D&D 5E Adventures in Rokugan Arrives August 5th

Adventures in Rokugan is Edge Studios' official 5E version of Legend of the Five Rings, announced last year. Legend of the Five Rings is an East Asian inspired setting which goes all the way back to the 1990s, and was purchased by Fantasy Flight Games in 2018, before being moved over to FFG's sister company, Edge Studios in 2020 (which has taken over all the TTRPG operations from FFG, including Star Wars).

The 5E version includes new classes -- Shinobi, Pilgrim, Courtier, Ritualist, Bushi, Duelist, Acolyte -- and various new shapeshifting animal species.

It's coming out on August 5th and will cost $49.99.

Adventures in Rokugan brings the famous setting of Legend of the Five Rings to the ever-popular ruleset of the 5th Edition SRD. Players can explore this rich setting in a whole new light, and the familiar rules promise to engage an entirely new audience of roleplaying fans. Alongside a new focus on roleplaying activities such as dungeon delving and monster hunting, Adventures in Rokugan promises to provide something for all fans of Rokugan.

 

[overgeeked]

This the catch-22 of 5E adaptations. Change the rules too much and you lose the 5E audience. Change the rules too little and you offer nothing unique to draw in the 5E audience.

 

[TwoSix]

In my opinion: Making your own classes that follow the 5e class to subclass model is firmly within the "mapping the setting into the 5e mechanics" safe playbook. (And you can spot a lot of the re-skinned class and subclass abilities from 5e that were just moved around to different classes/subclasses.)

We disagree.

To my mind, taking the time to make your own custom classes, and redo portions of the magic system, is more than enough to differentiate yourself in this market. There's no need, and honestly a lot of downside, in redoing the system math.

It's the conversions that use the all the bog-standard 5e classes when the cosmology of the setting is begging for different magic classes that strike me as being overly conservative. (And I'd ding WotC for the same in how they've approached the MtG settings.)

 

[Jaeger]

Changing AC to something radically different means losing a fundamental cwhen trying to make a 5E conversation. Otherwise, why make a new game? You're basically making Symbaroum 2E instead of Symbaroum 5E-mode.

No. AC would stay the same. I did not specify any changes to AC.

You absolutely keep the six ability scores, AC, HP, Saves, and there is still tons of design space to work with.

This the catch-22 of 5E adaptations. Change the rules too much and you lose the 5E audience. Change the rules too little and you offer nothing unique to draw in the 5E audience.

That is the fine line that would have to be walked.

It is more risky. Which is why everyone but the Dark Souls guys err towards the 'too little' end of the scale.

They seem to be getting away with it - so I can't really fault their hustle.

To my mind, taking the time to make your own custom classes, and redo portions of the magic system, is more than enough to differentiate yourself in this market. There's no need, and honestly a lot of downside, in redoing the system math.

Sadly, the above in bold is absolutely true.

I simply feel that there is a lot of design space that will never be explored because the majority of gamers are satisfied with a straightforward setting veneer atop their game of 5e D&D.

I fully realize that I am an outlier in this regard.

Bounded accuracy doesn't make scaling the system for something like fixed HP that hard. (as an example)

The PC's have fixed HP and you simply scale the monster hp and spell damage to fall within that scale to do the effects you want.

But... Such a system conversion would require some actual playtesting to make sure everything runs smooth the way you envision it.

Which is probably why such a ground-up 5e mod will not be done.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Only 3 more days!

 

[overgeeked]

Over on the L5R discord, one of the designers responded to a question and I thought that their answer might be interesting for some people here...

I think the dueling rules really illustrate the difference between the two games. The dueling rules in L5R RPG are highly tied into Strife and the combat system that exists in that game, and focus on emotional play. The dueling rules in AiR are a light addon to the combat rules of 5e designed to make one-on-one battles quicker and more decisive, and with rising tension. I'm pretty happy with having a system that feels like duels in L5R RPG, but bolts onto the overall 5e system well.

In terms of classes, I think the Bushi is my favorite of the ones where I did the main design. I love 4e D&D, and I felt like that level of martial prowess was about perfect for AiR. It was fun to take the techniques I'd designed in L5R RPG and created versions of them that would scale to high D&D levels. While for L5R RPG I focused on keeping most martial techniques sort of "samurai movie plausible," for AiR it was neat to hit the anime/wuxia/other high-power fantasy tropes.

I love what Welden did with the main design on the classes he spearheaded, especially the Shinobi. He came up with a really clever mechanical implementation of traps and other tools for players who want a character who is prepared for anything!

 

[vecna00]

While for L5R RPG I focused on keeping most martial techniques sort of "samurai movie plausible," for AiR it was neat to hit the anime/wuxia/other high-power fantasy tropes.

I'm here for that!

 

[Weiley31]

Over on the L5R discord, one of the designers responded to a question and I thought that their answer might be interesting for some people here...

It will be quite interesting to see if the "Dueling" system in this can be cherry picked over to regular 5E games.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm here for that!

Yeah, absolutely the same.

As the book's already out someone's doing a WiR over on RPG.net.

WIR: Adventures in Rokugan, L5R-inspired D&D 5th setting | Tabletop Roleplaying Open

Well, it seems that some stores have jumped the gun and some books are already out in the wild before Gen Con, so I'll leave this here for the moment in preparation for my "Where I read" thread. As stated above, this is a D&D 5th setting, so I'm not exactly sure where I should open the thread...

forum.rpg.net

It sounds like they changed just about everything. The setting, the assumptions, the inspirations, the focus, etc. The people who make the fantasy Japan and fantasy samurai game have apparently decided to pull back on that and remove bushido, rename the kami, remove a lot of Japanese influences and shift things to a more generic Asia and add China as a big influence. That's nuts to me. But at least I saved $50. That's always good.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, absolutely the same.

As the book's already out someone's doing a WiR over on RPG.net.

WIR: Adventures in Rokugan, L5R-inspired D&D 5th setting | Tabletop Roleplaying Open

Well, it seems that some stores have jumped the gun and some books are already out in the wild before Gen Con, so I'll leave this here for the moment in preparation for my "Where I read" thread. As stated above, this is a D&D 5th setting, so I'm not exactly sure where I should open the thread...

forum.rpg.net

It sounds like they changed just about everything. The setting, the assumptions, the inspirations, the focus, etc. The people who make the fantasy Japan and fantasy samurai game have apparently decided to pull back on that and remove bushido, rename the kami, remove a lot of Japanese influences and shift things to a more generic Asia and add China as a big influence. That's nuts to me. But at least I saved $50. That's always good.

Yeah, this is a huge change that, now that I see it, I'm not surprised was downplayed. I have to believe a significant portion of L5R's existing fan base would balk at this.

I remain curious about the mechanics in this book, but nothing else in it is of use or interest to me.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, this is a huge change that, now that I see it, I'm not surprised was downplayed. I have to believe a significant portion of L5R's existing fan base would balk at this.

I remain curious about the mechanics in this book, but nothing else in it is of use or interest to me.

I really does seem like a large stack of really odd choices. L5R does one thing and does it really well by all accounts. Yet for some reason, in this book, they're pulling back from that hard and turning the Japan and samurai focused L5R into a generic fantasy Asia with some shared lore names, but a heap of the lore changed. It's nonsensical. I get chasing the 5E money and so changing the themes and tone of the game to suit that, but a whole lot of the changes seem like change for change's sake.