As the title say... Seems like it'll live on in another studio! Can't wait to see how they manage it! French/Spanish studio under Asmodee.

All the older books will be reprinted too (swrpg, genesys, l5r).

" The FFG branded role playing games will be transitioning to a new European company over the course of this year. The company is called Edge Entertainment. Old books will still be printed, and new ones will be made. New books will still work with existing ones, so it's not a new edition."

https://imgur.com/DAK3m3X

Called it.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

" The FFG branded role playing games will be transitioning to a new European company over the course of this year. The company is called Edge Entertainment. Old books will still be printed, and new ones will be made. New books will still work with existing ones, so it's not a new edition."

https://imgur.com/DAK3m3X

If they launched a 5th edition revised core, I would be a happy man.

And it seems they already have two novels in the pipeline (from my favorite german online shop):

https://www.fantasywelt.de/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings-RPG-Curse-of-Honor-EN

https://www.fantasywelt.de/Legend-of-the-Five-Rings-RPG-Poison-River-EN

Those were announced a while back, though, and will be published through their new fiction arm, Aconyte. Those novels are also not specifically for the RPG, even tho the German site claims that for some reason ^^

1 hour ago, Myrion said:

Those were announced a while back, though, and will be published through their new fiction arm, Aconyte. Those novels are also not specifically for the RPG, even tho the German site claims that for some reason ^^

When they've published novellas, they've often come with some exclusive content for the LCG. Not gonna lie, wouldn't be mad to see novels with some exclusive RPG content in the same vein.....

Oh, yeah, 100% agreed on that.

Although the extra lore that the physical copies come with is arguably for the RPG. It's not much use for the LCG after all. Pisses me off that it only comes with the physical copies though.

9 hours ago, Diogo Salazar said:

If they launched a 5th edition revised core, I would be a happy man.

If they only reprint, I'd be grateful but not overly excited.

If they actually fix and polish the product, rewrite some of the problematic parts, and release it as a revised edition. I would actually be overwhelmed with joy and would buy the revised books in a heartbeat. Actually, I would rebuy all the books they fix.

After reading Path of Waves and random chair damage rules, overpowered shields, celestial implement randomness, useless bonds and intrigue options, a lot of broken techniques, I can guarantee that we hit the bottom of the barrel already in term of mechanical system designs.

Can't wait to see what Edge is thinking to do. Worst case scenario they will just reprint stuff...Which is already better than some expected. Best case, they do a soft relaunch and polish it. We honestly can't lose!

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

If they only reprint, I'd be grateful but not overly excited.

If they actually fix and polish the product, rewrite some of the problematic parts, and release it as a revised edition. I would actually be overwhelmed with joy and would buy the revised books in a heartbeat. Actually, I would rebuy all the books they fix.

at the very least, incorporating the Errata changes would be something. It still irks me a little that they didn't embody them into the .pdf versions.

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

After reading Path of Waves and random chair damage rules, overpowered shields, celestial implement randomness, useless bonds and intrigue options, a lot of broken techniques, I can guarantee that we hit the bottom of the barrel already in term of mechanical system designs.

I must say I'm nervous about Path of Waves given that people seem to think the balance wheels have fallen off. Will reserve judgement till I see it on Drivethru.

55 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

at the very least, incorporating the Errata changes would be something. It still irks me a little that they didn't embody them into the .pdf versions.

Their updates to PDF (books or otherwise) is abysmal. It can honestly only improve.

56 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I must say I'm nervous about Path of Waves given that people seem to think the balance wheels have fallen off. Will reserve judgement till I see it on Drivethru.

Balance is maybe not the right term to use (while it is also applicable, "balance" was already a bit iffy even before Path of Wave so I do not think it will be worst off; some stuff is too strong, some stuff is too weak... This game never was "balanced".

The issue for me is that the book is mostly a big waste of content space. So much futile garbage in there (like what I enumerate in my above post).
The lore about Ronin and Gaijin could have easily been inserted in other sourcebooks, and is kind of the only good thing in the whole book if you ask me (I'm definitely not the right person to ask though!)

Only an opinion here but the quality of books is steadily going down at each release; corebook ok (unpolished, but ok), emerald empire good (the lore!!), shadowland mostly good (cool lore, most new mechanics are ok or fun, chapters make sense), courts of stone mostly shaky (big reused section about castle, cheesy new minor clan, some weird and useless techniques, bonds), path of wave is even weaker.

I am glad L5R is given a chance to flourish under new designers, but we will see the result of that probably not before next year.

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I must say I'm nervous about Path of Waves given that people seem to think the balance wheels have fallen off.

Well, that one guy who everybody ignores says the wheels have fallen off. I haven't studied the full thing, but in general most kata and schools seem okay, the question seems to be a bit that a couple of the schools are problematic and seemed to have missed either an editing pass or a writer leaned too hard in the "L5R is nega-D&D so the gm will just order min-maxers to commit seppuku so only like 4 people will play a treasure hunter anyway", and some of the improvised weapon profiles are a bit strong, but again I'm not sure if that's supposed to be in reference to the one kata where you use an improvised weapon for a single strike or what, because I can't read the full. Sadly, FFG has always been awful at table editing, and at least with L5R they have a bad habit of placing important footnotes in the margins (which are easiest to read in pdf form on your flatscreen).

I expect though this is an "editing" not "design" problem, since PoW was delayed in printing and then the RPG team (where most of the editors and proofers were I think) were laid off. I also expect this means "official" eratta is going to be incredibly slow to come out, moreso than it was.

50 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Well, that one guy who everybody ignores says the wheels have fallen off. I haven't studied the full thing, but in general most kata and schools seem okay, the question seems to be a bit that a couple of the schools are problematic and seemed to have missed either an editing pass or a writer leaned too hard in the "L5R is nega-D&D so the gm will just order min-maxers to commit seppuku so only like 4 people will play a treasure hunter anyway", and some of the improvised weapon profiles are a bit strong, but again I'm not sure if that's supposed to be in reference to the one kata where you use an improvised weapon for a single strike or what, because I can't read the full. Sadly, FFG has always been awful at table editing, and at least with L5R they have a bad habit of placing important footnotes in the margins (which are easiest to read in pdf form on your flatscreen).

I expect though this is an "editing" not "design" problem, since PoW was delayed in printing and then the RPG team (where most of the editors and proofers were I think) were laid off. I also expect this means "official" eratta is going to be incredibly slow to come out, moreso than it was.

It's probably not even me who said the balance was getting worst. I always said balance was a non-issue (or so much of an issue that it doesn't really matter) in this game.
Plus I really doubt that Magnus would be basing his comment on only my opinion... That is a bit simple minded of you to think that.

The hating though. It is ok to ignore me, but don't get into a public hate war with me. Please. Just keep ignoring me (for whatever your reasons are) and move along.

https://edge-studio.net/

On topic, looks like EDGE has a new (albeit temporary) English site with blurb.

3 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

"L5R is nega-D&D so the gm will just order min-maxers to commit seppuku so only like 4 people will play a treasure hunter anyway"

😅 realizes I just made a treasure hunter solely because it's literally the only [Courtier] primary role-tagged ronin school.

It... it can't be that bad, right?

26 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:

😅 realizes I just made a treasure hunter solely because it's literally the only [Courtier] primary role-tagged ronin school.

It... it can't be that bad, right?

It's the Vigilance + School Rank that gets people annoyed. Since Vigilance is the TN for so many techniques, buffing that by your Rank kind of makes you almost immune to a lot of stuff. I'd be tempted to say that it should be (Air + Water + Rank)/2 for Vigilance, which means that it gives you a bonus, but not as much.

19 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

It's the Vigilance + School Rank that gets people annoyed. Since Vigilance is the TN for so many techniques, buffing that by your Rank kind of makes you almost immune to a lot of stuff. I'd be tempted to say that it should be (Air + Water + Rank)/2 for Vigilance, which means that it gives you a bonus, but not as much.

To be fair, a lot of schools or techniques (or even gear quality in the case of Sacred) have that hard counter gameplay.
At this point, this is part of the game. The GM needs to navigate through these hoops and challenge the PCs by throwing counters at them that nerf or nullify their own counters. Not my prefered playstyle (I prefer granularity), but it is really hard to imagine L5Rrpg differently at this point. There are literally techniques that can "cancel" a whole mass battle scenario, destroy a weapon in one blow, immobilise an otherworldly/tainted entity nearly forever, clean the Afflicted condition instantly and such (just a few examples, but it shows the overall design gist in many areas).

edit: If you start to balance all that, it would be an immense endeavour. I feel it is better to simply embrace it... For better or worst. L5R is not as much imbalanced as it is very extreme and swingy in term of power level depending on the situations.

My preferred edit is like, "Only bonus to Vigilance (And Focus, so you're also great at Intrigues because enemies can't hit you with social agendas) on Initiative and in Narrative Scenes". Technically, the school ability directly accomplishes what it's about, in that you are hardly ever surprised and have an uncanny sense for danger... It just works a bit too well. Seems like somebody missed it in an editing pass or forgot all the extra stuff Focus and Vigilance is linked to.

On the other hand, it's also incredibly dull , it's mostly reactionary other than initiative rolls, so mostly you just sit around and hard to target unless the GM goes out of his way to compromise you. So I dunno if I'd recommend it on that alone, the other schools seem more fun. But still make sure to frowny face at any player who clearly should not be playing a Treasure Hunter and is only that school because they feel the need to dab on initiative or something.

12 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

or a writer leaned too hard in the "L5R is nega-D&D so the gm will just order min-maxers to commit seppuku so only like 4 people will play a treasure hunter anyway"

I've seen in passing the Treasure Hunter school, and I must admit at first glance it seemed like Seppun-Palace-Guard-But-Better, but I guess the balancing factor will come from the vastly lower starting Honour (27 versus 50 ) and the relatively weaker gear and techniques; whilst the school has Kata, it's starting Kata is Tactical Assessment and the only 'stabby' Kata in the rank 1 curriculum is the really-not-very-good Striking as Air (plus the new 'Chaotic Scattering', whatever that does), whilst the Palace Guard starts with an Iai cut and preferential access to the awesome Crescent Moon Style at rank 1.

I dunno. How much social stats is a balancing factor will depend on how much you actually do draw status, honour and glory into play at your table. It should be one of the key advantages of Imperial characters; as a starting character, being able to tell an Emerald Magistrate " be quiet for a minute, because I am talking " is a pretty impressive option in an intrigue.

I agree min-maxing is best dealt with by the GM, though. Ideally by a quiet word pre-game; character creation is something that needs to be much more co-operative in order to have Ninjo and Giri that make sense, and advantages and disadvantages actually relevant to the storyline of the campaign; 'turning up' with a pre-built character a la D&D Adventurer's League really doesn't work.

edge the company which stop translating and releasing 3rd and 4rth Edition in Spain

3 minutes ago, shinta_hid said:

edge the company which stop translating and releasing 3rd and 4rth Edition in Spain

and in France too

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I've seen in passing the Treasure Hunter school, and I must admit at first glance it seemed like Seppun-Palace-Guard-But-Better, but I guess the balancing factor will come from the vastly lower starting Honour (27 versus 50 ) and the relatively weaker gear and techniques; whilst the school has Kata, it's starting Kata is Tactical Assessment and the only 'stabby' Kata in the rank 1 curriculum is the really-not-very-good Striking as Air (plus the new 'Chaotic Scattering', whatever that does), whilst the Palace Guard starts with an Iai cut and preferential access to the awesome Crescent Moon Style at rank 1.

I dunno. How much social stats is a balancing factor will depend on how much you actually do draw status, honour and glory into play at your table. It should be one of the key advantages of Imperial characters; as a starting character, being able to tell an Emerald Magistrate " be quiet for a minute, because I am talking " is a pretty impressive option in an intrigue.

I agree min-maxing is best dealt with by the GM, though. Ideally by a quiet word pre-game; character creation is something that needs to be much more co-operative in order to have Ninjo and Giri that make sense, and advantages and disadvantages actually relevant to the storyline of the campaign; 'turning up' with a pre-built character a la D&D Adventurer's League really doesn't work.

I think I understand their concern because I share it. I like to play intrigue scenes with NPCs that are actively trying to win, ie: they make rolls to persuade the PC etc. (But then again, who knows how intrigue should really be played. Timer? Momentum track per PC or for the whole party? The game just doesn't say.

Then if all of a sudden you have a PC who have like 7 vigilance, they become a bit immune to the whole "systems" of intrigues (among other immunities). Sure, there are ways around it (compromise them?) But that falls into what I was talking earlier; hard counters gameplay.

Though, the game is like that. You will have players that are straight up immune or overpowered in some wide areas. And you, as a GM, will have to come up with the right tools to "counter" them. Is it by design? Or just simply a by-product of bad design? The story doesn't say. But the result is the same. If you start as a GM to fear that your players will "break" the game, you are not doing it right. L5R requires the GM to custom tweak the adventures and adversaries to be able to deal with the players. A "generic" answer doesn't work here like it usually does in most standard adventure ttrpg.

I'm not sure I mind a character's school ability giving them a weirdly high vigilance too much. Yes, it does mean the TN to affect them with some stuff becomes really high, but whilst I haven't yet experienced the school in play, I think it's the fact Risk and Reward gives vigilance and focus increases that bugs me more.

High vigilance is very powerful but not universally useful.

It's the initiative value when surprised, and it's generally the TN (or the cost) to be tricked, trapped and deceived. With the school having Air/Water ring increases, you're more or less guaranteed a base Vigilance of 3, so you're looking at TN4 and TN5 checks early on, which is a big deal, but in and of itself not catastrophically different to someone in air stance with a TN-increasing effect. It is a very powerful effect - don't get me wrong - but specifically allowing for a high-vigilance character is feasible.

Increasing Focus as well seems like a touch too much. Firstly, it means you'll always get the initiative increase (because it's basically impossible to be compromised at the start of a scene) and you still get the increased initiative even if you fail your tactics or meditation check, making it far better than the Seppun school's Speed of Heaven (which adds bonus successes instead so you still have to pass) even just in the narrow scope of an initiative boost.

Plus, when you're the target of a persuade action, it means you increase the TN to gain momentum and the total momentum needed to complete the persuade objective.

13 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Plus, when you're the target of a persuade action, it means you increase the TN to gain momentum and the total momentum needed to complete the persuade objective.

Oh, it is busted. No doubt... But so many things are. It just gets really hard to start to balance everything in this game. Also, who knows if Intrigues require the NPC to "attack" the PC. It doesn't say so anywhere, nor there are example of that anywhere...

I do play as is (because, we like it?) But clearly, the game never mentions anything about it. All the intrigues examples are more like the PCs have 2-3 rounds to gain enough momentum to win.

But when you start to check all the Shuji in relation to the intrigue rules... Some stuff really doesn't make sense. It really is as if the system doesn't know how it should be played. Or at the very least, it really ain't clearly written.

Anyway, maybe the designers never intended the PCs to be the targets of NPC during intrigues? Who knows...

Our first intrigue scene that we made was with us, the 3 players trying to convince our daimyo that it was best to trade the new found vein of Jade in our province to the Crab in exchange for Kaiu Steel.

The GM started reading the rules (which took 10 minutes) and realized that it would be extremely broken with all 3 players contributed to the same momentum pool so each one would have its own. We argued that it made sense if it was a skirmish of 3 against 1. The lone one should be at a disadvantage. In the end, we all agreed (after talking for 10 minutes) that the daimyo would try to convince one of us to agree with him and hoard the Jade and if he convinced one of us before he was convinced otherwise, that would be the end of the scene.

We, as the group, came together, but the fact that we had to spend 20 minutes (of a 2h30 game) just to agree on how to play a scene because the book doesn't tell us, extremely frustrating.

The fact now, if one player decides, for a good reason, to play as a treasure hunter, pretty much makes him immune in intrigue conflicts, extremely annoying.