Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 5

Onward to the Book of Water.

This is the book of optional mechanics. Advanced Schools, Kiho, Paths, Minor Clans, Kata, Maho, whatever you name is here.

Spider Clan is first, not much to be seen here, altough I'm suspect because they on of the storyline points I dislike. Their schools seem to be ok.

Next up are the actual Minor Clans, Badger, Bat which have been mercifully been remade from the abomination they were in 3rd Edition (where they were essentially the Kitsu, Iuchi and Kitsune rolled into one), Boar (which has a rather fun school), Dragonfly, Falcon, Fox, Monkey, Oriole, Snake (THE ORIGINAL!!!), Sparrow (which lost much of their artistic ability and probably still are the worst bushi school), and Tortoise. These schools are, by design, supposed to be worse than than their great clan counterparts.

It's a design decision I despise. And they suceeded at it.

It's not so bad in shugenja schools, due to the meat of their strengths being in spell choice, or Courtiers schools which depend a lot of GM fiat, but amongst the bushi it is very much true. Apparently this is supposed to be a simulation of the setting, but the extent to which it has been taken is extreme to the point that it breaks verisimilitude. Worst of all is that in reality what it does is to remove narrative control from the players that choose to play a minor clan character. This wouldn't be so bad if all of these schools were inherently fun to play, but only the Usagi and Heichi bushi have mechanics that promote experimenting and fun. No playtester should gloat that they suceeded in mantainig the Suzume Bushi as the worst school ever.

Next up are the Imperials, including the now defunct Hantei and Toturi families. The current Imperial family is not included but in my opinion the Hantei bonus can be used without a problem.

After the Imperials come the Brotherhood monks. The main difference is that monks now have a trait bonus as well (altough due to an editing mistake they had also been included in 3rd Edition). Kiho came later in the chapter.

Ronin are next with 5 rank-1 path. It's kind of wierd that ronin paths come before paths are explained, but I suppose the mechanic isn't that complicated that it would cause confusion. It does make this chapter the more disorganized in the book

After this we have mass battles. Again there nothing new here, but there is a lack of provision for naval and shadowlands battles.

Also in the Book of Water we can find the Ancestor rules, which return in a form more similar to their 1st Edtion incarnation. Now, I had absolutely no problem with 3rd Edition ancestors, I think their only problem is that they were introduced and then promptly ignored with little atempt of integrating them in the line, but I have to admit these new rules look very cool. I only have two problems with them; 1) They are not transparent. It's not easy to assess the value of a homebrewed ancestor; 2) Ancestor are now very much a tangible setting element, an implication whose effect I'm not sure suit my taste... Kuni Yori is awesome though...

Following the Ancestor we have advanced schools and paths, which I feel should have come right after the Imperial families. Advanced schools work in the same manner they did so before, which is one of the reasons I'm not so sure the problem with shugenja has been solved. There is one school per Great Clan plus Spider.

Path however have suffered a make-over: They now replace the technique of the same rank. I liked how path worked but the new method is just as good, and for those who played 1st Edition they might remember that this was a frequent homebrewed solution in those days. I do have problems with some of the paths chosen and what they imply:

•  Crab: Berserkers and Oni-Slayers. 100% support in turning the berserkers in a path, I'm more worried about the meaning of the Oni-Slayers. If they intend to drop the Kuni Witch-Hunter as a basic school and instead release the Oni-Slayers as one in a series of paths representing the variety of witch-hunter training I'm all for it. If not then I think we on our way to have the same bloat that plagued 3rd Edition. And I say this as someone that generally loves lots of schools and was a fervent admirer of the 1000 Schools of Rokugan.

• Lion: The Deathseeker and Bishamon's Chosen. These both scream bloat to me. That the Deathseeker in particular is considered a Rank-1 path chills me, but I will probably just use it as the Hayameru school. Bishamon's blessing seems to exist solely due to some simmetry rule that say one path should be a bushi path and other a shugenja path.

• Mantis. Can you say bloat? In fact most shugenja path seem extraneous. Yes, the tensai make sense, but the rest...

• Worst of all are the miscellaneous alternate paths. Yes, Emerald and Jade magistrate make sense, I can concede the Legionnaire paths, but the Champion paths??! I might convert them to something else but it does not bode well when the core book already shows some signs of bloat...

After paths we have the crafting rules. They're simple if a bit oriented towards commercial products, which is odd as artitstic production has a much bigger place in the game. Nothing to write home about but not horrible either, except for the part that no player can craft a katana (strictly speaking no NPC can either but NPC work at plot behest), as crafting is based on price and katana are said to be priceless...

Incidentally this does beg the question why the designers are almost annoyingly insistent in saying samurai are not worried about monetary matters, but then insist on having price lists and basing crafting rules on them. Resource mechanics are not at the vanguard of RPG design these days and if you feel the pursuit of coin should be a background element of the setting they might actually be the best way to handle economics...

The next section is that of kata. Now in previous editions I hated kata with a passion. They were probably the only mechanic I saw no redeeming quality whatsoever. In 4th Edition I almost wish they replaced the schools. I am not convinced in the advantage of a few of them however and a few others like Breath of Wind Style feel a bit finicky.

After Kata come Kiho. Kiho have also been reworked, but it's been more a matter of streamlining and refocusing rather than outright reconstruction. Some Kiho don't seem very clear (Flee the Darkness, Way of the Willow), but again the design team seems to have done a good job of balancing things.

Finally we have the Maho and Taint sections. Thematically I liked how they were handled the rules being far more similar to the orignal 1st edition rules. Taint rules in particular seem to follow far more the original book of the Shadowlands rather than anything published since. I would like to see them in play to make a better assessment.

Novels

Got a few of the L5R novels I've been missing from Noble Knight. Now I only need to find Wind of Honor and Wind of Truth to have the complete line. I'm not sure if I'll comment on them as soon as I can of if I'll do it by comparing the publication dates with the RPG line.

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 4

Following the Boak of  Earth comes the Book of Fire that covers character creation and options. Systems covered are the skill system, Advantages/Disadvantages, Families/Schools, equipment and Spellcasting. I will mention again that in my opinion the layout was greatly improved in relation to 3rd Edition. We are talking about a big book, but everything flows more naturally and in the PDF the existence of links helps.

Points of note:

• There is no longer a limit to Insight Rank. I suspect this is merely the codification of something that in practice was already the norm.

• Carapace no longer exists, replaced by reduction. This is the opposite move of what I have mentioned in Part 3 with skill roll penalties,. Reduction is a straight modifier unlike carapace. If you prefer straight modifiers it's an improvement, if you prefer the dice penalties it's not.

• Armor now both provide an increase to the TN to be hit and provides reduction. This is more realistic, but again it is one more thing to track. Personally I favour Armour as a source of damage mitigation rather than increasing TN to be hit.

• As I mentioned before quite a few schools have techniques that allow dishonorable actions to have no consequence. Examples are the Yasuki and Yoritomo Courtiers, the Shosuro Shinobi and the Ikoma Bard. This is not a new problem, in fact it was the only ability of the orignal Ikoma Omoidasu, but in my opinion it makes the existence of Honor meaningless.

•  There are some odd choices of schools. The Hiruma school is a mix of the Ancestral and Scout with the Ancestral being dominant. I suppose it would make sense if the Scout school became merely a path in this edition but this mix feels strange. Another problem was created by space constraints, and exposes how timeline neutrality is not completely possible, the Shinjo bushi school was not included, the Moto bushi being favored. I understand why the Moto where chosen, but I would have straight out prefered the Shinjo had made the cut as they were the primary school for most of the setting history and because I much prefered the slight Arabic flavour the Unicorn than the cookie cutter pseudo-barbarian, pseudo-mongol stereotype they now are. The same happened with the Henshin that had to compete with bot the Asako courtier and Agasha Shugenja.

• Other school that I'm not completely happy, and I will admit it's mostly for a silly reason is the Tattooed Order. The reason? The tattoos only work if they are not covered by cloth... Yeah, I know it's silly, but I really dislike that an art convenience to display Tattooed monks be made part of the setting particularly in contradiction with other depictions like Hitomi who had a tattoo that was hidden and she could still use at will. But I suppose this is easy enough to ignore. Less silly reason not to be entirely happy with this school is the fact that the tattoos are yet another sub-system and ,worst of all, one that is quite opaque. I understand why they are no longer as they were in 1st Edition, but why not integrate them with the Kiho system? Why create another sub-system? I'm also disappointed that again there is no suggestion on how to create tattooed characters that are not part of the order like Kitsuki Taiko, Doji Reju, Hitomi, or Agasha Tamori.

• No more generic schools. 

• In general, however, schools seem to be pretty well balanced against each other. I've found no obvious stinker nor any obvious uber-school, altough I would prefer to have about a month of play to be more certain. I'm less happy with Shugenja schools, but I'll go into that in the next part of this review.

• Emphasis no longer provide static bonuses but rather allow re-rolling 1s. I'm not sure this was a good idea. Yes, 3rd edition L5R was bogged down by an excess of static modifiers, but the problem were not static midifiers per se. The problem of static modifiers were the fact that they came from multiple sources, were more often than not situational. In this case I think AEG has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Re-rolls tend to be more cumbersome than static modifiers and in this case the oerall roll probabilities do not become more transparent.

• There are less mastery abilities.

• The skill list has again been reworked. Some skills were split, other were merged. I have to admit I miss the rationale for many of the changes ,and tend to prefes broad skills but this is probably not a dealbreaker, altough social schools might have been somewhat shafted a most of the split skills were social.

• Advantages/Disadvantages were slightly reworked. The inherent/granted split was removed but they are now divided into Mental/Physical/Spiritual/Material/Social. I have a problems with a few specifics ones. Namely... 

• There are a few sets of Advantages/Disadvantages where you can't choose multiple options from the same set or the opposed set. Frankly, I don't see any narrative reason why a Character can't be blessed by both Hotei and Benten, or why it is impossible to be a Dark Paragon of Will and be Consumed by Perfection, and it doesn't look like it would mechanically unbalance things either, so I intend to ignore that particular rule.

• Dangerous Beauty. Not so much a problem with the Advantage itself, but with the fact that yet again it uses heteronormative language. This is disappointing because; a) Originally it had no such wording, and b) AEG was aware of the issue, it was brooched with relative frequency in their boards and I remember a lengthy discussion I had about it some three years ago in which Shawn Carman participated, which make the mix of dismissivness, cluelessness, if not outright arrogance, this issue is still treated with when mentioned to AEG all the more difficult to excuse. If I had read the comments made around the release of the book I doubt I would have bought it, and I do kind of regret giving them money again because of something which was one of the reasons I had stoped buying their products in the first place. Is it that hard to use inclusive language? Was the language used in Way of the Scorpion that terrible? Is it that difficult to replace "opposite" with "appropriate"? 

• Gentry has absolutely no game effect other than whatever the GM decides. The problem is that no help is given to the GM on how handle this advantage. Worst, suggested costs are as high as 30 points and it is suggested that PCs pool their point together to create the holding. So what we have here is an extremely expensive advantage without any mechanical effect, that tells the GM should do what he is already supposed to be doing, and doesn't even help him in doing so. WTF??! I'm going to ignore it, Social Position will not be limited to a single rank and will be used to replace it. Complete waste of space.

• Multiple Schools. My problem with this advantage stems from my issue with shugenja schools and as I said I will elaborate further on it, but my misgivings stem from the fact that I don't think that the problem with multiple shugenja schools and Advanced Shugenja schools has been solved. Shugenja paths yes, but the rest not so much. 

• Ishiken, at 8 points only allows the casting of Void Spells. I have mixed feelings about this one. I tend to dislike that to dislike that the only thing it does is allowing the casting of Void Spells, but I suppose I'll have to see how they intend to implement Void mages. If they are supposed to be represented by the printed Isawa shugenja school I suppose it makes sense.

• Dark Fate. Again this is a legacy issue which means those sacred cows were quite safe. This is the interesting advantage that is considered a disadvantage. Yes, the player is relinquishing some narrative control. Eventually. It is still an advantage, and it would be enough to price it under Great Destiny, maybe at 2 or 3 points.

• Spell casting also receives a face lift. While the difference are relatively minor they have a relatively big effect, in particular the fact that raises may no longer be used to cast spells without expending slots. Concentration rules were also simplified in a manner similar to 4th Edition D&D. However the best change in my opinion is how Importuning was iplemented. I think I would still prefer that spellcasting became skill based, but I have to admit this goes a long way in making Rokugani feel at least somewhat religious and I'm tempted to try and pitch a game where shugneja are limited to the basic spells.

• Another interesting difference in spells is that they now have keywords. I'm actually a bit surprised that they took so long to implement it considering AEG is a CCG company and the use of keywords in RPGs is around for a while now. They seem to work well, altough I'm worried on how they might be used in the future. As it is Sun, Moon, Crystal and Obsidian seem keywords that should have been included from the start and I'm kind of worried there might be the temptation to include these and others like Shadow in an ever inflating list.

• The Spells themselves seem to be well balanced, at first glance, altough False Whispers can be used as a social equivalent of nuclear bomb, and I'm sure I missed some interaction somewhere.

• Weapons have also been changed. Many lost their special properties which are now exclusively granted through skill masteries. The problem is that other weapons have not lost their special abilities, and there seems to be no clear rationale why, nor are the damage codes and costs very logic.

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 3

The Book of Earth is that of mechanics proper. During the countdown to the release of the game it was made a big deal on how the sacred cows of the game were thoroughly examined and put dow if found wanting.

Well, I'm happy to report that no cow was hurt in the making of this book...

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of changes, but they are just not nearly as dramatic as they were sometimes made out to be. The core system is the same from 1st and 3rd , a dice pool where you roll trait plus skill and keep ta number of dice equal to trait against a GM defined Target Number or the result of the opposing roll with results of 10 exploding.

The only systems that were cut out were the Dojo and Vassal Family systems, and considering their simplicity they probably will be re-introduced. I hope to be wrong  because I disliked how they had been implemented, vassal families don't need mechanical interpretation other than the ocasional path to represent specialized training, and Dojo can be fully represented witth Paths.

Some things that were changed:

• Void points can only be used once per turn, are harder to recover, and some of the Void Uses were removed/changed. I probably will ignore that limitation and re-introduce the Persistence use from 3rd Edition. I'm also pretty sure I'll be using the Speed use instead of the Initiative Bonus from 4th, because I'm not convinced Initiative has been as nerfed as it should in this edition and the old option seems to be more muted.

• No more Tides of Battle rolls. I think this is a good change, ToB was interesting, but slowed down combat resolution significantly eliminating the benefit of rolling Initiative only once per encounter.

• The Wound Buffer is now in the first Rank instead of being in the last. I'm undecided on this one. It reduces the importance of Initiative which is good, but it may also give a sense of false security to players.

• Action were far better defined and clarified, in a way similar to WRFP 2nd Ed. However I'm not sure the problem with multiple attacks has been solved at al. As it is attacks are complex actions, that with the appropriate technique become simple actions, so the power boos is still all there. I suspect that it would be far better that attacks were always simple actions that could only be used once per round, and that the extra attack technique removed that limitation, or instead, considering that the extra attack maneuver found it's way into this edition, it should give free raise that can only be used towards that maneuver.

• Stances were expanded, there is now a Defense and a Center Stance. Center Stance is pretty much Focusing from 3rd Edition, but with a temporary Initiative bonus as well. Full Defense was also changed, now it only add half the defense roll to the TN to be hit. Frankly there is nothing much to be seen here, Full Defense just became even less atractive an option, the Center stance is nothing new, and the Defense posture is necessary because no kind of action is possible on Full Defense any longer.

• Feint. I tend to dilsike feinting rules in general, for most RPG it should be assumed to be a part of the standard attack roll. It makes sense in some more detailed combat systems, 7th Sea being an obvious example. In L5R and this edition in particular it becomes even more of a sore point for me. Raises to increase damage may perfectly be used to simulate putting extra strength in the blows, hitting unprotected areas, or putting the the target in an unbalanced position. Instead we get a tweaky option that only has benefit if the character has an high attack and relatively low Void, and is limted by Insight Rank making it nearly useless. To add insult to injury this edition codified a lot of the status condition, so there is absolutely no reason why Feint couldn't just be used to inflict the Dazed or Stunned conditions.

• Iaijutsu. It has been graciously streamlined, ending the horde of rolls that were required to resolve duels and somewhat integrating it better with the normal Round/Action structure. Unfortunately I think this is one of the Sacred Cows, and one of those that could happily be slaughtered without prejudice. There is realy no reason for Iaijutsu duels to be solved any differently from other conflicts just because of something that happened in only two movies. On the other hand it might be interesting to experiment this system to solve every type of conflict from combat, to social repartee.

• Honor. This is another change where I have mixed feelings. It has been chaged so that it is in a 0-10 scale instead of the previous 0-5. Honor rolls are now an optional rule about which GMs are warned that it can unbalance the game in favour of High Honor PCs. The only fixed benefit of Honor is increasing the results of rolls made to resist the efects of Fear, Temptation and Intimidation. The way I see it we are again faced with a sacred, and again nothing was really done with it. And this is not a new problem, I used to love Honor, but less and less I see what it adds to the game. Imean we're bombarded that in Rokugan Honor is more important than steel, but the fact is that the rules never reflected that and now less than ever before. In 1st and early 2nd edition Honor was subjective to the point of Scorpion honor being defined almost in reverse. In 3rd edition it became largely objective but it started to introduce the exceptions which became even more prevalent in this edition. Merchant skills cause honor loss, unless your a merchant, Low skills cause honor loss, unless your a ninja. Basically you only have low Honor because your school says so, which make the point of having Honor in the first place moot. Why not conflate Honor with Glory? Why not use Pendragon's Passion system? It was the original inspiration for Honor, and Traits and Passions would work great if the main focus of the game is the conflicts of Bushido. Why not use something like FATE's aspects, Burning Wheels belief and instincts or a few other belief and conviction systems I can't remember? What's worst is that you can't really end up ignoring and ignoring Honor because there are a few school techniques and kata that depend on it meaning that you have a cascade of things to change after it.

• Most penalties are now measured in dice rather than straight modifiers as in 1st edition. This makes sense as it increases the importance of skills as a buffer to prevent the loss of kept dice, however straight numeric modifiers are generaly easier to judge by the GM and are also widely used. This is a fundamental flaw of the Roll and Keep system and there is no easy way to solve it. I'm afraid it might make action resolution more cumbersome, and I suspect most GMs will feel they have more thing to keep track of.

• Status Conditions have been codified and compiled in a nice little section.
  

• Stance declaration is made before Initiative is rolled. How? We are not told... This is not a big issue, and those that played 3rd Edition won't be phased with it as the seeds for this rule were already there, but I've got to admit I hated the dismissiveness people who posed  the same question  on the AEG boards before I checked it out were treated with. "L5R your way" is all well and nice but at least provide a baseline we can wotk with! And it's somewhat disrespectful telling someone there is no problem with an undefined rule only to then reveal that you haven't even using the rules that are defined...
  

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 2

The first chapter proper is the Book of Air that gives the overview of the setting, history, cosmology and social mores and customs. The history in particular is nicely done in broad strokes making it seem far less jarring and more complete than the equivalent section in third edition.

It is also obvious that they did try to make this edition as timeline neutral as possible, but unsuprisingly that proved to be impossible to do completely and understandably the writers defaulted to the current timeline when that happened. I will discuss this further in some specific cases in the remaining parts of this review.

For those familiar with the setting there isn't much to add. While I like Rokugan a lot, but it is a standard fantasy setting with a coat of Japanese laquer. This isn't necessarily bad but the exoticism might become disparaging at times, in particular when the trivial is seen as essential, and when the different elements that are pastiched together are not carefully integrated.

Also of note, in regard to previous editions, is the end of the "Rights of the Challenged" or rather the fact that the challenged party no longer decides the method of the duel. It was something I felt didn't mesh with the way Rokugani are described to be obsessed with Honor and if you look at societies or periods with shame cultures and duelling as the main method of settling social disputes it didn't made sense either.

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 1

"We are all legends. Our only choice is how to end the tale."

This review is pertains to the PDF being sold on DriveThruRPG, and it is not a playtest review, I've only read the book and did some mock skill/combat simulations to try and get the hang of some of the changes made. I should also point out that I'm mostly aiming it to people who are already familiar with L5R (which probably makes it an exercise  in futility as it means my target audience either has already read the reviews they were interested in, or has aquired the book).

I've divided it in six parts as it is quite a long review.

Starting by the physical (or in this case electronic) product itself it is a 403 page (405 if you count the covers) 148 MB PDF, bookmarked and hyperlinked, altough the bookmarks could have been better organized (e.g. colapsable bookmarks would improve useability) and some sections lacked links.

Costing 35$99 it is also priced at the high end of electronic products, but, considering the overall production values, not dramatically so.

Still this is a massive improvement for AEG which had a very restricting PDF policy that meant that in some cases pirated PDFs were equal or better than the official PDFs. This was particularly painful in the more recent releases, where AEG would sometimes realease an expertly done PDF preview (supposedly from the production files), and the poor slobs like me who bought the PDF release got a scan of the physical book.

The book is divided in six chapters starting with Introduction that includes the mandatory "What is Role-Playing?" section some general information and an overview of the major changes from previous editions. The layout is clear, text is legible and the artwork, altough mostly recycled from the CCG, is generaly great. In fact I was surprised because, when I left the RPG in 3rd edition, I felt the artwork was horrid, but they really seem to have turned around their Art Direction since then. The only piece that really disappointed me was the Lion battle maiden in page 92, everything else when not brilliant was at least competent. The water-color/woodblock print looking pieces at the start of every chapter in particular were awesome

A small mention on the map as well, however. 

I hated it. 

I mean, I really hated it.

The only good thing I can say about it is that it is prettier than 2nd Edition map. Apparently, for some undiclosed reason, AEG was forced to use the map intended for their Art of War boardgame which you can see on the right as it was presented for their Kotei tournament (the boardgame itself has been on hiatus for about 3 years now). The diffences from the RPG map are very minor.

It's obviously a very simplified map, with a lot of features moved, altered or removed. I'll discuss this further bellow but comparing it with 1st and 3rd edition it is really sub-par and the choice to use it is made more painful because, at least until recently, the French/Spanish publisher of L5R (which did the layout for this edition) had PDF copies of the nice 3rd Edition map on their website.

Also of note, in my opinion, is the fact that no text seems to have been copy/pasted from previous editions. This does not make a product necessarily good or bad, and I might have missed something, but it does imply a willingness to rebuild the game from the ground up.

Reborn

"No plan Survives contact with the Enemy"

It's interesting how that quote sum up this blog nicely.

At about the same time I started this blog, over an year ago, I was offered a mangement job in the company I worked with at the time. It was a significant challenge, particularly from someone who doesn't come from a business administration background and without any previous management experience. It also came with a nicely increased paygrade. Natuarally it also came with increased resposablities which kept me from updating this blog until recently.

And in the time since then things changed a lot.

I've achieved great sucess, and learned we are only as good as our last result. I've seen the best amd the worst of corporate culture, and learned a lot about people and office politics.

Meanwhile, L5R also changed, a new edition was launched this summer, and much to my glee. AEG seems to have changed their stance on PDFs, so I've aquired the new edition on DriveThruRPG and have been pouring over it.

Because of this, my plans will be slightly changed, I will make a simple review of the new edition, and only after that review will I start reading the product line. My objective has become to see how my opinion of 4th Edition is nuanced by that reading.