There are a few threads like this floating around for other FFG RPGs; it's intended for any light-hearted, amusing (or disturbing) events or rulings from your tables. Input from other players encouraged....

(With some apologies to Things Mr Welch Is No Longer Allowed To Do In RPGs )

• Character Creation:
  • If the PCs will be acting as mediators to a Crane Clan/Lion Clan border conflict, you may not select ' Blue-Yellow Colour-blindness' as a disadvantage.
  • "Stabbing People" is not an appropriate choice for your Addiction anxiety.
    • Or your Giri.
  • When selecting the 'Betrothal' , 'Blackmail' , 'Scorn of' or 'Sworn Enemy' advantages/disadvantages, please do not apply them to the other PCs without prior agreement.
• Courtesy:
  • After a Challenge is accepted, honour dictates allowing the other party the opportunity to obtain a weapon.
  • Even if they were armed, retroactively challenging someone to a duel after stabbing them does not qualify for an Honour or Glory increase.
  • Not getting first pick of the loot is not an acceptable pretext for seppuku.
  • Do not rub the Togashi Monk's head for good luck.
    • Do not rub any part of the Utaku Bushi for any reason.
• The Spirit World
  • No properly worded Invocation to the Kami includes the phrases " Fo' Shizzle " or " Teh Lulz ".
    • This also applies to Legal Edicts.
  • When an invocation permits you to create " any kind of melee or ranged weapon ", this is not intended to include Siege Artillery, Kunshu, or Fu Leng's Sword.
  • Whilst Rokugan may be the land of " Ten Thousand Fortunes ", there is no 'Fortune Of Massive Collateral Damage'
• Conflicts
  • " And then We hope they miss a lot " is not a component of a well-thought-out battle plan.

Character Creation

• Your GM actually allows you to make a Hunting Cat as a character for the Scorpion Clan provided he
  • Allows only one advantage of Honor is my Pride and disadvantage Too Honorable
    • Obiously he too has read Mark E Rodgers Samurai Cat books
  • When selecting skills Swordmaking is an option
    • So is riceball making
      • And hairballing

PCs shall not conspire to all have the same advantages/disadvantages, especially:

• Blackmail On/Blackmailed By (each other)
• Gaijin Name
• Karmic Tie (on each other)
• Blindness

Any player roleplaying a disadvantage that they do not possess may have it mechanically applied to them without warning i.e. materialism, delusions of grandeur, Benten's curse etc.

Rubbing the Cat's head is not a sign of good luck

• Nor is does it give a blessing
  • Or can he bless weapons
    • "STOP TOUCHING ME OR I SWEAR BY MOON YOU WILL HURT!"
      • NOTE his favorite food will calm him down

Seeing how many tenets of Bushido you can violate in a single act is not to be considered "an interesting challenge".

Your reputation preceeds you to the point that every bar and tavern knows you by name of "The one guy that can out drink a camel"

• However nobody has any clue what a camel is.
  • Or what one looks like
    • No outdrinking a whale is not permitted

The fact that another cat has joined the party only rtaises eyebrows from the only Lion in the group

• However its clear she isnt even a normal cat due to placement of her ears at all times even as a human
  • Yes those ARE earrings.....
    • No shes taken

• When you have an intricately laid out, engaging story arc planned, and see the opportunity to hand an exit to the player who is moving away.
  • Said exit involves a duel
    • PC loses said duel to the first blood, but survives
    • PC then hurls insults at the Brash opponent to trigger them to attack
    • Brash opponent cuts down PC illegally
    • Party turns and kills Brash opponent
    • Dead PC's final statements (after losing the duel, but before being cut down) hold up in the local governor's courts, as he is a (Scorpion) magistrate and died to deliver his testimony implicating the associates of the brash opponent
  • Cased closed. Good guys win. Bad guys lose. Everyone learns an important moral lesson. Player truly enjoys his send off, and thanks you as the GM for it.
• Rest of the players decide that this is obvious the end of the campaign
  • Because no one is going to top that PC death.

Nice. It's a sign people have properly settled into an L5R gaming mindset when "....but if I get my character killed in the process" becomes a useful optional element of a plan.

When you critically fail sneaking out of Kachiko's bedroom in her home in the City of Lies but everyone else also critically fails in actually seeing your character because they remembered Kachiko does have a cat.

• Because of this the only Scorpion imn the group wants to marry Asami
  • Sadly this isnt possible to intermarry cats and humans...
    • At least outside their clan

When your players investigate a cave-in at the Kaiu wall after an earth quake

• They all come out with at least one serious wound (Damaged organ, loss of limb etc. )
• At least half the party is afflicted and in serious need of a cleanse
• The entire party really needs to go to their school to get that extra school rank

1 hour ago, Hansisaf said:

When your players investigate a cave-in at the Kaiu wall after an earth quake

• They all come out with at least one serious wound (Damaged organ, loss of limb etc. )
• At least half the party is afflicted and in serious need of a cleanse
• The entire party really needs to go to their school to get that extra school rank

....Despite not encountering any actual enemies.

• When you decide to go 'looking for Hida' in the shadowlands as an alternative to accepting an invitation to court because quite frankly it's safer and less likely to send you insane.
• When the victim was your suspect's lifelong sworn enemy, who had publicly announced they were going to reveal the suspect's darkest secret in court tomorrow, has their knife embedded in the victim's chest, their hands have blood-stained marks matching the hilt wrappings, their shoes match the footprints on the stained tatami mat and their torn kimono, parts of which are still in the victim's death-grip, is covered in arterial splatter pattern and your first thought is " Bugger. Where do I get witness testimony?".

On 11/21/2018 at 4:01 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

• • Not getting first pick of the loot is not an acceptable pretext for seppuku

• • No properly worded Invocation to the Kami includes the phrases " Fo' Shizzle " or " Teh Lulz ".

But would the first apply to "compassion" honor gains?

And would Hotei mind *too* terribly much for the second?

35 minutes ago, Arolem said:

But would the first apply to "compassion" honor gains?

Whilst generosity is an important part of a Samurai's behaviour, the fact that the items in question are described as "the loot" implies they have not been obtained in an especially respectful manner from their previous owner. So.....no. Or at least, if looting the bodies, you're probably taking an equivalent honour loss which balances it out.

39 minutes ago, Arolem said:

And would Hotei mind *too* terribly much for the second? 

Technically Hotei is a Fortune, not a Kami, I think.

When the party {Consisting of one Lion courtier, two Crane {courtier and a shinobi} three scorpion shinobi and two cats {one of whicvh a half catdemon girl}} Get into a internal squabble thanks to the Lion doing overwatch when the catdemon girl got caught and then treated like a pet decdes to bring it up.

• At which point cat demon girl had 12 strife accumulated, twice her Composure
• It goes to blows, but the other cat doesnt do a thing
• Lion vs Scorpion is not a good idea
• lion vs catdemon also not a good idea though hilarious

Cat girl ended up with spending all her strife in one shot and nearly beaned our Lion with a rock had the other cat not stopped her she'd have chucked the thing

On 12/13/2018 at 10:10 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

• When the victim was your suspect's lifelong sworn enemy, who had publicly announced they were going to reveal the suspect's darkest secret in court tomorrow, has their knife embedded in the victim's chest, their hands have blood-stained marks matching the hilt wrappings, their shoes match the footprints on the stained tatami mat and their torn kimono, parts of which are still in the victim's death-grip, is covered in arterial splatter pattern and your first thought is " Bugger. Where do I get witness testimony?".

Ah, yes, the moment when players forget that their characters are samurai and thus can testify against the culprit themselves despite their involvement. This is only funnier if the GM forgets this and builds an investigation case on "lack of witness testimony" when a PC outranks the unsuspecting murderer.

By the way, two things that tell me I'm in an L5R game:

• The great majority of PC deaths are at the hands of other PCs.
• Players show up for the game with huge matrix charts that detail optimal Honor gains and losses.

Our grop did something really stupid in our last session

• Someone {we blame one of the Scorpions inthje bunch} bought catnip laced sake
  • Same someone told everybody BUT Asami {my cat demongirl} what their ploan was
    • Everyone waited until Asami got hammered on said catnip sake to see what would happen afterwards
      • Neddless to say, they're not allowed back in that tavern anymore

It is our first L5R campaign in new edition: We are 2 sessions in the story, several Bloodspeaker servants (group of zombies and cursed bushi) sneak-attacked players in a castle. Now Asako courtier is paranoidly doubting Kuni shugenja and Shosuro courtier, and Shosuro disappeared right before attack. All 3 are PCs.

..., reaching for another Onigiri, you hesitate and wonder: Did the first one Afflict me, will this one Taint me?

And in the first place, do Oni understand the concept of Giri at all?

{this is more a Things Ni Fang Is Not Allowed To Do in a RPG but it might count for your own games too}

• Have Asami finally meet her long lost sibling Hana
  • Hana however does not recognise any of the party because she is drunk
  • Asami gets drunk in order to translate drunkenese
    • Sadly Asami is too hammered to get down to proper translations so the Lion in the group translates after a bit of sake
    • Hana somehow falls in love with the Scorpion who bought the catnip laced sake in the last tavern
      • Said Scorpion reveals he is allergic to cats
      • Asami {my catdemon girl} pitches her sake at him when he fakes sneezing
        • Hana ends up tackling her sister,
          • Other NPcs begin taking bets on how long the fight will last
  • Through it all, I, the player of Asami, Is drinking a {alcohol free} Sake at the time, our GM then accidently gave me a refill, and it was Red Bull, you can guess what happened next
    • Asami now somehow owns her own sister after beating down the tavern owner to get her sister Hana free to leave without debt

Somehow, the storytelling part of this game just makes it so much more fun when your characters are hammered out of their minds

• When a brand new player who's new to the L5R setting asks with wide-eyed naievety "do you think she's plotting against us somehow?" about a scorpion.
  • Obviously the answer was Yes . Since Bayushi Mei Lin is now Topaz Champion, they haven't yet found out how bad it's going to be for them.
• When going to talk to Kakita Toshimoko to apologise on behalf of the Mantis for Hitoshi's abortive (and deeply drunk) challenge in the Topaz Championship, they got to guest star in place of Hoturi in the old L5R story Private Lessons .
  • "So....probably a good thing we talked the drunk kid down?" "Um.....yeah. Also, free koku!" (Toshimoko split the 'fee' with them as a thanks for the previous evening).
• When the Mirumoto Niten Adept has developed a personal favourite combination of techniques that is (out-of-character) being referred to as "Electric Juice Blender Style Strike"
• When the Hida Defender gets their first look at the Shadowlands Sourcebook and sees O-Yori Wall Armour and spontaneously starts dribbling.
• When the Kaito Shrine Keeper has basically turned into Rokugani Hawkeye and took out Goro the bandit leader with no less than an eventual eight kept off four dice in void stance.

The Kaito thing happened in one of my game! That 3 void is stress free and can be good, if you are lucky.

19 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

The Kaito thing happened in one of my game! That 3 void is stress free and can be good, if you are lucky.

It does leave the character disturbingly made of wafers with respect to Endurance and Composure, but Void 3 also means 2 Void points at the start of each session instead of 1.

Opening the ball by throwing Sieze The Moment and Exploiting A Target's Disadvantage or Leveraging her own Disadvantage into the same roll means she can pull off a surprisingly effective roll even for a situation where she has relatively limited skills - for a 0XP starting character a bonus rolled skill die and a bonus kept die is huge.

During the brawl in the Poisoned Water Sake House she got the job of being Hitoshi's 'babysitter' since the PCs assumed (wrongly) that the thugs had been hired to scrag him in particular.

One particularly unfortunate ruffian caught the wrong end of a Short Temper- ed shrine attendant's knee and spent the following turn being hammered unconcious against a table with the Kaito yelling " I " smash " Am " yelp " Totally " thud " Calm " gurgle " And " crunch " One " snap " With " thud " The " thwack " Void " splat

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

- When the question in a murder investigation is not "who have done it" (the scorpion, of course), but how to persuade/blackmail a suitably high status NPC to testify.

- When, on the rare instance when the culprit is NOT a scorpion, how to put the blame on the nearest scorpion to protect the honor of the uncle of the real murderer who happen to be a powerful Otomo.

- When a scorpion dies and everyone rushes to his room to recover his puzzle box and blackmail material inside.

See you i  n the San  ds.

We can chalk this one up to anopther "Things Ni Fang Is Not Allowed To Do in a RPG"

Make a Skyrim version of her characters. Asami looks nothing like her character sheet, hert eyes arent THAT green