Welcome!
First and foremost, yay for having subforums
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Here, I'm sharing the story of four samurai who lost a shipment of jade, and thus had to cut through Wall Above The Ocean Village to recover their stuff. Many shenanigans ensued.
The game itself was a marathonic 14-hours session with three 1-hour breaks slapped onto it. The four players were all L5R veterans, but the GM was a new guy both to the group and the setting tho he had extensive GMing experience (Shadowrun, D&D 4). It was a good game but it fell apart a little from the middle because of fatigue and some player and GM confusion regarding the setting.
The party was:
- Yoritomo Kusado, the one-eyed Storm Fleet Sailor, as big and strong of an ox but as dumb and stubborn too.
- Ide Tadaka, the no-nonsense Ide Trader with a hair-trigger. If anyone remembers my beta testgame, Tadaka was played by the same guy who had Isawa Macha back then.
- Matsu Reiku, the grumpy Matsu Berserker who got stuck on the wrong side of the Lion/Unicorn conflict for a variety of undisclosed reasons.
- Hiruma Sashuni, the quiet Hiruma Scout who has a dark scar on his heart. He was my character.
Prelude: Jade
The background of the story was Yoritomo's deal with the Crab Clan that the Mantis would supply the Crab with jade. One of the first shipments was bought from the Unicorn Clan and would be transported to Wall Above The Ocean Village from where the Crab takes it to the Kaiu Wall. From the Unicorn Clan, Ide Tadaka was entrusted to lead the caravan to the village and represent the Unicorn during the transaction. He was escorted by his loyal yojimbo Matsu Reiku. The Mantis Clan ordered Yoritomo Kusado to travel to the village and oversee the business while reminding everyone that this is all the Mantis' doing. The Crab Clan sent Kaiu Kasan to get the shipment and he in turn recruited his old comrade-in-arms Hiruma Sashuni to accompany him.
The plan was to disguise the whole thing as a shipment of crops, complete with fake rice bags covering the boxes of jade on the cart. Everyone would meet in a remote sake house at dawn, talk a little and stuff, then cover up the actual transaction in a game of dice where Kasan would lose a lot of koku to Tadaka but Tadaka would lose his shipment of "crops" to Kasan. There was even a fake fight planned between Kusado and Reiku to smoke-screen the cart leaving.
However, this plan went south from both sides as Kasan fell violently ill half-away to the village and Tadaka's caravan had a fluke accident that destroyed all their fake rice bags. Kasan made Sashuni replace him, but the scout was not as savvy of a gambler as the old Kaiu and Tadaka failed to replace their cover, so the plan changed: considering these ill omens, the group would meet in a warehouse at the port and the shipment would exchange owners as quickly as possible.
Act 1: ...To Dust
Hiruma Sashuni arrived to the warehouse first, accompanied by two budoka guards and four servants who would take care of the shipment proper. It was a cloudy autumn dawn, with the sun struggling to pierce through the thick clouds. The shadows fell long and dark, and Sashuni felt a looming threat in his bones, so he sent his two budoka to stand guard at the only gate to the street. Yoritomo Kusado arrived next, alone, and after exchanging formalities, he and Sashuni decided to take an elevated position where they could better observe their surroundings.
The caravan arrived late. Apparently, a group of ronin stopped them not far from the village and tried to extort some money from Tadaka. Reiku scared them away, but this incident still cost them quite a lot of time. The transaction started on a bad footing because Kusado suddenly revealed that the Mantis Clan wants a 10% "fee" from the deal. Neither Tadaka nor Sashuni liked this, with latter voicing his concern that Kaiu Kasan had not authorized him to pay any kind of "fee" in the name of the Crab Clan. Luckily, Kusado was flexible on the matter and Tadaka expected something like this so the willy Ide quickly produced an "art book of exquisite content" that he then used to bribe Kusado.
Things calmed down and Kusado was just about to finish up the transactions when... the shipment suddenly disappeared! Just like that, in one moment, the large cart was right next to the party, within an arm's reach, and in the next, there was only thin air. After the first shock, chaos ensued, with shouting, accusations flying all over the place, and a real fight almost breaking out. The only gate out of the warehouse was closed shut after the cart entered, so the implications were rather heavy: looked like the cart was never real to begin with!
Act 2: The Ronin
After things calmed down a little, Kusado presented a possible explanation: as far as he knew, the ronin who stopped the approaching caravan had a rogue Soshi Illusionist in their ranks. So the extortion squad was just a distraction, and while Tadaka and Reiku were busy dealing with them, the Soshi replaced the cart with an illusion or something. This was a painfully possible turn of events, so the party grouped up and we went hunting for ronin.
The basic idea was going back to the early encounter and extort the extortion squad. They were bullying some peasants on the road when we found them, and we immediately went for an all-out assault. Unfortunately, the party was so riled up we accidentally killed all four guys, so our plan to find their hideout by interrogating them failed quite spectacularly. So Sashuni had to employ the full arsenal of his tracking abilities to find the ronin camp. There, we first went with a diplomatic approach and tried to Intrigue the brotherhood into submission. We did pretty well and both the Soshi and the ronin leader cracked, revealing that they knew nothing about our cart... then a bunch of ronin with an obviously stolen cart showed up.
All **** broke loose in that instant, and the brotherhood was thoroughly defeated by the power of Pelting Hail, with some fleeing the scene while the others dying. The ronin leader was gutted by Tadaka while the Soshi was mortally wounded by Sashuni. With his dying words, the Soshi told us for realsies that they did not steal our cart. We were, like, 'oh, that's too bad', then unceremoniously left the camp for the village to investigate.
Act 3/a: The Crane
The party split up, with Tadaka and Kusado going after the Crane rulers of the village while Reiku and Sashuni went underground to follow our only obvious lead.
The Crane were rather... uh... dismissive. They first failed to acknowledge that a cart going missing was a problem in the first place. Then they started insulting Kusado for being a dirty pirate. Then they cussed Tadaka for losing his cart. Then they almost jailed the two for killing those innocent ronin. Tadaka bribed the local magistrate to start an investigation, and while the chick was out looking for our cart, Kusado sneaked into her office and seized some political munition. The portmaster was stealing goods to cover his gambling debts, the son of the governor was doing questionable things for his prostitute lover, and the governor's right-hand man was conspiring against his lord.
After a long and throughout political smear campaign, the two successfully chased the portmaster and the magistrate into seppuku, made the governor's son leave the city for greener pastures, and prompted the governor to allocate all available resources into finding our cart. They pushed the village to the brink of anarchy, but all they got out of it was a promise. Kusado even started to wonder if the chaos would favor the thieves.
Act 3/b: The not!Triad
Meanwhile, Reiku and Sashuni bashed some heads and wrecked a gambling den for information. The gambling den turned out to be a very lucrative source of leads, but this came at the cost of Reiku knocking him out from the adventure via suffering a Severely Injured Fire Ring (his only usable Ring). We managed to cut through the local criminal organization quite effectively, and with a combination of stealth and Pelting Hail, we fought our way to the local crime boss who gave us the Master Lead.
Here the party reassembled for a short time (this was after the other two got the magistrate's papers) and Tadaka tried - and failed - to heal up Reiku but gained a new friend. The healing rules are ridiculous btw. Then everyone went to their own separate ways.
We first looked up a dog fighting ring because a guy there was also into big-time heists. This one went downhill really fast thankfully to Reiku's Disdain for Compassion and Sashuni greedily failing a roll for a Void Point. So, apparently, a Matsu Berserker can't defeat four Big Dogs if all he has is an Air 2. Sad!
Our next adventure was the brothel where we met with the governor's son and at least partially became responsible for his leave: Reiku, beaten up from his fling with the dogs, decided to Strife up and Unmask for some free Fatigue but there was some problem with how to Unmask (in a brothel, in front of the governor's disgraced son) and the player went with Inappropriate Outburst and roasted the boy until he left, crying. One Fatigue well earned!
The third dead-end lead was the port thieves, but these guys were in utter disarray because their patron, the portmaster, had just committed suicide.
Finally, we looked up the crime boss' Master Lead that turned out to be a Mysterious Abandoned Building. Geeeeeeeeez...
Act 4: The End
The party gathered up at dusk to attack the Mysterious Abandoned Building. Our ultimate master plan was using Reiku as a bait then Pelting Hail anyone who takes it. 24 ninja did. This was a surprisingly tough fight because Reiku did not fully embrace his role and gave up our tactically advantageous position outside for a headlong charge into the building. Luckily, the ninja ganged up on him so we could Pelting Hail them into Compromised (they were 6 Squads of 4 ninja) and grind through them in melee. Reiku lost some fingers and poor Kusado tanked a huge hit that gave him Cognitive Lapses.
Once the building became quiet other than the screams of the dying ninja, we finally found the stolen shipment, safe and whole. We also discovered some papers that were from the ninja's employers... some Kolat? Dunno, we never heard about them, probably just some smugglers with too much imagination or something.
So we recovered the jade, set the Mysterious Abandoned Building to fire, and finally finished the deal for good at the light of the flames. We parted ways with wows that we should never, ever see each other again.
The jade is now en route to the Kaiu Wall, Kasan got better when Sashuni returned (he also looked suspiciously disappointed when his friend returned with the cart in tow), and half the village burnt to ash because we had forgotten the fire.
Happy End!
Everyone at the table enjoyed the game and we had tons of fun. The rules were hard to get for the new guys, but this was expected. Because of the nature of the adventure, some of the "key mechanics" like Strife/Unmasking got sidewayed but nothing was missed. The GM was not a fan of the structured social combat. The party felt very monolithic despite everyone having fairly balanced Rings - Reiku was the odd exception but he didn't do much and was overshadowed by the other characters. Some of the shenanigans were grossly off-theme, like Kusado hiding under a table and using Skulk to become invisible, and the game's overall feeling came closer to an Avatar: The Last Airbender episode rather than a Kurosawa movie. Pelting Hail is OP.
Overall, we gave the game a 7 out of 10. It was a good one.
