Legends of the Five Rings 3rd ed. -- Anyone have it?

[Ghostwind]

I received the new Legends of the Five Rings 3rd ed. recently to review and I have to say that I am fairly impressed with it. Full-color, good art and decent writing make this a pleasant read. I've never been a big fan of the setting, but I can see myself using some things for my own campaigns.

Anyone else have the book and if so, what are your thoughts?

 

[Ghostwind]

bump

 

[bluemoonfalc]

I got it a couple of weeks ago, and have reading it off and on since. It is a very nice looking book, and so far seems to be a very good new version of their D10 system. I am quite looking forward to running an adventure to try it out, once my group stops having summer vacations that interrupt our playing

Unfortunately, there are a few things through the rules that aren't very clear, especially relating to dueling. Especially bad for dueling is the lack of any examples of how it should work, combined with some subtle (and not so subtle) changes from how duels worked in 1e and 2e.

Overall, though, I would highly recommend this book for fans of L5R, or for doing a generic high-fantasy samurai campaign. And hopefully they will start putting up the web enhancements they have promised to convert some 1e/2e material to 3e.

 

[Dark Psion]

Should we wait for you to bump the thread three times before we respond?


Overall it is a great book, but as bluemoonfalc mentioned above, the one problem with the book is the lack of examples.

There is one brief Samurai stated on page 118, but that's it, each clan has four classes, but no examples for each class.

The section on Nemuranai (Magic Items) is 2.5 pages of how to make them, but no example items.

The Monster section is also very small and what happened to the Tsuno? I haven't seen a single mention of them in the book.

There is virtually no mention of the D20 Rokugan, only the titles listed in the reference section in the back.

For someone familiar with the 1st & 2nd edition L5R, this is a great book and you can grab and play. Your only problem will be "catching up" to the Lotus era of the 3rd edition.

If you started with D20 L5R, you may need to take your time and "unlearn what you have learned". You will especially have to go back and read the L5R parts of the dual stated books again.

If you are starting fresh with this book, you might want to see if you can get some of the previous books to help you fill in the blanks.