Legend of the Five Rings Diskwars

In my, geeky, hopeless, money-sucking, obsession to chronicle the evolution of L5R, I managed to get my hand on a few sets of Legend of the Five Rings Diskwars., and I've also got to play a couple of games as it is.

I have a recollection of Diskwars being somewhat big for a couple of years back in 2000-2001, but I had never saw the L5R version, only becoming aware of it several years later.

Diskwars might be seen as a low cost wargame. Cardboard disk of different sizes  are use to represent military units. Each disk has an Attack, Defense and Toughness value which are used to resolve combat. Since disk size affects both movement and combat, this reminds me of Song of Blades and Heroes a lot, and I have to wonder if SBH might not have been somewhat influenced by it.

Personally I'm more of a miniatures gamer because I like the painting aspect of the hobby as much as the gaming aspect, and the collectible aspect of this game would drive me bonkers (I suspect that's the reason I never got into any kind of CCG), but I have to admit I had fun playing it.

There were two "Editions" of the game, Imperial and Shadowlands, in reality rather an Edition and an expansion. In Imperial Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Unicorn were the available factions, with the Scorpion and Naga being introduced in the Shadowlands expansion.

The distribution model was a series of starter sets for each available clan, and booster packs.

Clan sets came with 5 fixed "flats", 2 common flats, and an uncommon flat. Each flat had an average 4 or 5 disks depending on disk size. Booster packs came with 4 flats, 2 common, an uncommon and a rare. Shadowlands worked slightly different, with a pool of 60 flats, but I suspect the difference is more cosmetic than anything else.

Rules are the same between both edition, Shadowlands just clarifying, adding errata and two more scenarios rather than changing anything, They probably are the same from basic Diskwars as well because there are few intances of different namings along the rules, e.g. Daisho was probably Swashbuckler, Counterspell was Surge and there are other. Many of these disappeared in the revision from Imperial to Shadowlands, but not all of them.

The rules themselves are pretty simple for the most part. I felt duels needed better explaining but I'm not sure how they would work in actual play as there was no way to initiate a duel with the disks we had. We did a mock up and my doubt is if hits incurred in the duel would carry over like missile or spell hits. I suspect it does, but it would be nice to have confirmation.

Most any other issue would likely stem from wierd disk interactions, but most disk are fairly simple so I don't know if there are obviously broken disks. In our games Soshi Bantaro did very well against the Lion army which had three shugenja forcing me to adjust my strategy, but when I played Crab with a single Kuni Yori, he didn't bothered half as much. It might just be that Scorpion pairs well against Lion, but not so much against Crab. Then again I managed to win with Lion (in no small part due to the Death Seekers ability, which also raised questions) but lost with Crab (probably because I took few elements which made the Scorpion abilities more effective).

Storywise there isn't much to add as it uses the Clan War Storyline, and only reprints one fiction from the ccg expansion of the same name in each rulesheet. In the Shadowlands expansion some of the flats also had flavour text.

The use of the Clan war storyline actually surprised me a bit, because when this game was published it had already been  wraped up for two years, so there is no reason why they had to use it. Why not explore other possibilities?

Come to think of it the same was pretty much true of the Clan War miniature rules. Every L5R branch into another market used the same storyline. I suppose that it's was a way to spare money in art and fiction, but why risk saturating the consumer with a rehash of the same basic story? The miniature game I can understand as it was released earlier, was certainly developed while the Clan War storyline was being worked and was certainly a far more complex project than L5DRW that potentially had direct ties to the RPG.

However this game was almost certainly developed with little effort. The rulebook like I said before is probably just slightly changed from the FFG original, I wouldn't be surprised the same happened with some disks, and I am absolutely sure it happened with the spells. The recycled art is no impediment and there is some art that I think is original (Iuchi Juoseng is awesome, BTW), so all in all tthere was little to lose in taking that risk here.

This is probablya moot point though because when AEG recovered all IP rigths from WotC L5RDW would probably still be one of the lines that would make sense, from a business standpoint, to cut.

Anyway here are the armies we used to test the game:

Lion Army:
Ancestral Home of the Lion
Ancestral Sword of the Lion
Scout x3
Matsu Agetoki
Medium Cavalry
Kitsu Motso x3
Akodo Death Seekers x3
Morito Tokei x2
Kitsu Toju
Gift of the Wind x2
Stiffling Wind
Gust of Wind
Essence of Water
Energy Transference
Mighty Protection x2
Delving the Earth x2
Earth Stagnation x2
Strangling Root x2

Total: 148 pts.

Scorpion Army:
Ruined Fortress of the Scorpion
Broken Sword of the Scorpion
Ninja Shapeshifter
Shosuro Hametsu
Bayushi Hisa x3
Bayushi Togai x2
Bayushi Aramoro x2
Light Infantry x2
Bayushi Supai x3
Ninja Spy x2
Soshi Bantaro
Bayushi Kyoto
Flight x2
Sure Aim x2
Path to Inner Peace x3

Total: 138 pts.

In the 2nd match:

Crab Army:
War Fortress of the Crab
Ancestral Sword of the Crab
Tetsubo
Kuni Yori
Crab Berserkers x2
Hida Amoro
Ginawa
The Damned x2
Hida Yakamo
Hida Tsuru
Hida Sukune x2
Fury of Osano-Wo x2
Path to Inner Peace x3
Mighty Protection x2
Strangling Root x2
Essence of Water
Energy Transference 

Total: 145 pts.

Scorpion Army:
Ruined Fortress of the Scorpion
Broken Sword of the Scorpion
Ninja Shapeshifter
Shosuro Hametsu
Bayushi Hisa x3
Bayushi Togai x2
Bayushi Aramoro x2
Light Infantry x2
Bayushi Supai x3
Ninja Spy x2
Soshi Bantaro
Bayushi Kyoto
Gift of the Wind x2

Flight x2
Sure Aim x2
Stifling Wind

Total: 146 pts.

Scorpion lost against Lion and won against Crab.

Death at Koten

Before I move on to The Lion I'm going to side track trought Death at the Koten, the 2009 L5R graphic novel.

The novel follows the exploits of magistrate Seppun Tashime, while investigating a suicide, across Rokugan.

Art wise, while in a style I don't particularly like, it is a solid work, coloring is crisp and clear, clothing and armour is generally well done, with some loving detail like family rather than generic clan mon and avoiding some of the worst excesses of comic book artists.

There were a few problems, female faces showed a disturbing lack of variety (three basic types mixed with 3 hairstyles), I suspect the artist never saw a male with well defined abs, because I'm pretty sure they don't look like the bony plates on turtle's abdomen, and I find the absence of nipples... awkward...  I can understand it on Kyoso no Oni, but on the Yoritomo captain...

Maybe he is indeed half turtle...

The worst art offense though was the constant milking of the cow. I don't think I've ever seen it happen in comic books before, but, boy, do those Rokugani milk the invisible cow. Seppun Tashime is a particular offender, made all the worst  because this is something we are told Rokugani frown upon socially.

However is the story itself that loses the comic.

The overaching device moving the plot forward is that of a talk between master and pupil which also serves as expository tool.

So far so good.

The problem is that there is alot of exposition going on on this story. In fact the enire novel feels like an expository tool for the setting of Rokugan. I suspect the writer's intent was to provide a window upon the world for those that might otherwise be unfamiliar with L5R, or it might have been a straight out guideline from AEG, which I can understand. However my own stance on such matters is that if you write a compelling enough story and characters the reader will be inevitably drawn to the setting, and, in this case, I feel that this atempt to shed a spotlight in as much of Rokugan as possible, harmstrings character and plot development.

For instance the titular Death at the Koten is only marginally related to the main plot, if at all, there are a  few leaps of logic from Tashime that would make a bad writer of detective stories blush, and every clan must have a cameo no matter how unnecessary, but of course everything was materminded by the Scorpion .

Basically the story is incredibly disconnected, the plot feeling constructed as hell instead of arising naturally from the setup. The student sometimes lampshades some of the unlikely twists, or at least I hope those are intentional lampshades, but just because the writer is aware of the inplausibilities it does not make them more acceptable.

Ultimately, this is a readable book, just not a very satisfactory one. For someone unfamiliar with Rokugan it doesn't provide much reason to try and find out more, for those familiar with the setting it doesn't add anything new if at all.

Overall I would only recomend it to the die hard or completist fan.

The Dragon

Like The Crab before I approached the The Dragon with a fair dose of apprehension. I'm a complete and utter Dragon fanboy, and the Dragon by their very nature is open ground for some of the worst sins of writing and characterization.

To put it simply, I fully expected to hate this novel.

Fortunately it's not as bad as I expected.

It is full of infuriating moments, but you can actually get past them.

I would actually like to know if this was writen after Enlightened Madness or if the Tamashii debacle was something that was planned well in advance with WotC still in the loop, because the first chapter, or rather the epilogue seem a bit of a sendup to it. I think the novel predates the story by about a year, but I might be wrong.

Basically the novel follows Hitomi's path during the Clan War and her quest for vengeance against Yakamo, with Daini's contact with the Naga as a sub-plot.

Hitomi is a fairly one-dimensional character, but overall does manages to keep the reader interested in her misadventures. It is a pity though that her main foil for her is Mirumoto Yukihera, not because it's obscure CCG character (in fact he may not even be the same character), but because Ree Soesbee, unfortunately, decided to make him a complete monster designted villain. Apparently we are really supposed to be rooting for Hitomi and the kami forgive us if we think she might be monomaniacal. Kitsuki Yasu also gets a bit derailed, and Mirumoto Sukune, which has always been hinted as an interesting character, including in this novel, is left in the shadows again, when he could have probably been a more interesting sympathetic foil to Hitomi.

Daini is a somewhat more rounded character, but much of his development occurs off-stage and by the end of the book that is very much an informed attribute. I suspect that is Naga coming of age ritual was supposed to show us that development, but if that is the case, then in my opinion it failed, mostly because while we are told the ritual was a sucess, it reads very much like a failure. Daini did not achieve any sort of enlightenment, he just didn't fail fast enough not to be enlightened...

Then there are the little quibles, or not so little in the case of the passage of time. Apparently Ree Soesbee is a firm believer of time moving at the speed of plot. No problem with that, except when two characters need to perform different tasks, one taking a few minutes, and the other a few months. They meet just before starting those tasks, and meet again immediately after finishing those tasks...

The hyperbole I used for emphasis above is much less exagerated than what you might think if you haven't read the novel. I have to wonder if Ree Sesbee has a grasp of time at all...

Oh, and incidently, obi are not used to keep armour in place. In fact armour doesn't work that way at all...

In the end this is a fairly enjoyable novel though. It's not boring like The Unicorn, or pointless like The Phoenix. It's main problem is that it could have been so much better. It has quite a few interesting premises that are not followed through.

The Crab

I have to admit I aproached The Crab with some trepidation.

The Crab clan and characters are often depicted as mere stereotypes, and sterotypes I don't like at that.

Fortunately my fears were unfounded.

While there are quite a few things I don't like, there is a lot more that I like.

This novel covers Kisada's disgruntlement with the Empire through the Scorpion Coup and Yakamo's feud with Hitomi culminating in his landing at Otosan Uchi.

This is done mostly through the eyes of Kisada, Sukune and Yakamo each of whom is well characterized. In fact, most characters are, with the exception of Kuni Yori, which pretty much falls into a stereotypical Evil Vizier role.

Yori even has his Evil Tower of DOOM.

Speaking of Yori, I really disliked how magic was handled in this novel. It has much of the same problems it had in The Phoenix, but I believe them to be far less excusable here.

Surprisingly, the fight scenes, were another place where I think the writing failed. For the most part it managed to avoid the unstopable badass complex, which is no mean feat considering this book stars both Kisada and Yakamo, but still there were quite a few problems, like weapons and armour not working the way they are supposed to (altough the worst I've seen so far is in The Dragon), and tactics that make no sense. On the other hand Stan brown is refreshingly accurate in regards to logistics and movement rates.

I did notice that there is a significant drop in the quality and pacing of the writing in the last third of the book which is where most of these problems can be found.

Overall though this was a rather entertaining book. It's a shame there is a noticeable drop in the writing quality by the end of the book and that Yori was cast in the flat out evil coucilor role, but this was made without making Kisada look too much of a fool.

I easily recommend this one to any L5R fan.

The Phoenix

How shall I put this nicely?

I hated this book.

It made The Unicorn look good in comparison.

It's still a work of art compared to Wind of War though!

I usually don't like how magic is portrayed in most fantasy novels and started reading this novel fully aware of that and trying to aoid making any judgment based on that, but while I didn't like how magic was depicted I wish that was the only problem it has.

The plot concerns Tadaka's efforts to uncover Junzo's ploys in the Shadowlands, and the unlocking of the Black Scrolls by the Council.

There is also a romantic sub-plot involving Isawa Kaede and Seppun Ishikawa (already started in The Scorpion), that isn't that interesting, and, if I remember correctly, will never get any kind kind of resolution.

What I find most puzzling is that Sullivan had made The Scorpion characters rather compelling, but in this book e never managed to make them anything other than bland. There are a few exception, Ob the mujina, but he is a comedic sidekick without much depth to it, as well as Kaede and Ishikawa but with no real development from what they already were in the Scorpion.

All other characters seem to be nothing else but spell-slinging automatons with little individuality. Tadaka seems little more than a plot expository device, Ujimitsu never goes beyond an in-universe joke. The reader is never given a reason to care about these characters.

The only moment of emotional depth was the Destruction of the Long Tail Nezumi. This part of the plot was extremely powerful and well done, but ended up highlighting the vapidity of the rest of the book.

On the other hand it seems Sullivan oercame his fascination with Natto writing this book. There is only one mention to the stuff.

Not related to the plot itself, but The Phoenix is the first novel that include a map of Rokugan. It has some interesting choices, Kyuden Kakita is put near Beiden Pass, about the same place where, canonically, Shiro Matsu is usually put and make it's sacking far more logic. Another difference is that in this map the Crane have no lands bellow the Spine of the World either, which kind of raises the question on where Asahina lands are.

Sullivan also continues his tradition of creating a new family. Beside the aforementioned Long Tail nezumi tribe, there is also the Heike vassal family of the Phoenix, which is similar in concept to the Morehei of the Crane.

In the end I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Completist or Phoenix diehards might want to get it, but you've been warned!!!

The Crane

The third installment of the Clan War series, and the first one writen by a member of the AEG storyteam.

Probably due to this it's one of the novels that most conforms to the generally acepted canon.

As I expected it also undoes nearly everything that was established in The Unicorn.

It follows the problems of the Crane following the coup, namely the Crane-Lion war, the kidnaping of Hoturi, the sacking of Kyuden Kakita and Kyuden Doji and the final confrontation between Hoturi and his clone.

It's standard gaming novel fare, with Crane characters somewhat Mary Sueish, but not obnoxiously so. In fact the only character that annoyed the heck out of me was Shiba Tsukune.

Do you know what the Phoenix do to keep warm in winter? Really?! Is this all Shiba Tsukune can say? Honestly...

This derailment aside it's a fairly enjoyable book as long as expectations are kept at a modest level.

The Unicorn

The Unicorn by Allison Lassieur is the second book in the Clan War series, and if I said The Scorpion aged badly, then The Unicorn is a saponificating corpse.

I honestly didn't remember it being as bad it is.

Well, ok, calling it a decomposing corpse might be a tad unfair, as this novel is mostly mind-numblingly bland and boring rather than outright bad, and even so it is still miles ahead of Wind of War in terms of quality.

It deals with the struggles of a disgraced Unicorn Battle Maiden Otaku, ahem, sorry, Utaku Tetsuko in dealing with banditry in the Wasting Disease afflicted lands of Rokugan, the efforts of Ide Tadaji to help his friend Doji Hoturi, and the Battle for Beiden Pass from the Unicorn point of view.

I don't know the reason why unlike the other books in the series The Unicorn one doesn't focus on it's respective Thunder, altough I suppose The Scorpion doesn't either (Kachiko still plays a large part unlike Kamoko though). It is possible that there was no original plan to make the Thunders the main characters of the series and it was something that emerged organically from the writers.

Either way using a obscure character is not necessarily bad, the problem is that Lassieur doesn't really give us reasons to care about Tetsuko, and the entire book is a bit of an exercise in futility.

I suspect, looking at the publication dates, that, at least, the first three books were commissioned at the same time and that there was little or no communication between the authors, and that because of that Laussieur chose not to commit herself to develop a plotline that might be invalidated by later releases. If that was the case she did herself a great disservice, as it did left us, if I remember correctly, with a plot that was invlidated by later releases and some pretty important cliffhangers like Ide Tadaji, that got no resolution. Might as well have taken the risk and try to do a memorable book.

Then again this book might have been her attempt at doing that...

Overall I would say this book is mostly of interest to a completist.

It's not horrible, despite a few weird pieces of characterization like the peasants in former Scorpion lands, the Tadaji storyline, or the Otaku being called Utaku at this point in the timeline which is an obvious result of WoTC guidelines. It's just entirely forgetable. Maybe the writer was just trying to establish how the Unicorn are distinct from the other clans but the author ended up with something that seems entirely diconnected from the rest of setting.

The Scorpion

Like I've said a few days ago, I've aquired a few of the L5R novels I didn't had and I've been reading them all, starting with the Scorpion.

The Scorpion is the first of the seven novels dedicated to the Clan War.

It actually deals with the Scorpion Clan Coup rather than with the Clan War proper, with focus on Bayushi Shoju's character.

It's a fairly decent novel, but while I remember enjoying it it doesn't seem to have aged that well.

The writing flows, and characterization is well done. Manipulation scenes are, in my opinion, nearly impossible to do believably, but Kachiko's manipulation of Hatsuko works well enough.

As a bonus point, there is a new family mentioned, the Inoshiro. Unfortunately their affiliation is not explicited, but they seem to be Crane, or possibly Seppun vassals.

Where I think The Scorpion fails is in the managemento of time. The entire planning and execution of the coup feels like it has occured within a period of about 3-4 months which broke my ssupension of disbelief this time around.

I wasn't entirely happy on how the magical aspect of the setting was handled either. It's clear that Stephen Sullivan was trying to keep it toned down, and, to his credit, he was largely sucessful in it, but there were still a few instances where it was used to little narrative advantage.

Finally, why such fascination with natto? At one point it seems Rokugani eat nothing else but natto.

Overall though, it is an enjoyable novel to read, depending on your tolerance for gaming fiction, and L5R fans won't be disappointed.

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Roleplaying Game review- Part 6

Finally we arrive at the Book of Void the GM chapter, which is the at the same time the best and the most infuriating part of the book.

It starts of rather impressingly by describing the types of campaigns that can be made in Rokugan with a few suggestion. It falls into exoticism at times but nothing too serious. The type of campaing setups described, amongst others are the classic magistrate campaign, the Legionnaire campaign, Imperial Cartographers, the Rank 0 campaing where you play pre-gempukku characters. The main problem I have with this part is a nomenclature problem and an assumption problem on the part of the designers.

The nomenclature problem is that of the restritcted campaign. Taking a campaign style and then slapping it with a name that can be seen as pejorative is not exactly a great pitch. Calling it something like the household campaign would work. It also assume that the normal that campaigns where everything is allowed are the norm, which is something I have extreme difficulty to accept as matching reality. Further it gives no help on how to design such campaign it only tells it may be a "superior game". This drove the problems I had with how the Gentry advantage hadn't been dealt with back to fore. Space might have been a problem, but no atempt is even made giving advice other than the discuss with the group which applies to every campaign.

The other problem I had involved how Two-Player games and campaigns were described. The designers pretty much assumed that the normal group will have more than three players, which might be true, but I think is a dangerous assumption to make. One of the reason I hate games with heavy nich protection is the fact that they tend to render the game unplayable unless the GM takes extra steps to prevent it. Now, L5R isn't that narrow, so it generally works well with few or even just with a single player, but, more inportantly it isn't a pick-up game, so it is perfectly natural that even in large groups players will have for some reason miss sessions.

However the designers pretty much assumed that two-player games are an oddity and apparently didn't even consider the possibility of single-player games. Worst, some of the two-player campaign pretty much relied on disempowering one of the players. And when I talk of player disempowerement I'm talking about narrative disempowerement, not necessarily about any mechanical assimetry, which may be perfectly sound (The Student/Teacher campaign is an example where the player with the student character in no way loses narrative focus).

For example the Magistrate/Eta assistant is an egregious example of this flaw. Not only does the eta player receives a mechanically inferior character, but pretty much the setup used means the character must fade in the background.

Fun hum?

Ironically while this setup is, in my opinion, horrible for a two player game, it would be great for a single-player game, independently of the character being played...

The rest is very sound GM advice. One thing I particularly liked was the discussion of Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. I knew Shawn Carman was an adept of this book and I think it was a great idea. I would have liked that there were CFSs directly associated to the situations, but further along the chapter there are quite a few of them so this is not problematic.

There is also a discussion on the differences between "Asian" and "Western" storytelling, which I think is naive, and sometimes outright laughable. One thing that particularly bothered me was the complete conflaction of Japanese and Chinese storytelling, and a narrow one at that, but that pales to the complete misrepresentation of "Western" storytelling. I couldn't help but get the feeling the authors were so enamored on how "Asia" is so different that they were like the proverbial blind men touching different parts of the same elephant. This was made even more jarring by the fact that in some other sections they seemed to be far more genre aware...

I really hate exoticism in whatever variant...

Another section that had me raise an eyebrow was the section on how to genre-shift a campaign, specifically the cinematic campaign part where they reference another AEG game, the now defunct 7th Sea.

It was at this point that I understood why I wasn't particularly enjoying this new edition. There were several moments were I felt the writers were going in some awesome direction only to stop just before they reach their destination and throwing us out of the car.

In this particular case what it bothered me was how Drama Dice and Brutes where so underexplained. In the case of brutes it took me merely a couple of minutes to create a working system, but I had the advantage of knowing 7th Sea Sea and I can understand that space limitation may have constrained the writers. However working drama die rules needed at most a couple of lines to create and integrate seamlessly. My guess is they remembered the Drama Die rules but then felt no need to follow follow up on it...

We then have poison rules, a very nice bestiary, in which the Nezumi finnaly receive their Void equivalent.

Finally we have the location Guide. As I said in the first part of this review, I really hate the new map, but the good parts first:

• Clan owned territory has been reduced, back to their 1st Edition borders. This allows space for GMs to use the unaligned territory, as Imperial, Minor Clan or just as plain disputed territory.

• There are fewer locations. Again this leaves more space for GMs.

• All entries were writen anew. There is no copy/pasting, no legacy items.

• All faction are represented, including all Minor Clans.

I have already mentioned most of the bad bits in the first part , but to reiterate:

• It's a simplified map with bits that are even more non-sensical than they already were, suddenly disappearing features, and teleporting features.

• There are fewer location overall, but there are several new locations. This is not a problem per se, but considering the importance they had for the plot, not finding the City of Rich Frog or Nanashi Mura is a bit puzzling. To compound this problem a few of the new locations seem a bit bland or theme parkey.

• Even with fewer entries there are missing items on the map, and entries that contradict the map.

The included CFS are also cool and the included adventure seems be functional altough I would prefer to see it in actual play to make an informed judgement.

So at the end of the day what do I think of L5R 4th Edition?

I've got a lot of mixed feelings on this edition.

The Good: Clear writing, editing, GM advice, completeness, they managed to finally make me interested into kata.

The Bad: Lack of design transparency, legacy issues, wilfull design decision like mechanicaly impairing Minor Clan characters.

The Ugly: The map, the refusal to use inclusive language.

It seems plain better than 3rd Edition, and it is a very complete book. However, at no point did it wow me like 1st Edition did.

I think my main problem is the overabundance of sub-systems. It's certainly the main difference from the original game, but I suppose that at this point the designers have to worry if excising some kind of legacy system will drive away customers. In my case it doesn't help that I don't feel design is very tranparent. It might be that the time I've been out of touch with the system has impaired my ability to evaluate design intentions, but, for what it's worth, it's not a problem I've ever had before.

In the end what this means, is that, having two unplayed games in my RPG shelf (ok, L5R is in the hard drive), I'm much more interested in pitching and playing Mouse Guard than L5R, and with AEG's apparent stance on the use of inclusive language I'm not even sure I want to sent any money their way...