Legend of the Five Rings

Pyramid Review

Walking the Way

Published by Five Rings Publishing

Written by Ross Isaacs and Rob Vaux

$19.95

For those who wish that there were more spells for the shugenja of the Legend of the Five Rings setting, AEG has heard you. Walking the Way is not a clan book, but rather, a book of over 50 spells and mini adventures to introduce those spells into play.

The book is broken up into schools of magic. Rokugan normally uses four schools based on Fire, Air, Water and Earth, but since the Way of the Phoenix came out, a fifth, Void, has been added and Walking the Way does not forget it.

Each spell is described in the main body of the text with what the spell does, if there are any spells which can counter it, and a little history of the spell itself. For example, Curse of the Jackal, a Water spell, was originally created by the Unicorn Clan.

The spells are balanced with higher target numbers for powerful spells, and long casting times for spells that might otherwise unbalance the game. Depth of the Void, while only having a base TN of 15, takes two hours to cast. All of the spells take up one page, with the adventures taking up one to three pages. On most spell pages, there are illustrations of Rokugan spellcasters and creatures. There are a few whole pages of art.

The adventures are brief and can be easily fitted into any GM's Legend game. The introduction by Rob Vaux encourages GM's to individualize the adventure so that the players can relate to it. A good . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: March 26, 1999

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