Legend of the Five Rings

By Derrigan Bluewave, in Your Settings

I love Rokugan, and it's setting, and have played 4ed, with the AEG ruleset. However, while i was thrilled when FFG bought it, and were talking about doing narrative dice, I wasn't thrilled with the results when I tried the beta. If felt like a lot of the flavor has been lost, and to me that was a sore point. So, I have been working on my own conversion of L5R to Genesys (actually, the symbols used in the document are the Star Wars ones, will fix that later).

There are several important differences from Genesys, so note:

1. Instead of 6 Characteristics, I have used the 5 Rings.

2. The Dice Symbols used in this version are the Star Wars ones. (this will be changed for the final version).

3. Due to the way Schools are set up in previous editions, I opted for the fixed Talent Tree format from SW.

4. Skills are decoupled from Characteristics, and any Ring can be used with any Skill. I will add more info on that in the next update.

5. I added more Magic Actions.

6. This is still being play tested in my group, so changes might happen.

With all that said, here is the link to the file.

List of things to fix for next update:

1. Embed Fonts

2. Add a section about the various Rings, and how they are used with the Skills.

3. Do another pass of proof-reading.

4. Add sample adversaries.

5. Make a version with Genesys symbols instead of SW symbols.

Edited by Derrigan Bluewave

the pdf contains an error.

the font "kudasai" is not embedded and hence the writing look very buggy.

I like what I see. Hope to see more of it soon. Thanks fot your work!

First of all, thanks for the inspirational effort!

As I've been contemplating on merging L5R and Genesys, myself, when I had a glance at your publication, a question arose.

The systems by themselves are very similar: There are

  • characteristics and skills, ranging between 1 and 5, freely combinable for checks,
  • two kinds of HP each, a more physical and a more mental one,
  • separately acquired special powers (i.e. talents/techniques), divide into five ranks,
  • narrative dice, with a true two dimensional resolution matrix on the one hand, more like one and two half dimensions on the other,
  • etc.

Consanguinity of the 2nd degree one might call it.

So, my first impulse was: Get rid of the not very elegant check resolution in L5R and use Genesys dice instead. - Have you ever considered just that?

There would be just the one major - to me at last - issue of incorporating the option of suffering negative consequences for an increased rate of success.

Perhaps I might consider changing Range Bands and Silhouette, and Turn Economy as well; I just don't see the need for that as of now.

In short: What was the reasoning behind your completely overhauling L5R instead of a well-considered splice? Are you aware of any issues I haven't identified just yet?

Thank you Grimmerling, and I welcome the discussion.

Let me answer that, because I originally did think about that.

Just changing the dice doesn't really solve the issue, because one of my main issues with the 5ed, was that it felt like they shoe-horned some skills in, and the variety of skill in 4ed was, for the most part, a part of the feel of the setting. You'll notice that I didn't add back all of those skills, because I did a very hard and thorough thinking about what skills are needed for me to feel like I'm playing L5R with Genesys, but also what is needed, and in some cases, mainly the Knowledge skills, i cut down the number of skills.

The Complete Overhaul came about when I saw that some changes I made required thinking about other elements of the game, like Kiho and spells, and blood magic, might be represented.

Note that thsi isn't even version 1.0, and you WILL see some splice added, once I hammer out the details of how the different Rings can be used with the different skills, which is drawing from the 5ed, because I did like that approach.

I have updated the file, still not version 1.0, but getting there. lots of content added, but still got the following to add:

1. Add sample adversaries.

2. Make a version with Genesys symbols instead of SW symbols.

And i do plan to expand on the Clan schools, but that's gonna take some time as I work through them, one Clan at a time.