For those of you who are not aware, WA’s own Micah Watt of Pyromaniac Press has once again volunteered a significant amount of his time to organise the Role Playing Games at Southern Hemisphere Open. As well as building an amazing timetable of Role Playing Games, he also took some time out to chat with one of the many DM/GMs that will be volunteering at Southern Hemisphere Open this year to run those RPGs.
Ahead of SHO 2109, at Claremont Showgrounds June 1-3, I had a discussion with William Bampton, the DM for Role Playing Game; Legend of the Five Rings
1) How would you describe Legend of the Five Rings as a roleplaying game?
Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) is an Eastern inspired role playing game that heavily features aspects of Samurai culture. It’s a system where you get to immerse yourself in a completely different culture. There is more emphasis on how the character react and deal with situations and in many cases the plots are very character focused. The system plays quite well with loads of opportunities for the players to insert their skills and abilities to resolve issues. The players are all parts of major Clans, represented by animals/mythical creatures and each has it’s own unique traits and abilities, like races.
2) How does it differ from popular systems such as D&D?
It’s a different dice system, which allows for rolling a huge pool of dice, think like Shadowrun, and lets the results hit some really explosive numbers. Its setting is drawn heavily from eastern culture and the social classes of the feudal era which adds a level of flair dissimilar to D&D. It also has an interesting class systems where your style can vary although you play a similar character to other players: you can be a staunch Crab warrior, or a graceful Crane, a deceptive Scorpion or a ferocious Lion.
3) What would you say are it’s greatest strengths/highlights as a game system?
It’s strength is it’s flexibility of style, although predominately focused on the eastern culture and style, it can be an intensely social/political system or a completely power romp, similar to anime style, with big enemies and intense battles. There’s also a variant set in space.
4) Describe the game mechanics. What statistics or skills does a character possess, what dice are used?
The characters stats are divided into the four major rings: Fire, Water, Earth and Air, each with a physical and mental attribute, and Void: the mystic essence which empowers though can connect with it.
A character has certain skills that are associated with their school, a Crane Duelist is very good at dueling (iaijutsu) naturally, whereas a Dragon Investigator is allowed to conduct criminal style investigations.
The system is a d10 roll and keep system which uses your skills and stats to build a dice pool, which you roll. For example, to fire a bow, you would use your character’s Reflexes (3 for example) and their skill in Archery -Kyujutsu- (4 for example) to build a pool of 7 d10s which you roll and keep your stats (3) and any 0/10’s you roll get to be rolled again and added to the total.
5) Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been playing/running TTRPGs, and what do you like best about them?
I started running 4th Edition D&D 7 or 8 years ago when I was back living in Darwin, from there Roleplaying became a regular thing in my friendship group we ran: D&D, Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness, L5R and several smaller systems. I got into GMing after I started to develop my own story ideas for D&D, I still run several campaigns when I can and always seek to improve. I love the stories that you can weave and build and how nothing ever goes according to plan, these unusual twists are what make the TTRPG experience so unique and fun.
You can catch Will and a host of other DMs bringing you great games across the event. Get your tickets here.