Hey there everyone;

As a new GM on this edition, when reading the beginner adventure (Tooaz Championship) I am getting a feel of oversimplification of scenes/die rolls.

I’m guessing (and hoping) it’s because it’s being created for beginner GMs (I’ll soon read the L5R rulebook and get a better feel).

I would have loved to roll dice with my players so that they could see the results of each section and pairing of the tournament.

Has anyone tried to give stats to the NPCs and attempted this?

Thanks in advance everyone!

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 2:44 PM, vanderhagast said:

As a new GM on this edition, when reading the beginner adventure (Tooaz Championship) I am getting a feel of oversimplification of scenes/die rolls.

You are. The Topaz Championship starts with the assumption that player and even GM may have no experience at all of RPGs, so mechanics are introduced very slowly (I think you're halfway through the event before void points come up, for example).

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 2:44 PM, vanderhagast said:

I would have loved  to roll dice with my players so that they could see the results of each section and pairing of the tournament. 

Has anyone tried to give stats to the NPCs and attempted this?

I have to admit not. The way I see it, unless a PC is involved, the story resolves however the GM says, because it's not 'important - working out each pairing including a PC in Sumai (for example) would be fair enough, but I wouldn't see the point in rolling for other people. (Especially since it is kind of story-critical that Hitoshi not manage to pass most of the checks; rolling dice just gives you a chance for this to go wrong...)

I think that's why they just stuck with the competitive check against the 'overall winner if you don't beat them'.

Yeah, I can understand that.

I’ve GM’d for multiple other campaigns in other systems, and I have adapted the story to whatever comes out. In this case, whoever won or lost, I would make it work.

I’ll start giving stats to these NPCs, just didn’t want to work on it if someone else had done it.

Thanks for the input.

When I ran this adventure, my group was already familiar with RPGs, just not with this system. So with that first encounter I did have them roll what was effectively a strength check with a TN of 0 so all they needed to succeed was either a success or an opportunity. After check-in and the incident with Hitoshi, my players opted to go out and explore resulting in them at the Make Neko Sake Brewery and some social encounters there.

Basically, you can expand on the adventure if you want or introduce elements sooner if you are playing with an experienced group. I suppose you could do a die roll for which challenger the players are paired with, but my group was not as focused on who they were paired with as they were with completing the challenges. Each group will be different. It seems to me you did fine improvising on the fly. And thank you for sharing as that will give me some ideas in the future.

we ran it with dice checks for a lot of things, because the way a lot of us assisted hitoshi was through opportunity on our own rolls, using the abilities to remove strive, reduce tn, ect. I didn't realize none of that was supposed to be rolled for, my GM seamed in the mechanics flawless. That said, we are all seasoned rpg players, our gm has been running L5r since first ed, and 3 of us have been playing l5r almost as long, so it wasn't a strain for us to roll and flow with the new mechanics.

Pairing was also important. It was stated that our group was running the race together, and Hitoshi running after. I made an excuse to go check my horse for the horsemanship part coming up, and got dropped back to run with him. This let me forge a path, point out the bees, and show off so badly that EVERYONE else looked bad by comparison, but still made it in time.

That said, we WERE disappointed at a few npcs losing challenges. I lost 5 bu betting on that Kitsu shugenja.