Legends of the Five Rings, 4th ed.

Friday, my friend Marius published a concise review the new 4th edition of L5R.

Yes, the graphical design is indeed lovely, presentation is good and clearly Rokugan-themed. A great deal of care has gone into this new edition.

The changes to the system seem to be mostly reasonable and sensible.

In addition to what Marius has mentioned about this revision, I would like to point out a few things that I noticed within the first couple of hours of use. This is of course quite opinionated, but that is what you get for reading a blog. ;)

• The index is improved in this edition, good going!


• Chapter organization still seems slightly haphazard: you have to know your way around the book to know your way around the book.
  
  Yes, the chapter ("book") titles "Book of Fire", "Book of Water", etc. are cute, but they seem to have little to do with the rings as I understand them in context of the system.
  
  Additionally, there appears to be little enough thought behind what went in which chapter.


• They have not fixed the monetary system.


• For a player converting from 3rd to 4th, there are several WTF moments.
  
  I kept thinking: "they should have made a character conversion guide, or at least a chapter briefly outlining the changes from 3rd".

I wonder about two more things:

1. We have had role-playing books like these for ages now, yet there appears to be little actual development in presentation.
   
   For those who want to understand the technicalities of a RPG, first-generation games were supreme in providing a technical reference to the actual system, usually very little prose, while leaving a lot to be desired in terms of descriptions of background, setting, and not least: graphical design.
   
   Today's generation of games are pretty darn good at providing background, setting, and graphical design, and also good in describing how the system works with examples and prose, but usually suck at being a technical reference.
   
   In other words: before, you could more or less easily look up the game mechanics, but in these days, you need to read several small essays and short stories to get there.
   
   What prevents RPG publishers from combining the best features?



2. And, as a person who is rather fond of carrying less things around, where is the searchable PDF? Please, pretty please! :)

These bullet points can more or less easily be solved by eager fans with too much time on their hands.

In these days, I wouldn't be surprised if one of these fans came up with an iPhone/iPad/Android app for handling the technicalities.

Oh, and, yes, the system and setting is still highly recommendable.