Legend of the Five Rings: Coming soon: L5R The Flamethrower!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Legend of the Five Rings: Coming soon: L5R The Flamethrower!

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Close your parentheses, dammit.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 16:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:35

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

PaybackJack posted:

In conclusion this OP is biased, ill informed, represents minority opinions and lacks substantial information about the games and world. It's exactly what I would expect out of an old hardcore AEG L5R player. Keep those blinders on and may the design team favor your clan.

It's pretty indicative of like 90% of the player base from what I've experienced so from that angle it's pretty useful.

I'd love to find a group to play L5R 4e with that would be properly down to houseruling the problems the system has out (or at least mitigating them) and also be interested in having characters who want to actually do poo poo instead of RPing Samurai Barbie's Tea Party every session while NPCs handle the oni rampaging through the countryside and the kolat plotting yet another assassination of the emperor, etc.

...not that I'm bitter from a string of unfortunate groups or anything.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 20:36

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

PaybackJack posted:

Yeah, he mentions people liked the L5R 4E RPG but I never met anyone who did. It was received almost as poorly as the D&D 4th Ed, except that L5R players were a lot more forgiving about it because god forbid they ever bit the hand that fed them. Though I guess ironically AEG did finally end up stop making L5R so...

That's weird because literally everyone I talked to said the same thing: 4e fixed a ton of poo poo that was incredibly bad & wrong in 3e and (pick one) is the best edition/is second best and 1e is bestest. But it might have something to do with that bolded part because my god does that fan base hate (a) homebrew/houserules of any sort, (b) PCs that effect any changes in their world, (c) PCs with ambitions beyond "serve my daimyo until I die", and (d) any changes at all to anything, even the most minor of flavor texts.

It's totally arcane to me; I had one guy in an L5R IRC channel throw an absolute tantrum at me because I wanted to make a crystal sword (because that would be effectively a magic item and PCs aren't allowed to have those, ever) and have the crystal be labradorite (because it doesn't perfectly match the description of the material given for Crystal in some book somewhere) and then had a bunch of the people in the channel back him up because despite being Rank 4 with Glory 9 I should still be loving around with begging to borrow a horse and an extra koku so I can eat and sleep indoors.

I just want a group I can try a thing with.

Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Oct 6, 2017

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 21:20

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Anyone bitching about FFG's lust for money when it comes to LCG's has never seen the aftermath of a Magic tournament or people opening up lots of packs. Players throw away 50%-80% of their cards from new packs away because it's unusable garbage or duplicates of stuff they have, rares included. It sucks I have to make a one time investment into this game to play competitively but it's nowhere near the money pit that is a CCG.

This is why advice for people starting out in MtG is "go to tournaments, especially drafts." Sure you might not win per se, but you're likely to make your money back in some form if you sweep up all the leavings. I've seen people hand new players their whole draft decks once a tournament is done with because it's literally 100% stuff they already have.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 23:43

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

KittyEmpress posted:

Meanwhile all of these things seem like pretty good changes to me, personally.

Yeah I mean that's all poo poo I'd back-port in a fat man's heartbeat if I were to do 4e again.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2017 19:24

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

frakeaing HAMSTER DANCE posted:

BTW, that's the one sad thing about FFG compared to the old CCG: AEG kind of threw poo poo at the walls and didn't even bother to see if it stuck before throwing something else. That led to a lot of really stupid, fun archetypes, like pirate raid Mantis, the old Ninja stronghold, etc that I don't think we'll see in a more structured game.

Counterpoint: a more structured game might just decide to make pirate raid mantis or ninja stronghold decks A Definite Thing because while I haven't a loving clue what those phrases mean, they sound :krad:

and the type of thing any game should have.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2017 19:01

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

I hope the Shadowlands see some development in both the RPG and LCG because otherwise it's a pretty gigantic bucket of unused material and wasted potential. If the Shadowlands are never a credible threat it really makes the Crab look like a band of paranoid idiots, first off. Secondly, without the Shadowlands the game is awfully single-note; yeah great you have clans that fight with s/words and an emperor who kind of but not really rules the whole thing. That's great for one game, maybe two, what else you got? You need that external threat to show that the petty squabbles are just that, and also that when it really matters the clans can actually accomplish anything at all worth doing.

I also want to see Spider Clan show up again, but with 100% less Daigot Sue. Spurned younger brother of the emperor who fucks off to the shadowlands with "fine, I'll make my own empire! With blackjack, and hookers!" is fine and good, but holy poo poo just about everything else was dumb as hell. Just let them be the subtle infiltrators trying to rot the empire from the inside, that's an interesting-ish angle to run with.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 01:51

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Aramoro posted:

The best storyline changes from tournaments where always the unintended ones. Lion became corrupt because they were all using Oni No Akuma. That's what I'd like to see back, if Scorpion with Crab makes a splash at tournaments maybe they become best buds in the storyline etc.

Having deck choices determining plot is a huge reason the plot is so loving stupid and needs a reset in the first place, so I hope they do the exact opposite of this and leave the writing to the writers rather than a bunch of nerds in bathrobes.

Aramoro posted:

The problem with that to an extent is that Shadowland's taint itself is also a creeping insidious evil, along with the Kolat if they bring them back and the Scorpion if you're one of the 6 other clans. You end up with too many creeping insidious evils. For a faction to work in the game it has to come from within the system of the great clans or why would they give a poo poo about your court games. They've got a lot of mileage with the three man alliance and tainting of great clans to go through first I think.

The Kolat aren't really evil per se, they (or at least a good deal of them) want humanity run by humanity rather than a bunch of monsters in the sky. The problem really is that originally they're all painted with the same stupid brush when ideally they have something like:

Kolat: not evil, wants a different style of government also no gods no masters
Shadowlands: overt evil, wants to eat you
Spider clan/Bloodspeakers: insidious evil, wants to subvert your noble intentions
Scorpion clan: not evil, just not honorable either

So let all of these be factions but actually make them different from one another in goals and motives and tactics.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 17:28

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

adhuin posted:

Why not start with 4 factions and replace other 3 with more neutral cards?

Because that's half the fan base that would be instantly and irrevocably pissed off at you for not including them in the initial release. If you buy up an IP, you never want to say "this half of the existing fan base matters more than this other half" which is exactly what only including half the clan in an initial release would be saying. Plus, it would look like a very lovely attempt at a cash grab from all the people who want to play [core] clan with [xpac] clan splash, or vice versa.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 20:27

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Lord_Hambrose posted:

One the reasons why I don't want bushi to get crazier abilities is that I want my L5R samurai experience to be more Sword of Doom (or 13 Assassins if you are feeling frisky) and much less beautiful Anime men hopping around on trees yelling the names of secret techniques at each other.

Conversely, this is exactly what I want out of L5R. I want my shugenja to be goddamned wizards who are also ordained ministers, I want my bushi to be yelling about their secret blade style that can only be performed with My Grandfather's Blade, and I want my monks to be pulling off Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Techniques while expressing extreme dismay that you forced them to use it. Mostly because it's pretty simple to scale a game down but really loving hard to scale a game up.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2017 01:46

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Lord_Hambrose posted:

I would like to see bushi get neat powers, but I agree that they should stay grounded so to help preserve the flavor of a monk. I think the main problem with shugenja is that they can cast spells so quickly. In previous editions the fact that casting meaningful spells took several rounds in a game where getting hit had a serious chance to cripple you was a good balance.

That's honestly one of the things I hate most about previous editions since combat is typically over really fast. I can either cast my Xk1 damage spell or I can spend multiple turns doing nothing except saying "I keep casting my spell" and hope the bushi doesn't finish the fight before then. And even if they don't, enemy's probably got like a -30 TN penalty anyways by now do that big fun hadoken spell is total overkill.

I would honestly prefer making spells more modular but less huge in their effects, and give bushi a bigger scale, width vs. height style. But I don't know how well that would work in practice.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2017 14:30

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

alansmithee posted:

you're being invaded by the Hindu pantheon

why did you have to remind me of this

Unless I'm forgetting something even more egregiously cack-handed, that was the dumbest of all the major plot lines.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2017 19:39

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Azran posted:

Completely unrelated but "Kakita" means "Little poo poo" in my language

So they're aptly named? :v:

# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 15:18

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

Val Helmethead posted:

Also Good Omens exists.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett confirmed for canon characters.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2017 19:21

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

KittyEmpress posted:

This is a loving terrible idea. Stop trying to rip all flavor out of the game so you can better game your honor gains, hot drat. Yes, the game encourages people from the same clan to act similarly.

The problem is that the game as it is really tries to shove you into "playing" a loving robot coded in entirely if-then statements. It's a problem that way too many people on the official forums think is a feature and it's up there with "the players never do anything interesting, that's for the canon NPCs" in poo poo I find repellent. But I find the whole "honor scale" to be right next to alignment in terms of stupid legacy mechanics too, because both tend to read as beep boop you did X thing you are now at Y quantity of this inherently qualitative thing, you must now act Z or take further losses boop burp. "Play X clan Y way or get hosed" isn't flavor, it's a straightjacket.

KittyEmpress posted:

One of the biggest things I don't understand from this forum is this obsession with being different from every One else of their school. In Rings, in skills, in attitude.

It's because being different is interesting and playing Cookie Cutter Kakita #8472 is boring as poo poo. One thing you should always ask when making a character is "why are we following this person's story instead of anyone else's? What makes him or her worth watching over anyone else in the world?" and someone who falls in line with everything their clan says and does and behaves exactly as expected is a really loving dull start.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2017 19:20

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:35

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

KittyEmpress posted:

It really doesn't punish you. You don't have to play the game optimally 24/7. It's a big conceit of role-playing that sometimes even though you can see what path will be the most rewarding, your character would want something else, and do it.

If having fun and playing optimally are at consistent odds, your game sucks. End of discussion. And if "play a stereotype" is the only way to be optimal, your game is boring as hell. I shouldn't have to pick between what is fun and what is useful; down that road lies groggy bullshit that has no place in late 90s gaming, much less 2017. It's a ridiculous Wick-ism to put all these "play the way I think you should or else" rules in. Like, if you wanna play "the clan stereotype but with one slight difference" then cool, go for it. But some of us want to play something else because a bloodthirsty phoenix or compassionate lion breeds inherent conflict and that conflict is compelling. If you can't imagine why it would be enjoyable to play such a character, I'd suggest you need to expand your horizons.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2017 04:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Legend of the Five Rings: Coming soon: L5R The Flamethrower!