to answer your question, I'd say : as a GM you are expected to remember all the rules in general, and most of the detail by heart.
Now I know it's not an easy task, and you may not have the luxury to spent much time on rules for an RPG (I can understand that, for a job plus familly life takes time too - and are more important than RPG of course - ).
But L5R was never ment to be simple to play, and the other editions were quite ''heavy'' when it came to rules anyway.
Now that said, I don't think you should worry much about the approach rules : it is quite intuitive once you understand the philosophical meaning of all the elements. as for the list of all the skills, it will be like the other RPG you master : you end nowing them by heart by using them.
 
Your post raise a good point though : a GM for L5R will obviously need a screen, and I have a proposal about that : We will need 2 screens : one for starting GMs, containing all the informations you need to consult all the time, and one for the more experienced GM, who will no longer need those informations (becaus they know them by heart) but will need a quick access to more exceptionnal points of rules.

Simply because it requires less thought mid-game, I approve of this concept; "at the end of a conflict scene, your strife and fatigue is reducted to half of your composure and endurance respectively if they are higher than this".
In narrative time, dropping strife and fatigue by a set value per time increment (currently 2 x water per day, I think?) is fair enough - obviously multiple days of rest should be enough to recover non-critical fatigue to zero whether you indulge any passions or not....
I'd put it this way: I am used to being the GM, and am used to ad-libbing rules. I agree with Kyros that something that should logically be able to happen in a game-world reality should be allowed to happen unless there's a good story reason not to allow it, even if the basic rules do not support it. I wholeheartedly agree that whilst rules need to be stable so that everyone round the table knows how the universe 'works', changing them is not the end of the world if it's done properly.
However....
Currently, this is an open beta. Essentially, it's FFG saying "here are our set of rules, what do you think of them?" which as far as I'm concerned means I should be trying to use them unmodified - if they don't work, then you follow the rules as best you can, note the logical or mechanical breakdown, and report that via these forums for the problem to be picked up in updates.

There is a difference between "no rules" and table-specific rules adaptations that a GM has the right to implement as long as they're clear for everyone and work best for their group. This decision in not (or at least should not be) whimsical. At some point, you can make a choice of whether you are playing a game or flagellating yourself with pieces of text that do nothing to further the fun you and your group are having.
If someone wants to reduce Strife and Fatigue to half of Composure and Endurance respectively at the end of each scene, it won't break anything and it will still be a RPG, not pure storytelling. I even think it would work pretty well in the current system. If it also reconciles the perceived inconsistency between RAW Calming Breath mechanics and common sense, all the better.

You missed my point: ANYONE can do shared storytelling without the rules, and that may be fun for some, it it's not a game unless there are rules and the rules matter.
I also think the second stupidest words ever penned in a roleplaying game  is (paraphrased) "The GM can change the rules on a whim"... (The stupidest are the entirety of F.A.T.A.L.)
For me, the Game is equally as important as the story... because there's no risk in shared storytelling, no chance of failure, and thus no fun.

Ho I agree you have to respect tue rules allwright (and thus know them by heart as a good GM), but not when they're stupid : when they are you have to modify them to match your mastering style. you do as you wish man, but I'm not the guy that follows rules blindly just because they are rules : first rules of an RPG : the GM makes the rules. it's in almost evry RPG book

Looks like it happens with the new way of dealing damage from update v3.
Sleeping characters are Unconscious, which, I think, would prevent them from defending (as "suffering fatigue to dodge, block, or otherwise avoid a telling blow" look incompatible with "cannot move, perform actions, or otherwise significantly act upon the physical world").
Thus, they suffer a +10 critical strike.
 
Regarding "The Path of Shadows", the increase to base damage seems useless. The conditions for using it would likely fall under a "the target can't defend" situation. This means an straight critical, without going through damage.

While I agree that striking a sleeping or unconscious person should be advantageous, the school bonus for Shosuro Infiltrators covers this, and is underwhelming...
The Path of Shadows (School Ability): Striking a foe from behind or while they are asleep is extremely advantageous, and thus extremely dishonorable. Fortunately for the ninja of the Shosuro Infiltrator School, such considerations are hardly worthy of notice. When performing an Attack action against a target who is unaware of your presence or is suffering the Incapacitated or Unconscious condition, treat the base damage and deadliness of your weapon as being increased by an amount equal to your school rank.
I think this ability should be re-done, as should the rules for attacking someone who isn't providing any opposition (asleep, unconcious)

Hmm. This is true, and the rules on “Only check when there is a chance for failure” certainly seem to apply. 
Honestly? I would make the simple rule of “Any successful attack on an unaware or helpless target is automatically a Critical Strike.” And leave it at that. Maybe add something allowing additional Successes on the roll to add towards Deadliness. 

It’s a bit confusing but it is consistent with the rest of the updates: modified sections are included in full under the page numbers they should be found in. If a new paragraph is supposed to appear several times in the final book, it appears several times in the update, under each section. 

Something is bothering me with this action. I like the concept of being able to recover a bit of fatigue and strife in action, but I feel this action need limitations.
Whats stops my players to say ''I'm gonna use calming breath for 10 minutes'' durring any non-conflict scene, to remove all their strife and fatigue? 
I just cannot tell them ''this action only works in conflict'', that doesn't make sense ! if you can ''calm breath'' in combat, you can do it any other time.
 

just a little nitpicking there, but technically, Niten in not a Iaijutsu style : it is impossible to draw two weapons simultaneously (because you need to hold the saya : it is just tucked into the Obi). when you practice Niten, you are suposed to start the duel with your two weapons in hands, and cross them before you, point facing down, when you salute the adversary.

Yes, that's why I removed the roll and increased Deadliness. Overall, with this change, crits should be slightly higher in average, unless you have lacquered armor or better.

Howdy!
There has been some mention, especially since the “Fatigue” update, that armor resistance would be best represented as a critical hit mitigation rather than as a Fatigue prevention (if anything, heavy armor should make its wearer tire faster). But doing so shakes the overall balance of damage ratings, Resilience, Deadliness and other harm elements of the rules. So here is another take that might help keep things in shape, and reduce the amount of dice rolling in the process.
1) No more armor Resistance to regular damage - this means that it’s faster to have one’s Resilience exceeded. So instead, add the highest skill score among Fitness, Tactics, Martial Arts (melee or unarmed) to the character’s Resilience total. It also answers another recurring comment that skill at arms should help mitigate the risk of being wounded. You'll still run a bit faster into the Incapacitated condition, but I'm not against making fights a bit swifter. Other side effects: no more weirdness of being able to land a critical strike with an attack that does zero physical damage with a double opportunity; and it is nigh impossible to trigger the negative effect of the Razor-Edged weapon quality --> cf. #4 for that last bit.
2) No more Fitness roll to reduce a crit severity! This is my favorite as this roll does get in the way of free flow action in skirmishes. Instead, reduce the severity by [Armor Resistance rating + the Ring of the stance the target is in]. You still tie this to a Ring that scales as characters progress and determines which of the critical strike's effects applies. If the target cannot take a stance (unconscious or for other reason), they don't get the benefit of the Ring reduction, and the attacker chooses the effect when several are possible.
3) I am aware #2 will reduce crit severity further than the typical number of successes one would get on a Fitness check, so I am inclined to a) bump up the Deadliness of all weapons by 2 and b) decrease armors' Physical Resistance values by 1 (to a minimum 0). This way, someone in Ashigaru Armor will typically end up with more or less the same crit severity as they do in the current system; those with less armor will suffer more and those with heavier gear will suffer less.
4) Add two levels to the table of critical strikes results below the "0" entry as follows. residual Severity after modifiers is -1: nothing happens (no lucky opportunistic destruction of armor with a phony crit); If Severity after mods is -2 or lower: same as -1, but if the weapon is Razor-Edged, it gets the Damaged quality. It brings back what my #1 took away, while making it much less likely and more difficult to metagame (e.g. by failing the attack on purpose to avoid damaging your weapon... you can still do that, but that requires knowing the opponent's Ring values). Note that the Update 2.0 also helps by allowing Razor-Edged weapons to increase Deadliness by way of opportunities expenditures.
Thoughts? Any other bases that need to be covered?

just a little nitpicking there, but technically, Niten in not a Iaijutsu style : it is impossible to draw two weapons simultaneously (because you need to hold the saya : it is just tucked into the Obi). when you practice Niten, you are suposed to start the duel with your two weapons in hands, and cross them before you, point facing down, when you salute the adversary.

In Fire stance, Strife doesn't give successes. It gives bonus successes. You must succeed with your "regular" successes before you can claim benefit from Fire stance.

Sorry I am new to the forums and this may have been addressed.
1) Bo. The dragon school of the togashi tattooed order (monk) lists starting equipment as Common clothing, bo, travelling pack, 5 koku.  Bo is not listed as anything in the book.  I assume it meant bo-staff but it could also mean bow. 
2) Chi Protection. Also in the dragon school of the togashi tattooed order (monk) one of the starting techniques in Kiho is listed as Chi Protection. there is no Chi Protection. I am assuming it meant Ki Protection a water Kiho.
There seems to be no conversion tables for money. you start with 5 koku but some equipment is listed as ru and other price listings. please convert all to koku or give a break down of conversion. (or don't give any starting koku at all).
After working with printed 20 questions character building and then transposing them to the character sheet, it would be nice if the sections for ninjo and giri were listed on the 20 questions as such. for a new player it required going back over the 20 step process to find out which is which. 
 
perhaps a little more room for weapons and armour would be nice. If you had a wakazashi, katana and a bow plus unarmed would would not have room. 
Also also, perhaps the travel pack could be renamed to the 10 item travel pack. this allows you to have 5 item packs and 20 item packs for schools that expect you to travel more or less.
Relationship section of character sheet should have a mother, father, ancestor, and most influential  line for easy of transcribing 20 questions to character sheet.
 
 
 

Well, the rules DO say that you shouldn't make a roll if the character can't fail  (under "When to Ask for a Check", p12)

I don't think they're going to change or remove the strife mechanic anyway. I personnaly like this mechanic, and I don't give a **** if its called a narrative system or not : i just like the idea that your character's emmotion are taken into consideration.
but as I said earlyer : if you don't like the core mechanic of this game, it's just not for you : you don't HAVE to switch to 5th ed, 4th is good to you know.

I noticed that striking a target that is not aware of your presence is still TN 2. maybe the rules should need a specification about that : if the guy does'nt even know you're there, maybe the TN should be lower.
And for the more unexperimented GMs, maybe it should be noted somewere that you do not need to roll the dices to kill someone who is uncouncious : the guy is sleeping, I don't see how you could miss his throat (by the way greate usefullness on the ''bayushi'' shcool here, for the lethality augmentation on unconcious targets). I know it's obvious but to some it will be their first ropleplaying game, so maybe it should be specified
 

But they do. Choose not to do your duty, Glory Rank Strife. Choose not to follow your heart, Honor Rank strife.

hi.
I personally don't see the problem in having different timing for the different school techniques. To me the most important thing is that a school tech gives the character a distinctive ability that represents his school, and that no other character could match. For example I think on of the best school is the kitsuki investigator's one : the ability marvelousely represents their wide knoledge of any subject when it comes to investigate, exactly as a ''rokugani shelorck holmes''.
however I think we'll need WAAAY more katas (and shûjis) in the final edition, espacially katas reserved to schools, the ''special school techniques'' that no other know. I guesse that's what they're trying to do ultimately : representing the school techniques by katas and shûjis.

The update and its change to honor duels to make them iaijutsu only duels again has really made me consider one of the things that has been in the back of my head, which is that samurai ted to feel a bit generic in this beta.

Lets look at honor duels.  Now, I admit, I am dyed-in-the-silk Crane clan; if you cut me, I bleed white and blue.  So duels are an very important part of my play experience, much like how the stats of Shadowland creatures are much more important to people who play Crab clan characters more often.  I must admit that I am quite disappointed by this move to iaijutsu duels from just honor duels.

Beyond mechanical concerns, it is so much cooler to see the slim crane duelist in sky blue hakama and embroidered sarashi with her sword sheathed and ready to strike against the massive crab samurai, heavily armored and swinging his gigantic tetsubo over his head; then it is to see that same crab remove all of his iconic gear and stance to try and mirror the crane duelist.

All of the clans have these iconic differences in how they fight, and with what.  Imagine the same duelist against:

The tattooed Dragon, naked from the waist up, in his Niten stance
The Unicorn dervish, whirling her scimitar as if it were a steel tornado
The golden haired Lion, with her razor-sharp nodachi that has spilled the blood of hundreds on the battlefield.
The sly Scorpion, lazily spinning the weight of her kusari-gama in her left hand.
The brave Phoenix, with his glittering naginata

These are awesome scenes.  They also allow each clan to bring their strengths into an honor duel.  If they are all doing iaijutsu, then they all look like the crane but wearing different colors (until they are cut down by that self same crane).  It feels much cooler to me for honor duels to allow for any weapon and style you want.

Mechanically the other clans don't need iaijutsu, water stance allows them to ready a weapon... and that is a good thing imo.  I like the idea that iaijutsu is a crane thing, just like niten is a dragon thing.  Lion are not interested in iaijutsu because they are to busy winning wars, Crab are not interested because they are too busy manning the wall, etc.  I like where the mechanical changes are going with respect to duels and iaijutsu... I think there is more to be done, but that is not for this forum.  Having all duels be iaijutsu duel feels very much like an artifact of the old lore and system.  I have often felt that all duels were iaijutsu duels because there was a card in the CCG that said so.  Requireing samurai from schools other than the Kakita school study iaijutsu as well as their normal skills feels like a bit of a handy cap to them... I means sure they could if they wanted to, but why?

I think that samurai in this edition tend to feel rather generic already, especially if you have a school ability that you can only use once a scene.  Then you are only special in that one instance, then you go back to being generic.  To be fair, we are used to the crazy powers of the schools, but it feels like a step down in uniqueness as well as power.  Having more powerful, school specific kata will help... and we have no idea what the final list of kata will be, or how many will be exclusive to whatever school.

I want my duelist to cut other characters down while they are using their strongest techniques, not their weakest.

I don't think just doing the first and last techs, with the "core" tech scaling is bad. I think it opens up a lot of space for homebrewing new schools, since instead of having to balance five techs, you just have to balance two. The problem is that if your base tech is weak, like I think Shiba Bushi still is, then you're stuck with that for five ranks before you get a new one. FFG has to really nail the balance on the basic techs in this system.

as for my part, I think strife and composure is the real plus-value of this version. without it, all the custom dice thing serves no purpose and can easily be replaced by standard dices.
the fight between the human nature of a samurai and the face he is expected to wear is a real interesting part of this world, and if you don't want to play it, you should probably stick to  (witch is a good game anyway).

We kinda ran into this one in the last session, but it could be a cheap cop-out if two players just get into a friendly duel, take only Calming Breaths, then bow out once they are at 0 Fatigue and 0 Strife. 
"Your breathing technique is clearly superior to mine. Victory is yours, Kakita-san."