If this timeline avoids recreating the Spider clan, it'll all be worth it.

The point is you are not "doing only that".
-1 TN on your next check is very potent :
   - that check is easier to achieve (if going for Rising Blade, you need to roll only 2 successes instead of 3)
   - AND it frees a kept dice (you won't have to keep that 3rd success, meaning you can keep something else instead)
All for a single opportunity, spend on a check that you don't care for (no matter whether you succeed or fail, you get to spend the opportunity)
Plus... isn't reading you opponent"s style the point of Center ?
 
There should be some limit to spending opportunities, or I'm going to start every fight:
 - meditating on my katana, paying hommage to my ancestors, looking for their wisdom in the fight to come (and make a Smithing roll, spending Void opportunities to get a -1 per opportunity on my next use a the katana and Air opportunitie to boost its values)
 - adjusting my kimono, trying to look as noble as possible to not shame anyone (and make a Design check, spending Air opportunities to add to its Resistance)
 - examining my opponent, trying to know if there are no signs of wounds that I could take advantage of (and make a Medicine check)
 - admiring the scenery (and make a Survival check, spending Fire opportunities to name Martial Arts [Melee] and reduce the TN by 1 on my next use of the skill)
 - bowing Courteously to my opponent (and make a Courtesy check)
 - declaiming a haiku (and make a Composition check)
 - use all the opportunities generated to reduce my Strife and increase my opponent's (unsettling them with my calm demeanor)
This gives me a tougher kimono, a sharper katana, and my Rising Blade is TN -2 or more.
No even spending a single action DURING the fight itself, and not caring at all whether any of those checks was successful...
First round I bid high and go straight for a Rising Blade without my opponent having chosen a stance or yet.

Props to Yojiro discovering Hotaru stalking Kachiko.

The way FFG have been doing things, it's much more likely that the winner would choose between Aramoro and Toturi for the Emerald Champion. A binary choice is relatively easy to plan for (though man, it startles me that they're writing alternate-outcome fictions and then just binning the one that didn't happen); seven different possibilities is much harder. Either it becomes unmanageable, or it becomes irrelevant, with the choice of Emerald Champion becoming a find-and-replace issue rather than one that meaningfully shapes the story.

I took for granted that all clans competed, but we only see the final. So the unnamed Crane duelist tried and lost. 
On the Scorpion side, I see it more like this:
- Kachiko: Go Aramoro and be my champion! Yoijiro, help him win
- Aramoro: Sure thing, I'll cheat my way to glory and be closer to you *hint hint*
- Shoju: we should be in the shadows and not ruling, Yojiro take care of that
- Yojiro: Sure thing, I'll double cheat the cheater with pleasure 

Don't know what you're talking, never happened, look over there... Shiny!
Go see the pretty lights.

But does "general awareness of ones surroundings" count as a skill? Shouldn't that just be an innate trait?

The person who's perceptive at a crime scene won't notice a flower is out of place in a floral arrangement, or the boom mic in a scene on a TV show, or that a raccoon out during the day is unusual etc. 
Their trait in the ring they use can be high, and they can succeed. It might also make a good advantage. But to disregard this notion out of turn seems silly. 
Sherlock Holmes knew about a wide breath of things on top of using an approach to notice said things.
You can argue it both ways if you don't disregard an idea just because it's not the way you're used to

But does "general awareness of ones surroundings" count as a skill? Shouldn't that just be an innate trait?

But does "general awareness of ones surroundings" count as a skill? Shouldn't that just be an innate trait?

I believe I get  it. When at court, and in many non-battlefield  situations, only Crabs and some Lion will be in full armor. I have two issues with that:
1- Bushi are warriors, They will be spending a  lot  of time in dangerous situations, and you'll find armor there. Players are escorting a bigshot to a military encampment for peace talks. Most people there will be wearing armor, even for duels, if things get pear-shaped.  Traveling around the countryside, a  bandit  lord  decides to be a bother. He won't care much for etiquette and will keep the  suit he grabbed from a dead samurai on. There are lots  of non-cheesy ways a player can end up very short of options because his weapon is lacking  compared to a bo that costs  two coppers.
2- Armor should not be near-immunity to the main, iconic weapon of the game. Traveling clothes cut base katana damage in HALF. You're telling me the peak of  Rokugani swordcraft  is  50% blunted by linen? While you are  pricking them with your sword, they can just send you down Resilience+10 in two swipes with a stick or hammer, and at that  point Deadliness  is a  moot point: you're done.  My katana's Deadlinessm might as well be 55: If I have no way of getting him under Reslience or force a finishing blow, it makes no matter.
 

Wood doesn't really work well against any armor, event stiffened leather and ring  mail.  It mostly just bounces  off. Swords also suffer against  plate, but at  least they are  actual metal. Swords are far better than blunt weapons at  finding a joint gap or junction on the armor. The  only weapons ever  made to -pierce- armor were weird billhooks, and they were so tricky to use few  people bothered because firearms soon made the  point  moot.
 
Crab bushi walks into court, spits in the  Doji's soup, gets called into a duel. "Fine, let's do it now. What, no, I won't take  off my armor, I need to get  back to my duty at the Kaiu wall soon. What's the  matter, you afraid?"
Matsu bushi walks into the dojo, spits  on the school's  plaque, gets called into a duel, shows up in full regalia. "This  is the ancestral armor of my noble forebears. Does  it scare you that  much, weakling? I thought you were supposedly -good- at duels."
As i aid i get the real world/culture clash explanation. I remember tons  of teen medievalist-wanabees going "Pshaw, katanas were trash, give  me an einhander anyway!" when growing up. Just didn't really expect to see  it being so richly adopted  in a samurai fantasy game. 
It's a bit  like  making a Star Wars RPG and  making lightsabers worse than flails.

It's quite simple analytically, in fact. On 10 rolled dice, you have almost 84% chance to roll at least one explosion. Both Skill and Ring dice have one chance in six to roll one (2/12 and 1/6 respectively). So rolling no explosion at all happens with a probability of (5/6)^10 = 16.15%. Rolling at least one explosion means any of the possible rolls except for those 16.15%, so take 1 minus that and you get 83.85%.
Probability to roll a success on a skill die is (7/12)/(1-1/6) = 70% exactly
On a Ring die: (1/2)/(1-1/6) = 60%
Now as AK_Aramis said, you only explode your dice after you keep them, and most of those explosions also cost Strife. What will happen is that you will probably be able to reliably hit TN5, a little less reliably TN6 (but still not too far from 50% I guess), BUT you will have to keep every success and exploding success you get, so you're way less likely to get opportunities or control Strife efficiently.
Since the last Forum thread on the same topic I did have the time to run a few "real-life" tests and it does slow down combat, especially when the Air stance target uses Striking as Air (but in a many vs many situation, it's less of an issue: the Kata only gives a bonus vs the "next attack", so have a grunt hack away with no hope of hitting, and they make the rest gang up on the TN5... still it's sad to have to resort to this kind of gamey tactics).
Finally, just one point: assuming a 10k5 roll event at higher ranks is probably a "best case" assumption. The provincial Daimyo, with his combat conflict rank of 7 will roll 8k4 at best on martial skills. And PCs should have an incentive to change stances depending on the situation, so they may not always use their best Ring for every attack action... (well unless their best Ring is Air, in the current state of the rules, because then they have very little incentive to drop out of it ;p)

If this timeline avoids recreating the Spider clan, it'll all be worth it.

If this timeline avoids recreating the Spider clan, it'll all be worth it.

Another thing they rebooted for was the chance to update the game. The original l5r is full of mistakes and inconsistency with the cultures it's inspired by. 
Like in the new game the Utaku family don't seem to have ever been the Otaku family, and don't need a big convoluted story to fix it. Also they've changed the way village and castle names work because AEG had it backwards. They've got the Unicorn much more Mongol influenced than they were at the beginning of AEGs l5r. They've made the game more inclusive by having more female champions like later editions did.
It seems like they're adding more elements of Shinto and other Asian beliefs. They've added crossbows and a few other weapons. Ashigaru seem way more common.
They're not just resetting the timeline, they're adjusting the setting.

If this timeline avoids recreating the Spider clan, it'll all be worth it.

If this timeline avoids recreating the Spider clan, it'll all be worth it.

In my opinion the Clan Wars era was the most iconic time period, so I'm honestly thrilled to have the timeline rebooted.  Now we get to mess up a different timeline!

Naga are okay - its the Spider we don't care for lol.

So, we started our first run-through last night with three characters:
Hida Takeshi, a Defender-trained Bushi Akodo Tsubasa, a Duellist-trained Bushi Shiba Mishiko, an Elementalist-trained Shujenga We ran through things as per the book:
Initially we went round and spent XP - this was pleasantly quick to do. Takeshi spent all his allowance on ring increases (allowing him to get back to the Earth 4 he had when we went through character creation the first time - I hadn't noticed the 'cap' on skills and stats at that point) to better suit his Large Stature. Tsubasa picked up assorted ring increases and a second rank of Martial Arts (Melee) Mishiko increased her Earth and Air rings (those being the rings for her main 'offensive' invocations) and picked up Biting Steel, being pretty much sold on the description of "that guy from the Brotherhood without Banners in Game Of Thrones" I'm not sure why starter adventure is intended to be for school rank 2 characters? I guess you may find that the adventure in the actual rulebook is different (that's been the case with quite a few of the SWRPG books, where there's been one adventure in the beta, one in the intro box set, one in the rulebook and one in the GM's kit that sort of form a 'set'). We also rolled on the 'discord wheel' with both rolls ending up landing on Hida Takeshi, who was extremely not pleased by this. Fortunately, he'd just increased his void rank, so he at least got the extra void point. The party started in Ishikawa Mura, arriving along with their master, the magistrate Seppun Hirohide As a related note: looking things up, I found this map on the L5R wiki: Ishikawa Mura doesn't appear that I can see, but with a name meaning "Rock River Village" and being about 6 days ride (so 100 to 200 ish miles?)  from the 3rd watchtower would suggest somewhere on the riverbank in the highlands between Hisashiyama Mura and Sunda Mizu Mura. The Moshibaru palace isn't on the map either (not that you go there), but the third watchtower is - apparently it has a specific name, Shiro Hiruma (Daylight Castle). The magistrate essentially announced that he was 'splitting the party', which led to the inevitable (and pre-accounted for by the writers) question 'shouldn't we be going with you'. This goes double since Takeshi and Tsubasa are assigned as Yojimbo bodyguards to the Magistrate, so leaving him when he's going deliberately into danger seemed odd. The stock answer sort of worked, but I added that since he was hunting a mahō-tsukai, swords wouldn't be of much use - he would be acquiring the services of some of the Kuni Purifiers to aid him, whilst sending Mishiko as an aide with them in case Keinosuke had any supernatural skills or tainted artefacts of his own. The party decided to split up and deal with three issues separately. Mishiko went into the inn, telling Yoshika to show her to the room, and questioning him about the events. She also searched the room, failing the medicine check to read any signs in the blood spatter, but picking up an opportunity (and finding the whetstones). Once Tsubasa pointed out the incense burner, she then carried out a Commune with the Spirits ritual (somewhat spoiled by the ghost of Hanake, her brother, appearing crouched in the corner silently screaming in terror), which let them pick up that (a) Hida Kayo had been not just killed but sacrificed in some sort of mahō ritual, which somehow involved his bloodline. Tsubasa and his attendant went to collect Hida Kayo's remains and - reluctantly - question the burakumin at the same time. The command check was very easy, but he picked up a disturbing amount of strife (presumably the capitol-born, crane-trained samurai finding the Hinin quarter as distasteful as you can imagine*). He subsequently went back to the inn, and helped Mishiko - having a good Martial Arts (Melee) and knowing about Kayo's wounds he was able to pick out the clues in the blood spatter Mishiko couldn't interpret. He also spotted some incense burners, leading to them realising that mahō had been involved. Takeshi went to question the rest of the villagers (and ended up meeting Mirumoto Chiaki, who was meditating in a grove on the edge of the village - relocated so each of them had a couple of things to do). Dealing with the villagers was easy enough - command (earth) works pretty well when you're a Crab samurai ordering peasants around in Crab lands, even with no command skill (although there was only so much they could tell him, though "heading towards the wall" covers a pretty wide area, after all). Chiaki was a different matter, and a combination of no courtesy skill, Irrepressable Flirtation and Bluntness left him very close to causing offense, with two successes disappearing in the reroll and only the single remaining explosive success rerolling into a second success let him pass, with no less than 5 strife landing on him whilst trying to not to say something inappropriate. The trio then set off for the wall in pursuit of Kienosuke, taking Hida Kayo's remains with them. It took them seven days (via a couple of villages and a Crab sentry post near Kyūden Moshibaru to end up at the Third Watchtower, with Akodo Tsubasa' rank of skulduggery proving useful to help them track Kienosuke more quickly (thinking to flag down and question a couple of travelling tinkers who saw him camp away from a nearby village). In the process, they heard that a Twenty-Goblins-Winter had been declared (Hida Takeshi explaining what it was**), and pretty much already suspected what they were going to find on reaching the Kaiu Wall itself. The evidence of the ongoing battles around the watchtower were evident in troop movements. Following some advice I gave myself, I noted that Hida Hiromichi had lost a lot of his officers in the recent fighting, and without his staff he's struggling to reorganise and manage the watchtower's garrison. They presented themselves to Hiromichi, who confirmed that Keinosuke was now a Crab Clan Samurai. He took charge of Hida Kayo's remains; saying he would keep them in the Third Watchtower's shrine until he could identify where they should be sent; he had served alongside Hida Kayo for some time but didn't know any details of his family - but said he would inquire where they should go and send them on. He also let them know that whilst Kienosuke might be a criminal, at the moment he was obligated to protect him without testimony. He suspected the accuser would be challenged and warned them to be ready. Whilst the other two assumed Tsubasa (as a Kakita-trained duellist) would be the one to end up in a duel, Hida Takeshi pointed out that the Fickle Finger Of Fate (aka the discord roll) had pointed at him, and his duty as a servant of the Emerald Magistrature and his desire to be an honoured member of the Crab both were involved here; much as it was likely to cause trouble with someone, and much as Akodo Tsubasa is by far the better duellist, Keinosuke was a Crab Samurai, who they were about to accuse of murdering Hida Kayo, also a Crab Samurai. It was appropriate that the accusation and its prosecution be done by a third Crab Samurai....  
At this point we finished for the evening.  
To be honest, the system worked well. It'll take a bit of time to get our heads around the approaches (fire water earth) as opposed to (strength intelligence agility) but it seemed to work well, and the dice mechanics were simple and elegant. Disadvantages and advantages both came into play, and people both passed and failed checks which impacted but never derailed the story.
Flicking back and forth in (what is, to be fair, a .PDF printout) took a while - specifically I knew because I remembered reading that at the end of a scene you recover strife equal to your water ring, but I couldn't find it when I wanted to check (it's on page 17), whilst the rate you heal wounds is in Harm and Healing on page 168. I think learning where things like this, and the opportunity tables, are, will be the main thing to affect the speed of play.
 
* Inevitable Monty Python jokes started at this point:
"He must be a samurai!"
"How can you tell?"
"He hasn't got s*** all over him...."
 
** Technically his player miming talking whilst I read out the text and saying "yes, that!" at the end.

I feel the same way. Currently, there's no effective difference between First Blood and Death (unless someone has an unrolled healing power or other way to recover from Incapacitated). If you've Incapacitated your opponent, and no outside party breaks etiquette to interfere, you can just wail on him until he dies (or, more likely, just get the GM to let you finish him narratively).
In my opinion, the victory conditions should be:
First Strike: Any successful Attack with a legal weapon, regardless of whether it deals damage. The whole point of a First Strike duel is that nobody gets hurt, and the rules outright state that they're generally fought with training weapons, so wounds clearly aren't the goal here. First Blood: Any critical with severity 5+ (after the Fitness roll). Realistically, a lasting injury like that should leave you bloodied (especially from a katana!). Mechanically, a 5+ critical isn't guaranteed from simply spending two Opportunities, but it's not too difficult to work towards (and is very likely with a Finishing Blow), so it seems like a good sweet spot for a quick duel. Death: Exactly what the name implies.

Actually, upon further reading, panic and strife are unrelated.  So it appears that the optimal strategy for an honorable commander/leader is to load up on strife to ensure bonus successes for the army. Strife only affects you while your bonus successes affect the entire army. Anything less would be dishonorable.
The authors should consider linking commander/leader strife to army panic in some way.

Void points are the one aspect of the beta I don't like. Just let them come from your void as in 4e. Start the day with max void rather than zero void. Then I wouldn't mind the gimmicky "you win by losing" void point regen mechanism. As is, void appears to be the weakest ring, and void points are highly unreliable.

Void points are the one aspect of the beta I don't like. Just let them come from your void as in 4e. Start the day with max void rather than zero void. Then I wouldn't mind the gimmicky "you win by losing" void point regen mechanism. As is, void appears to be the weakest ring, and void points are highly unreliable.