Product Description

Return to Rokugan, where honor is a force more powerful than steel.
For one thousand years, the Empire of Rokugan has stood as a bastion of nobility, honor, and virtue. These lands are ruled by the samurai, powerful heroes who carry the katana and wakizashi as their badge of rank. Eight Great Clans vie with one another for supremacy over these lands, all under the eye of the mighty Emperor. And to the south, the Shadowlands, the eternal enemy of Rokugan, waits for the next opportunity to disrupt all that these foolish mortals have built. It is a land of intrigue, wonder, and adventure.

Welcome to the third iteration of the Legend of the Five Rings Role-Playing Game. This player's guide will provide players and GM's with all of the setting, culture, and rules needed to create characters in the Legend of the Five Rings world and stage ongoing campaigns in Rokugan. While this book contains an updated version of the familiar rules, conversion rules will be included so that none of the many previous volumes set in this world will ever be obsolete.

The best Asian style fantasy setting roleplaying game of this generation returns to its roots with its release this summer. Legend of the Five Rings 3rd Edition returns focus to the Roll and Keep(R&K) system originally released in 1996. Conveying a deeper sense of realism, the R&K system best simulates the tension, reality, and lethality of Samurai drama. Look for it more information in the coming weeks here at L5R.com.

* Thrilling fantasy setting based on the myths and culture of Japan, China, and other Asian nations

* A new generation of the beloved Legend of the Five Rings roll and keep system.

* Streamlines existing rules without making previous products obsolete.

* Excellent sourcebook for Rokugani culture and history

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #568185 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

great RPG, despite a few flaws
The 3rd edition of the book is wonderful. It's high quality both in the hard cover it has and in the page quality. AEG did a great job there. Also, you won't see such wonderful art in many other RPG books. The art, in many areas, is magnificent and really aids providing you a look and feel for the game.

Now...to get out the minor negative stuff that resides in the 3rd ed. before I rave amount the many very good aspects of the game: the book seems rushed out, in terms of content. A good GM will need to read most of the book to know the rules of the game. The problem is that the book suffers from some organizational issues. Certain key rules are buried in what one might consider more minor/detail oriented sections rather than in an all-inclusive general rules section. There are numerous typography and grammatical/spelling errors (all very minor though and nothing that actually deters one from understanding how something should actually read). My group of gamers as also found some ways to break the game, at least while all the characters are all minor level (the "breaking" is lessened as characters level up) or inflate Insight (insight is used to determine ranks). To that end, we've adjusted some rules to make more logical sense for such skills as Lore, etc., which was ridiculously broken up into multiple skills. We've also banned or lessened certain school skill effects, etc that made a rare few early level characters powerful well beyond their rank/skill level. Also, the book failed to list rules for one or two skills, like expolsives (which will be corrected/added in the Lotus edition, or so rumor has it).

However, any decent GM (gamemaster) can help to easily smooth over any holes (and reading the book is actually very fun, even for a non-GM, non-hardcore\casual RPG'er like me.)

If you're looking for a unique and orginal game, you'll be hard pressed to find a more complete and awesome game with a very well done universe. The setting and rules are very Asian/Eastern in origin and feel. The history is amazing, the community seems awesome, you have the benefits and unique gameplay a D10 system provides over D&D's D20, and the actions a character must take to do well are very different from most RPG games with western influence. Plus, the shear amount of inspiration the book can provide to any gamer is wonderful.

Despite the few holes in gameplay and rules, this sucker get's five stars. All the great aspects of Legend of the Five Rings 3rd ed. truly help to negate the few errors and make it by far one of the best RPG's I've played, well over Star Wars or Dungeon and Dargons.

PS. A note to buyers, to my understanding the Lotus edition is only an expansion, not an all inclusive book for the rules and hisotry (ie. AEG is not fixing an spelling or organizational errors in the 3rd ed. book by releasing Lotus as a new, all inclusiver rule book). Double check me on that though, as I may be wrong.

I leave the boys alone...
I think the best critique I can give is to say that this is the first game product I've purchased since I last saw my AEG buddies... GenCon of 2002. Probably 1/3 of the folks named on the front page of the book are known to me personally, though I dropped out of "the gaming scene" about 3 years ago. (OK, I'm a game junkie, and the itch finally came back.)

That being said, the book is beautiful. And I am THRILLED with the return to the original "roll & keep" system. (I hate d20 in all it's incarnations.) I have only 2 comments on the "con" side.

Like other reviewers, I have to say that this book suffers from an incredible lack of editing and proofing. Whole sections are missing, and I found places where proofing notes were made, and ADDED to the printed text. Additionally, you have to read the whole book... the book has 5 sections and 5 writers, and at times, it does read like they didn't talk to each other.

The other issue is the inclusion of "kata". At a glance, it's painfully unbalanced. I cringe at the thought of the actual play experience. I do not mean that kata are unbalancing, but rather, that they are not balanced amongst themselves. IE, no Crane player that wants to live should ever waste the points to purchase a Crane kata, and no Lion player should ever be without the kata available to the Lion.

Basic combat remains the same as it was in 1st edition, and the game adds a fair amount of complexity to character skills in this version. The most significant changes are in dueling and magic. The changes in dueling mean that the Kakita school is no longer the dueling juggernaut that they were previously, but this is probably a good thing. The only down side I see to it is that the Kakita bushi were not given a corresponding improvement in their skirmish combat, leaving the school diminished overall.

In the magic system, there's a notable shift. A lot of spells have changed, mostly to be reduced in power. This is off-set by the increase of 3 additional ranks in all shugenja schools. What this means is that shugenja are much weaker in the early levels than they were previously, but around 4th Rank, it balanaces out and shifts the other way. The only sad part is the loss of versatility, as most spells are now VERY restricted on the number of raises (a game mechanic for bettering your outcome) they may apply to a spell. Gone are the days of The Cresting Wave (one of the greatest feats of magic in the game world, which is now impossible to duplicate).

It is neither good nor bad, but there are a great deal of interesting choices for included information, vs. excluded information. In many cases, I hear that excluded info is scheduled for later releases; but quite often, the choices make me go "hmmm."

One of the things that I'm truly estatic about, however, is the information on Shadowlands Taint and Maho. These topics are vastly improved since 1st Edition, and are mostly laided out in an organized manner. And in the long-run, I think the history overviews will be a godsend. I've certainly gotten enough game ideas to torment my local players for years to come.

The Best of them yet!
I have to say, this is possibly the best L5R game to date that I have GMed. The game is fun and I love the roll & keep system. BTW the layout is not a problem, after reading all the negative reviews, i almost did not buy this game, but I took a chance and ordered it and am not disappointed for sure.... IT ROCKS! Compared to 1st edition L5R it is the best, fun and most enjoyable game to date, my only complaint is the NPC's section of the book is kinda slim and the GM gaming advice section is also slighted, but being a veteran GM for over 25+ years, its not a problem....You must also have the Creatures of Rokugan as well, this adds a whole lot more to the baddies, which the main book is slighted with....well you dont have to have it but its worth getting anyhow.
The Rokugan history is deep and keeps on getting bigger all the time, so get this game, its a great one.