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Welcome to Adobe GoLive 5
One of the ways that I like to judge a role-playing product is to figure out whether or not it could be set on fire, then thrust at me with an iron poker while somebody screams "ARE YOU READY FOR PRODUCT X, DARREN MACLENNAN!"
You know, like the ads on TV for sports shows. They seem exciting enough.
The Secrets of the Clans series, so far, seems to be rather resistant to the setting on fire and thrusting; and this is disappointing, especially considering how interesting a lot of L5R's material is. The Clan series, which detailed the clans at their most basic level, were mixtures of folklore, oral storytelling, character writeups, myths - you name it, it was in there. They weren't all top-notch, but they're great just to sit down and read for a few minutes when you're on your lunch break.
The Secrets series, by contrast, is much more information heavy, and the information primarily centers around pure information, uncluttered by the myths, folklore, personal stories and so forth in the original book. Sure, it's nice to have the information laid down in dry, uncluttered format - but it drains the fun out of the setting. I miss the fun of the setting, the stuff that wasn't important to the players, but lent oodles of flavor to the book. The Secrets series is, tragically, kinda boring.
After a brief, dry history of the Lion, ranging from their founding and ending around the time of the current storyline, we get a brief overview of personal standards and back banners - including rules for toting them around in combat - and then launch into the lands of each of the Lion. Each location gets a four or five paragraph writeup, and then spattered throughout are adventures hooks - in the familiar challenge, focus, strike format - and famous characters from the current L5R metaplot. Every location has something interesting attached to it, like bandits hanging out in the local forest, or a smith whose swords have been tainted by the ghost of a lost love, with some famous characters from that clan statted throughout. While there is a hook for each location listed, I just found myself drifting off while reading through them; and the character writeups tend to be bland and informative, with no in-game fiction to liven their descriptions up, or illustrations to mark them in the mind.
There's also details on the vassal families of the Lion, so that Lion players who don't want to take one of the major three families as their patron can pick one of the subdivisions instead. I'm not sure if I see their point - why bother subdividing clans any further than they already are? - but I imagine that those who are looking for more detail for their Lion players will profit.
One thing that I'm absolutely delighted at is that one of the more troublesome aspects of the Lion clan has been retconned out of existence. In the original Lion clanbook, the Matsu family gempekku - passage into adulthood - was marked, apparently, by the ritual suicide of any candidate who happened to fail to take two hundred strokes from a bamboo cane without flinching, or without being able to quarter a pomengranate before it hit the ground. The original idea was something along the lines of the crazy tests that you'd have to go through in order to join, say, the Ultimate Leet Assassins Guild - if you couldn't pass the test, then you died by your own hand. The problem with this is that (1) you're born as a Matsu; you don't choose to join them, and (2) it presented the spectacle of a bunch of twelve to sixteen year old kids committing suicide for failing a test that I'd be hard-pressed to send a Marine through.
Not so in Secrets of the Lion. In this book, that particular idea has been retconned out as a wild story told by those trying to slander the Lion name - and thank Christ for that.
Another problem of the book is that L5R's original strength, the Clan War storyline - and the years leading up to it - is gone, replaced instead with a storyline involving the heirs of Toturi I, the Four Winds, a storyline which is still very much in progress. (For example, Otosan Uchi - the Emperor's home town, the heart of Rokugan - has been razed nearly to the ground.)
The problem with this is that because of the ongoing storyline, it's nearly impossible for the average GM to plot a story without clashing with the metaplot in a damned quick hurry - if I'm running a courtly campaign that entirely centers on Otosan Uchi, it's going to be a courtly campaign that's suddenly swarming with Shadowlands creatures after Daigotsu finishes up. ("My honored lord, YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAARGH!, I would AIIIIIIEEEE! respectfully request that you DEAR SWEET FORTUNES KILL ME NOW! post more guards at the door so NO! NO! NO! DON'T STAB ME THERE! no more goblins can sneak in and make my duties more difficult by torturing me when I'm trying to talk WHY CAN'T I DIE?" Even the most innocent campaign can be screwed up by a sudden shift in the metaplot. Trying to follow along with the metaplot is going to be extraordinarily difficult; but the role-playing books seem to assume that it'll be your main focus of interest.
The original game solved the problem by setting the game two years before the Clan War - an event that had already reached its conclusion - and letting the GM handle it from there. You could easily foreshadow the events of the Clan War without making the players feel like they're slaved to a metaplot. I wish that they'd gone ahead with the same plan for the L5R game, or simply published a single book - much like Time of the Void - which summed up the entire plot, from beginning to end.
The Secrets books also claim to lay bare the individual secrets of each clan - the stuff that you always suspected, but never really found out about. Unfortunately, the secrets laid bare in Secrets of the Lion are secrets that dedicated players of the RPG already knew about; the Shimizu vassal family's disgrace was already detailed in either Bearers of Jade (which any L5R player must own) or Way of the Shadowlands, and the cult that sprang up after its demise doesn't do much more than add yet another sinister cult to the four or five already bouncing around Rokugan. There's an interesting facet of the Lion history dealing with the Legacy of the Forge, and the Realm of Slaughter, but since the Tsuno appear to be using it for a particular purpose, it's again part of the metaplot, and therefore liable to go crosseyed as soon as the next card expansion comes out. I like the fact that they've statted the Onisu of Hatred, the Nightmare of the Lion, though - that's good material, exactly the kind of thing that I want to have.
Is this a good book to own?
Mmm. I don't know. I'll be honest: I'm pretty disappointed with the book. Stripping away all of the fun from the books may increase the content, but it also removes the reason for me to buy the books in the first place. Sure, it's much denser, and it's more informative, but reading it is almost like studying a textbook. I would say that you could pick it up if you really like the Lion, but otherwise, players could better spend their money on Fortunes and Winds, or Bearers of Jade.
-Darren MacLennan
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