31 Day Character Challenge 2024: 31 Legend of the Five Rings

Today on the 31 Day Character Challenge I look after my family’s honor.

A couple years John Wick created the 31 Day Character Challenge. You create a new character every day for a different role-playing game. You can see his latest video here.

I thought it looked tons of fun and decided to jump in and give it a try. Today, I’m going in on the first edition of Legend of the Five Rings written by John Wick. I’m using first edition because it’s the one I own. I’ve played the most recent edition and really enjoyed it; I just haven’t yet purchased a copy of the rules. I do intend to get one though.

I talk about my favorite games being ones that make me think differently. L5R was the first game that got me to do that. IT was the game that had me working my way around the ideas of my character over my own preconceptions. Most RPG characters I’d played up to this point had been versions of myself with my own reactions and ideals. L5R was a switch in not just my own reactions but how I approached the various challenges the character came on.

I can still remember hitting a mystery where we absolutely knew who the killer was, we’d found proof they were the killer, and we’re getting ready to arrest them. When we arrived at court one of the man’s bodyguards had come forward to confess they had killed the woman, framed their master, and we’re set to commit seppuku the next morning. We absolutely knew he was innocent, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Things like that, where family honor is so important that a bodyguard would let themselves die so that the more respected member of the family would go free because it would be less of a stain on the families honor for the lesser placed bodyguard to die. That the family could regain some honor by having the master request his bodyguard be given the honor of seppuku to redeem themselves. These were foreign concepts to me. I spent way too long trying to prove the bodyguard was innocent because I hadn’t yet gotten it at this point. This was the session where I realized that I had to start thinking differently than I normally would.

L5R is a mashup of various Asian cultures in their own fantasy world. While it isn’t our world you can see the inspirations for it floating around the game. The story is set around several families with seven main ones keeping a lot of the focus. You are a member of one of these families and belong to the Emerald Magistrates, a group of investigators who work for the Emperor to keep the land safe.

I’m going to create Riku.

Since the first part of creating a character is to choose a clan I’m going to go with the Crab clan. This is the family that guards the massive wall that border the shadowlands where an army of demons is constantly trying to invade the main part of Rokugan. While the Crab clan is often more concerned with function and safety over appearance, Honor is still very important to them.

Each character has five attributes: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Void. All but Void, have two traits. The lower of the two traits make up the rank for the attribute. With a base character, everything start at 2. This is important because these are going to start changing with most every decision.

Next, I choose family. Each clan is made up of three families. Crab has the Hida who hold the wall, the Kuni who hunt the demons, and the Yasuki who are the politicians. I’m going to pick Kuni and go hunting witches and demons. This gets me a point of Intelligence and most likely makes me a shugenja, or sorcerer. I will go that route and this gets me a point of willpower and the skills: calligraphy, defense, kejutsu, meditation, lore: shadow lands, hunting, and athletics. As a shugenja I get some spells with a focus on Earth spells.

I then get 25 points to spend boosting the bits of my character. Because I get a boost for Earth spells I want my Earth ring to be higher. Earth is made up of Stamina and Willpower. Since Willpower got a boost earlier I want to raise my stamina. This will cost me 8 points per my current rank, so 16 leaving me 9 to spend elsewhere. I’ll spend 4 of those points on magic resistance to be better at my job. With my last five points I’ll buy horsemanship, stealth, bo stick, herbalism, and tea ceremony.

That’s Kuni Riku.

Until next time, stay safe and be well.