The Gaming Den

Omegonthesane wrote: RIGHT FUCKING HERE, YOU ARE MAKING THE CLAIM THAT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FROM 3E HAS CARRIED FORWARD INTO 4E.

I made no such claim at all, please quote me doing so.

Actually, L5R 4E has had some changes that address Frank's concerns in both this thread and the L5R 3E thread. I've never played 3E and didn't plan to, so I didn't comment in the 3E thread. Its 4 AM where I am so my comments may be all over the fucking place, so I beg your indulgence if I come off as incoherent.

Regarding 4E dice and game mechanics:

- Its still Roll and Keep, which has wonky probability functions as Frank pointed out. However, at no point do you get to roll more than 10 dice (small favors?). For every 2 rolled dice over 10, you get an extra kept die. Once you're at 10k10, every 2 rolled dice or one kept die over 10 is converted to +2 to your final roll.

- For starting characters, you cannot have traits or skills above 4. This means a starting character (except for a kakita duelist during a duel) have more than an 8k4 roll.

- 4E RAW, shugi's get three spells per school rank, while bushi and courtiers get one new school ability per school rank. Assuming your GM does not allow you to do spell research or decrypt another shugi's prayer scrolls, thats all a shugi get and they only get it when they rank up. However many bugei (martial) skills allow increasing power via increasing skills. For instance, if you're a bushi, if you have a kenjutsu skill at rank 7 and an emphasis in katana, you are rerolling 1s to attack and exploding on 9s and 10s for damage, for 29 xp. Assuming you're a bushi (we'll call him bushi 1) with reflexes 4, you're rolling 11k4 (actually 10k4 since you don't roll more than 10 dice) with all those other benefits. Raising your reflexes from 4 to 5 would cost you 20 xp, and assuming you spent the other 9 points in raising your kenjutsu to 4, bushi 2 is then rolling 9k5 with none of the benefits that bushi 1 has. Bushi 1 and bushi 2 could achieve R&K parity at 10k5 by spending 8 xp and 5 xp, respectively, but bushi 1 still has all those skill bonuses. With straight up Roll and Keep, its always better to spend xp for a kept die as Frank says. However, given the rollover from the 10 die maximum, and the extra abilities you get for having high rank skills, that's not always true in L5R 4E. Directly to Frank's comment in this thread, I can't think of any starting character that gets to keep 5 on any roll in 4E other than the aforementioned duelist- my knowledge of all the 4E books is not encyclopedic so I could be wrong there.

- With regard to courtier skills, as many people have noted, they are highly situational. But to address Frank's concern about how they work, in 4E, its a straight up skill/trait roll if its not directly opposed eg, trying to get an immediate appointment with an official would be an etiquette/awareness roll with a TN set by the GM. Trying to get that same official to fast track your request for traveling papers would be a contested courtier(manipulation)/ awareness vs the bureaucrats etiquette (bureaucracy)/awareness roll, with the win going to the highest roll. In the case of social rolls, the effects of raises are nebulous in the rules. It makes Bayushi courtiers potentially powerful with handwavy effects; its great if you're a Bayushi courtier that just outrolled a bureaucrat with an additional 5 free raises due to your rank 1 school technique but, other than succeeding, what do those raises give you? 4E doesn't give you any metric to expound on this. My point here is that whether a social skill roll is against a TN or a roll off is defined in 4E.

- With regard to martial skills, in 4E gameplay there's a bit of a mini-game that goes on that attenuates the dominance of high kept dice people (This may be well known in other R&K systems; I haven't played any others.) The armor TN for most mobs is decently low; ~25 if they are wearing light armor and ~30 if they are wearing heavy armor (very easy to tell the difference). If I am keeping 4 or 5 dice, I'm going to just play the averages, not call any raises and hit the dude with the thing. But say I am keeping 8 dice, I can be pretty reasonably sure to hit that TN25 but the base damage I do is approximately the same as the person with keep 5. All that extra oomph in my die roll is wasted. However, if I call 5 raises and add 25 to my target number, I can make an extra attack in the same round. If I miss that first attack, though, I don't hit at all. In other words, L5R 4E tries to balance the statistical dominance of high kept die characters by essentially allowing them to gamble for more effects (an extra attack is not a maneuver you can attempt till at least rank 4 but there are maneuvers that require fewer raises).

TLDR; L5R 4E has a roll and keep system but tries to vary your path to power with a cap on dice rolled (10), benefits to having high level skills, and options for high kept dice combat characters that allow for both exceptional feats and appearing like a scrub next to that asshole Lion bushi. Sorry, I should have just said Lion bushi.

Regarding the Rokugan world problem of samurai of different clans, its definitely a pain in the ass for a home play campaign if you want a D&D-like adventuring group. I play in the L5R campaign Heroes of Rokugan, and the excuse used to explain why all of you are at the table together for the game is that your daimyo owes favors to someone, those favors were called in and your presence with these other random samurai to do a job is the result. Many a high Glory and Honor samurai, Hero of the Hundred Battles and Beloved by the Fortunes, has wondered why their daimyo has sent them to the ass end of the Dragon lands or into the Shadowlands once again, but they keep their mouth shut and do their duty to their clan and emperor. The inability for clan samurai to easily interact with each other is a major problem with L5R worldbuilding.

Mask_De_H wrote:Okay, ghost, you have gone completely batshit fanboy crazy here and need to dial it back.

That's a ridiculous thing to say. I have asked for Trollboy to back up his claims. He refused to do so and instead threw a shitfit. Asking people to provide evidence of claims such as L5R = racist is not being a fanboy, it's being sensible. Only an idiot throws that kind of accusation around unfounded.

If you are looking to disprove a claim made about something when data has been provided, you must provide data to the contrary, not throw a shit fit and accuse your opponent of doing so. If you are the one stating 4e has fixed things, the onus is on you to provide evidence.

I'm not looking to do anything other than ask people to back up their claims. I am not the one that has made claims, it is not up to me to dehunk or support them, it is, as it always is, up to the person making the claim.

Honestly this is starting to sound like the kind of argument one gets when speakin to creationists or conspiracy 'truthers'.

It you are unwilling or unable to provide said evidence, agree to disagree and drop it. Doing what you're currently doing just makes you look bad.

the burden of proof is not mine. I don't have to provide anything. Can't you understand how this works?

And I'm still waiting for the evidence of those claims.

Grek wrote:Right. Xd6k3 features a fixed range of possible outcomes (3 to 18), theoretically unlimited scalability of the RNG (adding an extra dice is always better, but will never take you off the RNG), but a practically limited scalability of about 10 or so before the benefits of an additional die are too small to reliably notice. Most results are skewed toward high, but the occasional black swan of all 1s can pop up. Downsides include the fact that its probabilities can't be calculated by hand and that the variance on the RNG shrinks as your dicepool grows.

I think you pretty much covered it. It's difficult to imagine what you would want to do with an RPG that would benefit from using that for outputs though. There are lots of times when you want it to be possible for a scrub to beat a veteran, and that is why we have swingy RNGs and dicepools and shit available as RNG options. But I can't think of a whole lot of instances where you don't want highly skilled people to be able to get outcomes that are out of the range of rank beginners.

What we're talking about is an RNG where everyone has the same range of outputs and highly skilled characters cluster around the same couple of numeric outputs. At the upper end it would be like billiards or checkers championships, where anything less than a perfect play was a disappointment. It's certainly a thing, I just have never seen anyone put together a use for an RNG with outputs like that.

Taishan wrote:- Its still Roll and Keep, which has wonky probability functions as Frank pointed out. However, at no point do you get to roll more than 10 dice (small favors?). For every 2 rolled dice over 10, you get an extra kept die. Once you're at 10k10, every 2 rolled dice or one kept die over 10 is converted to +2 to your final roll.

3e is already like that. But very importantly, that's actually bad. Roll and Keep doesn't really come into its own unless and until the number of dice being kept is large and the number of dice being rolled is larger still. If you're rolling XkX you aren't actually doing Roll And Keep at all, you're just rolling a bunch of dice and adding them all together. By making the rolled and kept cap the same, they've jettisoned all reason for there being a roll and keep system in the first place. You're just rolling a metric shit tonne of dice and adding them all together. So it's intractable at the table and it's pointless since you're basically just giving yourself a standard curved RNG using way more dice with way more sides than you need.

Roll and Keep doesn't really start giving mathematically interesting results until you're comparing things like 12k7 (average 51.86, deviation 6.6) to 11k8 (average 53.9, deviation 7.8). That gives a genuine tradeoff of power versus consistency, which is probably the only reason to even consider Roll And Keep in the first place?

Taishan wrote:For starting characters, you cannot have traits or skills above 4. This means a starting character (except for a kakita duelist during a duel) have more than an 8k4 roll.

Changing the 3rd edition soft cap to a hard cap (assuming they actually did that, which they may have, don't care) does reduce the bullshit discrepancy between a min/maxed character and a non-min/maxed character. But it only does so by cutting out the characters who were vaguely competent at anything. Characters who don't min/max in 3rd edition are bullshit flavored bullshit who get beaten down by ordinary bandits and can't wipe their ass without a named NPC holding them up. Removing the ability to twink out a Reflexes of 6 at chargen just means you can't make a character who is good even in a narrow field.

More generally, Roll and Keep is shitty and swingy when the number of dice being kept is small compared to the number of sides on the dice. Keep 4 on d10s is really at the low and shitty end. I wouldn't try to make Shadowrun 4 characters run around with dicepools of 4 or less because the math kinda breaks down at that point. And I wouldn't want to do Roll And Keep with 4 or less kept dice and d10s either, because that is shitty.

Taishan wrote:But to address Frank's concern about how they work, in 4E, its a straight up skill/trait roll if its not directly opposed eg, trying to get an immediate appointment with an official would be an etiquette/awareness roll with a TN set by the GM.

So... all of my complaints about 3rd edition still hold because the format of the roll and the target number of that roll are still MC ass pulls. Gotcha.

-Username17

Taishan wrote:TLDR; L5R 4E has a roll and keep system but tries to vary your path to power with a cap on dice rolled (10), benefits to having high level skills, and options for high kept dice combat characters that allow for both exceptional feats and appearing like a scrub next to that asshole Lion bushi. Sorry, I should have just said Lion bushi.

Frank gave a technically better reply than I can be bothered to attempt. Of course, you actually made specific points that can be compared and rebutted.

Taishan wrote:Regarding the Rokugan world problem of samurai of different clans, its definitely a pain in the ass for a home play campaign if you want a D&D-like adventuring group. I play in the L5R campaign Heroes of Rokugan, and the excuse used to explain why all of you are at the table together for the game is that your daimyo owes favors to someone, those favors were called in and your presence with these other random samurai to do a job is the result. Many a high Glory and Honor samurai, Hero of the Hundred Battles and Beloved by the Fortunes, has wondered why their daimyo has sent them to the ass end of the Dragon lands or into the Shadowlands once again, but they keep their mouth shut and do their duty to their clan and emperor. The inability for clan samurai to easily interact with each other is a major problem with L5R worldbuilding.

Wow, they had a new edition and didn't address a problem that doesn't require a competent mechanics writer to fix. John Wick would be proud.

ghost whistler wrote:

If you are looking to disprove a claim made about something when data has been provided, you must provide data to the contrary, not throw a shit fit and accuse your opponent of doing so. If you are the one stating 4e has fixed things, the onus is on you to provide evidence.

I'm not looking to do anything other than ask people to back up their claims. I am not the one that has made claims, it is not up to me to dehunk or support them, it is, as it always is, up to the person making the claim.

Honestly this is starting to sound like the kind of argument one gets when speakin to creationists or conspiracy 'truthers'.

It you are unwilling or unable to provide said evidence, agree to disagree and drop it. Doing what you're currently doing just makes you look bad.

the burden of proof is not mine. I don't have to provide anything. Can't you understand how this works?

And I'm still waiting for the evidence of those claims.

That's bullshit and you know it.

We have already pointed you, repeatedly, to the evidence for the claims that were made about 3e.

Occam's Razor implies that these will still be valid in 4e, because RPG editions by and large are very bad at fixing things, and the fact 3e made it to print implies that the designers were not top-tier. This goes double for fluff complaints, because L5R is an Intellectual Property(tm) and on that basis alone they are more likely than not to have treated all of its attributes like sacred cows.

The idea that claims about 3e are valid in 4e is not a claim, it is the null hypothesis. By default, a new edition may reasonably be assumed to possess any problem in the previous edition that has not specifically been fixed. It is very rare for an edition to change so much that all claims about its predecessor are automatically invalid when applied to it - D&D 4e and 5e are exceptional in this regard. If you are stating that 4E has changed so much that nothing that was wrong with 3E is wrong with it, then you are making a claim and you hold the burden of proof for that claim.

You will note that above, Taishan actually did point out some things that had changed, and was met not with rabid denial, but with specific counter-arguments.

Omegonthesane wrote: That's bullshit and you know it.

enough with the melodrama.

We have already pointed you, repeatedly, to the evidence for the claims that were made about 3e.

I never made any claims about 3e. I have no idea why you continue asserting the opposite. You're linking to a thread I have never contributed to.

Occam's Razor implies that these will still be valid in 4e, because RPG editions by and large are very bad at fixing things, and the fact 3e made it to print implies that the designers were not top-tier. This goes double for fluff complaints, because L5R is an Intellectual Property(tm) and on that basis alone they are more likely than not to have treated all of its attributes like sacred cows.

I have no interest in Occams Razor; I am only interested in evidence provided to back up the assertions made that L5R is unplayable, completely broken and racist. You have not provided that evidence, so further assertions, such as you are now making, are irrelevant. Either provide evidence or shut up.

You will note that above, Taishan actually did point out some things that had changed, and was met not with rabid denial, but with specific counter-arguments.

Good, so provide some evidence to back up the assertions made about L5R and we can move forward. Pissing your pants about occams razor and trying to sound smart while shouting and ranting just make you sound childish.

ghost whistler wrote:I have no interest in Occams Razor

We're done here. </ignore>

ghost whistler wrote:I have no interest in Occams Razor; I am only interested in evidence provided to back up the assertions made that L5R is unplayable, completely broken and racist. You have not provided that evidence, so further assertions, such as you are now making, are irrelevant. Either provide evidence or shut up.

So, having been provided with a 9 page explanation providing evidence for all the points you have queried for the 3rd edition of the game, you believe it is fair and reasonable to expect people to go out and purchase the 4th edition of a game they have no intention of playing and read through the entire thing looking for and documenting the changes? Rather than you, who apparently own and have read the 4th edition, reading a 9 page link and explaining to us which points are no longer relevant and why. This is in a field (RPG's) where iteration is the norm and wild changes between editions are a relative rarity.

This is why people are being dismissive of your continued requests for more evidence. You have shown yourself unwilling to do even a tenth of work you are asking other people to do. We have already been shown where the 3rd edition fails, and the balance of probability is that the 4th edition is comparable in most major areas. If you feel some problem areas have been fixed between the editions explain which ones and how they were fixed.

Occams razor has nothing to say on the subject of whether a subsequent edition will contain material from the latter. It simply states that the simplest explanation, in a given situation, is the most likely.

Explanation of what?

ghost whistler wrote:Occams razor has nothing to say on the subject of whether a subsequent edition will contain material from the latter. It simply states that the simplest explanation, in a given situation, is the most likely.

Explanation of what?

Oh my god, you actually addressed a single goddamn thing I had to say. I think I'll allow myself a pint in celebration of this rare event.

"Out of the set of problems that 3e had, which ones can we just assume don't apply to 4e, given the additional data that the IP is held by mind-bogglingly incompetent fanboys?"

See also Red_Rob's point:

Red_Rob wrote:So, having been provided with a 9 page explanation providing evidence for all the points you have queried for the 3rd edition of the game, you believe it is fair and reasonable to expect people to go out and purchase the 4th edition of a game they have no intention of playing and read through the entire thing looking for and documenting the changes? Rather than you, who apparently own and have read the 4th edition, reading a 9 page link and explaining to us which points are no longer relevant and why. This is in a field (RPG's) where iteration is the norm and wild changes between editions are a relative rarity.

This is why people are being dismissive of your continued requests for more evidence. You have shown yourself unwilling to do even a tenth of work you are asking other people to do. We have already been shown where the 3rd edition fails, and the balance of probability is that the 4th edition is comparable in most major areas. If you feel some problem areas have been fixed between the editions explain which ones and how they were fixed.

I can't tell if ghost_whistler is an actual fanboy in denial, or just a troll. But I assume the only reason he hasn't engaged on at least the mechanical side is because he knows he'd be cut to pieces. The 'most notable' of the mechanical changes between editions are helpfully summarized on one page, so it's actually dead simple to share them... so I will.*

• The Skill list has been reworked, rationalizing some errors in previous editions and, in the process, bringing back a few old favorites. Skills have Emphases that allow PCs to specialize in using the Skill in a specific way, but instead of creating a bonus to the roll, an Emphasis now allows players to re-roll dice that result in a 1. Skill Mastery abilities, first introduced in 3rd Edition, are still around but have been simplified and re-designed.

I'm going to call this first point out as being exceptional bullshit.

First, to 'rationalize' something in this context means to justify with plausible reasons even if untrue or inappropriate, which is a common tactic with RPGs but probably not something you want to use as a selling point. I assume they were going with the corporate meaning of the word (to streamline by removing), but that doesn't really work because a game is not a company; it does suggest that corp-speak has been so overused at AEG that it's become the default mode for the in-house writers. Second, 'bringing back a few old favorites' means that the already overlong skill list has been made longer. Third, re-rolling 1s in your roll and keep system hikes it up another unwieldiness notch. Except for the last sentence, this is like bragging about how they made the system worse.

Okay, I'm done. Other people can do the rest.

• Weapons no longer have special abilities. A character's extra capabilities with a weapon are now determined solely by Skill Mastery and School Techniques.

• There are now five combat postures, instead of three. The new Postures are Defense (which makes characters somewhat harder to hit, while still allowing them to cast spells or perform Skill rolls, but not attack) and Center (which is used for dueling and also allows a character to "power up" for a round before attacking).

• Iaijutsu duels have been streamlined and simplified, doing away with the need to spend endless time rolling Focus attempts.

• Initiative is now rolled once, at the start of combat, and changed only if a character has an Advantage or Technique which allows it to be modified later.

• The Action system has been simplified from 3rd Edition. A character may take one Complex Action or two Simple actions per round. Characters may also take any number of Free actions, but each specific type of Free Action (such as moving) can only be taken once per round.

• There are no longer Techniques which grant an extra attack. Instead, certain Techniques change attacks from a Complex Action to a Simple Action.

• Raises are now limited solely by Void, and the availability of Free Raises has been greatly reduced. Some of the combat maneuvers which can be performed with Raises have been changed significantly from 3rd Edition, especially the Extra Damage, Feint, and Disarm maneuvers.

• An assortment of standardized Conditions (such as Blind, Prone, and Stunned) have been introduced in order to simplify combat situations and consolidate information. Instead of searching through the rulebook to figure out what happens when your character is knocked down, you can simply flip to the Conditions section in the Book of Earth.

• The rules on Alternate Paths and Advanced Schools have been modified somewhat. In particular, Paths now replace a specific School Technique, instead of being "added in" between School Ranks, so there is now a real trade-off in taking a Path.

• The advanced rules for Kata, Kiho, and Ancestors have all been changed greatly from their previous forms.

I have to say, some of those sound pretty good. It looks like they've cribbed Shadowrun's action system, and d20's standardized condition setup, and so made a genuine attempt to enter the 21st Century only ten years late. But for all the new paint on the house, it still looks like it's built on sand.

On the setting side, I see that they've advanced the history through the proclamation of Empress Iweko, and therefore no substantial changes have been made at all. Sure, a different set of Clans are openly hostile to each other than before, but that doesn't change the likelihood that two PCs are going to be set at each other's throats by social pressure.


* No wallets were harmed in the sharing of this list, I'm just borrowing the copy I have in the store.

edit: I know what century it is.

Omegonthesane wrote: This is why people are being dismissive of your continued requests for more evidence. You have shown yourself unwilling to do even a tenth of work you are asking other people to do.

Because it's not my burden of proof.

Do you just not understand how discussion works?

Burden of proof is a stupid and outmoded methodology. If you have good points make them instead of squawking about who has the burden of proof. If you don't have good points to make, fuck off.

And as someone who is currently running an L5R 4e campaign, I can tell you for a fact that it is a mechanically terrible game. Even above and beyond the roll and keep mechanic, the advancement system is a godawful pile of obviously shitty bad ideas. 4e expects you to pointbuy a character, then take your 10 traits, recombine them into 5 rings, add all of those rings together, multiply the sum by ten, then add all of your skill ranks to the that total and compare THAT number vs a chart to determine your character levelInsight Rank. That means that if you want to be cheesy as hell, you can have your starting shugenja be Insight Rank 2 by putting all of your skills into 1 point fluff abilities, and that buying advantages means you level up slower than the rest of the party.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I can't tell if ghost_whistler is an actual fanboy in denial, or just a troll.

I think he's just a bit stupid, but it sure comes off as trolling.

He thinks it terribly clever to pretend to have no position and just demand evidence while at the same time ignoring evidence. Like a toddler just asking "why why why" all the time, shifting goalposts. It's not a discussion style worth engaging.

Ghost whistler, if you cannot make a positive assertion and subsequently back it up, then shut the fuck up. Grown-ups were talking here.

FrankTrollman wrote:Putting the brand under new management is of course the only way to move forward. Alderac has fucked the chicken too many times. They came out with a fourth edition of the L5R RPG five years ago and I haven't even read it. There is no product or plot announcement that AEG could put out that would entice me to buy a card or a book.

But of course, the concept has legs. There is beautiful art and a number of hooks that draw me in. A reboot by other people certain gets my attention. FFG hasn't really shown that they know what to do with an RPG property, but I'm interested. In a way that I bluntly would not be were this to be more flailing by AEG.

So I'm pessimistic, but I'll probably look at it. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

-Username17

Get ready for more custom dice and "narrative" dice pools if they make an RPG out of this. They'll milk that shit for all it's worth.

If they go more towards WFRP3 than Star Wars, I might be interested.

ghost whistler wrote:Because it's not my burden of proof.

Actually...

You've asserted implicitly that the newest edition is different from the reviewed edition by rejecting conclusions made about 3rd edition.

That would place the burden of proof on you.

TheFlatline wrote:

ghost whistler wrote:Because it's not my burden of proof.

Actually...

You've asserted implicitly that the newest edition is different from the reviewed edition by rejecting conclusions made about 3rd edition.

That would place the burden of proof on you.

No, it wouldn't.

And you're still dodging the questions. Three pages in and despite vile accusations such as racism, not one shred of evidence has been offered.

I can only assume that you people think throwing around such accusations is perfectly acceptable.

You're just wriggling out of answering questions and the only reason i can guess is because you don't have any answers.

Where is the evidence that L5R is broken unplayable and racist?

Plenty of people play the game. What are they doing wrong? Are they racist too?

"When you make a claim you have to prove it right; when I make a claim you have to prove it wrong"

"I don't want to read the evidence you have provided, therefore you have provided no evidence"

"The fact that the fluff was racist and the mechanics were broken after an original edition and two whole editions worth of improvement doesn't even hint that the fourth might be broken or racist"

There's some general categories that "American media does Japan" falls into:

1) "Why is Ken Watanabe speaking English to Tom Cruise": Last Samurai was well received and is one of the highest grossing movies in Japan largely from Tom Cruise being a popular actor, the story being solid, the execution of the costumes done really well, which helps mask any cultural inaccuracies. White folks fuck with their own history to make films like Braveheart y'know? The 'historic' setting is just enough to garnish the flavor of the characters without overwhelming them.

2) "The director really loves our movies": Kill Bill is pretty favorably received in that there is no pretense of 'authenticity' to it, the creator is very straight forwardly celebrating what he loves about Japanese action movies (along with Hong Kong and so on). In that way it is executed in a manner seen as authentic.

3) "What the fuck": Memoirs of a Geisha takes itself very seriously, which makes its innacuracies all the more glaring when it gets everything about Japan wrong in a super serious manner. The only Japanese who did not hate the movie are the ones who think foreigners are bipedal babies totally incapable of understanding Japan and expect nothing from them. (An angry Japanese lady reviews all three films here: https://www.quora.com/How-do-Japanese-p ... iko-Itoh-1 )

Basically, the more an American tries to present his work as "authentic part of real Japanese culture" the more critical Japanese will be of its failings. Most of what I know of L5R comes from The Gaming Den review, but I'd say if run poorly the game can fall to "Memoirs" levels of trying too hard, but a well run campaign can be "Last Samurai" levels of character driven enjoyment. I don't know if it works for "Kill Bill" chanbara genre storytelling though.

But y'know, chances are you're playing L5R at a table of other western folks (likely American? I don't know how many languages L5R's come out in) in a western country so the chances of someone from the cultures you are roleplaying being there to get offended are close to 0.

If ghost whistler has one point going for him, I'd say its the accusation that L5R is racist. Omegonthesane, what parts of L5R's setting are racist? When I read the book, I found it to be a fairly tasteful take on the Asian Fantasy genre. Obviously its not 100% faithful to Japanese, Chinese or Korean history or mythology, but Rokugan never pretends otherwise. The closest the fluff comes to being racist (at least as far as stands out in my memories) is the in character view of most Rokugani characters regarding the world outside the Empire.

This is a serious question, by the way: If there's some offensively racist element to L5R's setting, I want to know so I can excise it from my home game or drop the setting and run something else. But if there isn't anything like that anyone can point to, you need to stop making that particular accusation.

Grek wrote:If ghost whistler has one point going for him, I'd say its the accusation that L5R is racist. Omegonthesane, what parts of L5R's setting are racist? When I read the book, I found it to be a fairly tasteful take on the Asian Fantasy genre. Obviously its not 100% faithful to Japanese, Chinese or Korean history or mythology, but Rokugan never pretends otherwise. The closest the fluff comes to being racist (at least as far as stands out in my memories) is the in character view of most Rokugani characters regarding the world outside the Empire.

This is a serious question, by the way: If there's some offensively racist element to L5R's setting, I want to know so I can excise it from my home game or drop the setting and run something else. But if there isn't anything like that anyone can point to, you need to stop making that particular accusation.

That was actually Frank's claim, I should perhaps not have been so quick to parrot it.

FrankTrollman wrote:L5R isn't really a case of a game which we rag on because we are a bunch of negative nellies. It's a genuinely a bad game. It's bad on a lot of levels. It's bad on most levels it is possible for a game to be bad, up to and including containing offensively racist bits here and there.

It's also not actually something I remember strongly from rereading the L5R 3E review. The closest that comes to mind is the degree of Mary Sue fanwank given to the top twelve daimyos - retconning so that when the Crab boss crucified his son in order to use Shadowlands magic, it was only him being warped by sorcerous wiles even though his actual card said he was totally fucking immune to that shit, and he got completely exonerated while the shugenja he ordered to actually crucify his son became a melt-faced traitor.

The racism issue is complicated, which is why I sure as fuck have no intention of going into it with ghost, because he is a twat shitter. I mean, if he refuses to accept long winded dissections of the mechanics and plot of L5R over its history dating back to the very beginning up to the 3rd edition of the RPG with occasional digressions from Longes about how this or that is mildly different in 4th edition as being evidence at all of mechanical or story insufficiencies in L5R because they aren't directly framed in reference to the latest edition of the RPG, he sure as fuck isn't worth talking to about genuinely complex issues like racism in gaming. Obviously he's just going to continue to claim that his ever shifting goalposts have not been met and no one has presented any evidence that counts towards any of their statements - especially in the parts of their supporting arguments that he has not and will not read because reasons.

L5R is genuinely on shaky ground against charges of racism. It's a yellow-face game, where one of the central conceits of world design is that Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysians and Ainu people are all "basically the same." Sometimes that can lead to awesome culture fusion fantasy storytelling, but it's always treading awfully close to...



Now obviously, sometimes L5R says things about their people that are particularly tone deaf and it comes off as "You know how those xenophobic Asians are, amiright?" and that can get somewhat offensive. Where the actual line of it crossing into being offensive is going to be different for different people and you'll need to tread carefully in those waters with your own group. I'm not really in a position to lay down the law on what is or is not over the line in terms of yelow-faced generalizations. I'm not an "Oriental" myself, and my opinion doesn't count as much as the opinion of someone who is.

But you know what's not complicated at all? The fact that the supposedly good empire you're working for has Eta in it. Eta is a Japanese word meaning "N*gger" and refers to the historically discriminated against Burakumin people who were legally emancipated in 1871 and continue to face social (if no longer legal) discrimination to this day. Like, obviously some dumb asshole was copypastaing some shit out of a book about feudal Japan. But this is pretty much exactly like if you were copypastaing out of a book about the American South and you casually mentioned that a lot of the cotton was picked by n*ggers.

Seriously, this subject would be a lot easier to talk about if the message board didn't auto-delete the word n*gger.

-Username17

OgreBattle wrote: Basically, the more an American tries to present his work as "authentic part of real Japanese culture" the more critical Japanese will be of its failings. Most of what I know of L5R comes from The Gaming Den review, but I'd say if run poorly the game can fall to "Memoirs" levels of trying too hard, but a well run campaign can be "Last Samurai" levels of character driven enjoyment. I don't know if it works for "Kill Bill" chanbara genre storytelling though.

But y'know, chances are you're playing L5R at a table of other western folks (likely American? I don't know how many languages L5R's come out in) in a western country so the chances of someone from the cultures you are roleplaying being there to get offended are close to 0.

That's great; can you now explain what is racist in L5R?

FrankTrollman wrote:The racism issue is complicated, which is why I sure as fuck have no intention of going into it with ghost, because he is a twat shitter.

Oh, so now it's complicated. Of course. It wasn't complicated when you tossed the accusation out there hoping noone would notice.

So instead of this bizarre abusive diatribe you could actually just back up your claim.

L5R is genuinely on shaky ground against charges of racism.

Again, that's an assertion.

It's a yellow-face game, where one of the central conceits of world design is that Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysians and Ainu people are all "basically the same."

Lovely choice of words, "it's a yellowface game", your words by the way, no one else's and certainly not mine.

Please quote from the rulebook where it says or implies this because quite honestly you are so far off base it's frightening. You are not just clutching at straws, you're grabbing at at handfuls of dust in a hurricane.

The game is predominantly influenced by Japanese culture, but, and it makes a point of saying so, that it is also influenced by other far eastern cultures, such as those mentioned. How on earth is that racist?

Sometimes that can lead to awesome culture fusion fantasy storytelling, but it's always treading awfully close to...

How? How on earth do you assume that creating a setting that's influenced by a variety of cultures is racist?

Not really sure why the picture was needed.

Now obviously, sometimes L5R says things about their people that are particularly tone deaf and it comes off as "You know how those xenophobic Asians are, amiright?" and that can get somewhat offensive.

That's another assertion you haven't provided evidence for. Where does the book say anything of the kind?

But you know what's not complicated at all?

Do tell...

The fact that the supposedly good empire you're working for has Eta in it. Eta is a Japanese word meaning "N*gger" and refers to the historically discriminated against Burakumin people who were legally emancipated in 1871 and continue to face social (if no longer legal) discrimination to this day.

Page reference please, I have no idea what you are talking about and some context would be nice. What you are doing is no different thatn if someone said that Quentin Tarntino is a racist because in Pulp Fiction he refers to a black character as a '[EDITED]'.

So the book, though I'm waiting for page references, mentions a word that is a racist epithet. Ok, so what? Context please.

Is it a good empire? Rokugan is entirely dependent on who rules it. There is no implicit assumption that the Empire or it's Emperor are good or bad. Some are, some aren't.

Like, obviously some dumb asshole was copypastaing some shit out of a book about feudal Japan.

Is that an accusation? Please provide some evidence that's what happened and isn't just your bigotry.

Seriously, this subject would be a lot easier to talk about if the message board didn't auto-delete the word n*gger.

-Username17

It would also be a lot easier if you didn't resort to abuse and hyperbole and actually provided references for your claims.