Way of the Daimyo

Rating:
Summary: Way of the Daimyo
Review: I had high hopes for this book. The court and mass warfare are very important to the L5R CCG but haven't tended to feature prominently in the RPG. I was looking forward to a book that would tell me how to integrate them into campaigns without turning them into solely court-based or warfare-based campaigns.

Well, I got that - sort of. First off, WotD has a lot to say about the Glory system. Many of you may have found Glory was a bit unworkable in D10 as presented - you could go up far too fast, and the fact that Glory was supposed to be constrained by your social rank didn't work out.

This has been changed. Not only has Glory been redone, there's a new mechanic, Status, that measures your character's official rank within Rokugan. The Emperor, for instance, has a Status of 10 but may only have a Glory of 3 or 4, if he's never participated in that many heroic deeds. (I'd argue that Toturi III had a Glory of 7, but that's ironically mostly from his days before being the Emperor. Glory 10 is reserved for Shinsei and the Thunders). Conversely, a famous Ronin such as Dairya might have a Glory of 6 or 7 but no Status. My only problem with this is that it seems a fair bit of book-keeping, but it might turn out to be worth it.

However, it goes downhill from here. The rest of the book is concerned with the five 'stations' that high Status characters can acquire - the Warlord, the Ambassador, the Keeper of the Temple, the Provincial Governor and the Master Sensei.

The problem with these classes is the all-or-nothing effect. They provide advantages that are of very little use in a campaign that isn't focused on, say, running a city, and that are overwhelming if it is.

Consider, for example, your general L5R campaign - say the PCs are magistrates, or servants of a Clan Champion. One PC decides 'I want to take the City Governor Prestige Class/Path'! The DM is immediately torn. He either has to shift the campaign to the city, giving that PC a huge advantage over all the others, or continue as he's done, which means that the City Governor PC has a city somewhere in the background and is burning a lot of points/XP on something he never uses.

This is the biggest problem with the game and it's hard to get over it. I guess this sort of thing would mostly be useful for NPCs - but a GM/DM can give an NPC City Governor or Warlord whatever he wants, he doesn't need to bother spending points or taking levels in it.

The book is further detracted from by a generally low level of editing. There are lots of spelling mistakes, incomplete clauses and sentences that don't make sense. Luckily none of them are in rules-critical points, but it's still frustrating.

High points are not confined to the Glory/Status system. The book also has a more detailed mass combat section which is usable and simple. It offers more detail than that presented in L5R D10 2E and doesn't have much scope for PC involvement, but it presents a more tactical battle experience where different troop types have more effect. Again, it's more complicated than the basic, but the payoff is sufficient, IMHO. Then again, to me, the clash of mass armies has always been an important part of the L5R mystique. There are a few weird bits - entire units spontaneously becoming tainted as part of the random battle events mechanic - but easy enough to tweak.

Overall I give WotD 4/10. It's a little hard to review a book with such a specific purpose, but as the DM of a campaign where PCs are starting to obtain high rank and I wanted to give them a chance to become more involved in the government of Rokugan, I found it disappointing. If I am the target audience - and I think I am - the book fails to meet expectations. If I'm not, the book is poorly marketed and narrowly focused, and still deserves bad marks. Overall, you might find it useful for background and further fleshing out Rokugan, but this is a long way from a must-have.