LatwPIAT posted:

Degrees of Success

• 1 Marginal (finding a useful TV Tropes entry)
  
• 2 Moderate (getting someone's cell-phone number)
  
• 3 Complete (delighting your new playmate with a fresh-cooked breakfast)
  
• 4 Exceptional (selling five books to someone who'd come looking for one)
  
• 5 Phenomenal (writing the 500,000-word anniversary edition of a series you helped create 20 years ago)
  

Cthulhu Dreams posted:

Why do people have these pointlessly complex dice pool mechanics when most people (including myself) cannot accurately tell you how much harder it is to get two successes with 7 dice against TN 6 vs TN 7. If the GM can't work that out then he doesn't know what he is doing when he sets the difficulty.

Doresh posted:

You see, the Ouroboros Syndrome is heavily tied to the Anima Regium, those Renegade Beings who possess and occasionly turn you into Slendergjaum.

SirPhoebos posted:

I was reading through the F&F archive and I saw that Phil Brucato was going to be doing the Changeling 20th Anniversary book. Has that been released yet?

Mors Rattus posted:

...why?

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Legend of the Five Rings had "Tropical Fish", a skill solely for the caretaking of exotic fish. Rifts had "Sea Holistic Medicine". Vampire: the Masquerade had "Pottery". Pottery! It was definitely a thing for any '90s game with a decent supplement train.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

This is probably the one you're thinking of, her Experienced 2 version in the CCG. I don't think it was used in the RPG, though.



Usually she was depicted fully armored, though.

Night10194 posted:

It sounds like multiple clans being major line staff's special babies was a serious problem for L5R.

Mors Rattus posted:

I kinda wish the magic art powers had lasted beyond this. And been generalized to every clan.

Night10194 posted:

I don't think anyone actually likes the Scorpion in any capacity, do they?

Night10194 posted:

Same person, all related?

Kavak posted:

Are any of them named John Wick?

Simian_Prime posted:

I feel like we get constant hints of other threats (horde of not-Mongols, traders from not-Europe), but they never get much detail?

Mors Rattus posted:

4e also presents the 'child abuse' thing as rumors other clans tell but which aren't accurate for 90% of the Lion.

Emerald Empire is a good book.

quote:

"Wait just a second..." I said, rubbing my head. "I've got a gempukku ceremony tomorrow! I have to study!"

"Eh, don't worry about it," Turi said. "It's just a Matsu gempukku. They're easy."

"What do I have to do?" I asked.

Turi thought a moment. "Well, first you have to recite Akodo's Leadership from memory. Cake. Then you have to wield twenty weapons of war. Simple. Then you have to cut a pomegranate in four pieces before it hits the ground. Kid's stuff. Then they hit you four hundred times with a stick and you have to just sit there and stay awake. Easy. Then you have to fast three days in a room full of food. No prob. Oh, then they brand you."

"Nice knowing you, Garou," Sanzo clapped me on the shoulder.

"That's ridiculous!" I said. "What happens if I fail any of that?"

"You die," Turi said.

"Wait, that doesn't make sense," Toku said. "The Matsu are the largest samurai family in the Empire. How can they have such a difficult gempukku and still be so big?"

quote:

Soon it was the next morning. We gathered before Kyuden Matsu among the various members of the Lion Clan. I wasn't the only one to be receiving my gempukku ceremony that day. Matsu Bufu, Ketsui's little brother, was there too. He was a large, rather dim looking samurai. At the beginning of the ceremony he showed Okura a grin with about four teeth.

"I hope me pass," he rumbled.

"Er... good luck," Okura whimpered, shying back from the large man.

"Recite Akodo's Leadership," Okura said in a deep voice, and the crowd grew silent.

I whispered a spell under my breath, releasing a current of air spirits at Okura's mind. He was reciting the whole book in his head, ready to call me if I messed up. I just read it out of his mind.

"And you, Bufu," Okura said. "Recite Akodo's Leadership."

"Lions good!" the boy announced, and a thread of drool hung from his lip.

Okura glanced around uncomfortably. "Er, yes," he said. "Yes, that's right. Next test."

The twenty weapons of war was the easy part. Turi pointed out a quick loophole there for me. You had to wield twenty weapons, but you didn't have to wield them *well*. Luckily, growing up on the Kaiu wall I actually knew quite a few of the weapons. Bufu, on the other hand. Well... they let him count the weapons. He only managed to count four, but Okura said that was close enough and we moved on.

The trainer hurled the pomegranate into the air. I whispered a brief spell and an obliging air spirit appeared, invisibly holding the fruit long enough to cut it. Okura sneered and reluctantly nodded.

The trainer hurled another pomegranate. Bufu screamed and cut the trainer into four pieces. It wasn't the result they wanted, but it was pretty creative so they went with it.

The next part was pretty hard. I didn't have a spell that would last long enough to defend me from four hundred blows from a bamboo stick. Luckily, Sanzo had a bottle of sake. I drank it down as quick as my body would physically let me, and that seemed to do the trick. The trainer laid the bamboo into me and I stumbled off with a grin, sore all over but not feeling a thing.

The first time the trainer hit Bufu, he drew his sword and cut that guy into four pieces too. Again, they said that was close enough.

The last test was pretty easy. I couldn't move for about three days after the sake and the beating, and Bufu ate all the food in the chamber anyway. The trainer looked like he was about to say something, then he remembered his two predecessors and decided against it.

Ikoma Tsanuri approached the two of us when we were done, a wide smile on her face. "Congratulations," she said. She handed each of us a katana worked in gold and brown. "Matsu Garou. Matsu Bufu. You are now Lions."

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

You had to make a deal with an "angel" or demon so GM fiat was a huge part of it. It was almost like they were saying, "Dumbass, why are you playing this game? This is what you get for thinking you could rise to relative mediocrity. Now go play a good game like Kindred of the East"

JackMann posted:

My great, great, great grandfather, Sheriff Evelyn Belzar Armstrong (I am not making that name up), was partly responsible for Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, becoming an outlaw. He and his deputy, James Swisher, went to arrest a friend of Longabaugh's, Buck Hanby. Hanby reached for his gun and was shot. Swisher was afraid of retaliation from Longabaugh and swore out a complaint. Longabaugh was apparently arrested, but escaped, becoming an outlaw.

Selachian posted:

extruded swords-n-sorcery product

LeSquide posted:

I'm now on a huge Demon Lord kick and I think I want to run a game soon; what supplements besides the Companion are good? Is the Hell/Devil boom decent? I'm aware of the shocking setting twist.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Wapole Languray posted:

[*]The Child Weakness is the only weakness child characters start with by default. Child gives y ou a -3 to all Strength tests and Damage (to a minimum of 1), has fewer default Stamina (16 for Long Man, 20 for Bear Man), and a -2 penalty to all Knowledge tests.

Joe Slowboat posted:

There's a difference between 'subtext' and 'you will literally get two different settings if you read this text assuming the author is trying to help you understand the setting, or trying to trick you.'

Cooked Auto posted:

Last I heard it they were trying to get CTech 2.0 beta tested but how that went I haven't gotten the foggiest.

LatwPIAT posted:

the beta focused on the Tagers and Dhoanoids, which I think is the least interesting part of the setting.

Nessus posted:

This was however less annoying than the round of CthulhuTech, in which we were so heavily informed about the power of the cops that we super-stealthed while half the team ate chicken wings in a dockside bar.

Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

Has any RPG company ever sold DLC-like cards with extra rules?
I remember just jokes from KODT.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I'm pretty familiar with the Scorpion's OOC history. I got into Legend of the Five Rings around the time of the Shadowlands CCG set. My first deck was a Scorpion deck.

A lot of the Scorpion material, in my opinion, is "tell, don't show". We're told Scorpions have done a lot of important stuff, but rarely are the actual events demonstrated, and often it's kept vague and indistinct. Which may make sense from a in-setting perspective, from an out-of-setting perspective it doesn't do a lot to demonstrate why the Scorpion are necessary. I mean, sure, they might have stopped the Crab from marching on the Crane with mysterious stabs, trust them, they somehow always know the right murders to do - but an Imperial decree can do that, too.

That's not to say you can't rewrite them to be better, mind, but too often they were just written as smug, self-promoting ciphers from my experience. If any part of L5R has been stuck in Wick's shadow, it's the Scorpion.