Hajimemashite, and Hello to All!

Hajimemashite, and hello to all!

Introducing yourself seems to be the name of the game here for us newbies, so here goes nothing!

I recently heard about this site from an interview on Talking Tabletop, and thought that I would show up and see what PbP was all about. I've never played an RPG in this format, though I have played in person and online over Skype/Discord with friends before. Having said that, I do have friends who have done PbP in the past, and they've had a pretty mixed experience (mostly they complain about high attrition rates in their games). I'm hoping to have a positive experience, and this community seems to be, from what I have seen, a solid place to do that.

Now, a little bit about me as a person. I am an avid board game player (Betrayal at House on the Hill is a personal favorite), an enthusiastic reader (shamefully bad fantasy novels are my weakness, though I'm also partial to equally shameful weeaboo VN nonsense), and I have approximately a billion hours in PC games such as Crusader Kings II and Civs 3-5 (totally definitely not exaggerating here). I consider myself I pretty colossal nerd, and my primary areas of academic study are History (love me some Carolingian Franks) and creative writing (which I had better put to good use here). I also enjoy politics, and spend a great deal of time posting increasingly lengthy, divisive, and ultimately misguided political posts on social media. Yes, I'm that guy, and no, I do not plan on bringing that into my games here.

In terms of my past involvement with tabletop RPGs, I would call myself a moderately experienced player. I began playing in high school with a pair of Savage Worlds games that were run by a fantastic history teacher, and I've been interested in them ever since. I had a long hiatus during which I didn't play at all, but during my time at university I eventually found myself a pretty good D&D 4e group that ran for around a year. Since then, I've played (and DM'd) a smattering of 5e campaigns, but most have fallen apart pretty quickly due to everyone having actual real people lives. I also consume a great deal of other RPG media, primarily through shows like Critical Role and podcasts such as those on the One Shot Podcast Network, and any suggestions on other shows/podcasts that are enjoyable would be much appreciated as well.

Though my personal experience with RPGs has been primarily with Savage Worlds and D&D, the One Shot podcast has really stirred my interest in playing a variety of systems, particularly rules light (or at least lighter than I'm used to) systems and systems that focus more on narrative game play. Having said that, I'm up for almost any system as long as the game itself seems interesting. Specific things that I have been interested in playing around with are games that run on the Fate Core system, Edge of the Empire (or something similar), and L5R. I didn't see any L5R games listed in the games directory, so that one may be a long shot given its apparent relative obscurity compared to many of the other games I can think of. Even so, Jim McClure from Talking Tabletop (aka the greatest L5R fan in existence) really sold me on it, and if anyone would be interested in running a game in L5R 4e, I would be super duper down for that.

If you've made it this far into this post, you are a beautiful human being and I love you. I also seem to have used an excessive number of parentheses in this post, but I have ZeroPatience for rewording anything to fix that. So sorry (not sorry).

Hopefully at least some of this information is useful to somebody, and I look forward to playing with you all!

Welcome!

'hola
I tried running an L5R game recently but it ground to a halt quickly (I take a large part of the blame)
That said, wait around a bit, something interesting is sure to happen

I love you too and welcome

Welcome, and I love using parenthese too (especially in pbp) Hope you enjoy your time here!

Welcome! Strong intro -- you'll fit in fine around here!

Welcome! Happy gaming! :-)

I had a great experience with an L5R 4e game that I ran for my wife and a friend as two Crab Clan bushi. I really love the setting. You could get lost in the L5R wiki for hours.

Welcome to GP!

Love you too ;) lol

Anyway, welcome to GP, we're happy to have you!

Thanks for the words of welcome, folks! I'm definitely feelin' the love ;)
Hmm I suppose that L5R might generally have a higher attrition rate than other games. It seems like it would require a lot of player investment to really get into. Was that part of the problem you had, or did it just fall apart for other reasons?
It's heartening to see that there are a couple of people here with L5R experience! Maybe getting a game going is not such a long shot after all. :P I agree, the setting is fantastic! The rule books practically read like novels, and there really is a ton of fun lore in there.

Welcome ZeroPatience!

Add in my voice as an L5R fan - played in a 2 year campaign in Rokugan run by a long time player in that setting (using D&D 3e Oriental Adventures), and bought the L5R 4e core book. Love the setting.

That being said, it is a daunting setting to look to run. I personally don't have the time to read the thousands of pages of clan books and histories to do it proper justice.

I completely understand your reluctance to run it. "Daunting" does seem a pretty apt description of the task, and probably most of us who enjoy the lore feel similarly. I am certainly too much a neophyte to get it done properly. I guess in the end I'm not looking for a perfect game of L5R, just one that does it's best; a game that captures the essence of that which makes L5R what it is, even if it isn't spot on when it comes down to every precise detail. Besides, learning new things about the lore (and realizing you were dead wrong about other stuff) as you play isn't necessarily a bad thing! Regardless, I'll have to wait until I can dupe someone into running a game and doing all the work for me. ;P

Welcome to GP!

Hello and a hearty welcome!

It is certainly daunting. Giving it the appropriate feel requires a lot of effort on the GM and players to RP it all right. The example that I typically use is that players wouldn't typically think to take off their armor while traveling, but wearing your armor in someone's lands is seen as an insult because you're calling his lands unsafe. There are tons of small rules like that.

That said, I'd definitely be willing to run a game if/when I get more free time or when my current game ends (this second one isn't likely to happen anytime soon), and I'd certainly be up for playing in one. I can't emphasize how awesome the setting is, and the 4e rules are pretty solid, as I remember them!

It wasn't attrition, a combination of low player response and me not handling that well and then life getting very busy.
I've played long term games in Rokugan elsewhere, and it's a joy when it works, at some point I'd like to recreate that.

As an add on to the example of how it can be daunting, I once got into a fight with an NPC because of which side of the table he placed his katana on, turns out that the DM had just made a mistake and didn't mean to imply that my duelist couldn't defend himself. Whoops. Fun world, deep world, and the latter can be a problem.

Welcome to the site man, we are glad to have you. I'd totally be down for L5R, my friend sold it pretty hard to me, so you are not alone in that regard!

Welcome ZeroPatience! I'm glad to have you with us. Yah, PbP can be tough, lacking the face-to-face imperative that often keeps people at a table. It's really easy to just disappear from a game because well... we're just random internet things. But a lot of games seem to last here, in part at least due to the community that's developed.

If you don't mind me asking, did you hear my original interview on TT, or was there a more recent mention I missed?

YES! Fellow Rokugani! ASSEMBLE! Hahaha

As for all of the little details that make the setting great, I feel like the good news about running L5R in a PbP format is that you have a lot more time to check your work. For instance, if you were concerned about what things could be construed as an insult, what side on which to put your katana, or how many times you need to reject a gift before you can accept it, you have the option of looking it up without slowing down the game much. Obviously that doesn't fix everything, and there are still a lot of things that you could potentially miss simply by not even realizing it could be a problem (and as MoMo said, it's a lot of effort for both GM and players), but it at least might alleviate some of the mistakes that I can only imagine are made on the fly. I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like it'd give a player a lot more time to carefully consider what they're doing and what the exact consequences of that action might be, which is a huge boon for a system like L5R that essentially treats its complex lore as a core game mechanic.
Also, fighting duels over an accidental insult feels like something that would happen with relative frequency, at least if the setting actually real. Even samurai are fallible, after all. It sounds kind of amazing. ^__^
It was your original interview. I only recently found the One Shot Podcast Network, and I have been devouring pretty much all of their content over the last couple of months. That includes TT, since it is now a part of the One Shot Network (I don't remember if that was the case when your interview took place). Also, you're not a random internet thing! You're a beautiful human being! Unless of course you didn't read my post, and then obviously you are just a random internet thing :D

I really need to getting L5R onto GP, as I'm pretty sure Jim would actually join PbP over that :D