At Gen Con this year, Fantasy Flight Games released the first product in its new Legend of the Five Rings line, the Beginner Game boxed set.\u00a0 Last year, they introduced the Living Card Game (LCG) set in the same world.\u00a0 These products serve as the latest edition of the games created by Alderac Entertainment back in the mid-1990\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The Legend of the Five Rings is set in a fantasy version of Asia, with the empire of Rokugan serving as a version of feudal Japan on what amounts to a Chinese mainland.\u00a0 Supernatural elements lurk on the edges, while the main aspects of the game concern themselves with courtly intrigues and the conflicts that arise from pitting the duty toward one\u2019s lord against one\u2019s own desires.<\/p>\n
The original version of the role-playing game used a system called \u201cRoll and Keep,\u201d where a player would assemble a pool of dice based on skills and attributes (here called \u201cRings,\u201d which correspond more with elemental aspects than clearly defined traits), roll the dice, and select out a limited number of these dice to keep for their final total.\u00a0 The number of successes would then determine how well they were able to complete the action.<\/p>\n
There was also a D20 version that was little more than a brief revival of the AD&D Oriental Adventures book, but that\u2019s more of a footnote, for our purposes.<\/p>\n
For the new system, Fantasy Flight has taken specific cues from their success with their Star Wars line and brought out a set of new, weird dice with abstract symbols.\u00a0 It\u2019s still a \u201cRoll and Keep\u201d system, but rather than having a binary of success or failure, the new system adds in Strife as a mechanic on the dice.\u00a0 This models the inner conflict that a character must face in their lives.\u00a0 In play, the accumulation of Strife feels similar to the use of Strain in the Star Wars games.<\/p>\n
As noted, this game sets itself in a very strict, very Japanese milieu.\u00a0 This means that the characters are bound by the concept of \u201cwa\u201d<\/em> in their daily lives, the concept of maintaining harmony at the expense of one\u2019s own personal interests.\u00a0 In the game, they further define this with the ideas of \u201cgiri\u201d<\/em> and \u201cninjo,\u201d<\/em> respectively \u201cduty\u201d and \u201chuman feeling.\u201d\u00a0 For the betterment of Rokugan, a samurai must place the needs of the society or their superiors over their own beliefs and impulses.<\/p>\n What this means is that emotional displays would be disruptive to society, and the samurai must be vigilant against expressing such things publicly.\u00a0 This is where the Strife mechanic comes in.\u00a0 On the dice, the Success and Exploding Success can be linked with Strife, meaning that being able to carry through on a task will often come at the expense of an upwelling of emotion.\u00a0 Should this emotion build up too much, without proper relief, the character risks \u201cUnmasking.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnmasking\u201d is a player-controlled mechanic that takes place when the inner turmoil spills over into a visible meltdown.\u00a0 Characters are given specific guidelines toward how their Strife manifests itself, be it a sudden and overdramatic expression of anger or an uncontrollable weeping jag.\u00a0 These outbursts can affect a character\u2019s standing (as expressed by their Glory or Honor scores), but they can also be used to express something that they would otherwise be prohibited from doing by social structures.\u00a0 Because the mechanism of the \u201cUnmasking\u201d is left in the hands of the players, there is a tension in every roll as the potential for Strife accumulates, but it can also be a dramatic method of moving the plot forward.<\/p>\n The most interesting thing about the dice mechanics and the accumulation of Strife is that a player may choose to have their characters fail at a task rather than risk Unmasking.\u00a0 When the results are rolled, the kept dice can come down to a choice between Success with Strife or Failure with grace.\u00a0 Depending on the scene, this can push the characters in different directions as the players choose what the better outcome might be.<\/p>\n The original setting of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG was directly influenced by the events of the card game that preceded it, beginning with the Clan Wars edition that culminated with the assassination of the Emperor of Rokugan.\u00a0 Rather than try to summarize the events of 20 years of plotlines, Fantasy Flight has opted to reset the timeline back to the time prior to the Clan War and the Scorpion Clan Coup, thereby allowing them to revise the history of Rokugan as needed.\u00a0 This will also allow them to release specific RPG products to coincide with big events, such as the death of Hantei XXXVIII.<\/p>\n The politics of Rokugan are tied heavily to the function of the Great Clans of the setting.\u00a0 Each of the clans has its own distinct families, each of which controls certain aspects of life in the Empire.\u00a0 In the game, this translates to a loose sort of class system, less restrictive than Dungeons & Dragons, but born in the same mold.\u00a0 More than anything, it allows characters to specialize in certain areas of interest, based on what background they come from.<\/p>\n The Great Clans are as follows:<\/p>\n There are an abundance of Minor Clans, powerful families and alliances that nonetheless stand in the shadows of the Great Clans.\u00a0 Of these, there is one that is worth noting, as they later ascended to Great Clan status as the metaplot of the setting moved forward.<\/p>\n\n
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