(Message wick:152)
Subj: Re: What to tell the public
From: ork@lightside.com (John Wick)

  To: l5rrpginfo@frpg.com
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 15:10:02 PDT
-- /blue/homes/cowell/Mail/mhl.format --

Right now, Jim Pinto (hope he doesn't beat me up for mentioning him) is
running a game in which Toturi and Hoturi are dead, Yakamo is running the
Crab Clan and they've already gone through the Tomb of Iuchiban.

You don't need sourcebooks to run L5R. Heck, you don't even need the basic book
.
If you want to run it "officially", that is, by the book, then you have to
wait for the suppliments.

Argument: "I can't run an official L5R game because you're hiding the truth
about the ninja from me. I can't say anything difinitive about them because
I don't know myself. I can't even make hints about them because I don't
know the truth, and any hints I give may be based on false assumptions."

Okay, that's a very valid point.

Here's my response:
You can still run an official game without the 'truth' about ninja, just
like you can run an X-Files RPG without the final truth. Play off the
truths you know.
Here's what we know about ninja. We know that there are folks running
around in black pajamas killing people. We know they use certain tools. We
know that they were born out of Bayushi Aramoro's past. We know they have a
connection to the Scorpion Clan. We know there's a Shosuro Acting School
that teaches its students the arts of assassination that may have a
connection to the ninja.
Way of Shadow will be out very soon. Looks like February.
It will contain some of the truths you are looking for. At the very least,
it will include the most important truths.
Until then, you'll have to wait. Not because I believe that withholding
information will thwart the players (because I don't; if I did, I'd be
living in a _real_ fantasy world), but because I believe that reading the
RPG should be like reading a novel, with truths revealing themselves as we
go along. And sometimes, those truths contradict each other. That's the way
the real world works. Lots of contradictory truths. You (the GM) have to
choose which truths you believe . . . just like your players do.

We present a whole lot of different truths for the GM to use so he can make
Rokugan the way he wants.
Personally, I chose to use _all_ of them.
Yes, that makes Rokugan very contradictory, but then again, so was Walt
Whitman, and he was a real boy, not just a wooden one like Rokugan.


John W.
(www.7thsea.com)

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets rule!!!



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