[L5R 4th Ed] Developing a Campaign Idea

[Jbr208]

I'm developing an alternative history which can run parallel to the established history or can run any number of paths which are extremely distant from the established history that it would make Fu Leng's head spin.

I'm looking at running an adventure in the time period before the Scorpion Clan Coup, a time where clan tensions were fraying every relationship under the sun and the Shadowlands appeared to be weakening. With the seemingly weakened Shadowlands, the Crab took the time to look at the other clans as well as to the Shadowlands on an academic level. Kuni Yori took the time to investigate the nature of the Shadowlands, and became tainted. Hida Kisada, one of the greatest Crab Clan Daimyo, looked at the other clans and saw petty, corrupt politicians and pathetic samurai hiding behind the privilege of safety purchased by the great sacrifices of the Crab Clan.

This is about twenty years before the SCC occurs, so the destined Thunders are not yet Thunders and the Coup may yet be averted through some unknown agenda. The game, however, has little to do with that directly. The game features a handful of characters who can trace their ancestry to the founding Kami - Bayushi, Shiba, Akodo, Hida, Shinjo, and Doji. Now, the players are required to have the ancestor advantage with one of the Kami, and are expected to be a paragon of their ancestry.

Picture, if you please, a Shiba, a Bayushi, an Akodo, and a Hida (just the four I find most compelling, clearly not the only option), taken by a Togashi monk into the Shadowlands. The principle being that it has been nearly 1000 years since the Day of Thunder, and Shinsei said that every 1000 years the champions of Ningen-do and Jigoku must do battle to see if the next 1000 years will be of Peace, or Darkness, and if Ningen-do sends out their champions to do battle before Jigoku has had the time to bring their heavy hitter back up to fighting form, then the great massacres which are bound to occur on the Second Day of Thunder might be lessened greatly if not entirely prevented.

The campaign would run from the gathering of these "Thunders" by the Togashi monk, to a handful of courtly adventures and small scale skirmishes, to sorties into the Shadowlands, to marching straight into the pit of Fu Leng. Now, I can hear the questions abounding already: How does this scenario handle the opening of the black scrolls? How does this scenario deal with the Scorpion Clan Coup?

We'll start with the first of these: the first Black Scroll opened was the Wasting Disease, I believe, by Yogo Junzo after the failed Coup. Between Yogo Junzo, Kuni Yori, and the Elemental Council we account for eight scrolls. The Fox clan opened one, Bayushi Bantaru opened another, a third (the Touch of Fu Leng) has an unknown opener and the last one was opened by Mirumoto Hitomi. The black scrolls are filled with power, particularly the power of Jigoku, if the "Thunders" succeed in their mission, they stand to greatly weaken the connection between Ningen-do and Jigoku if not sever the connection all together. Weakening the bond between Ningen-do and Jugoku may very well diminish the powers of the black scrolls, and likely would have a profound impact on Fu Leng's power when the scrolls open.

As for what happens with the Coup, that is partially dependent upon what happens with the courtly portion of the game before and after the "Thunders" go into the Shadowlands. Partially dependent on the degree of success and failure met by the players in the Shadowlands. Of course, that's not even to say that the players can succeed, the characters are told by a Togashi Monk what his meditations have told him can happen; in all likelihood the PC's will run into Moto Tsume and get trounced a few days into the Shadowlands.

Now, for my question: do you think the premise of the alternate history holds water, and do you think it interesting enough to play?

P.s. I just looked at the preview of this thing and realized how long it was. My bad, at least it's broken up into paragraphs though.

[Black Jester]

Of course such a game would work. I would probably replace the enigmatic Dragon monk with Togashi himself in one form or the other (or, if you really want to screw your players: Someone possessed by the soul ofYajinden or Iuchiban who tells them pretty lies to accelerate the main event, similar to the 'gempukku gang' storyline during the destroyer war) and I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the character's heritage. After all, the Unicorn Thunder in the 2nd Day of Thunder was an Otaku not a Shinjo and Hitomi wasn't related to Togashi either.
Nor were any of the original Thunders, after all.

If your players are supposed to enter the Shadowlands, A Hiruma would be the first choice, after all.

I personally think that it is not that important to follow the L5R metaplot; after all the outcome of quite a few events are basically determined by random chance / a children's card game. Just think about it: If that final tournament of the Time of Void Era had ended differently, Hitomi or even Yoritomo might have beaten Fu-Leng and as a consequence had inherited the Imperial throne...

[Jbr208]

Worthy considerations. Now that I think on it, I could do to loosen up on the heritage aspect a bit, as you rightly point out, the original Thunders bore no relation to the kami.

With regard to the metaplot: I agree, but a number of my friends who play the game treat the metaplot as though it was a road with 9 foot high concrete walls which are several inches think, intending for the PC's to travel along the road without disrupting it too much; unless we're playing 1000 years of Darkness that is.

[BWR]

Say what? The Thunders were not related to the kami?
Hida "I took on the First Oni and lived" Atarasi was Hida's son.
Konishiko was the daughter of Doji (and younger sister to the original Crane Thunder, who was killed by Fu-fu's minions).

On topic, This works fine. To be honest, though I liked some of the storylines that came after the Second Day of Thunder, and didn't get into the setting until the end of the Four Winds, I, like several others, came to the conclusion that the most interesting and best form of the setting is the pre-SCC.
Do not feel obliged to follow established canon if you want to do something else. That's the fun of running your own games and your own stories. It's basically one big fanfic where you can do whatever the hell you want.
Heck, it's not as though the Story Team hasn't done their damndest to ruin the original setting over the years.

[Jbr208]

My mistake, I made assumptions after remembering that the others (Isawa, Matsu, and Shoshuro for example) weren't descendants. Should have remembered Hida's son, I think he became the first Lost and Hida himself went into the Shadowlands to kill him and repair the blemish on the family name. It has been a while since I read about the FDoT.

[Sir_Mopalot]

Do something BIG, early on, to show your players that the metaplot has little to nothing to do with what will actually happen. I ran a Star Wars game that opened with the players helping a rogue Jedi Master crash a dreadnought into the Senate shortly after Order 66, killing most of the galactic leadership, including Palpatine. Give settings exactly as much weight as you want them to have, just make sure your players either understand, either early on or before the game starts, how much weight you're going to give it.

[BWR]

Don't know if Atarasi became the first Lost but he probably became the first (human) akutenshi. And Hida did indeed wait around for a hundred years or so before going off to find and kill his son.

OT, you don't necessarily need to show the players things aren't going according to canon in a big way. Just warn any people familiar with the setting beforehand that you are changing a few things and don't need comments like "that's not how it happened".
I was very guilty of that sort of behavior until I got it into my thick head that just because you play in an established setting doesn't mean everything goes by the book.

[Black Jester]

Emancipating from the metaplot is by itself not a bad thing anyway, but in the case of L5R, one should have in mind that the plot is primarily written for (and by) the card players, and the RPG is more of an afterthought. The two different kinds of game benefit from different metaplot and setting approaches. For the card game, conflicts between the Clans with clear distinctive lines and frequent armed conflicts are a good impression of the game, and having the recognizable, identifiable characters who are part of your decks is a specific appeal. However, for an RPG approach to an ongoing metaplot, these are actually detrimental: the RPG benefits if you can combine representatives of different Clans within one group of individuals without a hassle (because mono-clan groups are possible, but rare and it is usually less restrictive to let the players choose their characters more freely); for the RPG, minor conflicts and challenges on a very local level (which are believable solved by a ragtag band of lovable heroes) and the whole bunch of recognizable, iconic NPCs are actively trespassing on the role of those characters who are truly important for an RPG: the PCs. Watching the Thunders beat Fu-Leng isn't nearly as interesting as being the Thunders who beat Fu-Leng after all.
Therefore I really think that Jbr's ideas definitely go into the right directions (even though I personally don't like to play in that era; I like the Mantis. I miss the Mantis when t is not around),

[Jbr208]

I mostly started writing this as a reaction to something my last L5R GM did, which was to basically have the PC plot line run parallel to the main plot while having some discernible effect upon the metaplot. I think the biggest effect we had was to prevent Hitomi from getting her hand cut off and later crippling Bayushi Aramaru's arm, virtually guaranteeing that Aramaru would gain the Obsidian Hand and open the Final Scroll.

We weren't changing the grand scheme of destiny/fate, but we were having an impact upon the road. What I'm doing is basically an attempt to put fate in the hands of PC's, the tabletop experience is to help tell their story, not "the Story of X NPC's Featuring the (Blundering) PC's."

[BWR]

Your game, your choice. Not that there's anything wrong with running a game that sticks close to the official story. It's perfectly possible to run large campaigns where the PCs never meet the BBEG of the setting (or the even bigger BBEG, or the third coming of a not quite so BBEG, or the new BBEG who totally whupped the old BBEG, who in turn came back from the dead a while ago).
And, let's be fair, stories about samurai drama rarely work well with Save the World stories.

The biggest thing we've ever done in L5R campaigns is destroy the Anvil of Despair (and as a reward get put in charge of the reborn Boar Clan). Things like Fu-fu or even Daigotsu are beyond the scope of those games.
Oh, and we're helping Yugozuhime defeat the Gozoku in another game.

Minor changes from canon, but nothing on the order of "we are the Seven Thunders now, sucker".

[Black Jester]

In the campaign I am currently preparing, the Lying Darkness does not exist, none of the events after the 2nd day of thunder happened necessarily, and several minor and major events have been changed from high fantasy/high magic settings to low fantasy and no magic, if possible.

In a prelude we already played, all players got existing characters for a one-shot and we tested how the game rules work with high-end characters. As such, the plot was adjusted slightly: In the original timeline, Yoritomo tried to wed the Fox clan Champion Ryosei; she refused and the Fox remained independent.
In our alternative timeline, Yoritomo drank too much sake and boosted that he will destroy the Walking Terror of Fu-Leng which was the former Fox Clan Champ and Ryosei's father. This let to an epic quest of the most powerful characters of the Mantis/the minor Clan alliance through the Empire, everyone a PC for this adventure. Thus, the players had a chance to play characters with an insight of five and beyond (which was as new to them as it was to me to GM) and it was rather fun.
As a consequence, the Fox joined the Mantis 40 years earlier (instead of the Centipede which remained independent for a few years) and had a much stronger say in Mantis politics - our Mantis are a bit more diplomatic and less confrontational).
The metaplot is malleable, and if you are primarily interested in playing the RPG instead of the card game changing the plot to address the different conventions of an RPG will more often than not help to improve the game.