Hey everybody. Things are really hopping here at L5R central! Despite this, we’re at a bit of a lull in the production schedule, where either I have already discussed things at great length or, in other cases, I can’t talk about them just yet. We do have a few things that we can look at today, though, so let’s have a look at those for a bit.

The Book of Earth

As I discussed last time, this baby is in the production pipeline. I know I wasn’t going to say anything else about it because we’re so close to release, but I did want to let those of you who are interested know that we are slated for a December release. So around Christmas time, you can help yourselves to a heaping helping of earthy goodness. I hope you all enjoy it!

The Imperial Histories, Volume 2

This is our big one right now. We’re feverishly trying to get it ready to go to print in the next few weeks, but of course there’re always trip-ups here and there along the way. Hopefully we won’t have too many of those this time around! Last time I spoiled the list of chapters that you’ll be seeing in the book, which include eight canon historical periods and five alternate versions of Rokugan scattered around the timeline. I thought this time around we’d look at one of those alternate versions of Rokugan, one created through our fan contest: the Togashi Dynasty.

More than you might think is different in an Empire where Togashi became the first Emperor of Rokugan, but of course the question that everyone usually asks first is, what happens to Hantei? Well, naturally he created his own clan. Let me share with you the pre-playtest version of the mechanics for that clan, crafted by our very own maestro of mystery, Robert Hobart.

Hantei Bushi School
Hantei was trained in the ways of combat by the Celestial Dragons themselves, and his fighting style could not be matched by any of the other Kami. Hantei never shared the full secrets of his fighting skills with his followers; instead, he adapted his techniques to his clan’s new duty of fighting against nonhuman threats to the Empire.

• Trait Bonus: +1 Agility
• Starting Honor: 6.5
• Skills: Athletics, Defense, Etiquette, Kenjutsu, Kyujutsu, Sincerity, any one High or Bugei Skill
• Outfit: Fine clothing, light armor, daisho, bow, any one weapon, traveling pack, 4 koku

Techniques
Rank One: The basic lesson of Hantei is to call on the favor of the Celestial Realms to oppose those who stand against Heaven. When facing a “nonhuman” opponent (see sidebar), you may add either your Earth or your Honor (whichever is higher) to your Armor TN. In addition, you gain a +1k0 bonus to all attack rolls against the same foes.

Rank Two: The power of Celestial Favor can overcome any who presume to trouble Ningen-do or the Empire of Togashi. At the start of your Turn, as a Free Action you may spend a Void Point to let your attacks this Round ignore all the Reduction of “nonhuman” opponents.

Rank Three: The Celestial Dragons strike with speed beyond thought, and you seek to emulate them as well as a mortal may do so. You may attack as a Simple Action with Samurai weapons or when attacking a “nonhuman” opponent in melee.

Rank Four: Those who serve the Celestial Heavens care not who their opponent may be, for the strength of Heaven’s favor cannot be withstood. You may ignore the effects of the Spirit trait when inflicting damage on “nonhuman” opponents.

Rank Five: The final lesson of the Hantei School is that the divine strike of Celestial Favor may defeat any foe, even one so powerful as Lord Moon himself. Once per skirmish, after hitting a “nonhuman” opponent, you may spend three Void Points to automatically inflict enough damage to reduce that opponent to Down/Out/Dead (whichever applies first). At the GM’s discretion, this Technique may also defeat transcendent entities such as Fortunes and Dragons… if you voluntarily choose to die in order to activate the Technique.

Sweet, eh? I get all tingly just thinking about it. The playtesters were really interested in this School, so I anticipate that Rob has folded a lot of their feedback into the revision. Don’t be surprised if the version that ends up printed is radically different!

The Book of Fire

Things are going very well with the Book of Fire, and we are anticipating getting files in from the writers very soon. This means that mechanical design will get rolling very shortly thereafter, and we’ll be able to share some mechanics and content with you when the next installment of the column goes live. I don’t want to spoil too much for you, but… there may be fire involved. ZOMG.

Unexpected Allies, 4th Edition

Well here’s the big announcement for this particular column. I think I’ve probably talked about this here before, but honestly I can’t remember and I’m not going looking through twenty installments to try and figure out the particulars! The long and the short of it is that in my experience, nothing fires a GM’s imagination like a really great NPC. Will you use it as an ally of your characters? Or an enemy? There are all sorts of points in between, of course, but inspiration comes from somewhere, and for me, one of the greatest has always been an awesome samurai character.

Some of you old war horses like me may remember back during first edition, we had a little sourcebook called Unexpected Allies, which was chock full of cool NPCs and ideas on how to use them. Man, I abused the heck out of that book, let me just tell you what. And now I feel honor bound to make it possible for a new generation of players to do exactly that.

As head of the story team, one of the biggest bummers about the world of L5R is that there are so many cool personalities in the CCG that never get any significant character development. We just can’t tell stories about everyone, you know… we’d fill up the internet with all the fiction. This means that hundreds of cool personalities have never been explored, and that’s a shame.

But hey! Maybe you can help us with that.

I am formally announcing a new contest for the L5R RPG, 4th Edition. All of you GMs and writers out there, select a personality from the CCG who never got any significant story time, but who you always thought was cool. Maybe it’s because they have awesome art, or they are using an unconventional weapon, or anything that makes it click for you. Give us a background and the character stats for that personality, and maybe we’ll put it in a new PDF sourcebook!

There are two caveats that I need to share with you. One of them is that one of the limiting factors will be the availability of artwork. If you pick an older card, it may be the case that I can’t track down artwork of suitable quality to make it work for the graphic design. I’m hoping that won’t be the case, of course, but I felt like I needed to mention it early on in the process.

The second is that you will need to include out standard boilerplate, which is as follows:

I, ______________, understand and agree to the following terms: Unsolicited artwork, story lines, character developments and other intellectual property (collectively “work”) received by AEG is considered a gift of all the donor’s rights, title and interest in and to the Work (including copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights) which Work is given to AEG for no consideration, and becomes the property of AEG. AEG is in no way responsible to pay any transfer fees, licensing fees, royalties or any other consideration to the donor.

Based on the above understanding, I hereby submit the enclosed Work.

I’m not interested in trying to get you guys to go out there and buy CCG cards if you’re not already a player. (Okay, well, I wouldn’t MIND, per se, but still.) No, if you’re looking for an old card, you can always check our online database at http://www.oracleofthevoid.com and find just about anything you need.

I can’t wait to see what you guys have ready to add to the L5R universe. ☺

See you next month!