Discussions of Honor (OOC Thread):

So this is for any out of character conversations.

Thanks for running this, Whistler. I'm excited for those "quick dips into the Shadowlands for easy xp" that my IRL gaming troupe always joke about.

All good mate, glad you're looking forward to it. All I ask is that everyone keep in mind its my first L5R game.

Everyone's got to learn sometime mate. I've found PbP to be a really good way of jumping into new games and learning at a steady pace

We shall see how it goes, well hopefully. I have found some really good DnD supplements recently that have helped a lot with campaign planning and villain crafting that is applicable to other systems as well.

Hey guys! Glad to be around and hopefully learn L5R. I am experienced in D&D but I am more than glad to try something new and starting from scratch and easy with this sounds awesome.

Quick question though, does any of you have the 5e to share? I could find up to 4e...

You can buy the L5R 5e version through DrivethruRPG here. I'll be buying my own copy next week. If you don't want to buy a copy of the book, I am happy to help step you through character creation and teach the mechanics once I have had a chance to read through it.

I'll wait so that you can help me in the character creation and the mechanics, I assume that reading some 4th Edition might teach me the lore and some of the mechanics and understand better the 5th edition. So I'll work with that in the meantime. Cheers!

The mechanics are completely different in 5e so I wouldn’t focus on those to be honest. The lore and background is mostly ok but FFG have rolled the timeline back a touch but the basic gist for how the clans interact with one another and their roles in the empire should hold up ok

From what I have heard they have binned the scorpion clan coup, which I am fine with but yeah, I will be using a lot of 4e source material for setting information and updating it when I buy the 5e version of Emerald Empire.

I have started to read through the 5e book and came across an interesting concept.

"Many samurai voluntarily become rōnin for a single year, typically in the year or the second following their gempuku. Considered to be a healthy outlet for a young samurai’s desire to prove themself, this allows them to sharpen their skills and temper their attitudes with experience. Having experienced hardship in the outer Empire, most return and swear fealty to the clan anew with true loyalty rather than an inculcated sense of duty.

While a rōnin is technically still samurai, they have no lord, no clan, and no family—and thus, no purpose. Rōnin are forced to find work as mercenaries or bodyguards, eating dumplings bought from foul heimin merchants and earning their straw bedding with the skill of their blade. Some resort to banditry or crime to gather the coin they need to live, but at least this is still an earning wrought by skill at arms. Even the lowest rōnin is higher than the bonge."

So the thought this spurred was that if you would prefer, we could do a game that centres around this type of Ronin, with you coming together to travel across the Empire. I like this idea since it wouldn't just restrict us to the Crab lands and is less restrictive. I'm happy to still run the Twenty Goblin Winter as part of this type of campaign, your characters just wouldn't join the Crab once you were done, you'd just move on with the respect of the Crab. If you would prefer to stick to the original game concept though, I am cool with that as well. I just wanted to float the idea out there.

I’d be happy with that, would mean we wouldn’t necessarily have to take the Ronin school as we’d only be dipping out from our clans/families

You can get the 5e Beta here to get the gist of the rules, but be warned: I don't know what has changed between this and the final published version. I've been reading this off-and-on all day, it's a cool system.

I do like this idea, and it says samurai usually go back to their previous clan, but one wouldn't necessarily have to. It is lacking that flavor of redemption, where these bedraggled and beaten-down samurai finally find their place again. But that could be handled in other ways, for sure.

Qralloq being the first player to join I shall leave you with the deciding vote. Mechanically speaking if we went with this option, I would have no problem with you stating up a beginning Samurai from your normal clan. In game though, you would just be recognised as Ronin.

There’s also nothing to say we couldn’t be a mixed group, some ‘pure’ ronin and some ‘part-time’ ronin if you get my meaning

Yeah I have no problem with that but Qralloq was sold on this as a Crab focused game and I don't want to pull the rug out from under anyone because another idea has occurred to me. So if they are cool with it, then we will alter what we are doing and if not, we'll keep the original concept.

No, no, don't worry about me. I'd be just as happy playing a Unicorn Battle Maiden! The temporary young adult rite of passage Ronin idea had a lot of appeal.

Cool, that will let us get out and explore the whole Empire and I definitely want to do a stint in the Shadowland with the Twenty Goblin Winter. I have also found a good character sheet here. I'm not sure how things work on this site but if you guys want to use it then feel free.

Also after a little more reading, I can see this whole Ronin journey thing being done to help you all hone your skills and increase your school rankings and once you have achieved an acceptable rank, you return home to pledge service to your lord and begin to represent your clan or at least that is the plan. In fact, I could see this being a standard practice across the entire Empire so that less skilled warriors don't shame the clan. So basically you train with your school, complete the Gempuku, become a Ronin, travel the Empire and hone your skills, return to your clan periodically to undergo additional tests and once you are deemed worthy become a fully fledged and well-travelled Samurai.

I have also updated the Character Creation board with the steps involved. For those that don't have the book, just give me your character concept and we can work our way through the mechanics of it.

Hello there people! I am finding myself slightly constraint in learning and reading what is requiered to even create the character. So I guess that I might drop to leave the space for someone that is used to L5R cause I am learning from scratch and I don’t seem to catch up with it as I wanted to... sorry...

That's all good Vexander, it's a pretty full on undertaking and thanks for letting me know now!

To everyone that is remaining, I was hoping that once you all have the mechanical components of your characters together, we could engage in a couple of trials runs so to speak. Just a few very RP light scenarios, that would be completely consequence free, so we can all get our head around the mechanics. I particularly want to cover a skirmish, a duel and an intrigue just to see how that goes. Depending on how we are feeling, possibly mass combat too. I imagine it would end up looking something like this. Once that is done, we can move into the game proper. Thoughts?

I like that idea. Sometimes, we make characters completely misunderstanding some key rule. This would be a good way to both learn the game and check out characters for fatal design flaws.

Good to know you think the idea is a good one. If I know one thing about L5R, the emphasis would be on fatal. I mean if anyone is going to lose a character, I would prefer it was because they did something silly rather than because we didn't understand the mechanics :P

Yeah that sounds like a great idea. Asides from listening to a couple of actual play podcasts I’ve not got any hands on experience with the system so it’d be good to at least have a little run through things

Looks like we have a plan then and I have even less exposure to the mechanics than that mcneils5. At the moment I just have visions of me sending too many bandits to fight you guys and you just getting chopped into pieces.

I ran a game of Usagi Yojimbo once (very deadly combat system) and faced the PCs against three ninjas for the first battle of the game. TPK. I remember saying, "Huh, I guess Dave nerfed the ninjas when we played this."

I could see the same happening here. I have been reliably informed that I have a birthday dinner to attend this evening. I will check your sheets sometime tomorrow.

Okay, so I wanted to have a really upfront and honest conversation with the group. I think the skirmish test has accomplished what I wanted it to. We all have a better idea of how the combat works and by extension the duel and social. Now personally, I can see how this system would work well around a table but I don't think it is particularly suited to PbP, since it seems to be a lot of work for very little payoff. I wanted to check in and make sure that you are still all onboard for an actual game of this. If so, I will close down the skirmish and we will move onto the real deal, if not no hard feelings at all.

I'm in, we just have to expect it to be a little slower, at least initially. I wonder if there's any plans to implement the dice, that would certainly make things faster.

I'm still definitely in for a game. Most of L5R for me has always been the RP so you can get by in a lot of situations with fairly minimal dice rolling IMHO.
Agreed. Keleth has previously said he'll look at adding the dice to the roller when he does the site re-design but he's got a lot of RL stuff on his plate at the moment so I wouldn't expect it anytime soon. Plus I'm not sure it would be worth him adding it at this stage given that there's very little interest in this system on the site at the moment. I do have a discord server running with a bot that handles these dice which we could use but it would mean having to flick back and forth between the two and I'm not sure if that would add more headaches than it's worth

I'd be up for a game, as you say, for the RP rather than the system, but even the system bears further exploration. The system isn't terrible, just clunky for having you convert d6/d12, then spend them in unobvious ways. I had added the conversion chart to the top of my character sheet so it was readily accessible. (I mostly access GP from a phone.)

To be completely honest guys, this really isn't doing it for me, mostly thanks to the mechanics that involved. Once again I could see how this would work well at a table but for PbP it is just a bit clunky for my liking. So who anyone else like to take over as the GM?

I don't mind taking over. I'm just in the middle of getting a Star Wars game off the ground on here but once that's going I'll be free to take this on....that is if everyone is still up for playing? I'd probably kick things off with the Starter Set, and if that goes well the follow on adventure on the FFG site and then the adventure in the GM's screen before moving to anything more 'home brewy'

That sounds good to me. Thanks, mcneil5.

Thanks for taking over mcneil5 you are a gentlemen and a scholar. Have fun guys!

No problem mate. Could you make me a GM for this game and I'll carry on running things in here (might be useful to have the previous stuff we've played through to reference if needed)

I think I have done it correctly, let me know if you have any hassles.

All looks good thanks

Qualloq and Tookie - just wanted to check you are both still up for this? I've got my Star wars game going now so I'll be turning my attention to this in the next few days. I'm also thinking of casting the net out and seeing if anyone else fancies joining in

Also Whistler are you ok with us using this game or do you think it would be better for me to set a fresh game up so you can clear it from your games list?

I'm still interested. I love the setting and I think the system requires some more noodling.

Same, I'm still here and still into it! I've just had less time the past couple weeks. Seems things have relaxed here and I'm ready whenever.

Good to hear that :) I've decided to spin up my own game for it so Whistler can clear this one off of their games library and sent you two an invite for it (link to game is here though if you don't get that). I'm happy for you both to play the characters you drew up for here, might just need to restrict a couple of bits like school abilities and access to a daisho to bring you both on par with the pre-gens initially

Whistler - if you want to see how things are going or join in the game you are more than welcome mate. I've left it set as a Public game so anyone can view it but if you want to play just let me know.