The back story here is that I'm a fan of the L5R lcg and the L5R universe in general, and thought it would be great to check out the L5R role playing game. I've never GM'd before in my life, but neither of the members of our role playing group that do wanted to GM for L5R, so I volunteered. I'm beginning to think that was a mistake..

I bought the beginner game and ran the first half of the adventure a couple of weeks ago. It went well enough. I learned from the experience. In the meantime I've been reading some of the fiction, through the adventure again, and the rules. We're about to do the second half tomorrow night, starting with Scene 6: The Competition, Day Two.

I was trying to find some GM-related commentary to help guide me with running the adventure and came upon this thread regarding the dueling competition that concludes the tournament:

After reading that, I'm wondering if I have misunderstood the approach the GM is supposed to be taking with running the Topaz Championship. Don't get me wrong, Wyrmdog's ideas look brilliant. But I had no clue that it could be this complex of a process. How exactly do people usually run the final (dueling) component of the championship? The adventure book reads "find out which PC scored the most tournament points and that PC faces either Kakita Riku or Bayushi Mei Lin in a duel, making a single competitive TN 1 Martial Arts (Melee) check." So that's just one dice roll... "The character with the most bonus successes takes the lead in the tournament....Then, any other PC who has not fought can challenge the character in the lead to the same contest. We assume that the other duels occur without incident and do not affect the outcome. The last character to hold the lead after all PC's have fought (or passed) is crowned as the new Topaz Champion."

We will have three PC's competing tomorrow night (one of them missed our first role playing session - so I was thinking of just "auto-awarding" him four xp to put him on even ground with the other two).

So first you have a dice roll pitting the point leader among the PC's against either Riku or Mei Lin, then another PC takes on the winner and then the third PC takes on the winner of that..? Is that it?

After reading Wyrmdog's post, I got the feeling I was missing something as his process is WAY more elaborate than that. How do people generally run that segment? I hope I haven't handled this entire tournament incorrectly to this point.

Thanks for any suggestions!

The basic box has watered down mechanics and rules for some of the more complex things on purpose, since the goals are to familiarize yourselves with the core mechanics of the game and slowly discover the setting, while making things run quickly and smoothly. Wyrmdog's post is about the full extent of duel rules per the Core Rulebook, which he apparently chose to implement instead of the single die roll duels.

You'll be good with running it the way it's in the box. Or you can change the structure a bit to a sort of single-elimination brackets where all players will get the chance to defeat a couple NPCs before they duel each-other. Just be up-front with the players that once you move on to the full Core Rulebook rules, some things will be different and mostly more detailed.

I also suggest reading this thread for some more information:

Agasha, thank you so much for your response, that's exactly the sort of information that I was looking for!! My stress level ahead of running this tonight has dropped to "tolerable" status.

If I can push my luck and ask you about a couple of additional concerns...(1) are you familiar with any podcasts or other resources where I might find some basic tips about GM'ing, specifically for L5R, or failing that, just in general? (2) Another issue I have pertains to the generation of conversations between PC's and whatever mechanism the GM should use to push the narrative forward (insertion of NPC's..?). The beginner box and the follow up adventure make some mention of additional encounter ideas, for example. Right now, as a source of relevant information that could push a narrative forward, I'm at ground zero, as a GM. So I'm wondering where would I come up with the necessary ideas to fill out an adventure with relevant information. The beginner box provides this on a basic level, of course, but I'm feeling kind of short on what to say if the PC's press me for additional information about a given narrative. It would be good to find a resource with suggestions for how to develop my own encounters or better embellish existing ones.

Lastly, do most GM's deliver information "in character", or (at least in the case of the beginner game), is it ok to just read/paraphrase the background information that is provided within the adventure? (Sounds like a dumb question.....but I'm on a roll, lol.)

Thanks again, that thread was perfect for what I wanted to know! And also, thank you for pointing me toward a couple of specific pieces of L5R fiction, very helpful!

I'm glad I could be of help. I was a player myself of this basic box. And since I'm currently playing the follow-up adventure, I'm not allowed to read specifics yet. As extra sources of information about the late Emerald Champion (Doji Satsume) plot, I suggest:

• The follow-up downloadable adventure, which so far seems to be quite related https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/54/5d/545d40f0-3e88-406a-ab00-fecd7cea0875/l5r01dlc_adventurecompressed.pdf
• Some of the fictions showcast the children of the late Emerald Champion as well, and therefore touch on the subject of his death. Mostly the Crane and Lion ones with Doji Hotaru (current Crane Champion), Doji Shizue (Storyteller at the Imperial Court) and Doji Kuwanan (who's been involved in the Lion-Crane conflict). I recall these specifically, but there could be others:
  • Her Father's Daughter
  • The Fate of Flames and The Fires of Justice
  • The Stories We Tell

11 hours ago, Agasha Kanetake said:

Some of the fictions showcast the children of the late Emerald Champion as well, and therefore touch on the subject of his death. Mostly the Crane and Lion ones with Doji Hotaru (current Crane Champion), Doji Shizue (Storyteller at the Imperial Court) and Doji Kuwanan (who's been involved in the Lion-Crane conflict). I recall these specifically, but there could be others:

• Her Father's Daughter
• The Fate of Flames and The Fires of Justice
• The Stories We Tell

I'd definitely read these (and/or point your players at them) if planning to play the follow-up adventure, since Doji Hotaru herself also features in "In the Palace Of..."

I'll be wearing the "GM hat" for the third time ever Thursday night (still working through the Topaz Championship...), so please pardon the lame question..

(Possible spoilers.)

During Scene 7: The Feast, Hitoshi commits an "unsightly outburst". The adventure instructions state.."The PCs have a chance to intervene, to remind the assembly that Hitoshi is not yet a samurai and lacks the standing to make such a challenge, perhaps. They could also suggest that Hitoshi has had an exhausting day and too much to drink, and everyone should ignore this gaffe. This requires a TN 3 Courtesy or Government (Earth) check ....."

My question is, should I be spelling out these two distinct alternatives to the players? This particular text is written in black. Text in red is supposed to be read to the heroes. Or should I simply ask them, "what do you do", instead? Since the parameters of the check involved here are specified in detail, that seems to imply that the players should be directed straight to these two options. If I ask them "what do you do?", and they go in a different direction entirely, then there's a good chance the Courtesy or Government check would be totally inappropriate. How have people been handling this situation? Thanks!!

When we played this part, without knowing what was suggested in the GM material (I just learned it right now), those are the two possible answers that jumped to our minds.

The "too much to drink" option is quite obvious, especially if you foreshadow that Hitoshi seems to enjoy his drinks a lot. The "we're not samurai yet" might be less obvious, but you can easily educate your players by asking an easier TN check to "recall" that information, if you see them hesitate too much. It should be relatively common knowledge for an aspiring samurai that such a challenge can only be issued between samurai, but the timing of when exactly one counts as a samurai, especially during gempuku, might require more specific knowledge.

Similar situations will likely come up often, since Rokugan society, customs, rules, etc. can seem quite alien, even to experienced (fantasy) roleplayers. Either educate them right away if it's something any samurai should know, or ask for skill checks like courtesy, culture, government or theology if you feel like it's less well known information or a special narrow case, before spilling the beans.

And if they suggest another solution, don't panic. Just look at the list of skills and approaches and find what works. Maybe your players can help you by suggesting what they think would be an appropriate skill/approach. This will also come up a lot even when playing published adventures, so get some experience at improvising skills checks!

EDIT: I strongly suggest that you tell your players to think about a gift before they show up to play, so they can come up with something interesting and personalized. Also, feel free to adjust or remove the corresponding check, and go with what you know of the Grey Crane to judge the gifts. It felt very weird for my (Doji Ren) gift to be the only one to fail, when the Diplomat School is probably the best place to learn proper gift-giving, and being Crane would have also helped me get tips about what to give to a well-known person from the same clan (second only to the Kakita girl, you can't beat an inside joke, obviously...)

Seconding what Kanetake said, but I’ll throw another coin into the ‘be prepared for alternate player ideas’ pot.

First time I ran the adventure the players, who had been very active in trying to help Hitoshi, immediately copped to the fact that he’d been skipped in the gift giving when I described the other Great Clan gifts but not his, and actually preempted the outburst. Togashi kept Hitoshi in his seat and quiet while Doji quickly passed messages that actually got the Grey Crane to apologize for ‘getting carried away in the celebration of everyone’s success’ and accidentally offending the honored guest from the Mantis. There was a lot of glaring, but both sides remained polite, and nobody lost face.

Players will be players. Let them pleasantly surprise you.

Thanks Agasha and Cannibal (lol...and wearing a stormtrooper outfit at that). Amazingly helpful information! With this kind of assistance from people as helpful as you, I might actually be able to do this. 😊