Anyone still plays Rokugan/L5R setting?

[Li Shenron]

I'm curious because I really love the settings, but I almost don't hear about it anymore on the boards...

If you still play it:
Are use using the D&D rules or the L5R rules?
If you use the D&D rules, did you update it to 3.5?
Do you use some Oriental Adventures material which isn't officially Rokugani?

It would be nice also to hear what other oriental settings are still played and with which rules edition!

 

[beepeearr]

It's my wife's favorite setting, so she runs it anytime she gets a chance. She hates the new edition though, so we use the D&D rules, although modified to give some of the feel of the d10 system. We use a different taint and honor system than the one in OA. Also Samurai (as in the caste, not the class) are all LA +1 (think kind of a cross between normal humans and plane touched like tiefling and aasimar), and gain rank one status at 4th level. Iaijutsu duels are handled differently as well. She has made a few other mods to the actual setting as well, like new clans and families.

 

[Li Shenron]

She hates the new edition though, so we use the D&D rules, although modified to give some of the feel of the d10 system.

3.0 or modified to 3.5?

We use a different taint and honor system than the one in OA.

Do you use the systems in AEG's Rokugan Campaign Setting? I prefer that to OA systems myself.

Also Samurai (as in the caste, not the class) are all LA +1

Interesting... do you allow heimin/hinin characters? We've always played samurai characters, so that LA would actually only have an effect in favor of Nezumi and Naga characters (the only non-humans which are allowed IMC).

 

[beepeearr]

Sorry, kind of a cross between 3.5 and 3.0 (mainly weapon rules, cover, concealment, and difficult terrains rules, with maybe a few other odds and ends, but none are coming to me at the moment).

We created a new reputation/honor system that combined both, so that we could use it in or normal D&D games as well.

essentially your reputation starts at 0 and can go up to a 100 reputation points, or down to -100. For every 10 point increment you gain a situational bonus or penalty to charisma based skills depending on who you are dealing with and what you are doing. The further from 0 you go the more honorable or dishonorable you become, and the further your reputation has spread.

Taint starts at 0 and increases up to 100, with corruptions and other penalties and benefits gained as you go up, in addition the higher you go the more influence the corruption has on you.

Essentially you can play a typical great clan samurai, LA +1, or a member of a vassal family, which are just regional variants of normal humans, and so far no one has ever askd to play heimin or eta, which are just normal humans. We've never had anyone play a nezumi, and in her game the naga have all disappeared, other than ruins, she doesn't use them.

 

[exile]

My group rotates games frequently, but L5R (using the Roll and Keep System from Alderac) is one of the group's most popular choices. I had mixed feelings about it for a long time, mostly because I had a hard time finding a caharacter that I really loved. Now that I have, bring on the L5R.

I've never played in a Rokugani setting without the L5R (Roll and Keep) mechanics, though I did buy all the 3.0 books for it and would be open to doing so; some members of my group however think that D20 is less well-suited to capturing the essence of Rokugan.

Chad

 

[beepeearr]

The way the LA +1 work is all characters choose a clan, family, and school (this represents early training and favored class not nessecarily class levels).

They gain the benefits of normal humans, except they lose the favored class any (which in our game isn't neccearily applied to the highest class level and is more beneficial), and have a small list to choose from for their bonus feat. They gain a +2 bonus to two different abilities based on family and school chosen (at least one must be from the chosen clan). Weapon familiarity Wakizashi and Katana (which are not bastard swords in our game, but have their own rules). And lastly they gain one permanent class skill based on clan (always a knowledge), two permanent class skills based on family (one is the same as the one given by the clan the family is in, and finaly one permanent class skill from school (which is the same one given by the family that the school is affiliated with) and a favored class. A character who chooses a family from his clan, and the school of his family gains a +2 to the skills that became permanent class skills (which is kind of a universal rule we use, anytime a skill that is already a permanent class skill, would become a permanent class skill again, gain a +2 instead.

We started with base humans and then used Plane touched such as Aasimar and tieflings as a precedent to create the rest of the race. The +2 to two ability scores account for most of the LA +1, with the limited feat selection and loss of the favored class any, accounting for the addition of the permanent class skills. The weapon familiarity was given to round it all out.

Basically since she wanted to port the whole setting to my homebrew, we wanted to make sure anything we added or changed from OA would also be in other parts of the world thus a universal Taint and Reputation/Honor system. Plus a less abusable iiajutsu mechanic was a must.

It's a little wonky at first glance, but has really helped regain some of the lost flavor of the d10 version. She prefers to use the D&D ruleset, but most of the players we have found who want to play L5R hate the d20 version, while she is the opposite, she loves the setting, but hated the original ruleset.

 

[Wraith101]

I still play in Rokugan regulalrly. We just updated to the new edition and although there are things they screwed up, I like it better than the old one (I am talking about d10 version here, I would never use D20. A lot of the flavour gets lost in translation).

 

[Li Shenron]

It's interesting to know that many think that the d20 rules don't capture the right feeling. How could that be?

Is it because of character creation? Skills? Spellcasting? Combat rules?

I don't know the old d10 rules, and neither the most recent revision by AEG. I only know the d20 3.0 rules, so I cannot really see what is wrong with them...

 

[Turanil]

It would be nice also to hear what other oriental settings are still played and with which rules edition!

For some time I had the folowing idea:

Setting:
-- A Japanese Daymyo and his retinue and peasants colonize an abandoned former Chinese region, now haunted. Not far from them is a Chinese Shaolin-like monastery with all sorts of monks and psionic-users. Both the monastery and the daymyo unite against the many monsters who roam the country.
-- Stories inspired from typical fantasy Wu-Xia movies (Chinese Ghost Story I, II, III; Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon; Bride with White Hair; Hero; etc.), but adding samurai and ninja to flying martial artists.

Rules:
-- Books used: 3 core books, OA, Legends of Samurai, X-Psi.
-- Only two PC races: humans, and possibly mongol-like barbarians of the half-orc or hobgoblin race.
-- Classes: Legends of Samurai classes for the Japanese people; Monk and X-Psi classes for the monastery's people (to emulate buddhism concentration monks, and flying wuxia types of characters); Barbrian, rogue, fighter, and OA shaman class for the mongols.

 

[Andor]

It's interesting to know that many think that the d20 rules don't capture the right feeling. How could that be?

Is it because of character creation? Skills? Spellcasting? Combat rules?

I don't know the old d10 rules, and neither the most recent revision by AEG. I only know the d20 3.0 rules, so I cannot really see what is wrong with them...

All of the above.

The original game (I haven't seen the new edition) has stats based on the 5 elemental rings (Air, Water, Earth, Fire, Void) each of which is broken down into one mental and one physical stat, except for void which just is. This really captures the feel of the world as protrayed in the fiction and the card game.

The dice mechanics of the system were also cool, you could basically try to do anything you wanted, by raising the target number you were trying to achieve. So while you might need to roll a 15 to Hit Usagi Yojimbo you could instead try to cut his obi off, so that the scroll he's protecting falls to the ground. The GM decides that's equal to 3 raises, and now you need a 30 instead of a 15. Roll well.

The combat system was also extremely lethal to reflect the "A samurai is always a blades length from death" aesthetic of the genere. This was a large part of the flavor of the game, and DnD fails completely to capture it, due to the buckets of HP high level characters have.