So here's a summation of the various rulings that have been made about Iaijutsu duels in the 4Ed L5R RPG game (drawn from the Alderac forums supporting the game Errata and Rules Questions). Trying to get it all into one place rather than spread across the morass of the errata topic. Excuse the American spelling from the cut/paste.
Advantages:

( Read more... )

My Canberra "day" trip went well, and even though the flight home was delayed by over an hour while Qantas found a new plane that needed less maintenance than the one I was supposed to be on. Still, got home and Em reaped the benefit of my being Spartan with my travel allowance, and got her pwessie of three new books (given that someone did not get ( Read more... )

I guess it is inevitable that your name for your brand new game is going to clash with the name of some other thing - eventually the simple, catchy phrases that authors and game writers use will align with the unspeakable conceptualisations of the rest of humanity in an unfortunate manner.

The latest and saddest example of this would be John Wick’ ( Read more... )

Various clan sites have now been blessed with previews of the 4Ed RPG. Mainly for my own convenience (as the L5R Facebook has links to all of these as well):

Crab - grappling rules
Crane - Iaijutsu duels
Dragon - Monks & kiho
Lion - Advantages & weapons
Mantis - Kitsune shugenja school
Phoenix - new/old spells
Scorpion - poison rules
Spider - maho
Unicorn - ( Read more... )

Considering that we're starting with 2Ed - and that seems reputedly the worst of all the editions of the L5R RPG - I'm wondering about this as a concept...

Raises mean that the player can choose to take a risk on board for the possibility of a greater gain; in the specific, voluntarily raising the Target Number (TN) of an action - making their life ( Read more... )

...and looking like a damned useful one too. It's only relevant to 1st Edition, which is a little sad. But here is the link to the reference material for L5R RPG 1Ed.

On the secret shame
(Adapted from an email to one of the players)... If you want to play an orphan and tie the reason for the orphaning to the back history, that's fine. As for the secret shame, well, any sort of thing that ends up with your father and mother and possibly but not necessarily his siblings, dead makes sense. Just no seppuku for the ( Read more... )

L5R 4Ed RPG is now being listed in Previews (for the uninitiated, this is the catalog that I use for ordering our RPG books from Pulp Fiction Comics, my "supplier" - shameless plug! :-)

The book is listed as US$59.99 and I usually get about US×1.7 price conversion to Aussie dollars. That would make it AS$102. If I get a number of orders, the price ( Read more... )

Well, this is interesting. What I did not tell Em last night is that my tentative planning for the first story will be set in the Crab/Crane borderlands between the two Clans. There is some long disputed territory down there that belongs to the Yasuki family, formerly Crane (way back) who are now Crab. I'll be diddling with the arrangement somewhat ( Read more... )

Generational Campaign

The idea of the game is that it will run through the same history that has been detailed in the timeline of the L5R CCG. So, using the Isawa Calendar, it will run from approximately 1120, prior to the Scorpion Clan Coup, through to the time of Iweko I and the Plague War currently being played out in the ongoing tournament ( Read more... )