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"Even a goblin is beautiful at sixteen".
"Sensei? I do not understand."
"You will. You will remember and then you will understand. Now first, tell me what it is. Examine the product."

The Physical Object

The Alderic Entertainment Group (AEG) has published a solid hardback, well bound and 256 pages in length. The cover art by Matthew Wilson depicting an enraged samurai fighting goblins is quite good, although the internal black and white artwork is often superior in technique albeit less dramatic. There is a small number of gloss pages featuring the various clans, and character development summaries within these clans with full colour artwork of clan members of the two 'schools' (Bushi and Shugenja), along with a latter section detailing standard building layouts and a map of Rogukan, the default story setting.

The text is presented in a standard two-column justified serif font with large sidebars which are often under-utilised pushing the main body of the text into the centre margins in an often almost unreadable manner. Sometimes the white text on the grey/black background of the sidebars is not particularly readable as well. The short fiction pieces are, contrary to many attempts in RPGs, an excellent effort giving a good sense to the gameworld. The table of contents is quite complete, and the Index a little short.

The book is broken up into five chapters which emphasise the Rings of the game; The Book of Earth (the setting), The Book of Water (the character), The Book of Fire (the system), the Book of Air (magic) and the Book of Void (gamemaster information). A final part consists of an introductory adventure, probability charts, geography and and the like, including a character sheet. Page 146 is repeated on page 256 but with the additional sidebar information of Counterspells. Chapters are indicated by their ideographs, which does not reduce page-flipping in actual play.

"That was very ... factual of you." "Thank you sensei. I do not wish to bring shame by expressing my opinion."
"Are you seeking social acceptance rather than wanting to tell the truth?"
"No sensei. I would rather tell the truth than appear to be sincere."
"Hmm... Perhaps you should be a wandering monk."

Rokugan: The Setting

Legend of the Five Rings is a roleplaying game with a very strong East Asian flavour. The setting of Rokugan is almost fantasy Japan but is not quite; indeed, it is sufficiently close that it may as well have been. Whilst I personally probably would have preferred this (historical fantasy is far more my taste than fictional fantasy), a very good job has been done in providing an overview of the setting. Effectively two books (Earth and much of Void, first and last) are dedicated to the setting, being the first and last along with parts of the book on magic (Air, the fourth). The Earth book starts off with a somewhat uninspired creation myth, followed by the briefest summary of 1,000 years of history and an equally brief description of the Seven Great Clans (crab, crane, dragon, lion, pheonix, scorpion, unicorn) and the lay of the land.

More effort is put into describing Rogukan's culture, including the mirroring of the Celestial Order within society. Society is a feudal structure with the Emperor at the peak, followed by the Samurai (bushi, the "fighters" and shegenja the "cleric-sorcerors"), and then the Heimin, of half-people (peasants, artisans, merchants). Outside the formal structure of justice are the Hinin, or non-people. These include criminals, entertainers, the eta ("dirty jobs") and ninja, although the latter are not really supposed to exist. The role of women is well elucidated, and whilst the game states that caste not gender determines their place, the subsequent text is written with women as the object rather than subject of their condition, making the setting quite sexist, despite stated intentions. More formally, the stages of life in the samurai's life are stated quite clearly from birth and youth, coming of age, marriage, middle-age, to death and seppuku. A brief example is given to the farmer's life, and no mention at all of other social classes. Good detail is given to the game-world's economy, professions, food, clothing, and dwellings following with a lengthy description of the Bushido code of honour and etiquette and finally, just over two pages on the Emperor's court and the application of justice throughout the realm.

At the other end of the book, the setting is expressed in terms of important people in the game-world, enchanted items, the calendar, the role of ninja (who do not exist), a dozen or so pages of "monsters". This includes the appropriate ghosts, goblines, ogres, oni, the most beloved nezumi and the more questionable zombies and skeletons. Also included in this collection is the penaggolan derived from the malay archipelago. The various maps are handy and appropriate, although the map of Rogukan itself is quite difficult to read. With an enormous mountain range splitting the Empire in two, it seems almost inevitable that north and south would split. That aside, I grimaced by what seems to be the inclusion of rivers that seem to flow down from moutains, up new ranges, and then down the other side - although I note that this is not the case in the significantly clearer 2001 d20 publication for Rogukan.

The Air book spends some time describing the religious beliefs of the people of Rogukan, "The Religion of the Seven Fortunes" and in particular the belief in reincarnation, the influence of ancestors, the Shintao - the Holy Order and their opposite, Maho - The Black Magic and finally various folk magic. The direct influence of this on the actual game system, like much of the descriptive passages, is very slight.

"Very good inago-hito. Now you know where you are."
"Sensei?"
"But do you know what you are?"

Samurai: The Characters

Character generation is almost entirely covered in the second part or Book of Water although some parts of development is covered in the Book of Void. It starts with a lengthy character concept of twenty questions, which are not included on the character sheet, have no systematic effect on play and most of which could be elucidated during story development. From this inauspicious beginning, the game moves on to specifying Rings and Traits with most Rings having two Traits, specifically Earth (Stamina and Willpower), Water (Strength and Perception), Fire (Agility and Intelligence), and Air (Reflexes and Awareness - social) with the final Ring, Void which can be used to augment other actions. Traits are rated between 1 and 5, with 2 being average and the default starting value. A player has 25 Character Points, with up to 10 points of Disadvantages (thus, effectively up to 35 points) to distribute to their character with a value of 1 Trait for 8 Character Points (12 for Void), 1 Skill Level for 1 Point, 1 Honour for 3 points, 1 Glory for 5 Points. Both Glory and Honour is rated like a Trait, but with decimal places. Honour 5 is "Strength of a 1000 Ancestors", Honour 0 is "Honourless Dog" whereas Glory is used to for recognition purposes.

Approximately fifty different skills are provided, differentiated into High skills, Bugei skills, Merchant skills, and Low skills. The descriptions are fairly modest and the ordering doesn't help especially if one is unfamiliar with the notion that Athlectics (for example) is actually a "Low skill". Almost sixty advantages and disadvantages are described which is perhaps slightly too many given that only a few are likely to be taken given the limits in character generation. The in-game play for many of the disadvantages can be quite strong, and with the game's biases sometimes clearly evident - in a game where there's a maximum of 10 points of disadvantages "Bad Reputation" is worth a mere 2 points, a "Missing Limb" only 3, but "Low Pain Threshold" is valued at 5! On the other hand, kudos are to be given for character generation actually including such social, physical and personality modifiers and often keeping within the game-world's thematic orientation (for example, "True Love" is a 3 point disadvantage).

Characters must choose a clan, one of three families from each clan and either bushi or shugenja for profession. The clan's animal provides a general psychological outlook, and each profession and family invariably provides a 1 bonus to a Trait. Profession also determines available starting skills, techniques (superhuman powers for Bushi) and starting spells (Shugenja). Whilst the professions are reasonably balanced, and an option is given for Ronin characters, it must be emphasised that there is an extreme restriction on PC choices at this point; you must be a Samurai and you must be a warrior or sorceror. There is no information whatsoever for generating characters of the Heiman or Hinin backgrounds - no "local farmer's lad rises from common foot soldier to become daiymo" or "geisha is most terrifying ninja in entire land" or "wily merchant subtley controls the Empire" or anything like that. Character generation is entirely orientated towards noble-caste characters who fight and caste magic. My players found this to be a particularly annoying restriction on their imaginative capacities and I agree entirely with their assessment.

Character improvement is called 'School Rank' which in turn is based on the character's insight, calculated from their Rings times 10 plus 1 point for every skill and one for every point above 1, which is a confusing way of saying "add up your skill points", but that's the way the rules try to explain it. Experience points are given out every game session with 1 for turning up, 1 for good roleplaying and 1 for progress towards completing common goals. New School Ranks are gained every 25 points so with 2-3 points per session, a new rank should be achieved every 10 game sesssions. This provides an extra dice for spell-casting for Shugenja, and an extra Technique gains for the Bushi. In both cases these are significant break points leading to a game that has highly graduated equilibrium.

"Remember inago-hito, great power is shown by those who achieve much whilst seeming to do little"
"I have learned that lesson sensei. Far better to talk around a situation that try to add up many pips from a big handful of dice."

Skills and Combat Magic

The third book (Fire) explain the task and combat resolution methods. AEG was obviously quite proud of what they came up with for task resolution, going so far to trademark their "Roll and Keep" system. Basically, actions have difficulty target numbers with examples from 5 (mundane), 15 (average), 25 (heroic) to 35 (never been done before). To achieve these target numbers a player rolls a number of d10s equal to their Trait Skill, and "keeps" their Trait value. Any 10's can be rerolled an added to the total. Raises can be declared, essentially making the Difficulty Number higher to achieve a more spectacular result, and sometimes free raises can be given with particularly special rolls. Circumstances can also be used to modify the Difficulty Number. Contested rolls against other characters have a TN of their opponents Trait times five. Void can be used to raise a Trait by 1 for one roll. When character's work together, only one character gets to use their Trait, with other characters contributing their skill level.

On one level this is an excellent system; it provides a means to simulate the age-old problem in gaming of allowing characters with natural talent to achieve high results, albeit inconsistently, where is low ability but high skill characters are limited in their achievments but always operate at the high end of those limitations. It's a great concept, but certainly needs two further modifications. Firstly, the distinction between "roll" and "keep" needs to be altered for knowledges and relations as the maximum ability for the latter is more dependent on 'skill' rather than 'ability' in the former case, and in the latter the maximum is dependent on the alter's considerations. Secondly, the use of d10s is particularly ill-advised; the human brain is simply just not that quick at scanning the results of 7d10, picking the best 4d10, rerolling the 10s and summing the total. A basic rule of good game design is that a result should be known when the dice hit the table. Finally, a common complaint is that (despite the inclusion of a handy chart on p221), calculating a percentage change for an action is difficult - for example, is a Trait is 3 and a Skill is 3 what is the chance of achieving a target number of 25? (The answer is apparently 54%).

The combat system is familiar initiative, roll to hit, roll for damage approach. Initiative is determined individually on a d10 Reflexes trait with declaration from slowest to fastest, but resolution from fastest to slowest. Combat turns are approximately 5 seconds long, with each character allowed one action (although techniques etc may provide more). Melee actions are typically limited to Normal Attack, Full Attack or Full Defense. A standard attack is against a TN of Reflexes times five, plus a bonus for armour. In other words as per the old Armour Class system, armour doesn't reduce damage, it makes you more difficult to be hit. A Full Attack gives a character an additional two dice to roll, but not keep and reduces their defensive TN to 5. With a Full Defense approach the character drops any offensive action and whilst their defensive TN remains the same, their opponent must drop any dice lower than the Ref Def skill. One player in my game found it particularly useful to build his total defense to 9 (4 Ref 5 Def) and declare Full Defense every time he lost Initiative.

Damage is also based on a roll-and-keep method. The weapon plus the character's strength determines the number of dice rolled, and the weapon determines how many dice are kept. Again this struck us as counter-intuitive, as surely damage is ultimately dependent on the strength applied. Thus damage from a katana (a 3k2 weapon) wielded by a character with above-average strength (3) will be rolled on 6 dice, but with only only 2 of them kept. With hit points determined by Earth Ring times 2 per level, and with the average character having 6 wound levels before being classified as down and 8 before being classified as dead, it can often require four to five katana blows to put a character down. On the other hand, wounds have an constant effect with loses applied to dice rolls; a character who is almost unconscious for example will be losing four dice on each of their rolls.

Mention must also be made of the rather impressive Iajutsu duelling system which allows for assement, early surrender, and focus along with a fairly hefty blow in response, although still limited by weapon maxima. In addition there is a rather lengthy and interesting battle resolution method, which concentrates on the characters declaration of position, the achievment of Glory for the character through various heroic opportunities ("pick up the banner", "protect the general" etc), and the risk of wounds or duels.

Magic, GM Notes and Sample Adventure

As previously mentioned the magic chapter is introduced with a description of some fundamental religious beliefs of Rogukan. More directly however, spells are based on the various elements expressed as the Rings, Earth, Fire, Air and Water. In order to cast a spell, a shugenja must read the scroll in which a spell is inscribed, which includes the necessary chants and gestures. This may take a number of Actions. The spell can then be released by reaching the target number of the spell, based on a roll of Ring Rank keeping Ring. Optoins are available for slower casting (Free Raises) and faster casting (higher target number). Those spells that do damage have a rating and damage is determined by DR Rank.

Every spell also has a Mastery Level. When a character has a Mastery Level equal or greater than a spell (Ring Rank) they may, with the expenditure of 3 experience points, decide to have that spell as an Innate Ability, although it is often just as cost effective to choose a more powerful spell (one player chose Earthquake, at ML 3). A simple alternative would be to have the experience point cost equal to Mastery Level, thus encouraging the accumulation of low-powered spells as innate abilities. Often the basic spells of Sense, Commune and Summon (element) which have a Mastery Level of 1 are chosen early on as Innate Abilities. Over sixty spells are described, with 15 among Earth, 21 for Air, 13 for Fire and 12 for Water. They are provided with descriptive titles which often give little indication of what they actually do (e.g., "The Fury of Osano-Wo".

The final pages include some sensible advise for GMs, including the requisite need for player input, the GM knowing their rules and the advantage of "showing" over "telling" along with some minor notes on narrative development, including parallel plotlines. A section is dedicated to the Ninja, including a sample family and school, which is firmly placed within the GM's section full of plenty of caveats and warnings of the introduction of ninja characters as PCs into the storyline.

Finally, Andrew Heckt contributes with a starting scenario which is a magnificant introduction to the social mores, magic, game system and political maneuverings of the game world, and not without establishing enemies for future plot developments, the possibility of a jolly good test of steel and the meeting of a most exotic shapeshifter. With the addition of numerous sidebar plot tangents, I am not exaggerating by suggesting that this is probably the best section of the entire book.

"Ahh! Sensei! Now I know what a goblin is!"

Final Impressions

Apart from these first edition rules, and some supplements for L5R (not excluding a Ratling 1.5l drinking mug) I have a copy of the Player's Book for 2nd edition and have read through the third edition. From what I have seen rules changes and elaborations in latter editions are far less significant than extra effor to improve the physical presentation of the text; indeed the third edition book is quite gorgeous. The most major rules change in second edition, for example, is the improvement costs for Traits and Void which are radically reduced (from 8 to 3 and 12 to 6) along with a slight increase in starting character points (25 to 30).

Overall, however our group found the L5R rules to be a bit of goblin, which is not necessarily to condemn it, but to finally recognise what it is, warts and all. The setting is quite impressive and detailed although not entirely to our taste (we prefered the Ashikaga Wars of Succession in the setting of fantasy Japan). Some of the limitations in character generation simply struck us as bizarre and the task resolution system (either for normal skills or combat), whilst certainly being innovative simply wasn't fun - which grew as a constant problem with the game itself; add this to the sudden jumps in power with the achievement of new school ranks and the handfuls of dice as game-stoppers for addition, made us wonder how such problems were not spotted in playtesting during the two years of development which the book claims it went through.

Although marking L5R 1st edition very slightly below average (3.5) on both style and substance, I do wish to emphasise that it is a certainly still game worth reading and playing, especially if one is prepared to take the time to expand the existing character generation system to give a greater range of castes, professions, and skills, play around with the existing game system and rework it into something which gives more acceptable results and is easier to implement in actual play. Fortunately in both these cases it is well within the realms of possibility, as existing templates already provide some ideas and the core mechanic itself is reasonably simple. The fact that this was not in the game as presented however has caused it to receive lower ratings than it should have.

Style: 1 .3 (layout) .6 (art) .5 (coolness) .4 (readability) .6 (product) = 3.4

Substance: 1 .5 (content) .5 (text) .3 (fun) .3 (workmanship) .5 (system) = 3.1

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