Legend of the Five Rings RPG, 4th Edition. Legend of the Five Rings RPG, 4th Edition is the core rulebook for the Fourth Edition of the Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game. Legend of the Five Rings fourth edition (the current edition) has a fairly strong community on the sup/tg/ IRC server (irc.thisisnotatrueending.com). Players looking for games, chat, or anything else related to the RPG should check out #L5ROOC and/or talk to KingGheedorah, who moderates the channel and is currently running over 9000 L5R games. Download legend of the five rings third edition masters of war pdf free shared files from DownloadJoy and other world's most popular shared hosts. Our filtering technology ensures that only latest legend of the five rings third edition masters of war pdf files are listed.
Legend of the Five Rings (1st edition) The Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game originally written by John Wick and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, under license from Five Rings Publishing Group, in 1997. The Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game originally written by John Wick and published by Alderac Entertainment Group. Legend of the Five Rings – 4th Edition (core rules) (3301) Legacy of Disaster. (pdf and print-on-demand) The Imperial Archives (pdf and print-on-demand).
| Roleplaying Game | |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Brian Yoon, Fred Wan, John Wick, Rich Wulf, Seth Mason, Shawn Carman, Rob Hobart |
| Publisher(s) | Alderac Entertainment Group |
| Publication date | 1997 (1st edition) 2000 (2nd edition) 2005 (3rd edition) 2010 (4th edition)[1] 2018 (Fantasy Flight Games) |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Roll-and-Keep system |
The Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game originally written by John Wick and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, under license from Five Rings Publishing Group, in 1997. The game uses the Legend of the Five Rings setting, and primarily the nation of Rokugan, which is based on feudalJapan with influences from other East Asian cultures.
Like most role-playing games, Legend of the Five Rings is played by one or more players and a game master, who controls the events that happen during the game as well as the non-player characters (NPCs). Legend of the Five Rings features many courtiers and other non-combatant character types as valid player characters.
In 1998, Legend of the Five Rings won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game of 1997.[2] In 2008 the L5R RPG 3rd Edition sourcebook Emerald Empire won the Scrye Players Choice Award.
In September 2015, AEG and Fantasy Flight Games jointly announced that the intellectual property had been sold to FFG.[3] Fantasy Flight Games released a new role-playing game based on the Legend of the Five Rings setting in October, 2018.[4]
The fictional setting of Legend of the Five Rings is similar to feudalJapan, though it also includes aspects of other Asian cultures, as well as magic and mythical beasts. There is no given name for the entire world which the setting describes, so 'Rokugan' is used alternately to refer to the specific nation within the setting or to refer to the entire world.
Rokugani society is based on a clan structure, with seven (and later eight) so-called 'Great Clans', as well as a number of minor clans. Great Clans are made up of several family lines, each with their own general purpose within the clan. Minor clans generally only have one family. Each clan also has areas of land bequeathed by the emperor under their control. The emperor retains ownership of all lands, however, and the clans essentially rent the lands by paying annual taxes.
The game system of Legend of the Five Rings uses 10-sided dice exclusively. Usually, when a die is rolled and the result is 10 (normally marked '0' on the die), the die is said to 'explode'. In this situation, the player rolls again and the new result is added to the original result. If this second result is a 10, the player rolls a third time, totaling all three results. This process is repeated until the player rolls something other than 10. The second edition and most books made for it were written to work both with this system and with D20 rules as presented in the Oriental Adventures D&D setting; this was discontinued after 3rd edition was published.
The mechanic for which the game is most widely known is the 'Roll & Keep' system, designed by Dave Williams and John Wick. When dice are rolled, there are two quantities given: a number of dice to be rolled and a number of dice to be 'kept'. The totals of the kept dice are added together, giving the player the total sum for his or her roll. For example, if a roll called for five dice to be rolled and three kept (said simply 'five keep three' or written '5k3'), five dice would be rolled. Out of those five, the player would choose three (generally, but not necessarily, the player would choose the three with the highest values) whose values would be added together for the total value of the roll.
Legend of the Five Rings uses eight traits: Stamina, Willpower, Strength, Perception, Agility, Intelligence, Reflexes, and Awareness. The Traits are grouped into pairs associated with four elemental 'Rings' (respectively to above): Earth, Water, Fire and Air. The four Rings represent a limitation in character development, because in order for a character to advance, the level of his Rings must increase, and to increase a character’s Rings, both of the Ring’s associated Traits must increase.
We don't allow posting of torrent links, download links, and requests for such. What if there's not an official recording of a concert released but. /there-there-radiohead-download-torrent.html. Sep 26, 2014 - In a surprise move Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has released a new album. Yorke is not sharing his work for free though, instead he's selling the album via a new paywalled torrent format which. After paying $6, fans can download Yorke's “Tomorrow's Modern Boxes”. C There are 103 comments. Aug 17, 2009 - Radiohead are no strangers to BitTorrent after the well-documented. There's other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we've.
There is a fifth Ring, called Void. This ring, like the other four, is taken from Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings, although 'Nothingness' is a better translation of the text. In the game, Void represents a character’s inner strength, and its use allows a character to perform extraordinary actions, or to perform normal actions more efficiently.
There are primarily two methods of creating characters in role-playing games: to roll dice to randomly generate attributes or to begin with a set number of points and a formula by which attributes can be purchased with these points. Legend of the Five Rings uses the latter method. Each new character begins with 40 'Character Points' to spend to create the character (except for ronin characters, which begin with 55). These points are spent to raise the level of the character’s Traits and Void Ring, to raise the level of the character’s skills, and to purchase new skills. In previous versions of the game, characters started with 30 points, or 45 for ronin.
These points may also be used to purchase Advantages, which give the character some extra bonus or ability that is designed to help in certain situations (such as 'Large', which increases the damage a character can inflict, or 'Social Position', which increases that character’s standing in the courts of the land). Conversely, if a player so chooses, he can select a number of Disadvantages for his character, which give extra Character Points to spend in other areas, but imposes some penalty on the character during play (such as 'Small', which decreases the damage the character can inflict with certain weapons, or 'Bad Reputation', which causes a great number of NPCs to dislike the character).
The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is renowned for its lethality.[5] Players who charge into combat unaware will often find their characters killed in the first session. Proper role-playing is encouraged to avoid combat when unnecessary, but the characters do have requisite abilities to survive if combat is forced in the early stages.
Oriental Adventures was published originally in 1985 by TSR, Inc. as an expansion for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and was set in a land called Kara-Tur. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast released a new edition of Oriental Adventures as an expansion for the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It was decided to make this new version of Oriental Adventures a showcase for their recently acquired Legend of the Five Rings. An official (but not 100% comprehensive) update of Oriental Adventures to the v.3.5 rules can be found in Dragon Magazine #318 (April 2004), pp. 32-48.
For the entirety of its Second Edition, with the exception of the Player's Guide, Game Master's Guide, Way of the Shadowlands, Winter Court: Kyuden Asako, and Time of the Void, books published for the Legend of the Five Rings RPG had two different sets of game mechanics: the mechanics from the Legend of the Five Rings Second Edition Player's Guide and corresponding mechanics for d20 System, such as those presented in Oriental Adventures. Beginning with the Third Edition of the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game, and because of the lack of availability of the now out of print Oriental Adventures, the d20 System rules have been dropped from current Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game books.
Listed by AEG reference number in parentheses followed by title
(3001) Legend of the Five Rings – Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire (first edition core rule book)
(3002) Game Master’s Pack: The Hare Clan
(3003) Way of the Dragon (Way of the Clans: Book One)
(3004) City of Lies box set (L-1 City of Lies)
(3005) Way of the Unicorn (Way of the Clans: Book Two)
(3006) Book of the Shadowlands
(3007) Way of the Crab (Way of the Clans: Book Three)
(3008) Way of the Scorpion (Way of the Clans: Book Five)
(3009) Way of the Crane (Way of the Clans: Book Four)
(3010) Way of the Lion (Way of the Clans: Book Six)
(3011) Walking the Way: The Lost Spells of Rokugan
(3012) Tomb of Iuchiban box set (S-1 Shadowlands Series)
(3013) Way of Shadow
(3014) Way of the Naga (Way of the Clans: Book Eight)
(3015) Game Master’s Survival Guide
(3016) Winter Court: Kyuden Seppun
(3017) Way of the Phoenix (Way of the Clans: Book Seven)
(3018) Unexpected Allies
(3019) Bearers of Jade: The Second Book of the Shadowlands
(3020) Otosan Uchi: The Imperial City box set (O-1 The Imperial City)
(3021) Way of the Minor Clans (Way of the Clans: Book Nine)
(3022) Game Master’s Pack (Revised): The Silence Within Sound
(3023) Merchant’s Guide to Rokugan
(3024) Winter Court: Kyuden Kakita
(3025) Way of the Wolf (Way of the Clans: Book Ten)
(3028) Way of Shinsei (Way of the Clans: Book Eleven)
(4001) Honor’s Veil (I-1 Intrigue Series)
(4002) Night of a Thousand Screams (L-2 City of Lies)
(4003) Code of Bushido (B-1 Bushido Series)
(4004) Twilight Honor (S-2 Shadowlands Series)
(4005) Midnight’s Blood (M-1 High Magic Series)
(4006) Legacy of the Forge (B-2 Bushido Series)
(4007) Void in the Heavens (M-2 High Magic Series)
(4008) Lesser of Two Evils (S-3 Shadowlands Series)
(4500) Character Travelogue: Crab
(4501) Character Travelogue: Crane
(4502) Character Travelogue: Dragon
(4503) Character Travelogue: Lion
(4504) Character Travelogue: Phoenix
(4505) Character Travelogue: Ronin
(4506) Character Travelogue: Scorpion
(4507) Character Travelogue: Unicorn
(3026) Secrets of the Lion
(3027) Secrets of the Scorpion
(3029) Secrets of the Unicorn
(3030) Way of the Shadowlands *
(3030) Winter Court: Kyuden Asako *(both marked 3030, there is no 3031)
(3032) Way of the Ratling
(3033) Time of the Void
(3034) Secrets of the Mantis
(3035) Secrets of the Phoenix
(3036) Secrets of the Crab
(3037) Secrets of the Crane
(3038) Secrets of the Dragon
(3039) Secrets of the Shadowlands
(3040) Complete Exotic Arms Guide supplement
(3041) Legend of the Five Rings Live-Action Roleplaying
(3042) Way of the Open Hand
(3043) Way of the Daimyo
(3044) Way of the Thief
(3046) Complete Exotic Arms Guide
(3047) The Hidden Emperor
(3101) Legend of the Five Rings – Player’s Guide (second edition core rules)
(3102) Legend of the Five Rings – Game Master’s Guide (second edition core rules)
(3103) Rokugan – Oriental Adventures Campaign Setting
(3104) Creatures of Rokugan
(3105) Magic of Rokugan
(3106) Way of the Samurai
(3107) Way of the Ninja
(3108) Way of the Shugenja
(3109) Fortunes & Winds
(4009) Bells of the Dead
(4010) Mimura: The Village of Promises
(WTC 12015) Oriental Adventures (d20 System)
(PCI 2101) Bloodspeakers (d20 System)
(3200) Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game Third Edition
(3201) The Four Winds: The Toturi Dynasty from Gold to Lotus
(3202) Creatures of Rokugan
(3203) Art of the Duel
(3204) Emerald Empire: The Legend of the Five Rings Companion
(3205) Masters of War
(3206) Prayers and Treasures
(3207) Masters of Court
(3208) Legend of the Burning Sands Roleplaying Game
(3209) Masters of Magic
(3210) Fealty and Freedom
(3211) The Vacant Throne
(3300) Legend of the Five Rings – 4th Edition (core rules)
(3301) Legacy of Disaster
(3302) Game Master’s Screen and Adventure (Descent into Darkness)
(3303) Strongholds of the Empire
(3304) Enemies of the Empire
(3305) Emerald Empire
(3306) The Great Clans
(3307) Imperial Histories
(3308) The Book of Air
(3309) Second City box set
(3310) The Book of Earth
(3311) Imperial Histories 2
(3312) The Book of Fire
(3313) Naishou Province
(3314) Secrets of the Empire
(3315) The Book of Water
(3316) Sword and Fan
(3317) Book of the Void
(3318) Atlas of Rokugan
Unexpected Allies 2 (pdf and print-on-demand)
The Imperial Archives (pdf and print-on-demand)
BACKGROUND
Back in the late 90s, riding the wave of Magic: the Gathering's hit, Alderac Entertainment Group created their own CCG, Legend of the Five Rings. This CCG tried to differentiate itself from Magic in a number of ways, such as using a pair of decks instead of one, and multiple win conditions.
The biggest and most significant change, though, was theme and lore. Where Magic was a fairly abstract game of wizards casting spells, Legend of the Five Rings was set in its unique setting of Rokugan. Rokugan is a fantasy version of Sengoku period Japan, where feudal clans of samurai fought to claim the title of emperor (well, shogun, but close enough). Because this theming and plotline was so strong, one of the major incentives of tournament play was to give players the opportunity to reshape the world of the game.
Capitalizing on the success of the world, AEG hired RPG designer John Wick to create a tabletop RPG for L5R. That game was published in 1997, and updated with new editions up through 4e in 2010, incorporating the world changes from the CCG each time. The core engine of the game was the self-explanatory 'Roll and Keep' system, where players would roll a number of exploding d10s and keep the best few of them.
In 2015, though, competing tabletop game company Fantasy Flight Games bought the rights to the L5R property from AEG. Fantasy Flight has had success in recent years with their 'Living Card Game' model, which eliminates randomized booster packs in favor of nonrandom expansions. By buying the rights to the property, FFG was able to launch their own L5R card game in 2017.
While board and card games are FFG's primary focus, they do also publish tabletop RPGS. However, their business model for Tabletop RPGs is to use non-numeric, custom dice. That has held true for the new Legend of the Five Rings RPG.
It's hard to argue that designing your rule system to need custom dice is anything but a money grab, a way to force every new player of your game to pony up $10-15 for a dice set. But, thinking about it from the publisher's side, it's very difficult to sustain the cost of writing and testing new rules without sustainable revenue that core book sales can't typically provide. If they can find a way to make their custom dice system strong enough to justify the additional cost to the player, I won't brand them as anti-consumer. But, have they done that?
CORE RULES
Characters in L5R, rather than having attributes like 'Intelligence' or 'Strength', instead have stats for the eponymous Five Rings of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Void. These rings represent philosophical approaches rather than concrete attributes: Air is subtle and defensive, while Fire is aggressive and passionate, for example.
When a player makes a check, they roll a number of black ring dice (custom d6s) equal to the Ring which reflects their approach for the action, plus a number of white skill dice (custom d12s) equal to the skill for the action. Every approach can be used with every skill; approach is less what you do, and more how you do it. After making the roll, they then get to choose a number of those dice to keep up to to their ring score. (There may be reasons to keep less than that, as you'll see.)
The dice show up to two of four possible faces. Successes (a circle) contribute to the overall success of the action. Exploding successes (circles with dots) contribute a success, and let you add one extra die. So far, so standard.
Where things get interesting are opportunities (flowers) and strife (flower petals, also look like little flames.) Opportunities do NOT contribute towards success, but they can be used for other purposes, such as turning a hit into a critical hit, affecting multiple enemies, or adding narrative flair.
Strife is really the core of the game. Strife comes as a cost on many die faces with successes or opportunities, essentially becoming an emotional cost to keep those dice. If it builds up over your composure (an emotional health pool) then your character is emotionally 'compromised' and takes massive penalties..or you can 'unmask' by showing a moment of raw emotion, which resets your Strife to zero, but at a cost.
And this is where the theme kicks in. In L5R, you have an Honor score, representing your samurai's obedience to bushido, the code of ethical and societally expected behaviors. You also have a Glory score representing the appreciation and respect others pay you. Depending on context, unmasking can be seen as either dishonorable, embarrassing, or both.
What this means is that the decision of which and how many dice to keep is always tough. Do you want lots of successes and opportunities, even if it means you might become overloaded with Strife? And if you do, do you unmask, getting a short-term power boost at the cost of long-term values? 0
In other words, the dice mechanic itself is forcing the players to decide how much they value the concepts of bushido, in an intuitive way that the old d10 system could not.
However, these rules are far from perfect. My first complaint is that because you have a different set of opportunity spends for every combination of ring and skill, you have to cross-index three or four tables every time you roll an opportunity just to know what you can do with it. While it's possible that this becomes more fluid with practice, and printed player references can help, I can imagine that for new players this would just be a nightmare.
Another issue is that there are no mechanical incentives to maintain Honor or Glory most of the time, which makes the cost of unmasking (and by extension, the cost of strife) significantly lower than I feel is appropriate for a setting with the tagline 'honor is stronger than steel'. You are trusting that players will equate the narrative cost of 'becoming dishonorable' with the mechanical benefit of 'I can kill this guy with my katana right now if I just take one more point of strife'.
Also, the difference between Ring 1 and Ring 2 is huge. If you're making a roll with a target of 2 successes, which is the default difficulty for most actions, then being restricted to only one die is extremely punishing, since you need to roll an explosive success AND have it explode. It feels backwards to me that a character with Ring 1 and Skill 5 would be worse at something than a character with Ring 2 and Skill 0 attempting the same thing. And since virtually every character starts off with at least one 1 in a ring, a full 20% of the possible approaches just do not work for each character.
The last point about the core dice mechanic is that it is extremely difficult to gauge your likelihood of success at something. It's obvious that having more dice is always better, but even a simple guesstimate like 'do I have a better-than-even chance of success at this' are damn near impossible to do without a spreadsheet and a few hours of work. Maybe that adds a dose of realism, since in real life we can only guess at our success chances usually. But it does make it more difficult to make intelligent, informed game decisions.
CHARACTER CREATION AND ADVANCEMENT
Character creation in L5R is surprisingly quick and easy. You pick a clan, a family within that clan, and a school in the clan. This is analogous to picking a race and class in D&D; it's the majority of your build, with only details and polish after that point. If I tell you I'm playing a Crane Kakita Duelist, you can immediately recognize that I'm probably going to be diplomatic and polite but deadly in a 1v1 duel. On the other hand, being a Scorpion Soshi Illusionist immediately tells you that I'm a sneaky spellcaster who is not to be trusted.
After getting your school, you pick a Distinction and an Adversity, (which allow or force rerolls when they apply) and a Passion and an Anxiety (which remove or add Strife when they apply). I felt the lists of suggestions for these were simultaneously too short, and over-written, taking up pages and pages of the book when it could have been condensed into a few tables.
You also pick two statements of purpose. Your giri is your societal purpose, the duty your lord expects from you. Whereas, your ninjo is a personal desire that brings you satisfaction. And these are explicitly stated to be in opposition with each other. I like this idea, but there is absolutely zero mechanical backing for either of these, so ultimately they're just flavor text.
After a few other details such as relationships with NPCs and choosing a name, you're done and ready to play.
The XP system is refreshing, though. XP gain is a flat 1 point per hour played, which made me breathe a sigh of relief because of how concrete and unambiguous it was. I'm not a fan of systems with arbitrary XP awards, since they're a hassle for the GM and a frustration for the PCs.
You spend XP to increase skills and learn new class techniques. If you spend it within a 'curriculum' defined by your school, then when you pass certain thresholds you hit a new rank (level, essentially) improving your existing abilities and opening new ones for purchase. You can also spend points outside your curriculum, though, which only contributes half XP and since improving a ring is always out-of-curriculum you will likely want to do that at some point.
I really like this advancement system. It manages to keep the feel of a class-based system, with specialization between different roles, but allowing for out-of-class 'dips' with only minor penalties. I also think that the pace of advancement seems about right--taking a character from rank 1 to rank 6 would take about 50 four-hour sessions, which feels like a good length of time to hit epic level, and yet because a new technique is only 3 XP you can potentially get a cool new toy after every session.
FLAVOR, ART, AND LORE
I was honestly shocked at how few pages were devoted to detailing the world of Rokugan. There are like 30 pages at the beginning explaining the clans and the world, and then the remaining 300 pages are all rules.
And then I realized that the lore was there--but it was distributed throughout the rules, in the descriptions of the clans and the schools, in the spells used, in the description of dueling.
I'm unsure how I feel about this. I think that it is definitely more welcoming to new players--if you read the flavor text for everything you add to your character, you will understand where your character fits into the world enough to jump in with no problem.
But I don't know that it works for the GM. This book isn't a campaign guide, I'm honestly not sure if there's even a map. The bestiary in the back is super short and it's not at all clear how you would make new monsters. Hell, it doesn't even really have a solid description of 'what the hell are my PCs supposed to do'.
That's not an accident, though. Again, FFG has a business model to work with, and the sourcebook for 'the Emerald Empire' is available for preorder now. I can't fault them for selling what they have now, but it does mean that the game in its current state is effectively unfinished. You would have to already know the setting pretty well from past editions if you wanted to GM it today.
The art is good, all very character focused. But, I'm not that impressed, because every single piece of it was a repurposed art asset from FFG's LCG (such as the kissing samurai from 'Shameful Display' put on the page about unmasking). It's gorgeous art, don't get me wrong, but I would have liked to see art made specifically for the RPG.
The book itself is well-made as well, although I wish that the pages were more clearly marked so it was easier to flip through and find things quickly. This is exacerbated by the super long list of advantages, disadvantages, and skills, which you basically never need to look at post-character creation.
CONCLUSIONS AND CRITIQUE
The first thing I will say is that if you're interested in this game, it's definitely worth picking up the rulebook, and a dice set. There simply is no better game on the market for feeling like you just stepped into an Akira Kurosawa film. That cultural flair is steeped into the world and the characters, with a lot of the baggage of the last 20 years of the old CCG's plot stripped away.
The second thing is that I think that this is a better edition than the last edition, which surprises me. I think that the cost of the custom dice is justified by the thematic and mechanical powerhouse that is Strife. This game just feels cleaner, neater, more focused on its core, because it needed that to justify the use of its dice.
But I don't think this is a game for everyone or every group. Players who come into L5R expecting D&D are going to get a nasty awakening the first time their Western sensibilities brush up against Eastern cultural norms.Meanwhile, players used to more narrative games like Fate or PbtA games are going to be frustrated by the crunch level of the game, which is very high. GMs who aren't already deeply familiar with the setting are going to be a bit lost until the other sourcebook comes out.Finding a group willing to commit to this game for 50 sessions is likely going to be difficult.
If you do, though, and everyone is willing to put in the effort, this could be an immensely rewarding experience for a committed group. I give it a thumbs up.
TL;DR: Custom dice support thematic roleplaying, but need players willing to work though challenging mechanics and themes, and a GM who already knows the world.