I’m on the record as saying “break your canon” is my favorite role-playing game ideology, right? I’ve said it about the World of Darkness and now I’m going to say it about Legend of the Five Rings. If you aren’t familiar, Legend of the Five Rings is a game setting that takes its inspiration from Eastern sources, rather than Western ones; most crucially, feudal Japanese samurai stories. The Empire of Rokugan, where the stories of “L5R” are set, is richly developed, through a variety of sources, from collectible card games to published books, and much of it is fan driven. Imperial Histories 2 is exactly the sort of book I am looking for when I say “break your canon.” They smash Legend of the Five Rings wide open, exposing the guts, the nuts and bolts, proposing campaign settings like Miyazaki-like fables to steampunk samurai tales all the way to samurais…in spaaaaaaace….
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