Spotlight - Enemies of the Empire for L5R 4th Edition

Yay! I'm finally kicking off another one of my product spotlights!! I have so many of these to get through it isn't even funny.  I will be trying to get through two more of these very quickly here, then I will be getting into my giant review season of all the Cubicle 7 books I have.  But right now, I am very happy to announce that I will be starting my review of Enemies of the Empire for Legends of Five Rings 4th Edition.

You may have caught my review of the core rule book earlier this year.  I really thought the book was one of the best ones I have read through in a long time and really represented some of the best Eastern-culture themed gaming out there.

This review got bumped up a little bit, mainly because I am starting up an L5R campaign right now via Google+ (made a post about it earlier this week).  I also happen to be running an L5R home game with my wife now, which may or may not turn out to be a good time.  Either way, the combination of both of these games going off right now means that it is time to actually use some of these rules in play! which means that my review might actually have a bit more meaning.  So, stay tuned this week for my notes regarding the contents of this beautiful book.

As far as the books specs go, it is almost 300 full color pages.  The artwork is just as gorgeous as the core book, so you are already getting a lot for the full retail price, which is mercifully cheaper than the core book, but still very expensive ( $39.99 for the hardcover, but also available from RPGNow.com for the reduced price of $23.99 for the PDF).  AEG really puts out books that you want to take very, very good care of.  I almost want to put this hardcover into another cardboard hardcover like you do with comic books.  You could kind of characterize this book as something of a monster manual aimed at use by the GM.  That is somewhat accurate, but the book is much deeper than that; it isn't just a collection of a crap-ton of monsters, it has a LOT of plot, story, history, and general fluff.  I'll go into all the contents in my next post in the series very, very soon.  Stay tuned!!

Review of "Crime Pays: A Godfather's Grimoire" Up at SGW

I finally bring my spotlight on Crime Pays: A Godfather's Grimoire to a close.  My review is now up on Stargazer's World.  I hope that you all check it out.

Spotlight - Crime Pays - The Gritty Details

Last time, in my previous post in this product spotlight, I basically gave an overview of the book, but now I am going to get a bit more into the gritty details of Crime Pays.  The Yakuza gang war which has been driving me bloody crazy recently has apparently died down enough that they have moved away from the direct area around my apartment and are no longer keeping me up at night with their goings on. So, let's get right down to it.

Crime Pays provides you with a macro, domain level system for managing your mob and using them to make money.  That is putting it pretty simply.  In the fashion of 4e, this domain level system uses a refined and modified version of skill checks/skill challenges in order to perform crimes and run your mob.

As the leader of the mob, you are the hand that moves everything from behind the scenes.  This means that you direct the big "jobs" that your mob is going to pull in your territory.  These crimes have the chance to earn you and your mob some cold hard cash, which you will probably then have to use to pay off all the people in your family and take care of the daily upkeep of your mob.

Basically, what the mob turn gets you is a chance to pull off a crime once a month and make some money.  For example, you could direct your mob to Smuggle something, which could earn you up to 2d100 GP.  There is decidedly more to it honestly; playing through these rules means that you also have options for random events, random law events, and random underworld events, which may cause problems for your family.  Some of these events can be pretty crazy - war, in particular, might end with your entire burning to the ground as the local prince laughs at you from his tower perched above the city.

Ultimately however, this is all just a very big and complex method of installing a generator for adventure hooks and establishing a crime campaign.  One interesting passage, in chapter 5 notes that, "unless a mob is both very aggressive and very lucky, it is unlikely that any mob is financially sustainable. Left to their own devices,
most mobs run themselves into the ground in a matter of a few months."  This rules set provides some interesting domain level mechanics, but you can't run Crime Pays as a purely "domain level" style of game.  The book is really just a tool set for providing adventure hooks for a group of players hoping to have an awesome urban campaign built on being the money-interested bad guys.

Next time, you can check out my full review of the book at SGW where I finally finish up this review and I provide my opinions of the book.

Spotlight - Crime Pays Overview

I find it very odd that I was extremely late in writing this spotlight, but the timing turned out to be quite perfect. Apparently starting last week, a full fledged gang war broke out in my prefecture in Japan. This particular gang war involves several extremely powerful Yakuza groups; one family, attempted to break off from the most powerful Yakuza in Japan, but that certainly wasn’t going to fly. They have since begun fighting in several of the major cities in the prefecture, including mine! With that premise, I can now actually bring you the first part of my spotlight on Crime Pays: A Godfather’s Grimoire by Goodman Games.

So, what is this book actually? Well, Crime Pays is NOT a simple guidebook for Rogue characters. If you were hoping that in this book you would find a host of feats and new magic items to outfit your thief character with, you’re going to be quite sadly disappointed. Crime Pays offers a methodology to play more of a macro level D&D style game, which has the player at the head of a mob. Crime Pays is essentially the guide for players who want to become a mob boss – a Godfather.

By this book’s definition, a mob is a family that runs a particular territory. The book offers a very detailed explanation for what that entails in quite a bit of detail. It also implements a very interesting style of “domain level” play but from the perspective of the crime boss. There are lots of random generation tables as well. But I’ll get into more of those details in the next installment of my spotlight… now it’s time for me to go dodge some Yakuza :P

Spotlight - Crime Pays: A Godfather's Grimoire by Goodman Games

I have been having a pretty hard and busy month(s) so my blogging has come to a very hard stall.  But, in an attempt to get it back up and running again smoothly, and in a timely fashion, I am now kicking off my spotlight on Crime Pays: A Godfather's Grimoire by Goodman Games.  The folks at Goodman Games were nice enough to send me over a review copy of the book quite a while ago, around the release, but with everything going on in my life at the moment, I just didn't have enough time to get around and review it.  I want to remedy that fact now and so over the next week (or so) you'll be getting my review of this book up here on my blog and over at Stargazer's World.

Crime Pays is an officially licensed GSL book for use with 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.  I would alternatively title this book "The Complete Mob" in old 3.5 fashion.  It has all the rules you need to run your own little underworld.  The book comes in right around 100 pages and is filled to the brim with tips and tables for the aspiring crime lord.  If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you give my spotlight a read through and go over and pick up the book in either print or PDF.

Amethyst Evolutions - My first look at something awesome

Chris Dias, of Dias Ex Machina, was nice enough to send me an advanced copy of one of the chapters from the upcoming Amethyst Evolutions.  I can't exactly show off the chapter itself, but he did give me permission to talk about it.  I have not yet had time enough to print the chapter out, lay on the floor, and then play in all the pages, but that is pretty much the extent of how amazing the chapter was.  Chapter 2 of the book brings several new interpretations of the older races, some new races (including the Kodiaks, which I showed off in one of my earlier sneak peak photos from the book) as well as the thing that I wanted the most... ORGANIZATIONS.  I thought the organizations in the first book were awesome, but I wanted more.  These are awesome as well, and I STILL WANT MORE!!!  I think I might have to beg Chris to do a book full of just organizations at some point.  It's like giving your adventuring group a nice big club to be a part of.  If you hadn't seen the cover to the book yet, it has been up on the Dias Ex Machina site since the end of March, but I haven't had a chance to throw it up here on the site yet.  He said they are getting pretty close to completing it, so I am very much looking forward to reviewing it and bringing you all of the juicy Amethyst details when they finally come out.

Spotlight - Leverage RPG - Setting(s)

We're back today with more on our continuing Leverage RPG spotlight.  Today's topic is going to be about the setting that is used in the Leverage RPG and related topics.

If you watch the show, or have seen the game, you probably understand that the Leverage RPG is set in our world, in present day.  It is a game which focuses on the evil corporations that cause harm to innocent civilians.  It is very much a world based on reality.  You know what the world is like right?  Using that as a basis, you really already understand all that there is to the basics of what you would call the "setting" for the Leverage RPG.  Your characters are all very wealthy and money is unlikely to be a problem for you (since you could always just steal as much as you need anyway) so you're never limited in your jobs to just one locale.  You should feel free, with the game, to go globe-trotting.  Head around the world and pull of Jobs in exotic locales.

If you aren't up on world cultures and history, or don't know your geography, bust out your laptop, head over to wikipedia and you can get as much information about the real world as you want.  Pretty easy huh?  No need for extensive setting books because this modern RPG is pretty much as real as it gets.

Well... at least that is what the Cortex Plus rules say...

But, like a few people that have posted in the comments of this spotlight, the rules are pretty open when it comes to the world of the game.  This RPG is one of those games that falls between Rules Heavy and Rules Lite and the system is free-form enough that it could be pretty easily adapted to just about any time-period based setting you could think of.

Let's say for example, that you want to play Leverage, but you want to do it in the future.  Great.  Your hacker is going to be very, very happy.  The rules system allows for that nicely.  Because of the way that the rules system handles things like Equipment i.e. Assets, you're not likely to have any problems adjusting the way these Assets are handled in a different time period, such as the future.  It's a very, very easy process. Someone in the previous comments remarked that the TV show was a lot like the Shadowrun RPG except that the technology was all dumbed down. I would say that you could run the Leverage RPG, in the Shadowrun Setting, very nicely, without having to deal with all the heavy duty number crunching that a game like Shadowrun comes along with.

However, let's not just go to the future with this, let's take a look at the past as well.  If you're like me, and enjoy playing Fantasy RPG's (we all do) than you're likely in for a treat with the Leverage RPG.  I could see this game as being very fantasy friendly.  It wouldn't be too hard to redefine the hacker roll into some type of magic user then simply play the game from there.  Your team of fantasy con-artists will be your fantasy world's robin hoods as they steal from rich, evil Necromancers, and give those gold pieces off to the people that need them more.

I give the Leverage RPG some major points for putting together a game system that is capable of doing all these different things with setting changes.

Wait... I haven't talked about the system yet... OK! You caught me!! I haven't talked about the system yet.  Stay tuned tomorrow and I'll be right on it.  Got some episodes of Leverage to watch and then you'll get your system post.

    

Spotlight - Leverage RPG - What is Leverage?

OK, let's define Leverage shall we.

Leverage
S: (n) leverage, purchase (the mechanical advantage gained by being in a position to use a lever)
S: (n) leverage (strategic advantage; power to act effectively) "relatively small groups can sometimes exert immense political leverage"
S: (n) leverage, leveraging (investing with borrowed money as a way to amplify potential gains (at the risk of greater losses))

Thank you Google for helping us out with that.

The show, and the RPG, are a play on words. If you've seen the show, or played the RPG, you probably know why.

Leverage is about Con Men (and women) who join together to do their thiefly duties and steal lots of cool stuff.  Sometimes its money, sometimes its artwork, sometimes its horses... (no really, watch the show).  Leverage is kind of like watching Oceans 11, but with only 5 people, and they do it for an hour every week.  Some of the "Jobs" are rediculously over the top and involve the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars.  In fact, the first episode of the TV show has the characters making off with so much money that they could all immidiately retire from a life of crime, settle down somewhere, and enjoy the good life... but, none of them would be satisfied with that.

The show's underlying premise is not only are these people Thieves, but they are also Robin Hood's.  It is kind of hard to say which one of them would actually be Robin Hood (I mean you could make the clear argument that Nathan Ford, the mastermind behind the group, is their leader, but... not sure about that... I like me some Christian Kane for that part... ).  Every character in the show has his or her own specially defined role.  Let's go down the list:  Smart Character - the Mastermind, Nathan Ford; Strong Character - the Hitter, played by Christian Kane; the Hacker, Hardeman; the super flexible, but super crazy burglar - the Thief, Parker; and the charismatic - Grifter, Sophie.

The Leverage RPG is an RPG simulation of the Leverage TV Show.  The Players take the role of one of the Leverage TV Show characters (or make up their own) and play through a variety of Jobs, adventures, if you will, which the Fixer (GM) leads them through.  The game is based on the Cortex Plus rules system and leans toward the story-telling side of RPG's rather than the Tactical Combat Side.  If there was a scale of RPG's with OSR at one end and D&D 4e at the other, the Leverage RPG would be much closer to the OSR side of that diagram.

Next time, in our Leverage spotlight, I'll get into some more detail regarding the Cortex Plus system, how character creation works, and also talk a little bit about how I think you can apply the rules set to run games that exist in a non-"let's go kill everything and steal the loot" kind of world.  Using this rules set, you'll be stealing much more loot, but you won't even have to wash your sword afterward.

    

Spotlight - Leverage RPG - Kickoff

It has been a really long time coming, but I am finally going to kick off of my Leverage RPG Review this week.  Earlier this year, Margaret Weis Productions, was nice enough to send me a review copy of the Leverage RPG when I had showed interest in reviewing their Smallville RPG.  I was quite intimidated at first.  At the time I received the copy of the book, the only thing about Leverage that I knew was that it was a show on TNT about thieves and it starred the dude who played Lindsey McDonald on Angel (we love our Christian Kane).  I wasn't really prepared to read and review Leverage until I actually got to see the show!  The Smallville RPG turned out to be a great product, if reviewed as an RPG Simulation for the Smallville TV Show.

One of the things that I didn't like so much about the Smallville RPG was that I thought it didn't do a perfect job of simulating the "Superhero" genre for me, since that was something I presumed the review should be based on, but after some discussion with the developers, and learning that they really tried to based the game as closely to the show as possible, the design decisions became much clearer to me. That really strengthened my opinion that I would be pretty much out of line to review this RPG without having some understanding of the source material.

But, now, everything has changed! I have finally gotten a chance to watch season one of the show, and will be watching season 2 very soon.  I actually enjoyed Leverage a lot more than I thought I would and I have gotten pretty much hooked.  I am very happy to learn that the show will be airing its fourth season in June of this year, which means lots more DVD box sets coming to me out here in Japan, eventually...  To make a long story very short, I have finally gotten a chance to give the Leverage RPG a good read and I'll be going through it, with my usual RPG spotlight format over the course of the next week.  I hope you all stay tuned for  it!

Warhammer 40,000 Retrospective - 40K Radio Review

I've been very much a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe since I was in Middle School.  My experience with miniatures gaming predates my RPG experience by several years, but I haven't played much since High School.  However, recently, I've been listening to the 40K Radio Podcast and my 40 K memories have come flooding back yet again.

40K Radio is a pretty good podcast in my podcast listening opinion.  I listen to a lot of podcasts (I'm going to start doing some podcast reviews pretty soon) and this is the first 40 K related podcast that I've listened to.  The guys that do the podcast are entertaining and they get into the gritty strategic details of the game in most of their shows.  They also bring in some great interviews with folks like Dan Abnett and Graham McNiell, some of the biggest names that come out of the Black Library.

The show can run really, really long sometimes, but honestly, I don't find that to be a bad thing.  Some folks dislike longer podcasts, but I love them.  As long as what's going on in the podcast is not BS random off topic nonsense, than I'm a very happy puppy.  Some of the 40K Radio Podcasts can be almost 3 hours long, but they don't stray off topic very much - instead they provide very in depth analysis of the 40K Game and Hobby and also manage to talk about the 40K RPG's once in a while (One of their recent podcasts features one of the 40K RPG Producers from Fantasy Flight Games).

If you're not really into 40K then you obviously won't find much in this podcast for you.  The show is fairly specific to the 40K game, especially the miniatures version, so if that isn't really your thing, you might not find much there for you.  However, if you are a current player, or even a former player looking to get back into the hobby and are looking for some news and discussion of the current edition of the game, you can be pretty sure to find a good start with 40K Radio.

Listening to them talk about 40K and some of the new armies that are coming out has gotten me into a very "Warhammer" type of mood, so I thought I'd take some time this week to talk about how I got started in miniatures gaming and how that entrance eventually led me to 40K and now into the 40K Universe RPG's.  I hope you enjoy it.

    

OSR - A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming

I have started to delve pretty deeply into Old School Gaming over the last few months, partly in response to the January RPG Blog Carnival, but party just out of my desire to better understand where our wonderful hobby came from.  I tend to get this way about a lot of things; I consider myself as somewhat of a Renaissance Nerd, so not knowing why we are the way we are is a Philosophical Questions which wracks my dice-centric brain.

About a week or two ago I made a post talking about how much I like reading The Underdark Gazette and how much I appreciated his guide to free OSR Resources.  Trying to understand a new game is one thing, but going from D&D 3.0 or 4e to Old School D&D is no easy task; however, he does a great job of collecting tons of OSR knowledge all into one place.

One of the items in his laundry list of OSR related stuff is: A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming - by Matthew J. Finch.  Today, I wanted to do a little review of this PDF, which is free to download and about 13 pages.  If you haven't checked it out yet, i'd navigate over to the Primer using the link above, download, and then read this post as I go over what I really liked about the Primer.

OK.  Did you finish downloading it yet?  Good.  Let's begin.

First of all, I'd like to say that I think that this primer provided a great, brief overview of what Old School Gaming is all about.  It certainly seems to be well accepted by the OSR community, so, if you're trying to understand Old School Gaming, it seems like it is actually a fairly reliable source of information.  I feel kind of like a college student borrowing a friends test to study... if his answers are right, I'm going to be very well prepared, but if they're wrong, I'm going to be even worse off.  Well, I've looked around the web a bit and all of the points he makes in this Primer seem to be pretty true wherever I look.  So, what exactly are the points that he makes?

Well - he divides his primer into four different Zen Moments which indicate major differences between D&D in 3.x/4e and Old School Games like 0e and 1e.  The Four Moments are:  1) Rulings, Not Rules 2) Player Skill, Not Character Abilities 3) Heroic, Not Superhero  4) Forget Game Balance. Rather than debate whether or not these are accurate, or argue about whether or not I think OSR is better than new editions, etc.  I want to take some time to talk about how I think I can, or cannot, transition from being a New School DM into an Old School DM.

I really think that his first Zen moment is fairly easy to transition into from 3x/4e.  I find myself doing this most of the time right now anyway to be honest.  Most of the time, this is out of laziness really - I dislike having to thumb through rulebooks and break up a game session in order to understand how to do things.  I usually just make a ruling on something and then later do a little research to see how accurate my ruling was up against some established criteria or rule.  I usually ban rules discussion at the table and try to keep my players from learning the rules too heavily.  So, I think transitioning into a rules light, rulings heavy game might not be so bad.

His second Zen Moment of gaming is a bit more difficult, but on a weird situation based level.  I think that some groups my be much better at transitioning into a Player Skill mindset more easily than others.  It might be just me, but I would imagine that some players who are new to the hobby might have a hard time with this, mainly because they aren't skilled.  I don't want to say that old school gaming isn't for stupid people, but I have friends who have played genius rogues that didn't graduate from high school.  I worry that some of these type of players would just be ill suited for Old School Gaming.

I want my fantasy character to be on a Superheroic level - but that is really just my personal taste.  I think this is the point of old school gaming that I have the most problems with.  I want my characters and creatures to do just crazy-insane-insane-crazy stuff in my games.  So, I feel like I might have some issues transitioning into a much lower power level game.

I think forgetting game balance is something I could do with a bit more.  As a GM I feel like it could be pretty nice to take a nice little break from careful encounter balancing and let things go the way things go.  Bust out some Random Encounter Tables and just see what happens...

So.  Basically, that is where I am at in my OSR head-space.  I continue to be very interested in getting into this style of play and I'll be looking for some OSR games next time I head to a con.  I might even try to convince my wife to use that Red Box I picked up over Xmas and play a few games.

L5R Spotlight - Full Review @ Stargazer's World

The timing of this post is pretty ridiculous, considering that Japan is pertty much falling apart around me, but time to continue my review of L5R.  I'm not sure if I'm done with my L5R spotlight because I have a lot that I still want to talk about regarding the system, the setting, and the 4th Edition Core book in general, but I am at the point where I have put out my Full Review of the Game.  You can read that review over at Stargazer's World.  To put it briefly, aside from a few criticisms I really, really liked the book and this iteration of the game in general.  Check out my Full Review!

L5R Spotlight - System

L5R uses a very simple system for most situation in the game. The Roll and Keep system, as used in L5R, requires the player to roll a number of ten sided die, and keep a certain number of those die rolls; the total of all of the “kept” dice is added together and then compared to a Target Number (TN). If the total of all the kept ice meets or beats the TN, then the roll succeeds. This system is used for everything in the game, including attacks, skill rolls, damage, spells, etc. It is a very easy system to understand and is also very simple to use. You always know exactly what die you’re rolling, since you only need d10’s to play the game.

One of the other awesome things about the system is that all dice “explode”. Whenever you roll a 10 on a die, you roll the die again and add the next result as well. L5R is one system, among many, that uses exploding dice and I really like most all of them. Exploding dice certainly adds a lot of excitement to the game and means that virtually any character can do anything. With the right amount of luck, even the lowliest commoner can bring down the greatest samurai (well, you might need a LOT of luck for that actually).

In my last post in this L5R spotlight, I showed one of the characters that I made for a theoretical game. If I ever get a chance to play L5R, I will definitely be interested in using a couple of the characters that I have rolled up. The Character creation system is pretty simple, so I’ll walk you through the basics.

L5R is a quasi class based game. Although your character class isn’t as strict and confining as it would be in games such as D&D 4e, you do have a pretty clear cut idea of what your role is based on the “class” you’re taking. Of course, they don’t really refer to them as classes, but Bushi, Courtier, Shugenja, Ninja, and Monk are pretty much classes in L5R.

After you pick your class, you next pick your clan/family/school. This combination determines your character’s basic starting package and gives you a bunch of mechanical powers all at once; in addition, your clan/family/school combination gives you some awesome fluffy background to help start generating a story for your character. I think that this combination is really great. A Crab clan Bushi does not feel the same as a Lion Clan Bushi from a fluff or mechanic perspective. In fact, playing as a Bushi from the same clan, but from a different school, can also be a very different experience from both a story and game point of view.

After you pick your starting package, the rest of character generation is based on a point buy system where you can pick a number of attributes, skills, spells, advantages, and disadvantages (which refund points back to you). The disadvantages and advantages in particular stand out as giving your character a lot of story – the mechanics and fluff here are very heavily bonded. Some advantage/disadvantages give you point discounts (bonuses in the case of disadvantages) which make a particular mechanic more appealing to take based on what type of character you are playing. For example, Crab clan Bushi can be “Large” more easily than other character.

The game system and the character system in this game combine to make for a very easy game to handle. Though the game could be called “rules heavy” it doesn’t really feel so cumbersome. Give the system a try and you’ll probably feel the same way.

L5R Character - Shunya Doji - Crane Clan Courtier

Among the clans in L5R 4th Edition, the Crane Clan has got to be one of my favorites.  I really dig on their entire clan history and I really like the position that they operate in society.  So, naturally, I really wanted to roll up a Crane Clan character when I got my hands on the new L5R 4th Edition Core book.

The Crane Clan is known for being incredibly powerful at court.  They have some of the greatest and most powerful courtiers across Rokugan.  So, pretty naturally, I wanted to make myself a Crane Clan Courtier.

The first thing that you should note is that when designing these characters for the blog, I chose to disregard the "suggestion" to restrict the total number of points that you could gain in character creation through the purchase of Disadvantages.  But, I didn't go too crazy... I don't think.  In my opinion, I really just prefer to leave character creation more open and so I usually don't limit this kind of thing during character creation in my games.  So, not much reason to limit myself here.

Without any further ado....

Shunya Doji - Crane Clan Courtier of the Doji Family

Biography
Shunya of the Doji family, began his life at Court at a very early age.  Shunya was marked early on to be an emissary of the Doji Family to the Imperial Court.  When he first made his appearance at the court of the Emperor, he was widely accepted and loved by many of the other Courtiers there.  He possessed some minor powers of divination, could tell a beautiful tale, and also was trained in flower arranging.  He quickly became adored by many women of the court; most treated him as a very special child.  He was a younger brother to all.  However, Shunya was never a healthy boy; he often suffered from Epilepsy, which many found to be somewhat disturbing, but because of his kind, gentle nature, he was well cared for.

In his youth, Shunya fell in love with the daughter of a female courtier, but this love was not destined to be.  The girl who had cared for Shunya immensely died of a terrible Fever that took her in the night.  Shunya would never recover from this blow and it has changed the way he treats everyone, especially his current spouse.

In his 20's, Shunya was married to a minor daughter of the Imperial Family.  This wedding marked his status in the Imperial Court and earned him the ear of those in greater power then he.  However, this marriage would also put a target on Shunya's head.  Because of the potential power that many saw in him, he became the target of several nearly successful attempts on his life.  Two attacks were made on Shunya during his time at the Court of the Emperor.  The first attack, by a group of unknown Ninja, cost him his left arm.  The second attempt, made through the use of poison, resulted in long term weakness of his body and permanant blindness.  However, because of these two unsuccessful attacks, Shunya earned even greater status at court.  He became protected by the Imperial Family and none were allowed to touch him again.

Now, Shunya remains at court.  He has an overwhelming force of personality and is cared for by his wife, an Imperial heir, as well as several powerful Bushi of his and other clans.

Personality
Shunya is a well mannered and well respected individual.  He holds up the highest standard of honor and would never debase himself through a dishonorable act.  He is very gentle and his kind nature is rewarded with kindness from most of the people around him.  However, verbally, in debate and in public, he commands attention.  He is outspoken and firm in his speech.  When he makes a statement or advises someone in a leadership position, he does it with every bit of his character.  His words force other Courtiers to take notice.

Appearance
Shunya is a beautiful young man, in his early 30's.  He has dark black hair and a slender, but still muscular body.  He is both handsome and beautiful.  However, despite his physical beauty in these areas, he is deeply scarred.  His eyes are pure white and possess no vision.  Also, his left arm in almost always concealed so as not to reveal the absence of his limb.

Character Stats

Attributes
Stamina 2, Willpower 3
Strength 2, Perception 2
Reflexes 2, Awareness 4
Agility 2, Intelligence 3

Skills 
Calligraphy 1
Courtier (Manipulation) 3
Courtier (Rhetoric) 3
Perform; Storytelling 1
Sincerity 1
Tea Ceremony 1
Artisan (Ikebana) 1
Etiquette (Courtesy) 2
Etiquette (Conversation) 3
Etiquette (Beuracracy) 2
Divination 1
Defense 2
Kenjutsu 1

Advantages
Ally (4/4)
Balance
Clear Thinker
Darling of the Court
Social Position
Virtuous
Imperial Spouse
Sacrosanct
Sensation

Disadvantages
Blind
Cursed by the Realm
Epilepsy
Weakness (Strength)
Weakness (Stamina)
Soft-Hearted
Lost Love
Idealistic
Missing Limb (Left Arm)

L5R - Intro to Rokugan

L5R is a game played in the setting of Rokugan.  This fictional, fantasy world, is a combination of numerous elements from Asian Culture.  If you didn't know that already, you've got some catching up to do.

I setting is obviously most influenced by Japanese culture.  The characters that you play as are highly influenced by classic roles in Japanese society - Samurai, Ninja, Monks, and Courtiers.  My understanding of Japanese culture and from talking to my Japanese family, it would seem that the Spellcasting, magic side of this game, is more heavily drawn from Chinese mythology and Chinese culture than Japanese.  That is in no way a bad thing, just something culturally that you should be aware of.  I think they did a really good job in making it very clear that Rokugan was not supposed to be a strict copy of a real world society, but rather a fantasy setting based off of several real-world cultures.  That works for me.

It is actually pretty suprising how much they took cultural realism into consideration when making this game.  In one section, they happen to bring up the ideas of Sexism, and man/woman roles, in the world of Rokugan.  The game itself makes allowances for female samurai, ninjas, and courtiers, but it also makes the note that if you do want to go more realistic with it, you should probably take into account the fact that these cultures had very strict definations regarding the roles of women in society.

But enough with all that noise, let's talk about how cool this setting is.

The world of Rokugan is comprised of a number of different clans who are said to have descended from the gods.  On a side note actually, creation mythology in the setting is a mixture of what we are probably familiar with from Greek/Roman mythology and creation myths from Asian settings.  Getting back to the world, these clans control most of the power in Rokugan and are constantly wise to threats from within their power structure as well as to threats from outside the empire.  Enter the Shadowlands.  The Shadowlands is pretty much the source of primal evil in the world and the great corrupting force for all Samurai.

That summary might be pretty quick, but in all honesty, it would be really, really hard to wrap the entire setting of Rokugan up into one review.  Let's just say that the setting is pretty awesome.  I would have liked to know more about the major clans, and a little less about the minor clans, but I do have a lot of my old rulebooks that I can consult for fluff; it's not as if fluff in this book is lacking, it's just that I would have liked more in that one particular area, mostly because I think if they had expanded that section we could have gotten a few more full color pictures out of it :P

Regardless, I would like to show of the setting a little bit more.  For that reason, I am going to post here, 4 Characters that I made using the L5R Rules.  These 4 Characters will come from my 4 favorite clans - Crab, Crane, Lion, and Scorpion.  Those clans are just too much fun to play around with.  I might even add in a Mantis clan buji if you're lucky.  Stay tuned for my character posting fun.

Lots of Luck

Spotlight - L5R Kickoff!

Well, it has been a long road leading to this point, but, triumphantly, I am ready to kick off my review week of the 4th Edition L5R Core Rule Book.  I got this as a review copy and have been literally glued to this book for about the last two weeks.  I have been delving deep into both the setting and the system and feel like I am now prepared to tackle this monster tome of a roleplaying game.

L5R produced by AEG is, in my opinion, one of the lasting juggernauts of RPG's.  I was a pretty big fan of the game when it was out in its previous edition, because of my love of Asian settings, and I have a lot of those roleplaying books still locked away at home in my gamer trunk (this has spilled over onto several bookshelves now).

L5R is a game based around several Asian Cultures, most prominent of those being Japan. Since I'm such a big Japan nut, and have a major in Asian Studies, live in Japan, etc. etc. I thought I would probably be a pretty good person to give this a review.  The game came out some time ago, but it is still worth talking about now. 

I will say right up front that I was totally blown away by the quality of the book in every single aspect.  The artwork is fantastic and in full color.  The book itself is of superb quality and the cover is brilliant.  The formatting of the book is perfect; the sidebars have almost as much visual impact as the actual artwork of the book.  You would not be wrong to buy this book simply to have on your coffee table alongside other art books.  It has been said many times, but really, this is the best looking book put out this year, hands down.

But... what is inside this book?  That is what I will be talking about considerably this week.  And, consdering I have made about a dozen characters now, you will probably even get to see a few of my character creations up on the site.  Stay Tuned!

Review: Soldiers of Fortune @ Stargazer's World

Howdy Folks! Wanted to alert you to my review of Soldiers of Fortune, by Matt James and published by Open Design.  The supplement was full of awesome.  You should go check out my full review which came up on Stargazer's World yesterday.  You can find it here:  Review: Soldiers of Fortune by Matt James

Review: Smallville RPG @ Stargazer's World

Hey everybody, my latest full product review, this time of the Smallville RPG is now up and online at Stargazer's as of yesterday.  You should go give it a read.  I found the book to be a very mixed bag; it might be perfect for you, but it also might fall very flat.  It is really going to depend on what you want the game for.  Also, the review brought up a very interesting discussion regarding the focus of RPG's which are based on licensed products, especially TV shows.  Check it out here:  Review: Smallville RPG by Margaret Weis Productions.

More Amethyst Love to Come

Chris Dias over at Dias Ex Machina has asked if the Dump Stat would liked to be involved in a sort of preview/play-test/review of some new upcoming Amethyst related goodness to come.  And, of course we said that we would.  I have really been enjoying getting into this setting for D&D 4e and I am drooling in anticipation waiting for more Amethyst like the dog in this here video below -



But, I don't have to wait any longer.  We have gotten the preview/play-test materials and they are pretty cool.  This preview pack includes several new builds for each of the classes included in Amethyst Foundations.  Can you say awesome??  It is about 40 pages of "Essentials" goodness *wink wink* get the pun.  So, coming soon, we will be taking a pretty detailed, but at the sime time every secretive look at

Amethyst Essentials

Review: Courts of the Shadow Fey at Stargazer's World

In case you missed it, on Friday, my reivew of Courts of the Shadow Fey, by Wolfgang Baur and published by Open Design, came out on Stargazer's World.  I encourage all my readers to go over there and give it a read.  If you like elves, or, for that matter, want to lay the smack down on a few of them, you might want to think about picking up this adventure.  Find out why by reading: Review: Courts of the Shadow Fey.

I hope you enjoy it and comment up a storm!!