L5R 4th edition

The 4th edition of Legend of the Five Rings is out! I have long been anticipating it. The book is very beautiful. Especially the layout and the page decorations are excellent. They use typical old Chinese and Japanese drawing style to decorate the page. It is just minimalistic enough. The drawings and illustrations are also good, but not as excellent as the page decoration. The layout is efficient in highlighting important items, and the book is much better organized than the previous edition.

Timeline
Earlier I have written quite a bit about the timeline of L5R, I'll try to avoid repeating my qualms about the the history after 1st edition.

The timeline presented in the book is very brief. They do not dwell on it. Since I have read a lot about the setting in previous editions this is fine with me. Though I suspect that a player new to L5R would want much more details about the history of the empire.

Setting
The setting is presented very nicely. With enough details to make it playable for new players. They introduce most of the cultural aspect in a very satisfying way. A good piece of work.

System
At a glance the system is identical to that of the previous edition, but when one look closer there are a lot of small improvements and changes. Recognizing a person based on glory and gauging a persons honor was always very difficult in 3rd edition. Now there is a much better system using a regular skill roll for each of them. Duels have been made simpler, with fewer rolls. I'm not certain that this is an improvement, but it is at least much less confusing.

With out being extremely familiar with all the school technique I believe that the essence of them has been kept. The biggest change to a single school that I noticed is that Kakita now has to learn Kenjutsu, as they can no longer substitute it with Iaijutsu. Aside from this the techniques are much better explained, and in many case less complicated. Which is good.

Some other changes are

• Kata can be activated in combat.
• Void is more expensive to buy than other stats.
• Shugenja can now attempt to convince the spirits to let him cast a spell that he does not know the proper prayer for.
• Clearly states that shugenja and courtier can be combined. Also that bushi and courtier can be combined. 
• More combat stands with more flexibility. 

Hunter: The Vigil

The core rule book for Hunter: The Vigil has gathered dust in my bookshelf for about a year now, well in my girlfriends shelf anyway. It would probably still be standing there gathering dust if my Kindle hadn't broken down the day before my vacation.

Hunter: The reckoning had in my opinion many flaws. It made the hunters to much like just another brand of supernatural creature fighting their favorite enemy. In the new version hunters are just normal, with a tidbit of extra juice through some special willpower rules. I like this part. Then they start ranting on about this organization of hunters and that organization. Most of them are not particularly innovation. Each organization had its own special brand of juice. Some has special equipment, others rituals or magic. Which brings us back to the feeling from reckoning that hunters are just another brand of supernatural creature.

If you want to run a game with large organization hunting supernatural creature, this is a book for you. If you just want a game of a small group of hunters doing their very best to survive against the horror of the nights this book doesn't give you a lot of help. Stick with the core rule book for world of darkness and a book or two about monsters and you'll do fine.

The only area where I think this book can be really useful (aside from filling the bookshelf) is if your running a different supernatural game and need some hunter antagonists. In such a game I can see how a big organization of hunters might be both scary and worthwhile for the story.

Letting go of the reins

In March 2008 I started a Vampire Dark Age campaign. The goal was to play from 754 to 2010. After 30 sessions and one and a half year later I needed some time of from being storyteller. So I asked one of the players to take over as storyteller from October 2009. The idea was that he was going to to between 5 and 10 sessions. I just want to talk a bit about how that felt.

At the initial handover it felt good. I was finally going to be a player again. I trusted the new storyteller to take good care of my campaign, so there was no real worries. The first session was almost like we were two storytellers, as he needed to confer with me about certain things and NPCs.

To make the handover smoother it was done just after the player entered a new city. That is during the sige of Paris in 885 they had been in Paris, but had a very limited experience with the city. So it was almost like a blank slate.

I know what your thinking 30 session / 1.5 years to play from 754 to 885 that is about 4.4 years per session or 87 game years per real year. Which means we are going to need play for another 13 years and 255 more sessions before we reach 2010.

In the beginning it was a bit fun and a bit frustrating to see how the new storytellers used the NPCs, and the plots I left behind. After two or three session that was all gone, it was just great to be a player again. The new storyteller had built up a total separate setting within my setting. He managed to isolate most of the play to Paris city, while still keeping the connection to the NPC and plots outside.

Now after six session as player I feel much more rejuvenated. It is with mixed feelings I look at the calender and see that in 4 sessions I'm going to be the storyteller again. In one way it will be great to be the sotryteller again. I have gotten a lot of inspiration from seeing someone else work with the NPC and plots I started, on the other hand then I will no longer be a player...