Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ivocaliban" data-source="post: 2041507" data-attributes="member: 17596">Well, the Crab would certainly get involved if they weren't so busy sacrificing themselves to keep the Empire safe from Fu Leng! Seriously, though, it's a difficult thing for me to choose a favorite because I really enjoy all the clans. Before reading The Way books I wasn't terribly interested in the Crane, Lion, or Phoenix, but after absorbing the (then) new information I discovered that all of the clans have extraordinary depth and variety. I didn't care much that the Mantis became a Great Clan, but the fact that it incorporates the Centipede and the Wasp is nice. I only wish there was more detailed information on the minor clans (Fox, Hare, and Monkey in particular), however. Perhaps, there'll be hints in the other Secrets books. In that same line of thought, it would also be nice if the Imperial families were detailed in the same fashion as the Clan families (and all in one book would have been nice)! Ah, well.I think this was the one thing I was concerned about...especially considering the reviews I read tended to claim the Secrets books were rather dry though heavy with information. For me, however, the way the clan books (old and new) were written provides a great deal of inspiration to me as DM. Rokugan was a wonderful book, as was Legend of the Five Rings, but they don't allow you to feel you really know or understand the various people of Rokugan. The clan books give you the right balance of stereotype and individualty to make each Clan shine.Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad OA introduced people to Rokugan, because I personally think it's one of the finest settings available in any system. For anyone who takes time to really read the supplemental material there's a wonderfully rich, detailed world that has a great deal of life. The upside is that the d20 system brought Rokugan to a wider audience, the downside is that there are potentially other great settings out there we're missing out on simply because they don't use this system.Yes, this was more to my point. OA attempted to present both the tools for a generic setting and describe a pre-existing setting from a different system all in a single hardcover book. The result was that both were slightly watered down. That said, I still think OA was a fine book, but it seems more reasonable that they would have used OA for the generic "So you want to run an Asian-themed campaign?" style book...and saved all the Rokugan stuff for...Rokugan.Sadly, this means that many people wouldn't have every discovered L5R/Rokugan at all. Now that everyone's had the opportunity to jump on the L5R train (or thumb their nose at it), it's certainly the direction I think they should go in the future.</blockquote>

Verification