Twilight Mountains

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  Thread: Trouble in the Ivory Kingdoms
  

Game Description

One week from now at Kyuden Sokora

A peasant messenger who has obviously gone through many hardships stumbles into a provincial Winter Court. He tells a heart wrenching tale of the remote Cherry Tree Village at the base of The Twilight Mountains trying to do its duty while struggling against many foes. Several people notice that Otomo Oki seems to be particularly moved and a solitary tear has fallen down her cheek behind the fan she used to quickly cover her face. Whether they themselves are moved to help or whether they hope to curry favor with such a high ranking Imperial hardly matters as shortly a brave band of Samurai begin plans to set off to the former Boar Clan Lands to bring the Empresses law and protection to this village.

The game starts in a small Kyuden along the banks of the River of Gold around the year 1198 (During the Age of Exploration) There is a pretty good chance the plot will wander west until it merges with the Ki-Rin path and ends up in the Colonies and Ivory Kingdoms. I will be drawing some material from the Second City box set and it's campaign but making sure it flows well for PBP, probably less complex investigation type stuff and more smacking things with weapons.

Characters:
Young samurai training at Kyuden Sokora. The river close at hand and the edges of the Shinomen forest mean this Kyuden is ideal for training Samurai suited to become Imperial Explorers. The area is peaceful and doesn't have many standing troops. It's also an Imperial backwater in neutral (nominally Otomo but each clan has it's spots) territory it also doesn't draw the best or most ambitious Samurai for normal duty. If you're ambitious and here for training chances are you stand out in the crowd.

Base book creation plus each player gets a free 1xp for lore:cartography, courtier, etiquette, iaijutsu and an "art&crafts" skill of some sort.

The Spider Clan make excellent NPC villains.

Me
My view of Rokugani society is kind of dysfunctional. Peasants are abused, outright lies accepted as truth because of the social status of the liar, justice can be bought with family connections and "gifts", etc. While people might be polite to you until they kill you with a katana and even afterwards it makes many NPCs no less a pack of vicious killers than in game systems where a murderer doesn't have any manners. Many people fight over slights of honor and some people intentionally use slights of honor to commit perfectly legal (and sometimes even glorious and honorable!) murder. Daimyo's like to give vague orders and not detailed mission plans so if you run into a hard choice it's not THEM that have to take the honor hit. Players should be comfortable with that.

Houserules:
I'll be doing something with hit points probably. I don't like losing PCs to a few exploding dice and risking the loss of a campaign and the end of an epic story line. I have a few options and am not fully decided yet.

I'll be buffing medicine to 3E levels were skilled practitioners can heal multiple dice of wounds and do it multiple times per day. I don't like needing a Shugenja to be a healing cleric.

I'm not a fan of void magic. It can be balanced but it requires the focus of a lot of my attention and there are other players too.

I'll give a +2 insight mastery bonus at rank 5 in every skill. Another +3 at 7.

The "new" taint rules where you can't accidentally get tainted is the ones I'll use. Many things still count as voluntary but getting stabbed by a beast of the Shadowlands isn't one of them anymore.

I loathe the "he said/she said" of who challenges who and gets to pick weapons. Iaijutsu and Katana's have been the weapon of choice for almost 1200 years and duels of honor use that combo. If you're from a bushi school that doesn't have a daisho then you get one. If you're a courtier or shugenja then make friends who duel. My rule of thumb for NPCs is that they'll have ~1 rank in Iaijutsu per insight rank unless they're an individual or school that takes it more serious than normal.

Rough Campaign Flow: Subject to PC actions but this is my idea.
Scout out the location of the attack, report back.
Dig deeper into the Twilight Mountains, report back.
Follow the plot into the Ivory Kingdoms.

It'll probably have a fair bit of combat, some of it against "monsters" of various types. It would take place during the "official" time of the War of Serpents.

From Imperial Histories II

The War of Serpents in the canonical storyline, described in this chapter, is something of a “low-boil” conflict, always in the background and rarely taking center stage.

The war isn't the focus of the campaign but perhaps some parts of the low boil conflict might cross over during a few encounters.