| Legend of the Five Rings | |
| Subtitle: | Roleplaying in the Emerald Empire |
| Publisher: | Alderac Entertainment Group |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| System: | Roll & Keep |
The Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game originally written by John Wick and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, under license from Five Rings Publishing Group, in 1997. The game uses the Legend of the Five Rings setting, primarily the nation of Rokugan, which is based on feudal Japan with influences from other East Asian cultures.
Like most role-playing games, Legend of the Five Rings is played by one or more players and a game master, who controls the events that happen during the game as well as the non-player characters (NPCs). Legend of the Five Rings features many courtiers and other non-combatant character types as valid player characters.
In September 2015, AEG and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) jointly announced that the intellectual property had been sold to FFG.[1] Fantasy Flight Games released a new role-playing game based on the Legend of the Five Rings setting in October, 2018.[2] In 2020, FFG's parent company Asmodee transferred FFG's RPG lines, including Legend of the Five Rings, to another subsidiary, Edge Studio.
The fictional setting of Legend of the Five Rings is similar to feudal Japan, though it also includes aspects of other Asian cultures, as well as magic and mythical beasts. There is no given name for the entire world which the setting describes, so "Rokugan" is used alternately to refer to the specific nation within the setting or to refer to the entire world.
Rokugani society is based on a clan structure, with seven (and later eight) so-called "Great Clans", as well as a number of minor clans. Great Clans are made up of several family lines, each with their own general purpose within the clan. Minor clans generally only have one family. Each clan also has areas of land bequeathed by the emperor under their control. The emperor retains ownership of all lands, however, and the clans essentially rent the lands by paying annual taxes.
The game system of Legend of the Five Rings uses 10-sided dice exclusively. Usually, when a die is rolled and the result is 10 (normally marked '0' on the die), the die is said to "explode". In this situation, the player rolls again and the new result is added to the original result. If this second result is a 10, the player rolls a third time, totaling all three results. This process is repeated until the player rolls something other than 10. The second edition and most books made for it were written to work both with this system and with D20 rules as presented in the Oriental Adventures D&D setting; this was discontinued after third edition was published.
The mechanic for which the game is most widely known is the "Roll & Keep" system, designed by Dave Williams and John Wick. When dice are rolled, there are two quantities given: a number of dice to be rolled and a number of dice to be "kept". The totals of the kept dice are added together, giving the player the total sum for his or her roll. For example, if a roll called for five dice to be rolled and three kept (said simply "five keep three" or written "5k3"), five dice would be rolled. Out of those five, the player would choose three (generally, but not necessarily, the player would choose the three with the highest values) whose values would be added together for the total value of the roll.
Legend of the Five Rings uses eight traits: Stamina, Willpower, Strength, Perception, Agility, Intelligence, Reflexes, and Awareness. The Traits are grouped into pairs associated with four elemental "Rings" (respectively to above): Earth, Water, Fire and Air. The four Rings represent a limitation in character development, because in order for a character to advance, the level of his Rings must increase, and to increase a character's Rings, both of the Ring's associated Traits must increase.
There is a fifth Ring, called Void. This ring, like the other four, is taken from Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings. In the game, Void represents a character's inner strength, and its use allows a character to perform extraordinary actions, or to perform normal actions more efficiently.
There are primarily two methods of creating characters in role-playing games: to roll dice to randomly generate attributes or to begin with a set number of points and a formula by which attributes can be purchased with these points. Legend of the Five Rings uses the latter method. Each new character begins with 40 "Character Points" to spend to create the character (except for ronin characters, which begin with 55). These points are spent to raise the level of the character's Traits and Void Ring, to raise the level of the character's skills, and to purchase new skills. In previous versions of the game, characters started with 30 points, or 45 for ronin.
These points may also be used to purchase Advantages, which give the character some extra bonus or ability that is designed to help in certain situations (such as "Large", which increases the damage a character can inflict, or "Social Position", which increases that character's standing in the courts of the land). Conversely, if a player so chooses, he can select a number of Disadvantages for his character, which give extra Character Points to spend in other areas, but imposes some penalty on the character during play (such as "Small", which decreases the damage the character can inflict with certain weapons, or "Bad Reputation", which causes a great number of NPCs to dislike the character).
As of fifth edition, characters are created using a 20 question system, with each question determining skill, social, and ring stats.[3]
The Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game is renowned for its lethality.[4] Players who charge into combat unaware will often find their characters killed in the first session. Proper role-playing is encouraged to avoid combat when unnecessary, but the characters do have requisite abilities to survive if combat is forced in the early stages.
Oriental Adventures was published originally in 1985 by TSR, Inc. as an expansion for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and was set in a land called Kara-Tur. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast released a new edition of Oriental Adventures as an expansion for the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It was decided to make this new version of Oriental Adventures a showcase for their recently acquired Legend of the Five Rings property. An official (but not 100% comprehensive) update of Oriental Adventures to the v.3.5 rules can be found in Dragon Magazine #318 (April 2004), pp. 32–48.
For the entirety of its Second Edition, with the exception of the Player's Guide, Game Master's Guide, Way of the Shadowlands, Winter Court: Kyuden Asako, and Time of the Void, books published for the Legend of the Five Rings RPG had two different sets of game mechanics: the mechanics from the Legend of the Five Rings Second Edition Player's Guide and corresponding mechanics for d20 System, such as those presented in Oriental Adventures. Beginning with the Third Edition of the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game, and because of the lack of availability of the now out of print Oriental Adventures, the d20 System rules have been dropped from current Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game books.
Listed by AEG reference number in parentheses followed by title
(d20 System) (Oriental Adventures)
The reviewer from the online second volume of Pyramid stated that "I have a great deal of nostalgia for FGU's classic game Bushido, and Legend of the Five Rings captures much of Bushidos Oriental swords & sorcery feel, with, thankfully, much more comprehensible rules."[7]
In 1998, Legend of the Five Rings won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game of 1997.[8]
Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game won the 2006 Gold Ennie Award for "Best Interior Art".[9]
In a review of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game in Black Gate, Scott Taylor said "L5R was epic, a Matt Wilson cover making me sit up and take notice, and the mechanics of game play a fresh change from the D20 of D&D and the D6 of Shadowrun as L5R introduced 'exploding D10s'. The setting, an amalgam of Asian culture called Rokugan, overwhelmed, and although my mindset is distinctly and irrevocably western, I still fell into this game head first."[10]
Scott Taylor for Black Gate in 2013 rated Legend of the Five Rings as Honorable Mention #2 in the top ten role-playing games of all time, saying "Where games like Bushido and Oriental Adventures failed to hold market share, L5R stayed the course and not only taught us what honor truly means, but also gave everyone the ability to live out a samurai fantasy that sat unattended in their imaginations. Certainly helped along by its popular collectible card game of the same name, L5R nonetheless has produced some absolutely fantastic role-playing books in the half a dozen editions since its inception."[11]