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yea the entire point of that school is 'with my horse I can't be stopped'. If they can justify it hell yea let them use their horses for whatever, because the times when they're off horse they become a lot less useful. Also the image of some serious and honorable bushi using his horse like Yoshi rules.
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Oct 14, 2017 17:58
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yea that update gives me a lot of hope, actually, they basically laid out the most glaring issues and said 'yep! Agreed, let's rework those!'
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Oct 19, 2017 04:48
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Yea, I'm pretty eager to see the new update! I'd be super happy if FFG could turn my opinion around here. Unmasking seems like a good compromise between Outbursts and 'yea but I'd rather not my stoic Lion be forced to act like an rear end in a top hat just because someone got a good barb in', and super eager to see a refined and expanded duel system!
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Oct 25, 2017 23:54
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but a scorpion warrior is the most sneaky, surprising option! *instantly cut in half by a Lion* ah, never the less...
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Nov 5, 2018 05:01
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My group is REALLY digging 5th ed so far. Custom dice can die in a fire but the system is at least a neat evolution of the raise/keep/etc bones and stuff like making the 20 questions a core part of character creation was a good touch. Beyond that the system really does feel like samurai stories, it's not historical but it really shouldn't be to begin with. It's the kinda game where the intro text is like four pages of a samurai wrestling with her secret love of her rival while trying to do her duty to her clan and there really is no 'right' answer. You can't really 'powergame' poo poo like honor and glory any more and because of that...they're kinda less important, and that's great. Samurai finally feel human (if a bit overdramatic, as is the genre) rather than beep boop honor-bots. Love the dog doc by the way. Totally gonna steal that.
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Nov 7, 2018 17:02
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yea L5R DESPERATELY needed a full reboot and a heavy machete taken to the lore to change things up. Satorii's probably gonna be possessed again (they do straight up namecheck the thunders in the intro fiction after all) but yea now he's a shitbag who's turn will probably work better as a 'you always were jealous of me, I know, but how could you become so twisted?' thing for Daisetsu rather than the clusterfuck of 'ok this is bad I get it but why is this even happening' it used to be.
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Nov 7, 2018 19:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah I think we'd all be okay with more mid-level shenanigans (which FFG seems to be down for, given the fact that the cards include stuff like 'a surviving Kitsu' or 'oh hey, a tengu') and less high-level shenigans with Dragons and the literal celestial bodies as deities. That said, I am super confident we're gonna see some of the Burning Sands metaplot, given the visions that led up to the meishodo conflict. Emerald Empire preview is up and it includes a Kitsune character where the whole mechanic is 'I have to hide who I am'. Seems they're gonna lean into the more mystic element of the world without going too bonkers, yea.
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Nov 8, 2018 00:33
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Dawgstar posted:Ah, so it's more of a well-known secret that the Scorpion run things instead of a hilariously ill-advised coup prodded by an evil magic sword. I like it. yea as a scorpion fan myself I'm super happy their first real bit of fiction was basically 'listen we have a sweet gig being the known shadow masters and while everyone's watching our right hand for puppet strings our left hand can do whatever we need to do to serve the emperor, you know, our loving JOB. Plus we'd have to be idiots to not assume this is borrowed time we have to make the most of...so if any of you idiots wreck this for us by making some insane 'LET'S JUST BE EMPEROR NOW GUYS' move I'm gonna cut your head off myself'.
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Nov 8, 2018 04:10
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yea they did a good job showing the two sides of 'typical Scorpion'. Kachiko wasn't wrong that bending over backwards to go 'no no guys I swear we're ok' won't really mean anything to a not-minor amount of their threats and maybe the world needs a more overt 'villain' like their ancestor promised the first emperor if it means they're well equipped to stand against the real monsters out there. Shoju is also not wrong that an equally not-minor amount of threats will see the fact that the Scorpion Clan exists at all as 'too much' and waving their dicks around could get a lot of Scorpion blood spilled for nothing and then, hey, every Scorpion that dies in some crazy Lion war is a Scorpion that can't ferret out the real threats to the Emperor. Honestly all the clans come off more well rounded than they ever did before. Everyone has flaws and successes and none of them are uniquely representative alone. The little sidebar of 'what Bushido means to the clan' is a really good addition. The addition of the Strife system REALLY let them add some life to the clans by using their schools. Like, it's a real good example of crunch creating fluff that you don't see often. I keep going back to the example of the Ikoma Bard's ability to either aggravate someone by giving the Ikoma's strife to them or comfort them by taking their strife, and the Shiba Guardian who can negate Strife gains of nearby characters. Those are really interesting ideas that really encourage the GM to go 'right...so HOW do you do that then?' Like, it doesn't say they magically have a chill out zone around every Shiba, it's up to the player to explain why them being right by someone when stress comes means that they can keep that stress from hitting, or why an Ikoma is able to not just help someone going through strife but actually absorb it into their own feelings and then have to deal with that themselves. I was kinda unsure how FFG would handle it but I'm really loving this direction they took it.
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Nov 8, 2018 04:50
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Dick Burglar posted:I've heard that in previous editions of the RPG, Unicorn characters were stuck in a sort of feast-or-famine situation where, if they could use their horse they were amazing, and if they couldn't use their horse they were kinda crap. Did this edition do anything to smooth that out? I know that the Unicorn are basically not-Mongols and therefore their horses and cavalry are one of their core aspects, but it's not exactly always easy to work in a "AND MY HORSE" to a lot of situations. Like said they really only have the one 'guys I really need a horse here' school and even then it's more 'I go from a pretty ok normal samurai to an equine GOD AMONG MEN' than anything. The other one just gets a little bump from Horse Biz and the rest of the families literally don't give a poo poo if horses exist or not they're merchants and mages and all. They're really good about making sure each clan starts with schools that play to all of their traditional elements, no awkward spread out stuff this time. Lion even get Kitsu ancestor channelers and Dragons get tattooed monks and Crab get their cool engineer craft types and like I mentioned Unicorn get their own 'I can get restricted stuff from out of the empire' merchant type. They do a good job of hitting all the iconics so if you wanna be a Lion but maybe don't want to be a berzerker you're still cool.
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Nov 8, 2018 05:28
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Really my only issue with this edition is those mainlander scum shoved the Mantis Clan stuff off to a free extra pdf, as if they're not a proper clan so they only have two schools  Sure the schools are cool 'sailor samurai badass' and 'storm mage gently caress your poo poo up' ones but still! The dishonor!
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Nov 8, 2018 05:30
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Mystic Mongol posted:The Badger Clan is like a lovely Crab Clan cover band. They protect the north border, or at least one specific mountain path at the north border. A thousand years went past without them doing anything. Then a single demon showed up and killed almost all of the before it was stopped. They spent a hundred years more begging for spare change from other clans, hoping to rebuild their ancestral castle. I loving love the Badger Clan, they have to be some kinda in-joke from a writer's campaign or something. They literally spent generations sitting on their hands in lands that even the Dragons would go 'uh this is a bad place to live, guys' waiting for their chance to DEFEND THE PASS and then one shadow-threat shows up and instantly destroys them. They're easily the funniest thing in L5R.
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Nov 8, 2018 18:08
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SuperKlaus posted:Dangerous ground. This treads near the heart of The Fighter / Wizard problem. So long as you treat it as a spur for some interesting flavor text everything's roses but the moment a GM demands a non-magical ability be explained before effective use, on the basis that it isn't "magic," the bullshit game design dam breaks. There's nothing that says it can't be magical. L5R is a distinctly and overtly mystical setting. Maybe it shouldn't be 'wizard magic' magic but there's zero wrong with 'I help my friend negate that Strife roll by smiling at him and reminding him of the time we were kids and faced a far worse danger together' and having THE BOND OF BROTHERHOOD be so mystically strong it helps or whatever. It's not 'you have to explain this' it's 'you get to explain this'. I mean, more 'proper' magicy types also tend to need to describe how they do their thing, remember that magic here is almost never D&D wizard magic and more to the 'I invoke the spirits and ask them for help'. That opens themselves up to a lot of narrative stuff too. Obviously unless your GM is a prick the answer of 'uh yea I just give Jim a thumbs up' should be just as valid if the player can't think of something off the dome, just like how 'I ask a fire kami to grant me a fire ball...yea he's down, thanks fire bro' is valid for a spellcaster who doesn't want to get all flowery after five rounds of combat.
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Nov 8, 2018 19:36
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Ruzihm posted:when a scorp plays meek informant and u have way of the crab Crab/Scorpion is one of my favorite dynamics because they have a shared overlap of 'we do poo poo work for the Emperor so the land can be safe and the guys like the Crane and Lion maybe don't respect us like they should' but just completely different concepts. Right now in my game I'm playing a Scorpion illusionist (that school is so fun) and my friend's Crab engineer has become friends with my character, but will just not let me get away with anything. The campaign is focused around a blood mage treason plot hiding as smugglers and bandits, so naturally we both agree 'yea these guys gotta die' since that's kinda our clans' overview, but it's just a constant battle of the engineer looking at my scorpion and going 'you clearly forgot to tell us you lightened the 'bandits' illicit cargo a bit before hand, right, my good friend Scorpion?' and me trying to use illusions and junk to send some illicit poo poo home so my lord can more 'control the flow' than 'completely wipe out' as the Crab would like. Meanwhile the poor phoenix we have with us is just kinda constantly trying to remind us 'hey, you remember the real threat here is heretical blood magic that could be used to kill the imperial family right?' and our Unicorn merchant is just kinda trying to make sure the actual legitimate business doesn't get hosed up. L5R is a good game, y'all.
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Nov 9, 2018 23:53
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I think it's when it's bestowed on you, since that's when the officials are all 'this guy's a cool guy with a fancy title' so that'd be when people take notice and go 'ooooh fancy title, that guy sounds like a cool guy'.
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Nov 10, 2018 00:11
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Elfgames posted:i'm pretty sure anyone can train a falcon in 4e and also a falcon in 4e is basically a flying katana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYdq1zFfF8
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Dec 27, 2018 17:02
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yea I really hope digital card games become more popular with Magic and Hearthstone being such big things, I'm sure the actual process is a huge burden but I can't imagine a much more niche thing like L5R wouldn't benefit from expanding the player pool to 'uh my friend heard of this, I can probably get him to get a deck yea' to 'the internet'
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May 25, 2019 01:41
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Yea I love strife in duels, it makes for really cool moments when the guy you've been needling and psyching out has it all come out in one big unplanned out strike
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Jun 1, 2019 04:37
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Lord_Hambrose posted:This truely is a Christmas miracle! FFG in general is deeply paranoid of piracy, which I mean I get, I'm sure this is already all over the chans and all by now, but yea it's just kinda a weirdly old school 'can't pirate our books if we don't give you them!!!!' logic that they never really shook.
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Aug 28, 2019 15:54
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GimpInBlack posted:Anybody have any idea how long it takes FFG to put out the pdfs of the books? I'm really looking forward to Path of Waves, but it's not on DTRPG yet. they do a weird super staggered thing to 'fight piracy' (as if the pdfs aren't instantly stolen anyway) so it'll be like, what, a month or two? Also yea I agree that even with its short run and the growing pains of a new system this was easily the best L5R RPG.
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Feb 25, 2020 15:35
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beautiful book, I hope the artists and writers got paid a lot, but boy is this just a waste of L5R. Like, I enjoy reading about the non-Rokugan parts of the world that wouldn't be touched on normally but it came at the cost of basically removing everything L5R about L5R to make D&D: Kinda-Japanese Fantasy Flavored. I'm sure it'll be fun, 5e is fun with a good group and this is a unique setting for it that was done well for what it was, but boy is my group gonna just keep playing the last edition L5R because this adds nothing interesting.
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Aug 7, 2022 04:27
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Yea I'm really not sure what 'endgame' for it is. Like, is this just L5R now? It's just a D&D tack-on? Because yea while we can argue all day about the changes FFG made, at least the roots were in Japan still. This is just kinda...not that at all? It's just generic 'far eastern fantasy' to the point where they themselves make some kinda bonkers statements that border on cultural erasure. Like the whole 'uh actually stoicism being a major theme in historical Japanese stories is a western myth you should avoid' is absolutely insane. I get they didn't want everyone to be a cartoon racist depiction screaming "MY HONOR" at every interaction but holy poo poo guys Japan did indeed believe 'honor' as a concept existed and was important in this time period! I really can't imagine this will 'convert' any D&D players to L5R proper, yea. Even the most basic things like 'well in L5R proper no you can't be a demon dragon hybrid and just walk around like it's normal' or 'no you actually do kinda need to conform to what's expected of your position or basically everyone will think you're weird at best' would be radical changes. So, I guess the goal is to just do a redo of the old, ugh, '~Oriental Adventures~' thing they did with 3.5 where this is just a D&D splat that exists in its own bubble?
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Aug 7, 2022 13:54
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I actually agree that Rokugan being less 1:1 'this is fantasy Japan' is better because yea it was never really a very good 'fantasy Japan' because its roots have always been a very weeby very western filtered 'historical Japan', so making it more 'Japanese focused blended inspirations' works well. My biggest issue with how this one did it was basically in them not actually using those things for any better storytelling. Like, there's still no real way to use the non-Rokugan lands so they still just exist as backstory fodder and not much more unless you're going to do the work. There's some throwaway mentioning of non-humans being looked down on but removing those unique things L5R had like in last edition means there's nothing really...to it? Like, maybe a tea house owner will make your ratman stay outside because they assume he's dirty? That sucks? There's no tools there other than a bit of throwaway fluff. With the older games when your 'duty' and 'passion' and 'honor' were tangible concepts as well as setting things you actually had tools to work with from both sides of the table and tbh aside from the non-humans I'd argue that those mechanics actually WAY more encouraged playing non-typical genders/sexualities/backgrounds/etc in these stories than the D&D 'just fuckin...I dunno...+2 to DEX checks for rats????' method does. Like already said this doesn't even 'solve' the issue where some people want their L5R to be more action focused 'samurais fighting shadow beasts' revolving stories because it really speaks more to vast, wandering, high fantasy epics than the more kinda...'survival horror'y tones those people tend to want. There's nothing BAD about that, I love some vast high fantasy bullshit but it's just not Rokugan's strengths at all.
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Aug 7, 2022 22:15
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That said when I say 'Rokugan probably doesn't need to be 1:1 fantasy Japan' I mean more in the terms of opening the outside world up, them just straight up loving up basic things like removing the actual Japanese inspired name use and all because that's some real 'eh they all sound alike' level lack of interest in genuine representation.
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Aug 7, 2022 22:20
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HidaO-Win posted:One of the things that nags me about the argument that Honour is a negative stereotype in L5R, was that prior editions of the L5R corebooks, lots of thought went into Honour, Glory and later Status. yea honor and its related tangibles was actually one of the better thought out parts of L5R and dumpstering it while calling it a 'stereotype' is absurd. The entire point was that all three were unique concepts that meant entirely different things. You had men of high honor but low status who were principled and noble despite not 'playing the game' well, you had the opposite in your typical corrupt authority stories, you had ''glory' as a concept that was fluid because both a master paper maker and a powerful general would be high 'glory' people for vastly different reasons and that interaction is what made things happen. L5R has, absolutely, dealt in stereotype in its past versions and that sucks rear end, but insisting that the base concept of the honor mechanic as a storytelling device is one of them speaks to a real lack of interest in L5R as a base. Frankly a lot of the changes feel absolutely hosed. Instead of fixing the more awkward Japanese inspired names for things they just made everything english, but not like, actually common and smooth english, more like they directly translated things? So you have poo poo like Emma-O becoming "The Judgement Champion" which is just...such a loving clunky and dumb name to actually have to say? You don't solve things by just sandblasting any Japanese inspiration and doing weird poo poo like making two celestial beings the kids of a Chinese sounding one, that's just exactly the weird 'eh, it all looks alike' lazy poo poo L5R has been trying to get away from!
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Aug 7, 2022 22:43
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Blockhouse posted:The book very repeatedly mentions that Japan isn't the only inspiration for Rokugan and lists Chinese material as much as samurai fiction in the references.. If anything a lot of setting changies seem to be adding wuxia to the mix to allow for player characters who can just run around fighting and doing good deeds without necessarily being chained to a position. Because you don't fix 'L5R had a problem with reducing Japanese inspired storytelling to stereotypes in some parts' with 'well let's throw in some half-learned Chinese and just erase the Japanese words and delete anything like bushido to replace it with an ~adventurer's code~ that makes no sense to exist instead'. You do it by, say, expanding on the not-China that exists in the world, making it clear you can make a character from there and give ways to make them distinct as a person of a different background and all. Basically if the problem you're solving is 'this game is a bit reductive of a culture' it feels like a bad solution to go with 'we should just delete the vast majority of mentioning of that culture, even done correctly with stuff like names and all, and also throw in some similar cultures so we can call it 'pan Asian' instead'. You're not making it more respectful to Japan that way, you're just making it generic.
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Aug 7, 2022 23:13
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