Magazines have been a tradition in the Role Playing community for a long time, many people still have old, tattered copies of Dragon or Dungeon in their closets, articles they loved safely tucked away for use in their current or future campaigns. With game companies moving into the online realm it makes sense for them to move things online as well, less production costs, no shipping, it’s all business. There is something though about holding a real magazine and the good people at Open Design feel the same way.

Open Design is the company behind one of the last remaining magazines out there, Kobold Quarterly.  KQ provides player and DM alike with all kinds of helpful information that could help you flesh out things in your character or campaign. The articles are all written by some of the best freelancers in the industry at the moment (including Chimera Games customer Ryan Costello Jr.!) and the presentation is just incredible, beautiful art, amazing prose all come together into one great package.

Kobold Quarterly comes out every quarter (Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter issues) but with so much info available it will take you that long just to get the most out of each issue. Chimera Games gets every new issue and has back issues as well, so why not come on down and check it out, if you are part of a campaign and want something to help make it even better we guarantee you will love it.

Kobold Quarterly Issue #21

From the website:

Kobold Quarterly issue #21 takes on the theme of Divine Majesty, with a host of articles to take your campaign into the higher realms, or lower depths.

“The Shaman” introduces a new base class for Pathfinder RPG that gains powers and abilities by unlocking secrets about the natural and spirit worlds. “Daughters of Lilith” presents the ecology of the succubus with new feats, powers and traits fully compatible with Dungeons & Dragons. David “Zeb” Cook’s article “It’s a Mystery!” provides an antidote to generic fantasy religions using the secrets and traditions of the mystery cults that flourished in ancient times.

“Clerical Conflicts” makes the life of a cleric extremely interesting with soul-ripping demands made by his or her god — dilemmas such as Disillusioned Crusader, Chosen One and even Were-Angel! TSR and WotC alum Steve Winter explores how GMs can build a compelling monotheistic campaign setting in his “Howling Tower” column, and “Divine Archetypes” gives players a way to make angelic heroes, holy traps, and celestial Fists of Fury.

KQ #21 also features official Pathfinder Society content, robber knights and vile wizards, new Zobeck and Midgard articles, and alchemists, druids, illusions, and seers for the AGE System — with a sultry pinup cover!

by Davila LeBlanc

THE CONFESSION:

I think it should only be fair to point out before even reading this review that I mention that I am a SAMURAI FREAK!  So obviously: I love this system.   It should also be mentioned that I have no real knowledge of the previous editions of this role-playing system.  That being said, I love this system.

LEGEND OF FIVE RINGS FOURTH EDITION

Welcome to the land of Rokugan where the Rule of the Emerald Empire and it’s Emperor is enforced by the Seven Great Clans.  A land of court intrigues, bold Samurai, mysteries, magic, monsters and most importantly a land of rich history. 

Legend of Five Rings has one of the most beautiful and rich world lores I’ve ever read.  In the fourth Editions books you don’t feel so much your reading a game manual as a history book.  Rokugan is a world of rich history and the writers of L5R have done a great job in capturing the flavour, thematic and all-around feel of a land that draws inspiration from many Asian mythos.

It CAN feel a bit like standard-fare fantasy with Samurai, replacing fighters, Ninjas and Ronins replacing rogues and Shugenja replacing wizards, and many new players might be turned off by that, however this isn’t a paint-by-numbers standard fantasy with a Japanese flavour paint job on it.  This is a rich world with plenty of room for play adventure and storytelling.

Practitioners of martial arts in particular, or Samurai genre fans will feel right at home in Rokugan.

ACCESSIBILITY

L5R isn’t a game for beginner players, it’s rules of a roll and keep system are easy to understand, but can get pretty complicated very quickly.  While running my campaign it was always a bit of chore crunching numbers and trying to figure out how many dice a player rolled and how many dice the player kept.  Add that with the fact that the rolls are open-ended and we’ve got a big number cruncher that just might be a bit intimidating for newer players.

But this isn’t really a system for new players; this one is more for Intermediate and up.  Players who’ve run D&D, and want to try something a little new, in world rich in traditions and history will have a blast.

HONOR

The game encourages players to play honorable characters, and although it is refreshing to have a game that rewards behaving honourably, it feels rather nebulous as to what honor can do.  Honor can be added to Courage checks and can be used to help the player out of a jam (kinda like a fate dice) but that is pretty much it.  Also given the fact that players have to keep track of their GLORY, HONOR and a myriad of other stats, L5R CAN be a little bit more intimidating than other systems.  Also be warned that characters can and WILL die very easily in this game.

Players who love to fight first and never ask questions should probably look elsewhere.

I often found it difficult to figure out when to penalize or reward my players with honor points and the rigid honor system of Rokugan can have players scratching their heads and wondering why they lost honor points or gained them for that matter.  There is a chart in the book but it is far from comprehensive.

That being said however I, found the rules easy to follow, the books (all four of them) so incredibly well indexed that I never had any problems finding any rule or reference, and character creation was so easy!

CHARACTER CREATION

With a forty-question survey in the core book, my players and myself found ourselves creating fully fleshed out (more or less) character with about an hour to an hour and half tops.  The game has a very good customized/level up system, players who just want to follow their current Clan Disciplines and Powers can do so very easily while players who want to make more “customized” characters can do so as well, just as easily.

The game has TONS of Character Build options.  With the Core Book alone, players will have countless character types to choose from.  The other books, BOOK OF THE CLANS, ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE and THE EMERALD EMPIRE, also add other options and powers, although trust me when I say you’ll have more than enough with the core book.

FINAL VERDICT

LEGEND OF FIVE RINGS 4th EDITION, is a very good role-playing system, which while intimidating to new players, is still a great time.  Sure there are imperfections in the system, but LEGEND OF FIVE RINGS has been out for awhile now and it’s developed a loyal following.  I should know, I’m one of them.

I give it Eight Cuts out of Ten.

SAMURAI (pros)

-Books are incredibly well indexed.

-Very rich lore and beautiful artwork.

-Character creation is both easy and fun.

-Great Writing and Presentation.

-A fresh different spin on the fantasy genre.

NINJA (cons)

-Very number crunch heavy on the die-rolls.

-Rich world lore CAN be intimidating to newer players who are just getting into role-playing.

-Honor System a bit nebulous.

NEEDED TO RUN:

-Legend of Five Rings Role Playing Game 4th Edition Core Book.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

AEG has also released a total of four source books for the fourth edition so far.  All of them are great reads and will add TONS of flavour to your L5R campaign.

In order of Importance they are:

1. Enemies of the Empire

2. Book of the Clans

3. Emerald Empire