Twenty Questions and Answers for Hageshi

Part I: Core Identity (Clan and Family)
1. What clan does your character belong to?
MANTIS
Ring Increase: +1 Water
Skill Increase: +1 Seafaring
Status: 25

2. What family does your character belong to?
The Families of the Fleet
Ring Increase: +1 Fire
Skill Increases: +1 Commerce, +1 Survival
Glory: 36

Part II: Role and School
3. What is your character’s role and school?
Storm Fleet Sailor School [Bushi]
Ring Increases: +1 Fire, +1 Water
Skill Increases: +1 Martial Arts (Melee), +1 Martial Arts (Ranged), +1 Fitness, +1 Seafaring, +1 Games
Techniques Available: Kata, Rituals, Shuji
Starting Techniques: Kata: Pelting Hail Style, Shuji: Stirring the Embers
Honor: 35
School Ability: Sailor's Fortune. Once per round, when making a Trade check and not Compromised, receive Strife up to School Rank to reroll that many dice.
Starting Outfit: Sailor's garb, wakizashi, knife, butterfly sword, sai , Yumi (bow), quiver of arrows, traveling pack, rope (20 feet), gambling set (cards), fishing rod and line.

4. How does your character stand out within their school?
Thoroughness, Patience, Calm
Ring Increase: +1 Earth

Part III: Honor and Glory
5. What is your character’s duty to their lord?
GIRI: Securing supplies and wealth for the Clan.

6. What does your character long for?
NINJO: Find out about his true parentage.

7. What is your character’s opinion of their clan?
While he agrees to the ambition of the Clan to be a Great Clan, he is divergent about Piracy being a focal point of the master plan.
Bonus skill: Courtesy

8. What does your character think of Bushido?
Sometimes impractical.
Bonus skill: +1 Commerce

Part IV: Strengths and Weaknesses
9 What is your character’s greatest accomplishment so far?
He is the reigning arm-wrestling champion of the docks in the city.
Distinction advantage: Bishamon's Blessing (Water).

10. What holds your character back the most in life?
As a gaijin baby on Mantis lands, most Rokugani still look down on him even after living with them for 2 decades.
Adversity disadvantage: Gaijin Appearance (Fire)

11. What activity makes your character feel at peace?
Nothing calms his soul better than a smooth boat ride down the bay or river.
Passion Advantage: Travel (Water)

12. What concern, fear, or foible troubles your character the most?
Having seen that money seemed to smooth his relationships with others better than any other thing, he has developed a desire to hoard currency and valuables.
Anxiety disadvantage: Materialism (Void)

13 Who has your character learned the most from during their life?
A kind uncle/mentor, a ship captain, taught him to always be prepared for any scenario because the high seas are a cruel and fickle mistress.
Mentor Advantage: Quick Reflexes (Fire)

14. What detail do others find most striking about your character?
Blond hair, sharp nose, chiseled face (and abs!).  He is big, muscular, and strong, and obviously a gaijin.  He wears a strange compass around his neck.

15. How does your character react to stressful situations?
When losing composure, Knotting cloth/rope, smashing things like punching a wall or crushing wood.

16. What are your character’s preexisting relationships with other clans, families, organizations, and traditions?
He is somewhat tolerated (but not much) in Mantis lands.  As a kobune merchant plying the coastal waters of the Crane and Clab clans, he has some contacts in the ports of call where he has docked and traded.  He has also periodically undertaken rescue and salvage missions for other clans for a nominal fee.  On one such occasion, he rescued a Kuni shugenja and his entourage from their floundering ship, ferried them to their destination, and waited to transport them out after their mission.  As a reward for his fidelity, he was given a finger of jade by the Kuni shugenja which he wears right to this day, both as a ward and as a good luck charm.

Part VI: Ancestry and Family
17. How would your character’s parents describe them?
He has a proper and reverent relationship with his adoptive mother and adoptive family.  Growing up as a gaijin was very hard because of the stigma and prejudice, but through the caring ways of his adoptive mother and uncles, he has learned to reduce his temper and not be prone to respond to insults.
Skill Increase: +1 Meditation

18. Who was your character named to honor?
An ancestor who captained a ship that single-handedly repelled a pirate raid on the city.  As a result, the Mantis swore that every succeeding generation of his family will be requisitioned a boat for use.
Samurai Heritage result: 1-Famous Deed (+3 Glory), 10-Boat (Mundane, Durable): the Karasubofu Maru

19. What is your character’s personal name?
Devlin.  This is the name in the name tag that was wrapped around him when he was fished out of the water by his adoptive mother, a Mantis clan samurai and kobune captain of some repute.

Part VII: Death
20. How should your character die?
Epic saving the world from some catastrophic event.

Hageshi is a 20 year old Mantis Clan Samurai sailor.  He commands a small kobune ship named Karasubofu Maru, more commonly known as the Ravenstorm.  He plys the trade routes between the Islands of Silk and Spice and the Crab port, but sometimes ranges farther into Crane waters.  He specializes in trade and transport, ferrying goods and people from one port to another for a  nominal fee.

He is of gaijin origin, but grew up in the Mantis isles when as baby, he was picked up at sea by a Mantis woman kobune captain.  While somewhat tolerated in his clan, he longs to discover his true parentage, and wonders about his true purpose for being in Rokugan.



MAIN STATS:




DERIVED ATTRIBUTES:

• ENDURANCE (Earth+Fire) x 2 = 10
• COMPOSURE (Earth+Water) x 2 = 10
• FOCUS (Air+Fire) = 4
• VIGILANCE (Air+Water) / 2 = 2

SKILLS:

• Fitness [Martial] +1
• Martial Arts (Melee) [Martial] +1
• Martial Arts (Ranged) [Martial] +1
• Meditation [Martial] +1
• Courtesy [Social] +1
• Games [Social] +1
• Commerce [Trade] +2
• Seafaring [Trade] +2
• Survival [Trade] +1

Preview Non-Player Characters in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying


From the lowliest peasant to the Emperor himself, non-player characters (NPCs) are the lifeblood of your adventures in Rokugan. These characters are everyone in Rokugan who is not one of your heroes—and though they may enter the story as enemy or ally, friendly rival or reluctant compatriot, NPCs are a Game Master’s most important tool in bringing the rich world of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying to life.

Join us today as we take a closer look at the denizens of Rokugan, as featured in the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Core Rulebook!



Who’s Who in Rokugan

Generally speaking, NPCs are divided into two classifications. Minions are simply the tools of drama—they exist to do a thing. They are the guard who must be fooled, the farmer who sweats in the fields, and the bandit who meets razor-sharp justice to increase a samurai’s glory. Adversaries, however, fulfill the recognizable supporting roles in your drama. They have motivations and methods, and they can be hindered or aided by the actions of the characters. Some may be purely antagonistic, the foulest of the foul, but most enemies will simply be those whose ambitions run contrary to the goals of the players. Some adversaries may even not be adversarial at all, instead representing opportunities for knowledge, resources, or favor.

Every NPC has an array of stats, just like the player characters, but they also have a unique characteristic: their Conflict Rank. This rank is a rough measure how dangerous this NPC can be in combat or intrigue situations.






For example, a Seasoned Courtier has a combat value of one, yet an intrigue value of five. This NPC could be defeated in armed conflict by even a young bushi, yet he would provide an appropriate social challenge for a group of characters to convince that the urgent business they bring to the castle is, in fact, as urgent as they say.



Conversely, the Loyal Bushi can represent a young samurai roughly on par (or a bit more advanced) than an individual player character, having a combat value of four and an intrigue of two. Though not completely at the mercy of a silver-tongued courtier, a skilled negotiator will certainly have a strong advantage. In a skirmish, however, the Loyal Bushi could be a threat to be taken seriously or a potential ally to help the players battle injustice.

Ultimately, though, the Conflict Rank is merely a guide, and Game Masters should take into account the players’ resources, skills, and tactics that can make opposition more or less difficult. And of course, the devil is in the details—journeying into the Shadowlands poses much different threats than attempting to uncover a conspiracy at the Emperor’s Winter Court. In fact, even within the Shadowlands, there’s no end to variation between the enemies that you may encounter.



Servants of Jigoku

Born in darkness and hatred, the spawn of the Shadowlands poses an eternal threat to Rokugan. But for the Kaiu Wall and generations upon generations of spilled samurai blood, the realm would surely be overrun. The cunning and power of these incredible monstrosities cannot be overstated, and their danger cannot be ignored.

You may find yourself set upon by one of the lowliest threats of the Shadowlands: the diminutive Goblin. Alone, a Goblin poses not much more threat than a farmer armed with a sharp field implement. In their typical swarms, however, these ravening miscreants can overwhelm a samurai without warning. Though their spears and bows are small, the swarm brings them to bear viciously. In fact, whenever a Goblin attacks with the assistance of other Goblins, they may spend opportunity from the attack roll to deal additional damage to nearby targets—bringing an avalanche of bloodthirsty frenzy to bear against the players.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Sinister Oni. These hulking demons spill forth from Jigoku to ravage and destroy with their teeth, claws, and horns. Truly fearsome in battle, the Sinister Oni boasts a combat rating of twelve, which means it would make short, bone-grinding work of novice samurai, and even a group of senior warriors would wish to bring the aid of their allies and a fair amount of jade. To stand against this Oni is to test your resolve against destruction itself. A Sinister Oni’s unholy flesh provides protection from most weapons and spells, meaning that its formidable endurance is especially difficult to chip away. The terror of this beast truly shines in its special abilities, though. The Oni may unleash a horrific roar with Dread Bellow, forcing all creatures in the vicinity to pass a Meditation check or become afflicted and forced away from the Oni!

And there are far more eerie and equally dangerous creatures lurking in the darkness of the Shadowlands…


Way of the Warrior

Whether you’re facing down a pack of Goblins or engaging in a battle of wits at court, the story of your adventures in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying is the story of Bushidō. Every plot point, every story arc, every struggling peasant, every haughty noble, every Jigoku horror; all are the ink in which your path of Bushidō is written.

Your legend begins soon, samurai. Serve your Emperor. Bring honor to your family and clan.

Preview Techniques and Equipment in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying


Years of training and dedication gift samurai with preternatural talents. These abilities can influence many aspects of a samurai’s life, and they exemplify the focused study, connection with the kami, and elite martial training that sets the samurai apart from mere peasants and merchants.

In Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying, a roleplaying game of honor and steel, you and your friends become samurai of Rokugan, who must overcome the challenges that face you with exemplary skill and training. Fortunately, your techniques set you apart, even among other samurai, whether you're a bushi, a courtier, a shugenja, or a monk. Join us today as we explore the various techniques that your character can use to excel in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying!




Perfect Assault
Every type of character has access to different techniques, and kata are the techniques of bushi and others skilled in the use of weapons. Subtle strikes, intimidating volleys of arrow fire, and blows of bone-crushing might are the purview of kata.

For example, Striking as Air is a kata that allows the samurai to strategically assail their opponent over multiple turns by reserving dice from a current roll and applying them to a later roll! With this ability, you may see that you've rolled one or two good results, but your entire roll is not sufficient to strike the target. Using Striking as Air, you can reserve those valuable dice for a better strike in the next round! Even a missed attack by a trained samurai can set up a deadly follow-up strike.



As another example, the ranged kata known as Pelting Hail Style can turn a simple bow and arrow into psychological warfare. Whenever the character makes a ranged attack, they may inflict strife on multiple opponents in close proximity, weakening their resolve and potentially causing them to flee or make a foolish and unbalanced attack. An uncentered enemy is easily toppled.



Commune with Kami
The spirits of the world do not always lend their power freely. They must be implored, coaxed, sometimes bribed. As a living being with power, they choose whether or not to come to the aid of even the mightiest samurai. Invocations are techniques that shugenja learn in order to bring the power of the kami to bear, often manifesting in brilliant displays of elemental magic.

Call Upon the Wind is an Air invocation that requires a Theology (Air) check. If successful, your shugenja spends the rest of the scene enveloped in lofting winds, making them capable of vertical movement and gliding freely over any difficult terrain. By spending additional opportunity results, you may even carry along willing allies into the air!



On the other hand, the Earth invocation Bind the Shadow confines an otherworldly being in a crackling prison of jade light. By spending opportunity on the invocation check, your shugenja may make it even more difficult for the tainted creature to escape its bonds, potentially locking the monster away for as long as a century!



Breadth of Knowledge
The world of Rokugan contains numerous disciplines, and while kata and invocations may seem like the most eye-catching, the duties expected of every samurai have supporting techniques.

Monks have access to kihō: the art of aligning one’s spiritual energy—or ki—with the energy of the entire universe. These techniques have been perfected by monks over the centuries, and offer a two-fold benefit; one when the technique is activated and an ongoing enhancement that may last for some time. Rituals blend the mundane and the arcane to give characters extra benefits when engaging in downtime during or between adventures. The techniques of shuji harness the art of communication in the way kata uses physical might: enhancing attack, defense, and control. Mahō techniques are largely forbidden, as they are empowered by calling upon the corrupted kami of the Shadowlands. Finally, ninjutsu is a collection of techniques taught to shinobi to turn even shadows and whispers deadly.



Armed for Battle
Techniques aren't the only tools that your samurai can bring to bear in your adventures. After all, every samurai but the most austere monk will travel with recognizable equipment, including weapons and armor that clearly mark their station. The Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook includes a full collection of gear, ranging from bows and throwing stars to the most resilient Crab Clan armor. Still, none of these weapons and tools is more iconic than the katana.

The meter-long curved blade of the katana is iconic for samurai across Rokugan. It is borne by generals and soldiers, scholars and scouts. Training with this weapon can be found nearly everywhere that strength of arms is required. Its damage and deadliness ratings, both essential for dispatching foes in different situations, are as high as any other sword that can be wielded in one hand. However, the control of the blade afforded by a two-hand grip raises its deadliness rating higher than any other weapon available to characters. Whether in a duel or a skirmish, an expert with the blade could eliminate enemies nearly instantly with quick, precise cuts.



The katana also possesses two additional qualities, Ceremonial and Razor-edged. Any item with the Ceremonial quality affords its bearer a bonus to convincing others of their identity and station. The Razor-edged quality, though, is both a risk and a benefit. On successful attacks, the owner may spend opportunity results to increase the deadliness of the weapon for a surer strike—but a successful hit that is reduced to zero damage (such as through armor or parrying) causes the weapon to become damaged!

A Samurai’s Tools
Adventures in Rokugan are dangerous, mystical, and noble. Some samurai rely on their strength and weaponry, others on their connection to the kami, and others still on their wits and intelligence. None of these alone will keep even the most ardent servants of clan and Empire safe eternally; only through cooperation, trust, and combined will can your samurai succeed in their adventures!

Strife is one of the most unique mechanics in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying. Representing your character’s inner turmoil, strife accumulates throughout a game and can lead your character to an outburst ill-fitting for a samurai. Strife reinforces the core ideas behind Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying—interpersonal conflict, the push and pull between duty and desire, and more.

Today, designer Max Brooke dives into the creation of strife as a mechanic, and its uses in a campaign!

Max Brooke on Strife in Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying
Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying has always rooted itself on a particular set of story ideas. The code that the samurai of Rokugan live by is demanding in the extreme. It tells a samurai to put the will of their sworn lord above what they personally desire, and even what they believe to be morally right.

On top of that, the iconic characters of the story have always been vulnerable in interesting ways. They are frequently uncertain—for all his experience at war and logistics, Akodo Toturi struggles with the pressures of rule at the Imperial court and the incredible responsibilities the Emperor puts on him. For all her brilliance and drive, even Doji Hotaru cannot foresee every outcome of her choices, so even she experiences doubts about the best path for her clan and the Empire. And the player characters are meant to follow in the mold of these figures—and protagonists of samurai genre stories within Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying and beyond. While the external struggles these characters face create the flow of the story, their inner struggles make them dynamic and engaging. Their vulnerabilities make them relatable, and their emotions act as the catalyst to fuel their development as people.



Emotions in Play
As the team sat down to design Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying, one major goal was to give the players tools that would help them grapple with the inner struggles of their characters as well as their external circumstances. We knew from talking to longtime players that many people saw subtle interactions, interpersonal drama, and the hopes and fears of individuals as crucial parts of roleplaying in Rokugan. After a significant series of discussions, we decided that this warranted a mechanic: something concrete, to provide a foundation for emotionally driven storytelling in the way that combat rules provide support for action-driven storytelling.

Strife grew out of this concept, and the idea naturally fit with another idea integral to Rokugan: choice and consequence. By placing strife icons on the dice, we sought to create a dynamic in which Roll and Keep had new weight. Instead of choosing the highest valued dice (or, occasionally, the lowest), strife allows the game system emphasize choice and consequences directly in its core interaction. A question a player must ask of their character is often “How much does my character want to succeed now?” rather than “Did they succeed?”

If the action is less important to the character, their player might consider letting them succeed less dramatically or even fail in order to avoid strife. By contrast, if the character is ardent in seeking something, they will naturally be more invested in the outcome—and more likely to accept the strife that comes with pursuing success at any cost. This engages the player to think about their character’s desires in all of their activities.



Strife in Development
Strife changed quite a bit during the early days of design, evolving from a stress-like concept to a broader, more multifaceted experience. It came to represent not just emotions like frustration or fear, but also joy, mirth, and a myriad other feelings. Just as fatigue helps you envision physical exhaustion that you are (hopefully) not experiencing personally, strife is a meter of the emotions your character is feeling that you might not always share.

Additionally, the consequences of strife evolved. While early versions called for outbursts when a character’s strife exceeded their composure, this was revised based on Beta feedback to a system for unmasking. Instead of happening to the character involuntarily, unmasking is always an intentional act, under the player’s control. This proved a much better fit with the system overall, and its focus on player choice in the way that characters’ stories develop.



How to Get the Most out of Your Strife
So, what are the benefits of a mechanic to help track your character’s emotions? People feel emotions at the gaming table already, after all. The answer lies in the fact that your emotions won’t always line up with your character’s feelings—but that disconnect doesn’t mean that understanding your character’s feelings is unimportant to roleplaying! Reflecting on how their emotions differ from yours is actually very important to roleplaying a particular character.

To think about it another way, consider why games distinguish between in-character knowledge and out-of-character knowledge. Creating a layer of separation between your character’s knowledge of the world and your own can help you better understand them as a person. Your character doesn’t know what you do about your individual studies or job—and by contrast, you probably don’t know nearly as much as your character about the specifics of Rokugani culture or the finer points of swinging a sword. When you look at your character's skill list, you see that they have strengths and limitations that are different from your own. This helps you imagine what it would be like to be that person, and how they would go about solving problems.



In the same way, creating a layer of separation between your character's emotions and your own with strife can help give insight into their existence. Choosing dice with strife can indicate that your character cares about something, and high levels of accumulated strife show that your character is reaching their emotional limit. Beyond that, it is often players, and not just the Game Master, who cast their characters’ fictional lives into ruin and disarray with disastrous choices or twists of fate. And this can be dramatic and fun (for you), but might well cause strife for the character. This helps you engage with the idea that your emotional state (excitement at a twist in the story) is very different from your character’s reaction (anger, surprise, or fear) to the events that you orchestrated. And, of course, this can be true for their positive emotions, as well—your character might be elated that they are near to completing their long-awaited vengeance, but you might understand that they will find no peace in bloodshed and feel a sense of sadness for them.

It also provides a mechanic by which to play out characters’ emotional reactions, which likely differ from your own. Part of the joy of roleplaying is considering unusual situations that vary from your daily life, and that can include roleplaying emotional experiences archetypical to the samurai drama, and emotions play a large part in that.



Other People’s Strife
Interpersonal conflicts aren’t only about one person’s emotions, and the way characters behave toward one another because of conflicting emotions is integral to many stories. Much as fatigue gives players a common parlance to discuss battlefield exhaustion and physical vulnerability, strife reflects emotional vulnerability. Learning how much strife a non-player character has accrued tells a player about their emotional state, and using abilities that inflict strife or remove it can affect that state.



In a game where intrigue scenes are so integral that they are listed first among types of conflict, we felt that it was important for characters to affect one another emotionally in tangible ways. The supporting words of a friend can bring someone back from being emotionally compromised, while a cutting insult can drive an enemy to attack at an inopportune time. Stoicism is an important part of samurai films, but so is emotional expression. These sorts of stories often turn on moments when a stoic character allows themselves to express some emotion—or when a smug enemy cracks and exposes their fatal flaw. Control over one’s emotions is founded on the idea that everyone has emotions, and these are the storm often brewing behind the calm façade.

Strife as a Resource
Ultimately, strife is a tool, and like most resources in roleplaying games, it helps the game system and the Game Master communicate more information about the world to the players. Strife conveys information that many games leave purely to roleplaying, because that information is especially important in the particular themes and motifs of Legend of the Five Rings. And even in Legend of the Five Rings, roleplaying still has a very important part to play in the emotional arcs of characters—strife is meant to enable this type of roleplaying and support it, not replace it, just as having a detailed combat system does not replace players narrating their actions.

Max Brooke is a designer for Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying and a developer for roleplaying and miniatures games including Star Wars Roleplaying, and X-Wing™. His quest for new stories has taken him through medieval literature, giant robot anime, and countless games. It continues to this day.

Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying invites you to play a firsthand role in the samurai drama of Rokugan, becoming a member of one of the Great Clans and serving your masters as best you can!

Last week, we expanded on the role of the elemental approaches and began the journey of character creation, looking at how you can use the Game of Twenty Questions to discover and establish the attributes of samurai in the Emerald Empire. Today, we'll progress through some more of these questions to see how impactful they are on your character’s abilities, personality, and the stories that you tell.



Schools of Thought
While the first two questions, those of Clan and Family, establish a character’s past, the next set of questions confirms their present. What is your character’s school, and what roles does that school fall into?

Here we move from “where they’re from” into “what they do,” which is the true meat of a character’s place in any roleplaying game.

A character’s role is a less formal descriptor than their school, and it can be thought of as a way to illuminate what a particular school prepares your character to do. Bushi meet enemies with steel, arrow, and fist. Shugenja provide religious counsel and commune with the kami to create spectacular magic. Monks contemplate a simple and introspective life, but their perfection of the spiritual, mental, and physical makes them quite formidable in matters of self-defense. Courtiers provide their lords and comrades with a deft voice and are masters of social encounters. Artisans are scholars, builders, and advisors whose value may be subtle but proves invaluable. And finally, secretive shinobi serve in secret as spies, saboteurs, and assassins.

These roles come into play more descriptively than prescriptively; a school prepares you to fill one or more of these roles, though different schools will do this in different ways.



For example, those of the Crane Clan who have studied at the Doji Diplomat School number among the most adept Courtiers in the realm. Their knowledge in social customs is surpassed only by their ability to maneuver inside these customs for the greatest and most impressive social interactions.

When this school is selected for a character, it increases your Air and Water Rings, as the students of this school are trained to be more cunning and perceptive. Then, the character gains one rank in five of the following skills: Aesthetics, Composition, Courtesy, Culture, Design, Government, or Martial Arts [Ranged]. Doji Diplomats also receive two shuji, or social techniques, including Lady Doji’s Decree, a very potent ability that keeps the Courtier safe from those who would do them harm. (We'll take a closer look at techniques in a later preview!)

Each school also includes an exclusive ability that enhances their ability to perform their primary duty, and for the Doji Diplomat School this ability is called Speaking In Silence. Once per scene, the courtier may add opportunity results to a skill check involving persuading or influencing someone!

But the path of a courtier is not the only path available to samurai of Rokugan.



Students of the Kuni Purifier School serve the Crab Clan as a combination of bushi and shugenja. By combining strength of arms with their communion with the kami of the earth, Kuni Purifiers are trained to battle the Tainted and impure abominations that invade Rokugan from the Shadowlands. By claiming this school, the character buffs their Earth and Fire Rings and chooses to increase three skills from Martial Arts [Melee], Medicine, Sentiment, Skulduggery, Survival, and Theology. If your character belongs to this school, you also begin play with five techniques, a mix of kata, invocations, and rituals.

The Kuni Purifiers’ unique School Ability is entitled Gaze Into Shadow, which lets them change the face of a kept dice showing the strife symbol if they are fighting or interacting with a being they know to be Tainted. The cursed monsters of the Shadowlands are their sworn enemies, and such conflict does not destabilize a Kuni Purifier's emotions; instead, such passion fuels their power.

In all, over 30 schools are described in the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Core Rulebook, with each clan gaining a full range of schools, each themed around that clan’s own interpretation of Bushido.

Ups and Downs
Proceeding down the list of questions, we'll find a section dealing with a character’s advantages and disadvantages. What is your character’s greatest accomplishment? What holds your character back the most in life?



These features for your character are each tied specifically to different Ring Values. Rather than relating to your character’s clan, they have more to do with your samurai as an individual—they are your character's distinctions and passions, adversities and anxieties.

Distinctions are advantages that tie directly into how the rest of the world sees your character, and how your character sees the world. For instance, Indomitable Will is an Earth advantage that espouses your samurai’s stalwart soul in the face of danger. When making an Earth check that represents your samurai performing a feat of internal resolve, such as Meditation to withstand the terrifying visage of a Shadowlands creature, you can reroll two of your dice before you choose which dice to keep.


The mechanical effects of Indomitable Will.

Passions, on the other hand, are interests—places where your character can find joy in the small aspects of life. A passion for Sake couples with the Water ring, and results in the character removing strife after making a check to serve sake or other alcoholic beverages according to custom or to brew your own.

Passing over to disadvantages, adversities tend to be a circumstance or background that causes recurring issues for the character. For instance, Momoku is an inability to fully sense the spiritual world that surrounds and suffuses everything. When a character with Momoku makes a Void check to touch or interpret the spirits, such as a Theology check to request the aid of kami, any die showing a success or explosive success must be rerolled before any dice are kept. However, if you fail this check, you'll gain a Void point, which you can spend later for a variety of benefits.


The mechanical effects of Momoku.

Anxieties are negative emotions that the samurai cannot seem to push out of their minds. They arise in specific circumstances and must be dealt with by the samurai or, potentially, their allies. Cynicism, for example, is a reluctance to give credence to any new or unusual idea, no matter how promising it may look to others. Any time the character must think creatively to solve a problem, such as a Tactics check with a Fire Approach to overcome an enemy’s unusual defenses, the character receives three strife. Still, if this is the first time this has occurred in a scene, your samurai will gain one Void point to compensate.

These advantages and disadvantages are not merely meant to punish or reward mechanical abilities, and players and Game Masters are encouraged to explore the many ways that stories and scenes can develop that will challenge or illuminate these traits inside the narrative.



Rounded Out
While these questions establish the mechanical identity of your character, the rest round them out, breathing life into the samurai you will inhabit. What does your character long for, and how does this impede their duty? The push and pull between your character’s ninjō (their desire) and giri (their duty) are essential to Legend of the Five Rings storytelling, and discovering your characters inner turmoil will impact the game in ways only you can understand.

How would your character’s parents describe them? What does your character think of Bushido? Who has your character learned the most from during their life? Completing the Game of Twenty Questions will leave you with not just a character you are happy with, but gives context to that samurai’s place in the Emerald Empire.

In our next preview, we will examine the different categories of techniques and resources available, as well as the various pieces of equipment available to samurai across Rokugan.

Join us today as designer Max Brooke examines the cross-section of narrative and mechanics in  Legends of the Five Rings Roleplaying for our very first Roleplaying Designer Journal!

Max Brooke on the Dice System of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying
During our Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Beta, one question we occasionally received was “Why not use Narrative Dice System of Genesys for Legend of the Five Rings?” And it’s a valid question: the Narrative Dice System has a strong track record, and obviously works well for many different genres and game experiences, from science fiction to steampunk to the Realms of Terrinoth.

When we sat down to design Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying, this was absolutely a topic we also discussed. Designer Katrina Ostrander and I had both developed books using the Narrative Dice System, and Genesys lead developer Sam Stewart was also a major contributor to the meetings—so the NDS perspective was certainly well-represented. However, we decided fairly quickly that we wanted to develop a new dice system for Legend of the Five Rings, for several reasons.



The Long History of Roll and Keep
Roll and Keep has been a fixture of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying since its first edition. While we also quickly decided that we wanted to depart from the traditional numerical dice to streamline resolution and add richness of results, much of the appeal of Roll and Keep is not in the dice themselves, but in this unique way of using them. The idea of rolling a set of dice and then choosing a set of the results is fundamentally a very intriguing mechanic. It gives players an unusual amount of control over the outcome of their role, which helps to reinforce key themes of the setting. “Rokugan is a land of choice and consequence,” and we wanted this to continue to be an important mechanical theme in the dice system of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying.



In earlier editions of Legend of the Five Rings, this was often illustrated in examples where players might actually choose to fail to preserve their characters’ honor—though this was a rare occurrence in actual practice. Still, even if it wasn’t often exercised, the fact that a player had to actively choose to succeed (or fail) gave them a certain ownership over their character’s fate.

When a bushi looses an arrow or a courtier spreads a rumor, they choose to set something into motion, and the consequences, even of success, are something the character and the player alike have chosen. We felt that this was an element we could explore even further, and so we set out to design dice that would encourage such moments of choice more often, giving players decisions that encourage them to empathize with their characters’ choices, even in a small way.

Different Mechanics Encourage Different Storytelling
Legend of the Five Rings owes a great deal of its roots to cinema—especially the films of Akira Kurosawa and other chanbara (samurai film) creators. However, in many of these films and the stories that inspired them, the personal moments and the subtle emotions that stir beneath are as important as the action and plot twists, if not more so. A look exchanged between two characters often bears vast weight of meaning. Internal emotion, external façade, and the significance to be found in the gulf between the two can be very important.

Of course, most of this will be expressed through roleplaying, but mechanics can serve as reminders and guideposts for roleplaying. Just as earlier iterations of Roll and Keep reminded players of the weight of their choices by making choice a key part of the process, the new edition’s Roll and Keep aims to encourage players to empathize with their characters and look deeply at their inner emotions.



Strife is therefore quite different from threat in Genesys, because it reflects the internality of the character rather than the narrative circumstances around them. Every time a player chooses a die with strife, they are interacting with their character’s emotional state. Their character might appear stoic to everyone looking at them—unmasking is always the player’s choice, after all—but their player can see the swirling emotions beneath in accumulated strife, and can incorporate it into their roleplaying as they think best fits the character.

Even opportunity is more oriented around the character than in the Narrative Dice System. While opportunity can be used to “add details,” in a similar manner to advantage and triumph, it is always a matter of the character noticing (or perhaps being the first to notice) an object, piece of terrain, or feature of a person. It is also linked to the Ring the character used, and gives different effects based on use. Therefore, like strife, it is also a reminder of the character’s individual perspective. A character who often uses Fire opportunity to add details will often spot absences or come up with wild theories—but fail to notice the patch of poisonous plants that another character later identifies by spending a Water opportunity.



The Role of the Five Rings
Another motive to develop a new dice system that we discussed in our early design meetings was to make sure that the Five Rings were appropriately central to a game entitled Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying. In Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, the Five Rings have strong thematic identities, and when designing the RPG, we wanted to mirror this level of commitment to a core concept of the setting.

As a result, we decided that we wanted all five Rings to play a role in the lives of all characters. Instead of linking a character’s core statistics to physical qualities as past editions did (and as Genesys does), we wanted to explore the idea that a character’s Rings would reflect their aptitudes and tendencies in problem-solving rather than traits like Brawn, Agility, Intellect, or Willpower.



Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying diverges from both its predecessors and from Genesys—each Ring relates to skills in terms of different approaches, and all Rings are useful for all types of character. A bushi (warrior) could specialize in their Fire Ring, reflecting a reliance on swift, overpowering attacks. Or, they might double down on their Water Ring, granting them a mobile and adaptable fighting style. There are circumstantial upsides and downsides to each approach, and some approaches will get little traction when applied to a particular problem. But overall, Rings do not determine which scenes a character can participate in effectively (battle, diplomacy, art, etc) as much as the tactics at which they excel. This goal required a different design for characteristics, skills, and the core mechanic than the ones used by Genesys.

Pacing and Checks
One final reason we settled on in the first design meeting for Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying was a matter of pacing. In our early design meetings, we already knew that we wanted more results on the dice than binary success and failure, as this played well into our plans to develop and enhance Roll and Keep, often pairing the best results with results a player might sometimes choose to drop. Checks in Genesys are very information-rich, but this also necessitates that they occur less often. As a result, Genesys is quite restrictive about what calls for a check—and it is extremely rare for a character to be allowed to make more than one check in a turn.



Katrina suggested that the pacing for Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying should be faster than Genesys, but still maintain a degree of informational richness absent from binary success/failure results. This came from her many years of playing previous editions of Legend of the Five Rings, and everyone agreed that it fit with our experiences in the long-running campaign she had run for us in the prior year. Compared with many RPG settings, it is much more common for PCs to undertake short activities solo—from duels, to minor intrigue scenes, to constant clandestine snooping on other PCs by the Scorpion character. However, with results as deep as the ones produced by the Narrative Dice System, it would be harder for GMs to allocate more than a single check for these sorts of micro-encounters. Sam Stewart suggested that a result (eventually strife) could result in resource depletion rather than more narrative results.

By having a lower GM load on each individual check, Legend of the Five Rings accommodates more rapid checks than Genesys, allowing for more back-and-forth in the sorts of micro-encounters that occur naturally based on the conceits of the setting.



The Right Tool for the Job
Each time a team sets out to design a new roleplaying game, they consider their options carefully. Even in games defined mostly by player imagination and shared fun, it is important to consider how a system runs, what behaviors it encourages, and how best these align with the sort of story it is trying to emulate. A system can be a very valuable guide for even experienced GMs and players. The Narrative Dice System and Roll and Keep are both systems that we’re very excited to continue to develop in years to come!