storytime...feel free to ignore...

We were playing about 10 or 12 years ago when another player and I were talking about the game and it came up that we felt it was a missed opportunity that none of the PCs had ever hooked up. We realized then that between us we had one male and one female character, Crane and Scorpion respectively, and decided to make it happen. The couple eventually married and the wife was immediately approached by Clan agents. She became instrumental in setting the stage for the Scorpion Clan Coup. During the coup itself, she killed his brother and some retainers, permanently disabled his father via poison, and let a commando group into the palace.

Her husband heard all these things after the fact as he had been fighting other Scorpion forces, thinking his newly pregnant wife safe in the palace. When others told him of her treachery, he had many of them executed until finally, one of the other PCs managed to get to him corroborating the story. He took the Crane armies out to find her and spent much of the clan war hunting The White Scorpion. He was unsuccessful. We hand-waved her escape, made up stories of sightings, and I started a new character.

Many real years later we started another campaign that included the Crane scion's son ( by the second, non-traitorous wife, a 3rd Player ) who grew up on stories of her betrayal and after his gempukku, set out to find her while in the pursuit of his other duties as a Magistrate. Along the way, he got distracted and then, when he least expected it, the group stumbled on a village full of girls. His father's first wife had been purchasing the contracts of courtesans and other girls resigned to a life of near slavery using her daughter as an agent ( that PC's half-sister; they had briefly encountered her in Toshi Ranbo the year before ), then bringing them to her isolated village and training them to be warriors. The girls ranged in age from 8 or 9 to 20 or so and had wildly varying ability given their backgrounds and so on. One of three that were made captains by the White Scorpion was a 12-year old who, when she died, broke the players' hearts.

The group had come to the village to warn them of a 'ronin' army consisting primarily of a nearby minor clan looking to take the village for its access to a mine. Things were a little more complicated but...meh. So they figure out that the older ronin samurai-ko running the village is indeed the White Scorpion but they are in no position to do much about it. There are confrontations and they are convinced to help defend the village. Several epic fights later, they have secured the village's safety and the White Scorpion willingly submits herself to the son of her ex-husband in exchange for a guarantee of safety for her surviving girls.

The PC reluctantly beheads the White Scorpion ( he had come to respect her but needed to fulfill his drive for vengeance ), driving off his half-sister and ends up feeling terrible and vindicated all at once. We moved on to a Moto plot by Chagatai and associated rebellion, the fall of the Hantei who in our game had managed to survive the SCC by hiding a child until after the Second Day of Thunder, and eventually the birth of a new dynasty.

/storytime

We are now in 1162 and we'll see what shenanigans we get to. Is that what you're looking for ( action and intrigue )?

I like the idea of an L5R game that take place in a single territory, so the players get a real chance to know the people, places and politics of the land. It gets them really invested and makes them feel like they have a home. To involve multiple clans in a scenario like this I like to use "Imperial Lands".

A lot of the lands and provinces in Rokugan are directly controlled by the Emperor. But the Emperor doesn't have the manpower to manage all of them. So he gives his governors the authority to invite Clan samurai to help administrate his provinces. The players can be from any clan, on loan to the Emperor, and take up minor positions in the governor's court and are sent out to resolve issues.

18 hours ago, WHW said:

Another reason to stick together: The Wandering Year. During peace, some freshly-adult samurai are blessed with a priveliege to wander around Rokugan for a year, learning all they can (though technically they are Ronin during that time). These wanderers often form groups, for safety and to create bonds of friendship.

It's 'at least a year', I think. It's not been referred to in the current edition but used to be called 'Musha Shugyo'

11 hours ago, Wyrmdog said:

We frequently start using a magistrate arrangement and inevitably the PCs become friends and trusted allies and that's when we move away from magistrates being a mandatory part of the glue and into much messier arrangements. We have spouses, siblings, cousins, retainers, yojimbo, children, lords and ladies...every convoluted connection we can make.

storytime...feel free to ignore...

We were playing about 10 or 12 years ago when another player and I were talking about the game and it came up that we felt it was a missed opportunity that none of the PCs had ever hooked up. We realized then that between us we had one male and one female character, Crane and Scorpion respectively, and decided to make it happen. The couple eventually married and the wife was immediately approached by Clan agents. She became instrumental in setting the stage for the Scorpion Clan Coup. During the coup itself, she killed his brother and some retainers, permanently disabled his father via poison, and let a commando group into the palace.

Her husband heard all these things after the fact as he had been fighting other Scorpion forces, thinking his newly pregnant wife safe in the palace. When others told him of her treachery, he had many of them executed until finally, one of the other PCs managed to get to him corroborating the story. He took the Crane armies out to find her and spent much of the clan war hunting The White Scorpion. He was unsuccessful. We hand-waved her escape, made up stories of sightings, and I started a new character.

Many real years later we started another campaign that included the Crane scion's son ( by the second, non-traitorous wife, a 3rd Player ) who grew up on stories of her betrayal and after his gempukku, set out to find her while in the pursuit of his other duties as a Magistrate. Along the way, he got distracted and then, when he least expected it, the group stumbled on a village full of girls. His father's first wife had been purchasing the contracts of courtesans and other girls resigned to a life of near slavery using her daughter as an agent ( that PC's half-sister; they had briefly encountered her in Toshi Ranbo the year before ), then bringing them to her isolated village and training them to be warriors. The girls ranged in age from 8 or 9 to 20 or so and had wildly varying ability given their backgrounds and so on. One of three that were made captains by the White Scorpion was a 12-year old who, when she died, broke the players' hearts.

The group had come to the village to warn them of a 'ronin' army consisting primarily of a nearby minor clan looking to take the village for its access to a mine. Things were a little more complicated but...meh. So they figure out that the older ronin samurai-ko running the village is indeed the White Scorpion but they are in no position to do much about it. There are confrontations and they are convinced to help defend the village. Several epic fights later, they have secured the village's safety and the White Scorpion willingly submits herself to the son of her ex-husband in exchange for a guarantee of safety for her surviving girls.

The PC reluctantly beheads the White Scorpion ( he had come to respect her but needed to fulfill his drive for vengeance ), driving off his half-sister and ends up feeling terrible and vindicated all at once. We moved on to a Moto plot by Chagatai and associated rebellion, the fall of the Hantei who in our game had managed to survive the SCC by hiding a child until after the Second Day of Thunder, and eventually the birth of a new dynasty.

/storytime

We are now in 1162 and we'll see what shenanigans we get to. Is that what you're looking for ( action and intrigue )?

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it with this one. That’s some good storytelling there. Sounds like you’ve got a good gaming group. The willingness to sign a character over to the GM for the sake of story can be a rare thing among groups, I’m always happy to see it happen under non-vindictive methods.

It also highlighted for me the type of players who will really enjoy this setting, and that seems to lean heavily towards those who mainly enjoy narrative playing. I could be wrong on this (and I’ll wait until I can examine the full system) but it seems like dice slinger types might lose interest after a bit.

Those who have played the beta or previous editions can correct me on that if I’m off base.

10 hours ago, jeremysbrain said:

I like the idea of an L5R game that take place in a single territory, so the players get a real chance to know the people, places and politics of the land. It gets them really invested and makes them feel like they have a home. To involve multiple clans in a scenario like this I like to use "Imperial Lands".

I did one where we started the game at the Dojo. They were allowed to play any Clan they wished, but they all had to take a Lion school for their character. I gave the non-Lion characters the "Different School" advantage for free, and an equal-cost advantage to the Lion characters, though I don't remember what it was off the top of my head.

My players loved it. In later games I ran a few of them asked if they could be from that dojo.

5 hours ago, Flavorabledeez said:

It also highlighted for me the type of players who will really enjoy this setting, and that seems to lean heavily towards those who mainly enjoy narrative playing. I could be wrong on this (and I’ll wait until I can examine the full system) but it seems like dice slinger types might lose interest after a bit.

While you aren't wrong - the setting really does encourage narrative storytelling and embracing the scope of the setting - we do have a few die-slingers at our table. For them, we try to keep the action high as well. Bandits, a rampaging Kappa otherwise unconnected to the story but that they keep encountering, stumbling into brushfire wars, rivalries, duels...we just let there be a possibility for every bit of violence to have greater context and that seems to help both sorts of players stay engaged.

Once they were playing ronin who'd been deputized by a Magistrate. They attacked what they thought was a notorious bandit group posing as monks but who gave off signals that they were not what they seemed. Turned out they were disguised Scorpion escorting a young noble through dangerous but generally pious lands along with a solid golden Shinsei as a badly disguised and heavy, but easily transported annual tax from her father. When they realized they were going to lose the fight, the Scorpion opened the palanquin that contained the noble and the Shinsei and killed her themselves to keep her from falling prey to the 'bandits' ( the poor, misunderstood PCs ).

I suppose some players could have interpreted the truth of those disguised bandits as me punishing them, but they hadn't done their homework and things were going swimmingly for them otherwise and it just made sense to me that they might get it wrong. You know your players better than I do, so pick the details with them in mind. If your players would think of that as a bait-and-switch, obviously don't do that. ?

The PC band fell apart ( though the PCs themselves stayed together ) when a retainer NPC decided to make off with the Shinsei days later while the PCs considered what to do with their seriously wounded captive ( the bodyservant of the noblewoman who barely survived being skewered by her clansmen ), whether to return the golden Shinsei to some nearby shrine, smelt it into counterfeit koku, or turn it over to the Magistrate. That one took a sharp turn into ronin bands, bandits, and gangsters clashing over the Shinsei, the noble's older brother seeking vengeance with a coterie of badasses, a months-long ( in-game ) chase to find the former retainer NPC, buying into the Sparrow clan with the recovered spoils, and uncovering violent underworld shenanigans in every new village.

I hadn't initially planned on the golden Shinsei or the princess, only the disguised Scorpion. But as the encounter unfolded, they became an addition that I knew would complicate the RP and bring a lot of violence to the table, thus pleasing everyone. Consequences and fallout. Context. Give those things to your encounters and things get messy and fun real fast. Though I do admit we occasionally have bandit or monster encounters that are just excuses to roll dice. I keep those pretty low-stakes so no one dies ignominiously, letting the PCs be awesome.

Hope that helps.

While every clan has a very different philosophy, and each clan has their lands - that doesn't mean every samurai of each clan is so different. They are all human after all. There are also many cities of which may be owned by one clan, but populated by several. The 1st ed City of Lies story set contained many characters from different clans all living in the same area. One thing about the setting is that it is more civil, and regimented. People have positions and occupations, so making a "samurai cop" group is easy but you don't have to play it so straight.

You could build a narrative where one city is host to members of multiple clans. Maybe the Unicorn and Scorpion clan each have a sort of embassy in a Lion clan city near the border. Each samurai serves their own embassy, but being similar in rank to each other finds their duties often lead them together while working. In working together they have become friends, and can be useful to each other but their bosses are not the same. They may even be called to act against each other, and how a player handles orders from above can be a point of drama as they decide to conceal their orders, or expose them. Do they choose to operate according to their higher ups against the group? Do they attempt to balance their loyalties? The other players may even be sympathetic and understanding having been called on by their clans as well.

If you've read Good Omens, consider how Aziraphale and Crowley work for opposing forces, yet operate as friends and confidants through the story.

I'm genuinely amazed that nobody mentioned "Rokugan Your Way" yet.

You don't like it? Change it! There is a lot of twisting and turning Rokugan can take and remain Rokugan. Some of the alternate settings can be great inspiration, like Iron Rokugan (Rokugan with guns and trains), the Sapphire Throne (socially loose Rokugan), and the Emerald Starts (Rokugan IN SPACE!). If there are aspects you feel restricting, then change them or drop them, just don't forget to put some thought into it so that the setting will remain consistent.

Selling the game system itself is the hard part. It is a very good system, make no mistake, but it sure needs a certain mindset that is definitely not for everyone's liking. There is some leeway here too, since you can play the system more rigidly as it was intended, but I feel like it downgrades gaming experience. You can also homebrew it because it has a lot of innate flexibility, but this might be very effort-intensive. maybe you can roll back to the previous (4th) edition because it is far less particular but mechanically still sound.

3 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

You don't like it? Change it! There is a lot of twisting and turning Rokugan can take and remain Rokugan. Some of the alternate settings can be great inspiration, like Iron Rokugan (Rokugan with guns and trains), the Sapphire Throne (socially loose Rokugan), and the Emerald Starts (Rokugan IN SPACE!). If there are aspects you feel restricting, then change them or drop them, just don't forget to put some thought into it so that the setting will remain consistent.

I need to find my copy of that book. I made a couple of Emerald Stars characters once, but never managed to get a game together for it.

I do realize I am a tad late for the conversation, having returned here just out of a morbid curiosity about how terribly this game is going, but I will take the chance to, instead of attempting to invent excuses to sell you this game, just warn you to quietly back way from this trainwreck of a system and go back to playing the older editions. ^^

@Bayushi Koba Booooooo!

Rokugan your way is an insult to our honored ancestors! A shameful display!

Im also torn. There's some stuff I dislike about the new system. Mainly:

- Using Rings and approachs with skills instead of fixed attributes-skill pairs. This seems very exploitable by min-max players.
- Strife mechanics I kinda dont mind, but not sure my players are going to like it.
- There were many mechanics that were not polished or didnt work quite well in the beta like for example massive battles, range bands... They got a lot of feedback for those, so here's hoping they got reworked.
- Combat seems to be less lethal (fixed, non explosive damage) which isnt exactly bad. It depends on what you like, but I think my players are gonna miss the thrill of that. Fixed TN to hit is another thing I dont really like, the air stance change kinda helps if you want to make the stereotypical agile/dodgy swordsman, but I dont like tying the bonus to the school rank. So suddenly... high rank shugenjas are master evaders? Ive thought about tying the bonus in air stance to the character's air ring which makes more sense imho.

In fact many things I dont like I can see myself reworking them. The question is if I should bother to get a new system if I have to fix a lot of stuff that I feel it doesnt work. Ive been running a successful (and with that I mean fun) 4th edition campaign for more than 2 years now. At the moment Im thinking I will wait for some reviews or even better, will try to browse the book at the local store before deciding to jump in.