The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The eleventh Way book deals with monks, what they are like, and how to play them. The rules are optional, if you do not want Kiho powers or Monks as players or NPC’s in your game, or do not care about Rokugan religion, then there is no particular reason to by this book.

The Way of the Shinsei is very uneven in quality, so I have to review it section by section, making this review quite long. Sorry, but I se no other way.

Appearances first: the book has a nice setup, with good little illustrations to break up the text, and not so good big illustrations to fill up space. It also has commercials, character sheets and whatnot, so all in all the book have about 85 pages of real stuff. Many sidebars are repeated twice in the book. I have no way of knowing if this error fills up empty space, or if it has caused the loss of information.

Content: Ye roleplay fiction. These stories takes the place of “How the major clans view the monks”, and are not bad.

The Inner Way. This is to some extent a rewrite of the religious material in Way of the Phoenix. I do not have WotP, so how much is new, I cannot say. This chapter cover a lot of ground. We get an understanding of the teachings of Shintai (which are not teachings); the doctrines of various “schools” or “fractions” of Rokugan; the two types of monks – those who have retired from a samurai life due to age, and those, often of low birth, who have been monks since their youth. We also learn the basic nature of religious life in Rokugan: baring festivals, it is a individual thing. No church on Sundays, no praying five times a day. The chapter covers Enlightenment, and refers to the rules and mechanics for character enlightenment, which are crisp and precise.

All in all good stuff, except for one thing. Shintao is combined with Fortune worship by Imperial decree. But all I know about the seven fortunes after reading this book, is their names, and their area of influence. What is their personalities? What do a statue of one look like? What is their creation history? What is their relationship to each other? What are their symbols? Quite simply this book does not make it possible to play a fortune orientated monk in a satisfactory manner.

Character. First we find New Skills, Advantages and Disadvantages, some for monks only, others for everybody. One of these is so universally useful that it should have been in the basic rulebook, namely (direct quote):

“Know the school (intelligence) A character with this skill picks one particular bushi school that he has attended or studied with some regularity. The character gains Free Raises against anyone using that school equal to his rank in this skill. In addition, anyone trying to use that school to strike this character has his TN raised by 5. This is considered a Bugei Skill.”

Neat, eh?

The rules for creating monks that have been monks all their lives are simple. You get 1 void, 25 character points, your glory is 2, which cannot change, ever, and you get 3 kiho for free (more on kiho later). Then you pick a school. True to the shintao, schools do not give you as much as you must bring yourself. Schools give you a starting Honor, 6 or so skills, and a little benefit, like “May keep an additional die in hand-to-hand damage”. No school trait bonus.

Kiho Think of Kiho as school techniques ala carte. Some are martial arts attack powers, they often cost a void point to use, others are defense like powers, they are turned on all the time, but you can only have one of these on at any given time, and they often have a drawback, and finally some Kiho a neither of these things. Within certain limitations, you can pick the ones you want.

There are 10 pages of Kiho, and they all look cool and playable on reading. They present monks as persons with powers quite unlike those of the Shugenja.

Non monks can take Kiho too. Shugenja, Ise Zumi, Sodan-senzo, Witch Hunters, and any “spiritual” minded schools that pop up after this book was written, can pay character points and XP to get Kiho, if they have the meditation and the Shintao skills. This makes this book potentially useful to any player of such characters. The price runs form 6 to 16 XP, and Kiho takes high rings and often a supply of void points to use. So it is not a free ride by any means. But a Kiho might be worth the bother, just to have a surprise power.

Next come Retirement, rules on making an existing character into a Monk. The rules are longwinded and complex. As far as I can guess their primary purpose is to make it hard to make a super dualclass character. This should have been accomplished in an more simple manner, as these rules stand, they are a hindrance to actually performing a fascinating piece of roleplaying: retiring a character to become a monk. It would have been so simple to say: “a retired character can buy kiho a normal prices, but never gets any for free…” and all game balance problems would have vanished. These rules are so hopeless that not even the payed employees of AEG bothers to use them, as the next section shows…

Who’s Who among the Monks. 10 monks of note are described here, complete with stats and a mugshot, ready to be used by the gamemaster… except the descriptions tells us of secrets, without telling the GM what the secrets are, the mugshots are miserable, and the stats makes no kind of sense. Remember the rule that monks always have 2 glory? Here we have Koichi, Acolyte of the Void (What the f*** is an Acolyte of the Void?) with a glory of 1.3. 1.3, how did one arrive at that precise figure? It looks so deliberate. But it isn’t, isn’t it? Here we have Togashi Jodome, he is a retried Ise zumi, now a monk (against the retirement rules), glory 2.1, Acolyte of the Air (which is…What?), his insight is 164, yet his rank is somehow 3. Here’s Tetsuya, awesome dude, void 6, many Kiho. No school rank. Guess his parents set him to work at the farm, instead of sending him to school…By the way, I wonder what schools these guys belong to…and so on, and so forth…

These monks were clearly written by people who do not know the rules, making them nearly useless. Any GM who tries to use these characters will find himself in trouble if a single dieroll has to be made…

And now…Sample monk characters! Argh. Actually these 5 beginning monks are quite good. They give you ready to use characters, and if you do not use them, they still give you 5 original ways to play a monk. Nice pictures too.

Appendixes: An nice (well, pretty gory) episode with a temple and an crab shugenja on the run from a Oni.. A far to short bit about playing a monk in Rokugan (mostly about being at court). Descriptions of some major temples. Description of two monk L5R ccg monk decks. What is the point of this? I read through it anyway and found that those hopeless characters in Who’s Who are actually trading cards. This tells us that not even AEG can figure out how to convert trading card characters to roleplaying characters.

What’s missing: A GM guide on how to have monks as player characters, neither in mixed groups, or in pure monk campaigns. A player guide on the possibilities playing a monk can hold. A section on special monk hand to hand fighting rules would have been nice. As I already mentioned, a minimum of info on the Fortunes would make fortune orientated monks possible.

All in all: Half this book is useful to players who want to play monks, GM’s who want to make cool NPC monks, and anybody interested in Shintao, the deep part of Rokugan religious life. The other half is worthless filler.

The Way of the Shinsei
The Way of the Shinsei Capsule Review by Mads Jakobsen on 20/03/01 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average) The eleventh clanbook for L5R is an uneven piece of work. Product: The Way of the Shinsei Author: Too Many Cooks Category: RPG Company/Publisher: AEG Line: Legend of the Five Rings Cost: 19.95 Page count: 112 Year published: 2000 ISBN: SKU: AEG 3028 Capsule Review by Mads Jakobsen on 20/03/01 Genre tags: Fantasy Asian/Far East	The eleventh Way book deals with monks, what they are like, and how to play them. The rules are optional, if you do not want Kiho powers or Monks as players or NPC’s in your game, or do not care about Rokugan religion, then there is no particular reason to by this book. The Way of the Shinsei is very uneven in quality, so I have to review it section by section, making this review quite long. Sorry, but I se no other way. Appearances first: the book has a nice setup, with good little illustrations to break up the text, and not so good big illustrations to fill up space. It also has commercials, character sheets and whatnot, so all in all the book have about 85 pages of real stuff. Many sidebars are repeated twice in the book. I have no way of knowing if this error fills up empty space, or if it has caused the loss of information. Content: Ye roleplay fiction. These stories takes the place of “How the major clans view the monks”, and are not bad. The Inner Way. This is to some extent a rewrite of the religious material in Way of the Phoenix. I do not have WotP, so how much is new, I cannot say. This chapter cover a lot of ground. We get an understanding of the teachings of Shintai (which are not teachings); the doctrines of various “schools” or “fractions” of Rokugan; the two types of monks – those who have retired from a samurai life due to age, and those, often of low birth, who have been monks since their youth. We also learn the basic nature of religious life in Rokugan: baring festivals, it is a individual thing. No church on Sundays, no praying five times a day. The chapter covers Enlightenment, and refers to the rules and mechanics for character enlightenment, which are crisp and precise. All in all good stuff, except for one thing. Shintao is combined with Fortune worship by Imperial decree. But all I know about the seven fortunes after reading this book, is their names, and their area of influence. What is their personalities? What do a statue of one look like? What is their creation history? What is their relationship to each other? What are their symbols? Quite simply this book does not make it possible to play a fortune orientated monk in a satisfactory manner. Character. First we find New Skills, Advantages and Disadvantages, some for monks only, others for everybody. One of these is so universally useful that it should have been in the basic rulebook, namely (direct quote): “Know the school (intelligence) A character with this skill picks one particular bushi school that he has attended or studied with some regularity. The character gains Free Raises against anyone using that school equal to his rank in this skill. In addition, anyone trying to use that school to strike this character has his TN raised by 5. This is considered a Bugei Skill.” Neat, eh? The rules for creating monks that have been monks all their lives are simple. You get 1 void, 25 character points, your glory is 2, which cannot change, ever, and you get 3 kiho for free (more on kiho later). Then you pick a school. True to the shintao, schools do not give you as much as you must bring yourself. Schools give you a starting Honor, 6 or so skills, and a little benefit, like “May keep an additional die in hand-to-hand damage”. No school trait bonus. Kiho Think of Kiho as school techniques ala carte. Some are martial arts attack powers, they often cost a void point to use, others are defense like powers, they are turned on all the time, but you can only have one of these on at any given time, and they often have a drawback, and finally some Kiho a neither of these things. Within certain limitations, you can pick the ones you want. There are 10 pages of Kiho, and they all look cool and playable on reading. They present monks as persons with powers quite unlike those of the Shugenja. Non monks can take Kiho too. Shugenja, Ise Zumi, Sodan-senzo, Witch Hunters, and any “spiritual” minded schools that pop up after this book was written, can pay character points and XP to get Kiho, if they have the meditation and the Shintao skills. This makes this book potentially useful to any player of such characters. The price runs form 6 to 16 XP, and Kiho takes high rings and often a supply of void points to use. So it is not a free ride by any means. But a Kiho might be worth the bother, just to have a surprise power. Next come Retirement, rules on making an existing character into a Monk. The rules are longwinded and complex. As far as I can guess their primary purpose is to make it hard to make a super dualclass character. This should have been accomplished in an more simple manner, as these rules stand, they are a hindrance to actually performing a fascinating piece of roleplaying: retiring a character to become a monk. It would have been so simple to say: “a retired character can buy kiho a normal prices, but never gets any for free…” and all game balance problems would have vanished. These rules are so hopeless that not even the payed employees of AEG bothers to use them, as the next section shows… Who’s Who among the Monks. 10 monks of note are described here, complete with stats and a mugshot, ready to be used by the gamemaster… except the descriptions tells us of secrets, without telling the GM what the secrets are, the mugshots are miserable, and the stats makes no kind of sense. Remember the rule that monks always have 2 glory? Here we have Koichi, Acolyte of the Void (What the f*** is an Acolyte of the Void?) with a glory of 1.3. 1.3, how did one arrive at that precise figure? It looks so deliberate. But it isn’t, isn’t it? Here we have Togashi Jodome, he is a retried Ise zumi, now a monk (against the retirement rules), glory 2.1, Acolyte of the Air (which is…What?), his insight is 164, yet his rank is somehow 3. Here’s Tetsuya, awesome dude, void 6, many Kiho. No school rank. Guess his parents set him to work at the farm, instead of sending him to school…By the way, I wonder what schools these guys belong to…and so on, and so forth… These monks were clearly written by people who do not know the rules, making them nearly useless. Any GM who tries to use these characters will find himself in trouble if a single dieroll has to be made… And now…Sample monk characters! Argh. Actually these 5 beginning monks are quite good. They give you ready to use characters, and if you do not use them, they still give you 5 original ways to play a monk. Nice pictures too. Appendixes: An nice (well, pretty gory) episode with a temple and an crab shugenja on the run from a Oni.. A far to short bit about playing a monk in Rokugan (mostly about being at court). Descriptions of some major temples. Description of two monk L5R ccg monk decks. What is the point of this? I read through it anyway and found that those hopeless characters in Who’s Who are actually trading cards. This tells us that not even AEG can figure out how to convert trading card characters to roleplaying characters. What’s missing: A GM guide on how to have monks as player characters, neither in mixed groups, or in pure monk campaigns. A player guide on the possibilities playing a monk can hold. A section on special monk hand to hand fighting rules would have been nice. As I already mentioned, a minimum of info on the Fortunes would make fortune orientated monks possible. All in all: Half this book is useful to players who want to play monks, GM’s who want to make cool NPC monks, and anybody interested in Shintao, the deep part of Rokugan religious life. The other half is worthless filler.