This new samurai recently bought the core rulebook, thinking that he might try and GM hi's a very first RPG game in the L5R setting, using 5e rules.

I fell in love with the idea of L5R after discovering The One Shot podcast lets-play of the 4th edition with Jim Mcclure
.
Now, after reading... Attempting to read the 5th edition rules... I kind of feel stuck. Like... Should-I-commit-seppuku stuck?

I am looking at the rulebook, and I have no idea how to tackle this beast as a new GM who wants to try and play this game with hi's board game friends who have never even played an RPG.

Can anyone experienced in L5R give me any tips?
Is there a way how to streamline the game or enjoy the game despite its complicated rules?

I probably should be asking more concrete questions, but I think that that is the problem...

TL;DR = I am so overwhelmed I do not know where to even start with learning and playing the game as a GM based on the rulebook. Can anyone help me get whelmed?

I think there’s a free beginner book available on drivethrurpg. Never actually read it, but I think it has a built in adventure already helping the GM to what kind of rolls the players would to solve problems, so that could help you teaching on how to adjudicate.

To be fair, I haven’t played any of the adventure sets from 5th edition, but overall critique about them has been pretty positive.

I’ll say this though, I feel like the overall layout of the book is horrible and the conflict chapter should be burned to the ground, salted and something else entirely built. But I think I am on the minority opinion on that.

Also, you were lucky it only took you 3 days to have your post visible to others.

On 11/7/2020 at 3:12 AM, Hollow Bonfire said:

Can anyone experienced in L5R give me any tips?

The easy answer is 'the beginner box', but that's kind of a cheap shot after you've bought the core rulebook!

Nevertheless, the point still stands; if you can get the Topaz Championship adventure, it comes with premade characters and an adventure which deliberately adds in the mechanics one at a time. Plus it comes with dice, tokens and a cool poster map of the empire.

On 11/7/2020 at 3:12 AM, Hollow Bonfire said:

Is there a way how to streamline the game or enjoy the game despite its complicated rules?

Genuinely; do just that. The game is designed on the assumption a GM will fettle it to taste.

• If you have the core rulebook, the first thing I would do, especially as a new GM, is tell you to turn to Chapter 7: The Game Master.
• The rest of the book can go hang for the moment.
• This chapter contains a lot of simple, sound advice for a new GM, regardless of system.
• I would strongly encourage you to look at the 'Story-first groups' box on page 286. This way of play deliberately cuts out most of the complexity - the techniques chapter, for example, becomes narrative effects, whilst conflicts are simplified to single rolls.
  • At least until you and you players are used to the idea of rings and approaches - subtly different to the usual RPG stats of strength/toughness/charisma and what have you, along with how you pick Target numbers and how opportunities work, keep things as simple as possible.
  • This goes double if it's the setting, lore and characters that's drawn you in, rather than a desire for a mindless dungeon crawl.
• The basic mechanic - as in, the stuff in Chapter 1 - is simple and elegant; don't get blinded by techniques and conflict scene rules till you've got you head round that, along with a rough idea of how honour, glory and status works . It's perfectly possible to play an interesting intro session purely with narrative and downtime scenes.

If you want some more specific examples of each, I can talk you through a few. Let me know if that'd be helpful.

Above all:

DON'T PANIC.

THAT'S THE PLAYER CHARACTERS' JOB.

As an example:

Rings and picking approaches

• This is probably one of the most important concepts (outside conflict scenes, anyway).
• First off: Rings and skills.
  • Your ring rank is equivalent to your stats in a.n.other RPG system or board game, equivalent to strength/dexterity/constitution and so on.
  • They're a touch harder to relate to the 'real world' because a ring doesnt describe 'stuff' (say 'physical strength') so much as 'ways of achieving stuff'.
    • A character with a good fire ring is good at inspiring people, creating works of art from scratch, performing athletic feats involving a sudden, short burst of speed or power (like a sprint), theorizing a solution with intuition and intelligence, attacking aggressively with little regard for their own endurance or defence, and so on.
    • It applies equally to social, mental or physical 'stuff'.
  • Meanwhile, the skill defines the 'stuff', regardless of what youre doing with, to or in it.

So the shorthand is:

1. Ask the player "what do you want to do?"
2. The response will generally come in the form "I [approach] the [target] to achieve [effect]" - "I resharpen by sword", "I sneak past the guard to get into the barracks", "I reconsecrate the shrine so the Kami returns", "I persuade the daimyo to overlook me being caught unchaperoned in her daughter's bedroom", and so on.
3. Approach gives you the ring. Whilst the player decides what they're doing, you translate it into the required approach (it's not an excuse for I-use-my-best-ring-for-everything, which some players will try to get away with....)
4. Target gives you the ring - - either the thing you're interacting with (so fixing a sword uses smithing) or the environment the interaction takes place in (scrutinising a blacksmiths shop for clues relating to a murder would also use smithing, because that skill defines your ability to notice something being 'out of place' - damaged, missing, etc.
5. Both are up for debate with the players. It's ultimately your call, but on finding out the roll and difficulty, the player should have the option to say "yeah.....nah. New plan..."
6. Note that there are generally several ways of achieving the same thing: Air/Fitness would sneak past the guard unseen, whilst water/sentiment would let you schmooze your way past, and something like Fire/Composition would let you forge a convincing pass to show them. Obviously the relative difficulty (hence TN) and prerequisites (e.g. knowing what a genuine pass looks like) would vary in each case

2 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Above all:

DON'T PANIC.

THAT'S THE PLAYER CHARACTERS' JOB.

Yes, players can smell your fear and then you lose their respect. 😂

21 hours ago, Diogo Salazar said:

I think there’s a free beginner book available on drivethrurpg. Never actually read it, but I think it has a built in adventure already helping the GM to what kind of rolls the players would to solve problems, so that could help you teaching on how to adjudicate.

To be fair, I haven’t played any of the adventure sets from 5th edition, but overall critique about them has been pretty positive.

I’ll say this though, I feel like the overall layout of the book is horrible and the conflict chapter should be burned to the ground, salted and something else entirely built. But I think I am on the minority opinion on that.

Thank you for the advice! Just to make srue, is this the resource you were referring to: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/54/5d/545d40f0-3e88-406a-ab00-fecd7cea0875/l5r01dlc_adventurecompressed.pdf

I was kind of worried that I was the only one who found the rulebook unnecessarily complicated. I am happy to be proven wrong. Otherwise, I kind of started to feel that I am the weird one out. A dirty gaijin.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

The easy answer is 'the beginner box', but that's kind of a cheap shot after you've bought the core rulebook!

Nevertheless, the point still stands; if you can get the Topaz Championship adventure, it comes with premade characters and an adventure which deliberately adds in the mechanics one at a time. Plus it comes with dice, tokens and a cool poster map of the empire.

Genuinely; do just that. The game is designed on the assumption a GM will fettle it to taste.

• If you have the core rulebook, the first thing I would do, especially as a new GM, is tell you to turn to Chapter 7: The Game Master.
• The rest of the book can go hang for the moment.
• This chapter contains a lot of simple, sound advice for a new GM, regardless of system.
• I would strongly encourage you to look at the 'Story-first groups' box on page 286. This way of play deliberately cuts out most of the complexity - the techniques chapter, for example, becomes narrative effects, whilst conflicts are simplified to single rolls.
  • At least until you and you players are used to the idea of rings and approaches - subtly different to the usual RPG stats of strength/toughness/charisma and what have you, along with how you pick Target numbers and how opportunities work, keep things as simple as possible.
  • This goes double if it's the setting, lore and characters that's drawn you in, rather than a desire for a mindless dungeon crawl.
• The basic mechanic - as in, the stuff in Chapter 1 - is simple and elegant; don't get blinded by techniques and conflict scene rules till you've got you head round that, along with a rough idea of how honour, glory and status works . It's perfectly possible to play an interesting intro session purely with narrative and downtime scenes.

If you want some more specific examples of each, I can talk you through a few. Let me know if that'd be helpful.

Above all:

DON'T PANIC.

THAT'S THE PLAYER CHARACTERS' JOB.

I am going to look into buying the "beginner box" or maybe borrowing it from some of the RPG guys I know. It sounds like this is a must-have resource since you are the second one to recommend it.
The tips you provided will help me greatly when I will attempt to re-read the rulebook for the second time in earnest. 😀

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

As an example:

Rings and picking approaches

• This is probably one of the most important concepts (outside conflict scenes, anyway).
• First off: Rings and skills.
  • Your ring rank is equivalent to your stats in a.n.other RPG system or board game, equivalent to strength/dexterity/constitution and so on.
  • They're a touch harder to relate to the 'real world' because a ring doesnt describe 'stuff' (say 'physical strength') so much as 'ways of achieving stuff'.
    • A character with a good fire ring is good at inspiring people, creating works of art from scratch, performing athletic feats involving a sudden, short burst of speed or power (like a sprint), theorizing a solution with intuition and intelligence, attacking aggressively with little regard for their own endurance or defence, and so on.
    • It applies equally to social, mental or physical 'stuff'.
  • Meanwhile, the skill defines the 'stuff', regardless of what youre doing with, to or in it.

So the shorthand is:

1. Ask the player "what do you want to do?"
2. The response will generally come in the form "I [approach] the [target] to achieve [effect]" - "I resharpen by sword", "I sneak past the guard to get into the barracks", "I reconsecrate the shrine so the Kami returns", "I persuade the daimyo to overlook me being caught unchaperoned in her daughter's bedroom", and so on.
3. Approach gives you the ring. Whilst the player decides what they're doing, you translate it into the required approach (it's not an excuse for I-use-my-best-ring-for-everything, which some players will try to get away with....)
4. Target gives you the ring - - either the thing you're interacting with (so fixing a sword uses smithing) or the environment the interaction takes place in (scrutinising a blacksmiths shop for clues relating to a murder would also use smithing, because that skill defines your ability to notice something being 'out of place' - damaged, missing, etc.
5. Both are up for debate with the players. It's ultimately your call, but on finding out the roll and difficulty, the player should have the option to say "yeah.....nah. New plan..."
6. Note that there are generally several ways of achieving the same thing: Air/Fitness would sneak past the guard unseen, whilst water/sentiment would let you schmooze your way past, and something like Fire/Composition would let you forge a convincing pass to show them. Obviously the relative difficulty (hence TN) and prerequisites (e.g. knowing what a genuine pass looks like) would vary in each case

I see that you already gave one example.
You are right that understanding how the dice rolling (rings and approaches) work seems paramount.
I would appreciate it if you could give other examples as well. But only if you are able and willing. I think that re-reading the book while keeping in mind the things you wrote is already going to help me a lot. Yet, the examples would be much appreciated.

2 minutes ago, Hollow Bonfire said:

I would appreciate it if you could give other examples as well. But only if you are able and willing.

Absolutely fine.

• It's also probably worth mentioning Opportunities here. Especially when playing narrative games early on, opportunities are a big part of keeping things interesting.
• Once you get into more rules-heavy conflict scenes, players will generally take care of opportunities for you, because techniques like Kata (for swordfights) and Shuji (for social situations) often give you specific ways to spend them
• The short version is that opportunities represent 'good stuff' not directly related to success or failure of the check as defined.
• Essentially, Opportunities are the 'and' or the 'whilst' - If a player says" I [approach] the [target] to achieve [effect] whilst [something else] " then the something else will require them to roll and spend opportunities.
  • As an example, imagine your player's character is a magistrate who's heard rumours of highly illegal shennanigans in a local shipyard. Maybe smugglers are bringing in opium, or 'gaijin pepper' (aka black powder) or something. Anyway, the samurai decides to go do Miami Slow Tide Harbour Vice impressions and check the place out, ideally finding the contraband without the smugglers ever knowing they were there.
    • At this point, the player has a choice - a decision which should be based on both what their best rings are and also what's most important to them.
    • "I search the shipyard, and try to avoid being noticed"
      • Looking at the list below, searching the shipyard is Survey - that's the approach for spotting stuff when you don't know where it is (or even if it exists)
      • The setting is a shipyard, so it's going to be the Seafaring skill (could also be Skulduggery or Commerce , at different TNs).
      • The GM knows that the contraband isn't actually that well hidden - the criminals aren't expecting the Emerald Magistrates to turn up - so it gets a TN of 1 or 2 (variable depending on specific bits of preparation or clever ideas the player might come up with that would make it easier). If the player gets that many successes or more, they find the contraband - bonus successes meaning they either find more of it or find it faster.
      • Not being noticed isn't included in the 'deal' of the check, though. That requires you to also roll opportunities. Water isn't the naturally 'sneaky' ring - Air is - so I'd say you'd need to spend two opportunities (at least) to avoid being noticed whilst you search.
    • "I sneak through the shipyard, and try to spot the contraband"
      • This is the same thing, reversed. In this case the player is primarily trying to avoid being spotted.
      • Looking at the list below, sneaking through the shipyard is Feint or Trick - that's the approaches for using agility and deception to avoid being hit/spotted/hurt
      • The setting is a shipyard, so it's still going to be the Seafaring skill (you could make an argument for Fitness or Skulduggery , at slightly different TNs).
      • Now the check is pitting the player's sneakiness against the criminal's awareness. In cases like this, the easiest thing to do is set the TN as equal to the target's vigilance (in this case 2). Success means the player isn't noticed, and bonus successes means their breaking in isn't even noticed after the fact, and/or they might get close enough to overhear conversations.
      • In this case, finding the contraband is what you get from opportunities - again, this is more a Water thing than Air, so you'd want two opportunities to spot the contraband in the process of sneaking through the 'yard'.

• Fire - Invent, Overwhelm, Incite, Theorise, Innovate
• Water - Adapt, Shift, Survey, Charm, Exchange
• Earth - Restore, Withstand, Reason, Produce
• Air - Refine, Feint, Analyse, Trick, Con
• Void - Attune, Sacrifice, Sense, Enlighten, Subsist

Equally - a quick 'mini session' from years ago; giving an idea about the sort of skill/ring combinations different situations might use:

What did you have in mind for the story/adventure?

Perhaps the assorted forum types can help with some suggestions - it might be a good case study in and of itself, and add a chance to look at NPCs.

Also - Honour.

Glory is pretty obvious; if something would make you famous, you get glory. Bad reputation (or obscurity) - lose glory.

Honour is a bit more.....nuanced. For starters it's an internal measure. You gain or lose honour based on your intent, as much as the outcome, and you get honour shifts for stuff you do even if no-one else knows you did it .

The thing about honour shifts is that most important choices do cost you honour either way!

Choices like " do you brutally murder the innocent and steal her stuff ....or not ?" are bushido on easy mode.

Also note that it's possible for a choice to cost you honour by one tenet, and give you honour for a different tenet. The subtlety is that each clan has an 'important' tenet (where shifts are doubled) and an 'unimportant' tenet (where shifts are halved). This means some clans will have a different view on the honourable course of action in the exact same situation.

For the sake of example: a group of emerald magistrate find themselves in a village and discover that the local daimyo is cheating on his taxes in order to feed the commoners (who are starving, through no fault of his). Do the PCs report him or not?

Exposing the Daimyo would be a violation of:

• Courtesy (embroiling a higher-status individual in a scandal)
• Compassion (if you believe no-one would step in and see to the heimin's welfare)

Meanwhile, covering up the crime is a violation of:

• Duty (their immediate duty is to the Magistrature, who will ultimately carry the can for enforcing - or in this case failing to enforce - tax law)
• Righteousness (because it's a violation of the social order and 'how the world ought to work')

Looking at examples, I'd say it's probably a minor breach of each. So clan perspectives:

Crab - expose (courtesy loss halved)

Crane - conceal (courtesy loss doubled)

Dragon - conceal (duty loss halved)

Lion - expose (compassion loss halved)

Phoenix - expose (righteousness loss doubled)

Scorpion - neutral (duty doubled, righteousness halved)

Unicorn - neutral (compassion doubled, courtesy halved)

It's an interesting situation and games like this often turn into mini ethics 101.

1 hour ago, Hollow Bonfire said:

Thank you for the advice! Just to make srue, is this the resource you were referring to: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/54/5d/545d40f0-3e88-406a-ab00-fecd7cea0875/l5r01dlc_adventurecompressed.pdf

I was kind of worried that I was the only one who found the rulebook unnecessarily complicated. I am happy to be proven wrong. Otherwise, I kind of started to feel that I am the weird one out. A dirty gaijin.

Yes, that’s the one I meant. Expanding on Magnus examples, Martial Arts X are the simplest skills to represent because their endgame are all the same (I hit my target with pointy, bludgeoning, cutting end) where the how that was done can change. While other skills can use different Rings to accomplish the same thing but the endgame be slightly different. For instance, you could use Command/Water to convince a Samurai to help you with something because he might feel regret for not helping you or you could use Command/Fire to threaten the same Samurai into helping you because now they are afraid of you. In both cases, if successful the Samurai will help you, but one approach might be easier than the other depending on the Samurai demeanour, for instance and both Can offer hooks for the GM later (with Water, the NPC might befriend the PC or the NPC might ploy against the PC with Fire).

Finally, Opportunities present opportunities (wordplay intended) to add flavour to the story or even to “fail-forward”. One example I posted on the campaign I am currently running where the PC failed to refuse a gift from the Emperor but got enough opportunities to not suffer that much consequence for the failure.