The Imperial Histories
Once Great Clans is on the shelves, the next thing out of the pipeline is the Imperial Histories. You may have heard about this one, as we held a contest that allowed fans to submit ideas for chapters. A couple of the folks who submitted entries ended up working on the book, including Jason Bianchi. Jason’s chapter on a previously unexplored period of Rokugan’s history, one characterized by terrible famine, is just one example contained in the book of how you can take the new edition and make whatever you want out of it. The book is chock full of mechanics as well, because we didn’t want it to be just a GM book (let’s be honest, those don’t sell well!). The Harriers I mentioned earlier? They show up here as an Advanced School.
The philosophy of design on this book was more specialized. In each chapter, we wanted to introduce mechanics that not only supported the themes and feel of the era depicted in that chapter, but which could be applied to different eras as well. With a few exceptions, the mechanics found throughout the entire book can be used in almost any campaign with little to no modification. The different mechanics are meant to serve as a way to drive home how an L5R 4th Edition game is a partnership between the GM and the players. Even if your campaign was set in a modern era, by working with your GM you could very easily find a means of incorporating the concepts, mechanics, and stories from Imperial Histories into your character’s background. And really, isn’t telling your own story what an L5R game is all about? Like Great Clans, in our next column I’ll give you a preview of what you can expect from Imperial Histories, and we’ll talk about how it was created and what kind of thought went into the process.
