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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

It is everything I have complained about regarding the treatment by WotC of their settings, only worse. I owned every L5R RPG product through the end of AEG's ownership of the IP (four classic editions plus WotC's 3.5 version), and played through multiple campaigns and convention games. I don't know what this is or why I should buy it.

 

[overgeeked]

It is everything I have complained about regarding the treatment by WotC of their settings, only worse. I owned every L5R RPG product through the end of AEG's ownership of the IP (four classic editions plus WotC's 3.5 version), and played through multiple campaigns and convention games. I don't know what this is or why I should buy it.

It's certainly a lot of strange choices. Adapting the setting to 5E makes sense as that's the primary purpose of the product. They want to get in on the 5E action and hopefully make some money from 5E fans...hence using 5E and writing 5E mechanics for L5R stuff. But, importantly they'd also like their regular audience to buy the book...so they rewrite almost the entirety of the lore for the setting. And L5R is known as the fantasy samurai and Japan game with honor and bushido centered...so of course they pull back from Japan, pull back from samurai, and scrub both honor and bushido from the book. Honor apparently makes no appearance and bushido is replaced with the precepts of Confucianism.

 

[vecna00]

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.

Mostly, I just want it for crunch that I can integrate into other campaigns. The lore is just a bonus in my eyes!

 

[overgeeked]

Mostly, I just want it for crunch that I can integrate into other campaigns. The lore is just a bonus in my eyes!

Maybe. I prefer the lore of earlier L5R games so it’ll be no use to me and an active hindrance if they players read it and think we’ll be using that. I hope the lore isn’t too wound up in the mechanics and so easily ported.

 

[Lycurgon]

Yeah, that seems like a bizarre choice. I can completely understand changing from a Japanese focus to a more mixed Asian flavour if they were doing a generic 5e update of "Oriental Adventure." Naming something after a whole region and then focusing on just a small corner of area is not great, so expanding and changing the focus to a wider influence of Asian flavours is a good idea IF you are creating an new Asian Adventures setting or toolbox book.

BUT L5R isn't an Asian Adventures book it is a fantasy Japan inspired Setting focusing on playing fantasy Samurai and Ninja and the society around them. Some updates and changes are expected but to change the setting so much is not a good choice. This is basically not the same setting at all. It seems like fans of L5R will find little that resembles the setting they love.

I would like a new Asian Adventures 5e Book for making fantasy Asian influenced homebrew games, so this might be useful for that. But I wouldn't want to use this for a Rokugan setting book. Maybe taking the mechanics and using with L5R setting might work?

 

[vecna00]

Here's an article about the book from their website. I'm tired and I don't have enough focus to read it, but maybe there's something useful there?

Venturing into Rokugan - Edge Studio

A rich setting in a whole new light

edge-studio.net

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe. I prefer the lore of earlier L5R games so it’ll be no use to me and an active hindrance if they players read it and think we’ll be using that. I hope the lore isn’t too wound up in the mechanics and so easily ported.

Well, looks like there's a fair amount of rules that are dependent on the new lore. The person doing the RPG.net WiR is doing a great job, unfortunately almost everything they're revealing is a negative for me and what I want out of AiR.

Pilgrim, seekers of enlightenment who learn to master the energies of yin and yang within themselves, balancing this ki of light and dark to perform exceptional feats (another major change of background, as L5R had never had the Taoist concepts of Yin and Yang, let alone a balance between them, but rather followed directly the philosophy of the five rings and the void as an element both part of everything and separate from everything. On the other hand we are adding foreign real-world terms into a game that was expressly trying to eliminate foreign real-world terms, while at the same time using the Chinese version of these terms instead of the Japanese in'yo and on'myo... but they do also use the Japanese "ki" instead of the Chinese "chi", so...).

This is less and less a Rokugan I recognize or want to play in. Imagine that, a property that's been associated with fantasy Japan and samurai for the last 25 years almost randomly deciding to toss the fantasy Japan angle and, at least in part, replace it with fantasy China. It's surreal.

 

[GreyLord]

Well, today is the day...but probably not for me as I don't see it available at my normal shopping locations.

I'm planning on getting it, but the only exposure I have had to L5R was the 3e/3.5 books, so their moves probably are not offputting to me from what I've read thus far.

 

[Shardstone]

A more mixed asian flavor is kind of horrible, in my opinion. It stinks of Western orientalism, boiling all the cultures into a melting pot, keeping what you like, and just jamming stuff together. This is very disappointing. I know Japan was heavily influenced by China but...this was a great Japan-LotR and now...I need to read the book before I confirm my opinion.

 

[Shardstone]

"-Focus on what D&D 5e is good at. This means character-centric heroic fantasy. That doesn't mean it's all combat crunch, but combat is a major part of D&D and is an expected part of the play cycle, along with exploration, discovery, and what I will term "adventuring.""

One of the writers of the book says this.

What a lord of HORSESH*T! D&D is not only good at combat, but even if it is, they made a whole new suite of classes, spells, races, backgrounds, and sub-systems! They could have made D&D into anything they wanted it too!

I am so tired of developers buying into the meme that D&D can only be about fantasy combat adventure. Its so short-sighted and reeks of an inability to have a true vision for what the game could be. I haven't read the book yet, so I won't say its horrible, but this kind of design philosophy really irks me to no end.