I will start running L5R this weekend, and while I intend to ease people in with the beginner box and then 'in the palace of the emerald champion', my intention is to adapt the material from the excellent 1st edition City of Lies box set that I have in pdf.

The superb selection of NPCs and their secrets and intrigues is a real strength of City of Lies, but I am now faced with 50+ NPCs, of which about half have printed stats in first edition rules.

Some seem simple enough to convert, I feel I could just use the same ring and skill values for the Thunder Guard and they would function just fine. Others I could probably use the sample NPCs in the core book for (with some tweaking occasionally), Asako Kinto fits the scholarly shugenja profile pretty well.

But some NPCs are pretty edge-case. Let's take Ample as an example.

He is a large, kinda slow, ronin, muscle-for-hire type.

In 1st edition this was modelled by the following rings and stats:

Earth 5

Water 1 - Strength 4

Fire 1 - Agility 3

Air 2

Void 1

I feel I can pretty much import his skills and special ability wholesale, but how would people model the water/strength and Fire/agility divide?

I guess it's easy enough to take the rings as they are, but should I attempt some advantages and disadvantages, or other NPC abilities to use him to best effect?

Of course I don't intend to centre my campaign around Ample (as large as he is), so what other general advice do people have for adapting older material? Any pitfalls I need to avoid?

Thanks for any help.

Look at what the character is supposed to be like. Ample's a wrestler, he needs rings that let him use Martial [unarmed] properly. The main kicker though is that in 5th, there's a Ring rank limit based on Void and your lowest Ring: with a Void of 1 none of his other Rings can be higher than 2. I think in this case upping Void to 2, putting Fire at 2, and setting Earth and Water both at 4 seems reasonable stat-wise if you don't want to change Ring values too much.

However, in my opinion the Fire and Water rings have shifted meaning between 5th and previous editions. Agility is Water in 5th and Strength is Fire in 5th, going by the Ring descriptions and by the corresponding Approaches and Stances. High Water also feeds into Composure being high and low Fire feeds into Endurance being low, which is the reverse of what you'd want for Ample. So, if you want the character to be translated faithfully and don't mind juggling Ring values a bit, Water at 2 and Fire at 4 is probably better. Those two Rings warrant a closer look if you want to adapt characters from previous editions in general (again, in my opinion). Perception and Intelligence can stay Water and Fire respectively, though a good case can be made to just switch Fire and Water entirely between 5th and previous editions as well.

you don't have to be that precise when making NPC. as long as you understand the adjectives that work with each rings, you can do whatever you want.

the system for npc/opponents is super easy. plus you don't even have to make everything add up (like secondary stats etc), and this is understood by the players fast enough. so, more power to the GM. also the skills are based on categories.

sure, it might be "weird" than an archer is as good with a sword than with a bow, but honestly, its an NPC... who cares. the GM can play it how he wants.

so really, just go with how you "feel" the NPC should be. like I said, once you know what the rings mean, you can pop NPCs in a few seconds and they will be close enough to your idea.

giving them 1 or 2 special ability is what takes longer. you might want to start a bank of those in a word doc to give quick inspiration.

7 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

Look at what the character is supposed to be like. Ample's a wrestler, he needs rings that let him use Martial [unarmed] properly. The main kicker though is that in 5th, there's a Ring rank limit based on Void and your lowest Ring: with a Void of 1 none of his other Rings can be higher than 2. I think in this case upping Void to 2, putting Fire at 2, and setting Earth and Water both at 4 seems reasonable stat-wise if you don't want to change Ring values too much.

However, in my opinion the Fire and Water rings have shifted meaning between 5th and previous editions. Agility is Water in 5th and Strength is Fire in 5th, going by the Ring descriptions and by the corresponding Approaches and Stances. High Water also feeds into Composure being high and low Fire feeds into Endurance being low, which is the reverse of what you'd want for Ample. So, if you want the character to be translated faithfully and don't mind juggling Ring values a bit, Water at 2 and Fire at 4 is probably better. Those two Rings warrant a closer look if you want to adapt characters from previous editions in general (again, in my opinion). Perception and Intelligence can stay Water and Fire respectively, though a good case can be made to just switch Fire and Water entirely between 5th and previous editions as well.

Yeah, NPCs don't follow PC character creation restrictions. An NPC with Void 1 (and no Void points), isn't a problem. Similarly, for NPCs, the derived statistics aren't actually derived, but are caveat, so an NPC can have low Fire or Earth as necessary for their attitude/style, but still have high Endurance, for example (something Avatar111 pointed out as well).

4 hours ago, Isawa Miyu said:

Yeah, NPCs don't follow PC character creation restrictions. An NPC with Void 1 (and no Void points), isn't a problem. Similarly, for NPCs, the derived statistics aren't actually derived, but are caveat, so an NPC can have low Fire or Earth as necessary for their attitude/style, but still have high Endurance, for example (something Avatar111 pointed out as well).

You can certainly do that, I just prefer somewhat important NPCs to be created on similar footing as the PCs. Not that the players can't stand to be surprised once in a while, but for me it matters that things are recognizeable and consistent.

17 hours ago, Monkey Bloke said:

I will start running L5R this weekend, and while I intend to ease people in with the beginner box and then 'in the palace of the emerald champion', my intention is to adapt the material from the excellent 1st edition City of Lies box set that I have in pdf.

The superb selection of NPCs and their secrets and intrigues is a real strength of City of Lies, but I am now faced with 50+ NPCs, of which about half have printed stats in first edition rules.

Some seem simple enough to convert, I feel I could just use the same ring and skill values for the Thunder Guard and they would function just fine. Others I could probably use the sample NPCs in the core book for (with some tweaking occasionally), Asako Kinto fits the scholarly shugenja profile pretty well.

But some NPCs are pretty edge-case. Let's take Ample as an example.

He is a large, kinda slow, ronin, muscle-for-hire type.

In 1st edition this was modelled by the following rings and stats:

Earth 5

Water 1 - Strength 4

Fire 1 - Agility 3

Air 2

Void 1

I feel I can pretty much import his skills and special ability wholesale, but how would people model the water/strength and Fire/agility divide?

I guess it's easy enough to take the rings as they are, but should I attempt some advantages and disadvantages, or other NPC abilities to use him to best effect?

Of course I don't intend to centre my campaign around Ample (as large as he is), so what other general advice do people have for adapting older material? Any pitfalls I need to avoid?

Thanks for any help.

I've been working on this box set myself for a while, and expect to start on Sunday. I am absolutely happy to share notes, probably best by PM.

13 hours ago, Isawa Miyu said:

Yeah, NPCs don't follow PC character creation restrictions. An NPC with Void 1 (and no Void points), isn't a problem. Similarly, for NPCs, the derived statistics aren't actually derived, but are caveat, so an NPC can have low Fire or Earth as necessary for their attitude/style, but still have high Endurance, for example (something Avatar111 pointed out as well).

Caveat is warning (in English). I suspect you mean fiat, which means by decree.

And many of the Adversary NPC templates DO follow the formulae.

7 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Caveat is warning (in English). I suspect you mean fiat, which means by decree.

And many of the Adversary NPC templates DO follow the formulae.

lol, good catch. Didn't mean fiat though, meant arbitrary, in the context of whim (as in, whatever fits the idea, rather than caring about a reliable system), but fiat works just as well. That's what I get for posting tired. The fact some follow it, and others don't, just enhances the arbitrariness of the whole section. The way I see it, for our purposes as players, it's a good idea to just stick to the formulae for NPCs, until the moment it doesn't make sense, and then feel free to ignore it (except when dealing with PCs obviously).

18 hours ago, Isawa Miyu said:

lol, good catch. Didn't mean fiat though, meant arbitrary, in the context of whim (as in, whatever fits the idea, rather than caring about a reliable system), but fiat works just as well. That's what I get for posting tired. The fact some follow it, and others don't, just enhances the arbitrariness of the whole section. The way I see it, for our purposes as players, it's a good idea to just stick to the formulae for NPCs, until the moment it doesn't make sense, and then feel free to ignore it (except when dealing with PCs obviously).

The ones that don't seem to be using the beta formulae. Editing error?

I just got hold of Emerald Empire and, to my great satisfaction, it has the stats for Hyobu in it!

On 1/17/2019 at 10:02 PM, Tonbo Karasu said:

I just got hold of Emerald Empire and, to my great satisfaction, it has the stats for Hyobu in it!

That's cool!

Frustratingly she isn't statted in 1st edition, so we can't compare and see how FFG did it.

Thanks everyone for the advice given, it'll help a lot.

@Tonbo Karasu it would be good to share notes and ideas for using Ryoko Owari in this edition.

I'm not sure if this deserves a separate topic, but it's about the same thing so...

Honour, Glory (and err... Status?)

In adapting the NPCs I've started pondering the Honour, Glory and Status of them.

In 1st edition they only had Honour and Glory, where Glory encompasses both social rank and fame.

Honour was ranked from 1 to 5, with 0.1 point increments. It seems simple enough to double the 1st ed score, and check the 1st ed table on page 59 and the 5th ed table on page 302 to make sure it feels correct. That doesn't feel like an issue (please correct me if I'm missing something that could impact this).

Glory was a 1 to 10 scale in 1st edition, and probably maps to Status more than Glory in 5th edition. Shosuro Hyobu has a glory of 6 in 1st edition, and while Status 60 is listed a provincial governor rather than city governor on page 305 of the 5th edition core book, I can accept the governor of Ryoko Owari, one of the largest and most wealthy cities in Rokugan being considered more important than most city governors.

That said, her son who is the head of the Thunder Guard has a glory of 5, and her daughter, a courtier and socialite has a glory of 6 also.

As for the 5th edition Glory rank, I'm assuming I'll need to eyeball it based on character description. Should I take influence from the 1st ed glory rank? Does anyone have any words of advice or wisdom for setting glory on NPCs?

Am I overthibking this entirely? Should I simply look at the descriptions on the tables in the 5th edition core book and say "that looks about right"? While that approach isn't wrong, I'd like to remain true to the characters, hence looking at the old stats.

8 minutes ago, Monkey Bloke said:

Am I overthibking this entirely? Should I simply look at the descriptions on the tables in the 5th edition core book and say "that looks about right"? While that approach isn't wrong, I'd like to remain true to the characters, hence looking at the old stats.

I'd eyeball it based on this. These stats aren't completely linear, so in the case of honor doubling probably isn't quite right - but it'll be close enough though, so no real harm if you want to go this route anyway. Splitting up Glory into Glory and Status is a lot less convenient though. It's not really a 50/50 split, so you'd be looking at how much each contributed to the overall rank.

That said, the tables are really just a starting point and certainly Glory and Status are somewhat fuzzy and fluid. Giving Hyobu a bump in status due to Ryoko Owari's importance is certainly justified, for instance. Staying true to the characters will work better if you go with what you think is right than if you follow the tables very closely.

It might be interesting to note that Hyobu is in Emerald Empire with full Adversary stats (M5, P12!!). Her Societal scores are Honour 35, Glory 70, Status 65.

Yasuki Nobuko also shows up, with a rather less impressive Honour 64, Glory 35, Status 45.