Mass Battle Rules for Small Armies

These rules’ main objective is to give every type of School in a party a role in achieving victory in battle, be it bushi, shugenja, courtier... Battles following these rules are supposed to have a few squadrons of combatants on each side, mostly foot-soldiers with a few samurai acting as officers. They can be used to simulate the entirety of a small battle or a single flank of a larger clash of armies.

These rules assume that one player will play the role of General for their army, while the other players will each function as Officers in charge of specific roles, like Scout, Herald, Champion, etc. What these officers do will be explained in their respective phases of play.

Quick and Easy Court Challenges and NPCs

I like making court sessions not only roleplaying scenes, but fully mechanically engaging challenges. L5R 5e already has a framework for that, but 4e and previous editions never actually gave GMs a good basis, despite priding itself of having Courtier schools and plenty of social advantages and disadvantages. I add several frameworks to help with making these as mechanically engaging as Bushi and combat, but today I’ll talk just about the baseline: NPCs.

A New Challenge

Here we go! A blog to talk about house rules and tips for an RPG that barely anyone plays, how could this NOT be a success? 😁

I decided to do this after some discussions in the L5R Discord and realizing I have about 20 years of experience with this game. Now, I do play with lots of house rules, but many of them I think could improve the game by a lot, for a lot of GMs out there.

Something I realize while playing this game is that L5R could use more focus on the economics, on how a magic samurai in a fantasy land administrate said lands and how society demands more from them than merely toeing the line, behavior-wise. Service, gifts, soldiers, the appearance of wealth...

Now, I do play (and write) stuff specifically for the 4th edition of the game, an edition which is no longer supported. L5R 5e is the current version of the game, an edition that I don't like very much. But I will attempt to convert stuff for it as well, I just ask for a little patience, suggestions and corrections whenever they may be needed. I'm always open to those!