General Category > Role Playing Public Radio Podcast

The L5R Loan Offer

(1/3) > >>

Lord_of_Apathy:
So I just listened to the GenCon 2016 Wrapup podcast and heard Ross comment that he is not interested in running L5R because he has too many of his own games he still needs to run, but might try to convince Aaron to run it  but that would fail since there are no robots in the setting.  At this I remembered the alternate timeline in the setting with  rules for Rokugan in Space!!!  Which gave me the image of an Aaron run mash up of Samurai and Cyroks.  I don't know whether to be horrified or laugh for hours on end.

Fred

Twisting H:
FYI   One Shot has a very good L5R adventure up. 

System seems clunky though and very lethal combat wise.  Haven't analyzed it however.

http://oneshotpodcast.com/podcasts/one-shot/92-legend-of-five-rings-rings-part-1/

Lord_of_Apathy:
It never felt clunky when I was playing but the Roll-Keep system is definitely a different feel from most other systems I have played. Combat  does have a potentially high lethality factor but L5R is not intended to be a "one fight a night" game. I played the muscle character a long running campaign which lasted a couple of years, granted there were periods that we had to take a month or two hiatus due  to conflicting schedules, I can recall at most 5 or 6 sessions where combat occured. Mostly it was investigative and political interactions.

Cthuluzord:
I'd be interested to read some L5R. If I'm honest, "samurai" is probably my all time favorite film genre of anything. I've read the Hagakure, The Book of Five Rings, Rashomon, etc. I'm the kind of nerd that has a favorite in the Samurai trilogy (II, of course), owns all the Shogun Assassin films and the complete Lone Wolf and Cub manga line (along with Samurai Executioner), and has seen Hari Kiri as both the original and remake. I love me some samurai stuff, is what I'm saying.

But I don't think we'd ever get a campaign out of it for the following reasons.


* I've not seen the system yet, but there's a lot of reaction to it that makes me skeptical. d20, in general, infuriates me in lengthy amounts of play. I'd have to check the rules in depth, but I couldn't run something for long with the crunch of any system that would be called d20 by most people. I mean, maybe L5R just uses a d20 and there the similarities end, but I'm hesitant.
* There seems to be A LOT of world lore in it. I'm not sure I want my samurai fighting anything except other samurai in the Edo period; not to mention a bunch of scorpion Oni or whatever the fuck. Then there's the fictional political intrigue amongst all the fictional the clans...I'd probably throw all that out and start fresh. I mean, if we're already making things up, I'd prefer getting the fun doing it myself and having some room to breath. In general, the more established as setting is, the less I'm interested (with the notable exception of EP's "maybe it is, maybe it isn't" setting design). This means the system would have to be good enough to save from the lore (which I don't know), and I'd be disappointing everyone that wants to hear L5R (which are the only people that would listen, because the game is old and won't attract those "new hotness" hits
* The japanophile urge amongst RPPR members varies wildly. You wanna talk Sengoku period history? I'm totally IN...but Aaron, Tom, and Ross tune out once I talk about how many koku your prefecture owes in taxes that season. Wanna go all anime? Shaun and Aaron will break down the door to get into that game...and I will quietly sneak out the back. Want to do no more than name a character something from outside the a judeo-christian tradition? Jason will look at his phone for twenty sessions rather than engage. Ross, David, and I will be all about modern Tokyo espionage...Tom will make a forger/sniper. Finding a group of players that would give a damn about L5R to play at all, no to mention a campaign, would be a dicey prospect.
So I don't think it's going to happen. I'm really excited for "Reflections" and other games that might map on to the tropes of samurai genre without so much baggage, but I haven't found something to make me really advocate for it. And even if I did, that would be no guarantee. As Ross mentioned, we just have too damned many games to play as is. I'm lucky when I can get a spot to run anything, so it needs to be something everyone has an equal amount of engagement in.

Lord_of_Apathy:
1. It's not a d20 system it uses a d10 die pool system...

2. You really only have to use as much lore as you want. For me playing in an established world that is lore heavy is normally more enjoyable than playing in generic world where I have nothing but mechanics to base a concept around since I have more details to inspire me.  But I can totally understand how some people find lore too restrictive.  If I was going to throw anything out of half the games I love playing it would be magic systems cause its too much work to keep track of as either a GM or a Player. But half the players in my groups love magic in games for the toolbox approach they offer to solving problems.

3. Yeah I got nothing here... When listening to the actual plays I envy the RPP crew and your ability to run not only amazing campaigns that come to a narrative end, something that never happens in my home games, but satisfying short adventures in multiple game systems and settings.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page