What is Heroes of Rokugan?
Heroes of Rokugan (HoR for short), is an ongoing role-playing campaign (sometimes called a "living" style campaign) using the Legend of the Five Rings role-playing game published by Alderac Entertainment Group. You will be able to play your characters in any HoR event that runs anywhere in the world, gaining more experience, honor, glory, and status, and helping to shape the fate of the Emerald Empire.Almost all HoR events take place at conventions, game-days, or home play. There are a limited number online games as well, usually run through an instant messenger program. If you are interested in online events, we strongly recommend that you join the Heroes of Rokugan Forum as that is where most of the organization for such events takes place.
Heroes of Rokugan does not require you to register yourself or your character, although we do encourage you to register both yourself and your character with the Module Manager so that in the event that your character is lost or stolen it can be reconstructed from our records. We do not have memberships or dues. We also do not require you to 'validate' or otherwise get official approval for your character sheet -- instead, the GM at each table is expected to briefly review each character for legality before starting play. We do ask that you read and follow our character creation and house rules, and restrict your characters to playing only in official HoR adventure modules. The only thing you need to do to begin playing is to have your GM start requesting modules.
In order to run a legal table of Heroes of Rokugan, you will need a minimum of four players (plus a GM, of course), though the preferred number is six -- all adventures have been designed with six-player tables in mind, and GMs running smaller tables may need to employ some play-balancing. A table can be run with seven players, but we do not recommend it, and generally prefer that six be the maximum number of players.
The modules are given numbers (i.e. SoB01) according to the order in which they were released. As the campaign is a "living" world, this is the chronological order that the events within happen, and we recommend playing them in sequential order for the optimal experience of the developing storyline. However, you aren't required to play them in order, and many adventures are fairly "stand alone" and can be enjoyed equally regardless of sequence.
We do strongly ask that players and GMs follow the character Insight Rank restrictions for the modules:
Introductory - Rank 1 characters only.
Low Rank - Rank 1 and 2 characters only.
Low-Mid Rank - Rank 1, 2, and 3 characters may play.
Mid Rank - Rank 2, 3, and 4 characters may play. Rank 1 characters may also play, but it is not recommended!
Mid-High - Rank 3, 4, and 5 characters may play. No Rank 1 characters allowed. Rank 2 characters may play if they are feeling bold.
High Rank: Rank 4 or higher characters only.
You may only play any one module ONCE, regardless of how many different characters you might have. After all, once you've played it you know the story and cannot be surprised or challenged by it (not to mention making things unfair on the other players at your table).
Anomalies: If you do play the modules out of order, a sort of "time-warp" can sometimes occur, a necessary evil in this sort of campaign. You have all the experience and knowledge of any other modules you've played, so you may sometimes find yourself with an odd perspective on events, such as meeting an NPC who you saw die in another module. Players are expected to accept such anomalies as an unavoidable quirk of a story-driven "living-type" campaign.
Two-Round Modules: We highly recommend that you play both rounds of two-round adventures consecutively. You can split them if absolutely necessary, but this can make it very difficult to maintain story continuity, and we do not recommend it.
Exclusives: Modules that are listed with the EXCLUSIVE marker are exactly that: exclusive to one event. They will not be run again anywhere ever. They are intended as special 'bonuses' for players attending that particular event.
Interactives: Interactives are special live-action (or 'LARP') events that run only a few times, or sometimes only once. They offer the players a chance to impact the larger overall storyline by running their Clan's diplomatic efforts. The only thing to need to do to be involved at an Interactive is show up with your character sheet -- all other materials and information will be supplied by the event organizers. Interactives that can be ordered are only allowed to run at conventions or game-days that will have more than 20 people in attendance.
Finally, please be aware that our modules do contain some mature content. Rokugan is a serious and often tragic world, and the Heroes of Rokugan campaign reflects this. Players under the age of thirteen are probably not mature enough to be able to handle HoR scenarios.