Well yeah, I did have to work extra to get my group into it... but the setting is really awesome and full of potential for great adventures that are varied and dramatic and extremely rewarding It encourages character exploration like very few other games can.

So I guess... no pain no gain?

10 hours ago, gmcc said:

yeah i see but since the game is not very popular is hard to get a GM to teach or let new players play

Which is why the Beginner game exists. It's an excellent introduction. Both to the mechanics and the pillars of the setting: Honor, Duty, Social Conflict, and Martial Conflict.

It also helps to remember John Wick's favorite quote about L5R: "Rokugan is not Japan." Rokugan is exactly as much japan as the group wants to make it so. (barring obstinate fools of GM's).

my real problem is that i no 0 about this game and lcg wich would make it very hard to teach or create a story on it... the lcg seems very difficult compared to others and in my region no one plays it..

23 minutes ago, gmcc said:

my real problem is that i no 0 about this game and lcg wich would make it very hard to teach or create a story on it... the lcg seems very difficult compared to others and in my region no one plays it..

Coming up with adventures isn't that hard... Really.

The first two will give a good feel: The Beginner game is a guided adventure; The downloadable follow-on, in the Palace of the Emerald Champion, is also really good, and well guided. Another is available free - albeit with different pregens - Wedding at Kyotei Castle.

Knowledge of the card game is not needed nor overly helpful. So don't sweat it.

10 hours ago, gmcc said:

my real problem is that i no 0 about this game and lcg wich would make it very hard to teach or create a story on it... the lcg seems very difficult compared to others and in my region no one plays it..

There are tons of modules from previous editions freely available ( https://kazenoshiro63445525.wordpress.com/content-archive/ ). Knowing how those editions worked would help with converting them, but is really not necessary.

21 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

There are tons of modules from previous editions freely available ( https://kazenoshiro63445525.wordpress.com/content-archive/ ). Knowing how those editions worked would help with converting them, but is really not necessary.

Some guidelines should one do this - I've done it this way:

Listed TN's : use the associated ring as the optimal ring, TN is divide by 5, round down then subtract 1. Any other ring should be at least one higher.

Converting Characters: use the listed ring, at 1 level lower. Use the closest skill; Sincerity is about the only one that isn't self-explanatory - It's the ability to appear sincere, no matter what you're saying. It can be used to lie, to convince people you're being truthful, or even to hide your enthusiasm, as needed. In short, it's a tie to Sentiment and/or Culture, as situationally appropriate. Damages, just look up.

School abilities? fake them as best you can - many are now Kata or Shuji. Pick one that sounds close; for the schools that exist in 5E, you have the rank 1 already.

Replacing Characters: it is oft just as good to simply swap out for a suitable template and specialty package, possibly changing the demeanor, and maybe adding a key Kata or Shūji, and/or replacing the existing one.

While I love L5R as a game. I am not a big fan of the FFG system. I have played their SW game and a little Gensys and do not like using specialty dice. Does not seem to convey what I want in my game. I prefer 4th Ed. I will pickup the books for fluff and stuff but I will continue to roll d10's and hope they explode :-)

Trevor L.

3 hours ago, Hida Katsu said:

While I love L5R as a game. I am not a big fan of the FFG system. I have played their SW game and a little Gensys and do not like using specialty dice. Does not seem to convey what I want in my game. I prefer 4th Ed. I will pickup the books for fluff and stuff but I will continue to roll d10's and hope they explode 🙂

Trevor L.

FWIW, this edition uses a different system than Genesys/SW

1 hour ago, sidescroller said:

FWIW, this edition uses a different system than Genesys/SW

A VERY different system if I may add. It is essentially Roll & Keep with a special dice fix on Raises and an extra resourcing system strapped onto the deal for good measure.

6 hours ago, sidescroller said:

FWIW, this edition uses a different system than Genesys/SW

Definitely.

4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

A VERY different system if I may add. It is essentially Roll & Keep with a special dice fix on Raises and an extra resourcing system strapped onto the deal for good measure.

Yep.

One can achieve a very similar effect by simply treating dice as success-based: 5-9 = success, 10= explosive success.

Or, add raises, and go 1-2 null, 3-5 raise, 6-8 success, 9-10 explosive.

Strife would be harder to deal with in Old-5R...

13 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Or, add raises, and go 1-2 null, 3-5 raise, 6-8 success, 9-10 explosive.

Strife would be harder to deal with in Old-5R...

Odd is clear, even is Strife (Blank is Blank). Tho on a D10 I would rather go 1-2 Blank, 3 Success + Raise, 4-5 Raise, 6-8 Success, and 9-10 Explosive Success.

Ok I get they are different, but I have read the book and I just don't like not having concrete numbers to roll for. To me personally I like numbered dice and concrete target numbers to roll for. But don't get me wrong, if you like the way this work go for it and enjoy any chance to game is always good. For me and my group we will be staying with 4ED.

FFGs L5R system is no way as math intensive as any edition of D&D/D20/Pathfinder but it does have concrete numbers to roll for. Instead of a high target number the system requires a number of successes and opportunities to acheive a desired effect. This approach might be easier to deal with for those who don't like doing a lot of math.

2 hours ago, Hida Katsu said:

Ok I get they are different, but I have read the book and I just don't like not having concrete numbers to roll for. To me personally I like numbered dice and concrete target numbers to roll for. But don't get me wrong, if you like the way this work go for it and enjoy any chance to game is always good. For me and my group we will be staying with 4ED.

You can think of successes as "1"s and other results as "0"s. TNs are concrete target numbers. The math is very, very similar other than 5th having opportunities instead of raises and even that doesn't make a big difference in terms of odds (it does !n terms of strife management, of course).

1 hour ago, Alisair Longreach said:

FFGs L5R system is no way as math intensive as any edition of D&D/D20/Pathfinder but it does have concrete numbers to roll for. Instead of a high target number the system requires a number of successes and opportunities to acheive a desired effect. This approach might be easier to deal with for those who don't like doing a lot of math.

D20 isn't exactly math intensive. The only thing that's remotely complicated is keeping track of bonuses and penalties, and a decent character sheet takes all the work out of that.

D20 can get intense when you have to juggle a class bonus, ability score bonus, feat bonuses, magic item bonuses, situational bonuses and helpul spell bonuses. And the bonuses you keep forgetting. And then add it all together and do the math right.

1 hour ago, Alisair Longreach said:

D20 can get intense when you have to juggle a class bonus, ability score bonus, feat bonuses, magic item bonuses, situational bonuses and helpul spell bonuses. And the bonuses you keep forgetting. And then add it all together and do the math right.

That's not something to juggle. That's something to record on and consult from a character sheet. Most of those bonuses are either permanent or long lasting and only change if some kind of negative effect is applied to you. You have the total and the different bonuses on your sheet and you work from there - you only have to make an adjustment if something changes. And other than adverse ones in combat, you tend to know the temporary effects quite well: your buff spells become routine. I've never seen anyone struggle with math in d20, unless they refused to keep track of temporary effects on their character sheet.

On 2/18/2019 at 5:11 PM, Alisair Longreach said:

D20 can get intense when you have to juggle a class bonus, ability score bonus, feat bonuses, magic item bonuses, situational bonuses and helpul spell bonuses. And the bonuses you keep forgetting. And then add it all together and do the math right.

But D20 is simply juggling static bonuses or penalties with a huge range in variation per roll. The math is simple and much more intuitive for probably of success for normal or challenging TNs. L5R 5E muddles things a bit more because a single Ring or Skill die can have multiple results, and "success" which we've been trained in roleplaying games to desire is not the only objective in this game. For example, if you want that first strike in a duel, you'll need to keep enough opportunities too, while managing strife. The probabilities aren't difficult to understand or calculate, but the outcome is a little more complicated than "did I hit their AC?"

Actually, one of the reasons I like roll and keep systems much more than D20 or percentage roll systems is the non-linear distribution of the results. It’s much more elegant and does a good job representing the likely outcome of an action depending on skill level (i.e. the higher the skill the less likely it is to utterly botch an easy task). In D20, however great you are, you always have 5% chance at a fumble. The density function of previous L5R editions was really neat to look at (kind of a skewed bell curve, climbing sharply on the left side and tapering off more slowly to the right). 5e is less granular, but I expect the odds to follow a similar pattern. The main difference is that you have several parameters to a roll rather than just an overall numerical result, and I think it works pretty well while keeping the probabilistic elegance of roll & keep.

On 2/18/2019 at 7:26 PM, Franwax said:

The main difference is that you have several parameters to a roll rather than just an overall numerical result, and I think it works pretty well while keeping the probabilistic elegance of roll & keep.

Agreed. And one of the reasons I like *this* version of R&K compared to the previous L5R versions is that it generates less useless information on the success/failure axis. Like, since almost all TNs used increments of 5s, and because there's so many results possible on R&K with d10s, there's not a meaningful difference between rolling, say, a 46 and a 47. But working on a scale of 1-5 or 6 ish is much more intuitive.

18 minutes ago, sidescroller said:

Agreed. And one of the reasons I like *this* version of R&K compared to the previous L5R versions is that it generates less useless information on the success/failure axis. Like, since almost all TNs used increments of 5s, and because there's so many results possible on R&K with d10s, there's not a meaningful difference between rolling, say, a 46 and a 47. But working on a scale of 1-5 or 6 ish is much more intuitive.

That was not always the case.. you could have rather common occurrences where the granularity did matter (Center stance giving a bonus on the next roll of +1k1+ your Void ring or something... bonus to TN to be hit equal to school rank when dual wielding... or just the armor bonuses ranging in 2, 3, 4 or 5). But 5e works well enough with more discrete TNs ranging from 1 to 6~7 for the most part. And the fact that “raises” (read “opportunities”) are dissociated from success opens very interesting avenues.

On 2/13/2019 at 11:19 AM, gmcc said:

yeah i see but since the game is not very popular is hard to get a GM to teach or let new players play

Man, I WISH the game wasn't as popular. My gameshop preordered a few copies of Emerald Empire (one for me) and I STILL can't get my hands on one because the blasted thing seems to be out of stock.

The game does have its mechanical flaws, some of them obvious ("Hi, I'm Pelting Hail Style and I'll ruin everyone's day."), and it does have its mechanics no-shows ("How do I this?" "Well, do you narrate it?"), but I think its biggest problem is that Bushido is SO important in playing it and that no-one's used to that when playing other systems. Sure, D&D has Paladins with a code of conduct, but that's not really enforced, otherwise there wouldn't be a gajillion threads on whether they fall for killing goblin babies (the answer, in case you're wondering, is yes, yes they do). But in L5R Bushido is as an integral part of the mechanical rules as "your dice pool is ring dice+skill dice, keep a number of them between 1 and your ring value."

Getting too many hits to your Honour and Glory is bad. Like, REALLY bad. In a world where duty to the clan/family is everything, reflecting poorly on them is going to get you kicked out, and in that same world, having no clan/family means you're screwed. Even as a ronin, having too low a H/G score means no-one's going to hire you, because they can't trust you to get the job done, and you failing will reflect poorly on THEM. And that means you're going to have to resort to banditry for food/supplies. And bandits who disrupt the Empire are EXACTLY the sort of stuff daimyos send their samurai to handle, and since you don't have a family/clan who'll initiate repercussions at you getting ganked, you're going to be handled in a very FINAL way.

13 minutes ago, JBento said:

Man, I WISH the game wasn't as popular. My gameshop preordered a few copies of Emerald Empire (one for me) and I STILL can't get my hands on one because the blasted thing seems to be out of stock.

Looking at pretty much every other FFG RPG line: it seems to be a deliberate choice to have relatively small initial print runs and print more when deemed beneficial.

15 minutes ago, JBento said:

Man, I WISH the game wasn't as popular. My gameshop preordered a few copies of Emerald Empire (one for me) and I STILL can't get my hands on one because the blasted thing seems to be out of stock.

The game does have its mechanical flaws, some of them obvious ("Hi, I'm Pelting Hail Style and I'll ruin everyone's day."), and it does have its mechanics no-shows ("How do I this?" "Well, do you narrate it?"), but I think its biggest problem is that Bushido is SO important in playing it and that no-one's used to that when playing other systems. Sure, D&D has Paladins with a code of conduct, but that's not really enforced, otherwise there wouldn't be a gajillion threads on whether they fall for killing goblin babies (the answer, in case you're wondering, is yes, yes they do). But in L5R Bushido is as an integral part of the mechanical rules as "your dice pool is ring dice+skill dice, keep a number of them between 1 and your ring value."

Getting too many hits to your Honour and Glory is bad. Like, REALLY bad. In a world where duty to the clan/family is everything, reflecting poorly on them is going to get you kicked out, and in that same world, having no clan/family means you're screwed. Even as a ronin, having too low a H/G score means no-one's going to hire you, because they can't trust you to get the job done, and you failing will reflect poorly on THEM. And that means you're going to have to resort to banditry for food/supplies. And bandits who disrupt the Empire are EXACTLY the sort of stuff daimyos send their samurai to handle, and since you don't have a family/clan who'll initiate repercussions at you getting ganked, you're going to be handled in a very FINAL way.

I see this as a feature.

16 minutes ago, JBento said:

I think its biggest problem is that Bushido is SO important in playing it and that no-one's used to that when playing other systems.

I still can't believe that playing an unironically principled character is supposed to be anomalous.

6 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I still can't believe that playing an unironically principled character is supposed to be anomalous.

I don't know if it's SUPPOSED to be, but in my gaming group it is, and you're exchanging forum messages with him. >_>