RPG: Legend Of The Five Rings – Initial Impressions
We’ve got the L5R roleplaying game here at the BoLS office. As we get ready to delve into Rokugan, here’s a first look at everything you can find within.
Fantasy Flight Games’ Legend of the Five Rings is an exciting new version of an RPG classic. Blending custom dice and modern takes on narrative consequences, with a system that builds a lot of complexity into characters, you’ve got a cool engine that powers the core of samurai tension and intrigue that is the world of Rokugan.
For our initial foray into this land where honor is stronger than steel, we’ve got a look at the three main products you can find right now–though a fourth book has recently been announced–today, however, you’ll find the Core Book, the Beginner’s Set, and the Gamemaster’s Kit. This last one was the most surprising to me, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, let’s take a look at what’s inside the Beginner’s Box.
As you can see it’s a beautiful box. Inside you’ll find everything you need to get started, whether you’re a player or a GM. There are the usual things you’d expect, a basic overview, a streamlined quickstart guide to the rules, and four pre-generated characters. But these four characters go above and beyond many of the starting characters you’d see in similar products. Each one gets their own folder with the instruction to check and see if this character is right for you.
We’re going to take you inside one of these characters, showing off the roleplaying hooks, personality, and story behind each of these.
Today we’re going to be taking you inside one of them, just for a glimpse of what makes up one of these characters. So meet Isawa Aki, shugenja of the Phoenix Clan.
One of the greatest things about this, is that before you even get to the rules, it tells you who this character is. It gives you everything you need to get right in their heads, including their own little story.
And then of course you’ll find a pre-filled character sheet with a breakdown of everything this character does.
And a quick and handy reference for how the game itself works, and various things to keep in mind. All of which will change when you level up–but no need to worry about that, they’ve got your advanced character here as well.
All in all, these folders are great. And of course there’s a starting adventure too, but what I didn’t know was that there’s a starting adventure in the Gamemaster’s Kit! Titled Dark Tides, this adventure introduces a whole bunch to the game.
It has a new minor clan, the Tortoise Clan–along with rules for making heroes from it–a city that’s just a little corrupt, at the heart of which are conspiracies and gangs.
And a plethora of options to make this adventure you’re on. I’m real excited to take this one for a spin–look for a review of this and the L5R Corebook sometime soon…
It’s real fun so far–for now I’ll leave you with a look at just two of the pages that await you inside the L5R Corebook.
Techniques are the bread and butter of your character, and here’s one set you can layer on–there are a bunch. Everything from special Monk martial arts to Ninjutsu. But more on this later.
For now, enjoy this journey into Rokugan.
Happy adventuring!
