Customer Reviews

L5R Creatures of Rokugan Third Edition (Legend of the Five Rings (AEG))

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As far as supplements go, Creatures of Rokugan is pretty useful. The first few chapters deal with rules for playing spirits of various realms (including animal spirits), naga, and nezumi. Animal spirits are fairly well-done and appealing; they aren't extremely powerful, but have a number of very useful abilities that make them excellent additions for any group. Naga and nezumi have been updated and seem somewhat expanded compared to their earlier incarnations in the game; nezumi especially are very detailed and have a lot of style behind them.

After this come the various creatures, and there is no lack here. Instead of a "Shadowlands On Parade", we get a bit more diversity. Keep in mind, of course, that oni, gaki, and other hostile beings are more plentiful, but a clever GM will find plenty of extra creatures that should help them come up with some good ideas.

Is the book perfect? Sadly, no. I regret to inform you all that AEG seems to stubbornly refuse to proofread their work, or even run their text through a spell-checker. There's a lot of somewhat poor flavor text, and misspellings are so common that they'd give a teacher fits. Normally, I'm not really concerned with such things if the rules are sound, but several of the people who work with AEG have been in the business too long to be making these kinds of mistakes, and one would have hoped they'd have at least bought a copy of MS Office or something that can help them avoid the more obvious mistakes with nothing more than a few mouse clicks.

If you can overlook the poor writing quality and consider that you are buying this book to flesh out the land of Rokugan with more than just humans, you are definitely getting your money's worth. Just don't bring a lot of expectations to the store (or website) you buy it from.

This is the book of monsters for AEGs Legend of the 5 Rings RPG. Note, that while previous L5R books were done in a dual format of D20 and AEG rules, this book is all AEG rules. If you have the D20 Creatures of Rokugan book, you should be able to establish a conversion base with the monsters that are in both books.

While this book does have a lot of creatures in it, the book fails to follow the most fundamental rule of a monster book, "Good Art and Lots of It". The majority of the monsters of this book are not illustrated and those that are, well the art is not that good. When you are dealing with exotic creatures like Oni, the demons of Japanese mythology, you really need pictures to visualize them. Considering all the art available from the L5R card game, the lack of monster pictures here is strange.

The book does have very good sections on the Naga, serpent people, and the Nezumi, rat people. These sections provide everything you need to play these races and takes up about a third of the book. The rest is an alphabetical list of the creatures, monsters and spirits of Rokugan and while they are described in detail, most are lacking illustrations.

This is another Excelent Source book of Legends of the Five Rings!

Rules to play with the Nezumi Ratling and Naga ... and lots ... LOTS of creature to fill yous campaing with terror!!!

Very very nice!

A very useful book, I like all the info included, lots of flavor, lots of inspiration. This book continues to make the third edition my favorite edition.

This volume is an exceptional addition to the L5R game, and well worth the purchase. It includes many creatures only seen in the CCG, and that alone makes it valuable.

I am an avid table-top role-player, mainly using the standard d20 rules with the occasional vintage version of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. But this system is great!! Combat is vicious, but not the overriding element in the game. It is a more social game, forced role-playing instead of roll-playing.

Overall, I recommend it to anyone looking for something new to try!