Welcome back!
Welcome back to the party.
Akodo Hideyoshi, Mirumoto Katsuyoshi, and Shinjo Xiaoxing: I'll go ahead and give the three of you another experience point for the warehouse scene. I think you certainly earned it, heh.
I know Katsurou can read the posts, but I'd like to see you guys bring him (and Doji Oruku) up to speed. It's my way of gauging what clues have stuck :D
Plus, interpersonal roleplay is a strength of PbP. Why ignore a strength?
Going to take me a bit to get an in character fill in of events up, I will try to get a good explanation up soon unless Xiaoxing beats me to it.
Still trying to make sense of what Katsuyoshi does and does not know. The one problem with pbp is you can't always remember what has happened.
Thats why I went with the "I fill them in". That he can read and get it all without me having to remember.
Sorry for delay guys and gals.. schedule changed this week and I'm still figuring out when I have time to sit and fritter away on teh internets :D
Edit: heh, I was so harried I completely forgot to introduce you to a reinforcement NPC :D. I barely got it in under the edit time limit... I'm still not happy with the narrative flow of that post... so don't be shy to ask questions.
Guys, ridiculously busy at work, and leaving for a business trip this afternoon. I will be out a couple of days and not able to update until Sunday most likely.
The Thunder Guard leave with Dokiu, right?
It's a big holiday weekend here in the States, I'm going to give another day for people to respond to Katsurou's suggestion that everyone just stay honest and let him talk your way through Gate's Gate.
Well, that ship has sailed for Gate. He wanted to restore his family honor and he was denied the opportunity. He's ronin now, and he's no more an Akodo than you are a Scorpion. As a matter of fact, referring to him by his former name was actually fairly insulting (basically a verbal equivalent of rubbing salt into a wound), but I'm letting that slide as a matter of etiquette you as a player weren't familiar with.
And as for the necessity of the rolling part, I'm feeling you. I like to allow roleplay to determine the outcome of social situations whenever possible, but from a plot point of view, his job is to stop you from proceeding on to the next scene with weapons. If you wanted to keep your weapons when you go find Whisper, you "should" have snuck them or your characters in ;) This is another one of those situations where it would have been super handy to have someone around who doesn't care about honor hits, heh.
I rolled on your behalf because the adventure, as written, assumes no possibility of talking Gate into shirking his duty. I didn't like that "no chance" aspect. He's just a stubborn ole Ronin with an uncompromising sense of duty. So.. I allowed you a good College Try. You guys did get close enough to success to force him to go to an honor roll. Time to regroup and make Plan B? Or perhaps just go on w/o your weapons? Or try to fool him and hide something on your person? Or say "GET HIM" and force your way thru? Perhaps engage in a spurious legal debate and "convince" him you have the law on your side? (you do have Magistrates there to help your case) Options are yours to explore :) And feel free to "ask the GM" about ideas.. I have Good Cop and Bad Cop NPCs to reply with :D (Doji Oruku of course leans towards stay honorable, Kuni Eiriasu leans towards "whatever it takes to get the job done")
So a typhoon just swung by Tohoku where I live so Internet is spotty as hell right now. I'll try to get on when I can, but it's seriously been raining buckets the last few days and the net has been failing me. Bot me as you need to.
Well, that ship has sailed for Gate. He wanted to restore his family honor and he was denied the opportunity. He's ronin now, and he's no more an Akodo than you are a Scorpion. As a matter of fact, referring to him by his former name was actually fairly insulting (basically a verbal equivalent of rubbing salt into a wound), but I'm letting that slide as a matter of etiquette you as a player weren't familiar with.
And as for the necessity of the rolling part, I'm feeling you. I like to allow roleplay to determine the outcome of social situations whenever possible, but from a plot point of view, his job is to stop you from proceeding on to the next scene with weapons. If you wanted to keep your weapons when you go find Whisper, you "should" have snuck them or your characters in ;) This is another one of those situations where it would have been super handy to have someone around who doesn't care about honor hits, heh.
I rolled on your behalf because the adventure, as written, assumes no possibility of talking Gate into shirking his duty. I didn't like that "no chance" aspect. He's just a stubborn ole Ronin with an uncompromising sense of duty. So.. I allowed you a good College Try. You guys did get close enough to success to force him to go to an honor roll. Time to regroup and make Plan B? Or perhaps just go on w/o your weapons? Or try to fool him and hide something on your person? Or say "GET HIM" and force your way thru? Perhaps engage in a spurious legal debate and "convince" him you have the law on your side? (you do have Magistrates there to help your case) Options are yours to explore :)...
I appreciate the candor on this. It helps as player when things get frustrating. I used his real name on purpose, fyi. I suspected it would be an insult of a sort. Again, an attempt to remind him of who he was and inspire him to act in his own behalf. I do have the Idealistic disadvantage, and in case anyone was wondering when I'd pop that in here...there it is!
On the off chance that the player is also not understanding Gate's motivations, I'll explain a little what's going on behind the GM screen.
Gate has no idea if your story about the Oni is true, but he's in Ryoko Owari Toshi, the City of Lies and it's earned its nickname. A large portion of why Gate is successful at keeping weapons out of the Floating City when the city is populated by the best liars in Rokugan is that said liars have failed so often before they've come to believe his honor is infalliable and not worth trying to lie to anymore.
Gate fears that if he allows so much as a single samurai to run around the Floating City with his swords, everyone in the city will assume he can be tricked after all, and his aura of invincibility will be gone. And he's probably right. Once his proverbial armor has a chink, shady types will inevitably exploit that chink. He doesn't want to go down in defeat here. Importantly, the Governor doesn't want Gate to fail either. Scorpions actually love having high honor types around... they're predictable!. And noone, especially not the Governor, wants the Licensed Quarter to turn into a Rokugani Wild Wild West.
It actually doesn't matter if he believes the Oni is real or not. If he doesn't believe it, he won't insult you by pointing out that you're "lying". If he does believe it, then he'll do what he did: "If it's such an emergency then, why haven't you already talked to the Governor?"
As for the plot sequencing: it's not so much the writers are saying "Gate can't be talked down" as much as they didn't write a contingency for dealing with the attempt. The writers assumed that if you want to be armed on the island, you'll just sneak the weapons or yourselves in. I'm having to adapt to the Players going off script, as they are prone to do :D
Well, in my opinion that is a flaw in the writing - to assume that we would sneak ourselves in and take an Honor hit. That certainly railroads us high honor types into doing something we wouldn't do, and leaving no options.
I can see behind the screen, and understand your dilemma, but thanks for the information. I've stayed out of the talking parts as best I can until I think Hideyoshi's Ideals would get in the way - like now. Hideyoshi has said his piece, probably ruined any chance we had with Gate. But he won't ever understand it, he is a Lion after all, an Akodo, who swore on his sacred blade, etc etc. How dare Gate refuse him!!! ;)
Hideyoshi, from my perspective I think that was the Idealistic disadvantage played just right, it cropped up in a difficult situation and forced our hand in a way that might not have been explored otherwise. It's all good!
GM, if I remember rightly this is one of the first adventures published for L5R, definitely the first 'urban sprawl'/sandbox boxed set pretty much ever, from before the days when that term was even in use! Definitely appreciate you're having to adapt the writing as we go. The campaign probably expects a sneaky Scorpion to be at least one of the party ;)
It's a truism of L5R, it benefits the players/player group, and adds endless interesting RP opportunities (if you're playing with the right people!) to have both high and low honor types in the same party, we're just running a particularly 'unbending' posse at the moment!
Let's not worry, I'm sure our high honor will carry us to triumph over the foul creature of the shadowlands, just like the tales we're told of our ancestors ^.^
D&D/Pathfinder can have similar issues. Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard is the core foundation of any group. You may not need those classes per se, but you need someone to be able to do what those classes do. A macguffin or critical plot clue can be hidden behind a lock. If the party doesn't have disable device or a knock spell, they'll potentially be up a creek as well.
A L5R party's core foundation, imo, is bushi/shugenja/courtier/someone who's not straitjacketed by honor. I toyed with the idea of requiring at least one shady low honor sort, but I decided against it. I mean, if you're playing a Samurai RPG, it's natural for someone to want to play a paragon of bushido! Since I let you make a party w/o that base covered, I consider it my responsibility to give you the ability to deal with those scenarios inventively.
Anyway in our case here, it's not that big a deal, at least I don't think it is at any rate. Once we're past Gate, we're back on track whether you have weapons or not. Except for having become frustrated with the roleplay, it will have been the same net result as having just handing the weapons over from the get go.
Sure, I can empathise with you that it's frustrating that Gate isn't cooperating in the face of all the doom and gloom I've been telling you you're facing. But he doesn't know that, and worse, has no reason to believe it's not an inventive trick simply to bring weapons onto the island. In your case, he believes he has to assume (for the good of the city) that when you ask to keep weapons it's for some extra-legal assassination under color of authority and the bit about the Oni is simply a story meant to be so crazy that he might believe it. Your rolls were good enough to convince him you're not a bunch of crooked cops on your way to wipe out someone you're upset with. However he does know that if he believes your story about the Oni, he will soon be swarmed with more stories about "OMG an Oni is coming, you have to let me keep my weapons, too!" in the coming weeks and months, and he would have indirectly helped make the Floating City a hive of murder and bloodshed. He's not prepared to take that risk, even if he might be inclined to believe what you're saying. (Not that it isn't a place were people get assassinated already.. assassins just have to be sneaky and use poison or such rather than crudely sticking a sword into someone)
It's been a week or so since we heard from Mirumoto Katsuyoshi and Kitsuki Katsurou... you guys still interested in the game? I do hope the taifun didn't cause any lasting damage...
No, it just killed my ネット for like a week. There was flooding the next prefecture over, and now this earthquake in Peru has sent a (thankfully small) tsunami over. No lasting damage, but things have been hella hectic. Japan's a volatile place.
Your motivations are not what is important right now
Xiaoxing cuts off Whisper mid-sentence
Where are those masks!?
she exclaims directly
I love that you're roleplaying but rude outbursts are not the sort of behavior expected of highly honorable samurai like Xiaoxing :)
I'm inclined to dock a box of honor, but I don't want to issue a penalty without thinking about it for a while.. that's a benefit to pbp afterall.. I don't have to decide such things on the spot!
Given the seriousness of the situation in Xiaoxing's eyes, coupled with a Unicorn upbringing where "strange foreign ways" might excuse said behavior, I'm not completely decided to take a box of honor. If not, maybe a box of glory instead (to represent all the gossiping that'll get around about her barbaric behavior..)
Like I said, just saying I'm thinking about it. It's not to punish you.. it's to enforce the restrictions you gave yourself in playing a high-honor character! :) (or to facilitate your slide into City-of-Lies-style shystery...)
It was at that point the Shosuro actor peeled off his Xiaoxing mask, descending on Whisper in a flurry of ninja shinobi kicks... ;p
I'd say the box of honor lost is fair if you decide it's so. Xiaoxing has had a long, unpleasant night, and no-one to really take it out on politely discuss things with, so she's a tad... 'tetchy' at the moment!
Soon all the yoriki in the party will move from being James Gordon to Harvey Bullock! Hrm just thought, does that make Whisper the Oswald!? :D
I think Whisper doesn't have a future as bright as Oswald's. Maybe he's one of those guys that works for Mooney in a the basement of that crazy hospital.
Also, it's worth noting that one of the main reasons Gordon trusts Bullock as much as he does is that Bullock never takes bribes.
I got socked with homework tonight... I'll skip posting an update and catch us up tomorrow :]
Hopefully Mirumoto Katsuyoshi hasn't been lost.. almost two weeks now since we heard from him :(
Sorry about the delay there guys and gals... it's midterm season.
And as for the damage codes of the shard of jade and the katana of fire:
I should have said. I was thinking just unarmed damage for the shards, but I won't undo the damage roll. The biggest best shard can count as a tanto :)
And the katana of fire is 2k2, just like a regular katana. Upon doublechecking the spell, I see it does add the wielder's honor to the damage roll. So I'll tack on another 7 damage that Hideyoshi dealt!
Sorry about the delay there guys and gals... it's midterm season.
And as for the damage codes of the shard of jade and the katana of fire:
I should have said. I was thinking just unarmed damage for the shards, but I won't undo the damage roll. The biggest best shard can count as a tanto :)
And the katana of fire is 2k2, just like a regular katana. Upon doublechecking the spell, I see it does add the wielder's honor to the damage roll. So I'll tack on another 7 damage that Hideyoshi dealt!
So does that add +7 in addition to the +8 I get for the Lion's Roar technique? ruh roh, here comes agro...
EDIT: Something else I noticed: I've been rounding up to +8 (Honor is 7.5) for the Lion's Roar. Is that correct?
Yep the Katana of Fire's damage bonus will stack with your school technique! A Lion is not something you want to be struck by... try to have pity for the poor Oni if you can! :D
OTOH, no you don't round ranks. 7.0 and 7.9 are both "equally" 7 honor, mechanically. The boxes just show how close you are to changing honor ranks up or down is all.
Oh and mid terms are finally over... I apologize again for the slowness this past couple weeks. It's downhill for a bit and I'll try to be mindful of giving you heads up as finals approach so you won't be caught by surprise if I get behind again.
Halloween is coming up, and it'll be a grand time to be playing this adventure set in Rokugan's Halloween :)
No problem GM, welcome back!
And yup will be fun to be playing this whilst Halloween rolls around :D
Whoops! >.<
...and that's why any self-respecting samurai stays far, far away from anything that's even thought of visiting the Shadowlands, let alone been resident there for any period of time ;p
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I just spent a good half hour typing up the next post only to see my browser crash and the entire thing was lost. That's what I get for not doing it in word and just copypasta into the browser.
Rather than redoing at this late hour I'll get the post up lunchtime tomorrow... I have to get up early in the morning. Sigh.
Preview: There'll be a discussion about where to begin looking for the other masks Whisper sold. You'll be given a chance to recall some related clues offered earlier in the pbp game and impress the magistrates with your acumen.
So if you don't already have an idea where to look, search the thread for the hidden clues! :)
Congrats on killing the Oni! It's a major milestone in the adventure storyline, so I think this is a good time for some rewards.
And looking back, it's been a looong time since I gave rewards... I don't think I've given XP since dealing with the bandits at the crematorium? Wow. Time flies :]
So, we had the scenes at the Crane Estate, on the pier, and in Whisper's store.. plus we had what became the major fight at the Scorpion Warehouse as well as the Floating Island fun and games.
I think from now on I'm going to try giving out XP for good RP and good ideas right as they happen. To help me out in this, feel free to prod me and ask about whether a given piece of rp is XP worthy. I won't view it as xp grubbing, I promise :) I don't want to get back into another situation of "ehn. Everyone gets X amount of XP." It devalues good rp that should have gotten bonus awards.
But to catch us up, I think 8 XP isn't overly generous for the pace of progression I'm hoping we'll have in this game.
Bringing the Oni down is a major accomplishment as well, so I think a box of honor award is in order for everyone involved. Also, once understanding gets around the city that it wasn't a cheesy "Haunted House" Oni attack but a bona fide omg that thing might have massacred the island Oni attack, you'll all earn 3 boxes of glory to represent your 15 minutes of fame.
TL;DR: You get 8 XP, 3 glory, and 1 honor :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks for the awards GM :)
Loved the bit about the 'fake Oni attack', that mama-san is on to something there, we'll have started a whole new annual tradition now :p
so for the 3 Glory and 1 Honor: does that come to +3 and +1? or +.3 and +.1?
In other words, I'm trying to figure out if my Honor should go to 8.5 or 7.6 for example.
Honor and Glory awards (and reductions) are always done by boxes, or tenths of a rank. So yes you could think of 3 boxes as +0.3.
I think I've finally figured out what to do about Xiaoxing :) Was kinda thrown for a loop there but I think I have a way forward now!
A few thoughts on Rokugani police procedure: (I also recommend reviewing page 48 of the RPG if you haven't seen it already)
There is no taking a suspect downtown to sweat out a confession. For one, there is no Police HQ analogue in Rokugan. The nearest analogue in Ryoko Owari is the Emerald Magistrate's personal estate, which is currently vacant as no Emerald Magistrate has yet been posted to the city since the murder of the last one.
What your characters DO have available as a threat is a trip to the Prison. What we'd recognize in the real world as Due Process just doesn't exist in Rokugan... guilt or innocence is basically determined by a Magistrate's pronouncement. (the 2000AD/Judge Dredd legal system is pretty close to the Rokugani system actually). This means Magistrates, if willing to deviate from the tight and narrow path of honorable behavior, are pretty powerful individuals! The major check on a Magistrate's power is in protections of the Samurai social class. Where a Magistrate can summarily pronounce a peasant guilty of whatever crime he sees fit, a samurai can only be pronounced guilty by a Magistrate of sufficient rank. For Ryoko Owari, generally that means the Governor must pass judgement over an accused Samurai herself.. although she has delegated that power to her chief and most trusted magistrate, Yogo Osako.
Since Hida Muchi is a samurai, you can't just summarily pronounce him guilty of trafficking stolen goods as if he were a peasant merchant. (I know that's not the threat, but bear with me here) You CAN however throw him in the dungeon to await an audience with Yogo Osako or the Governor, where you'd present your testimony against his*. Now, if he's innocent, he has to wonder what sort of corrupt evidence you'll bring to frame him. If he's guilty, he has to worry whether you have legit evidence and his goose is as good as cooked. Either way, from his point of view the threat of spending the rest of the Festival in a dungeon is unappealing, and is likely to want to avoid you coming to that decision... as his options then would be submit or resist violently.. neither are attractive since you outnumber him 4 to 1 (including the Emerald Magistrate inside his home)
*=This is assuming you're magistrates (after this adventure, you will be!) Right now as Yoriki you are only deputies without the full powers of a Magistrate and your implied threat is that Kuni Eiriasu would be the one ordering incarceration.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Arrgh time keeps slipping away from me.. apologies for that update taking almost a frikkin' week. Schoolwork is starting to overwhelm, heh. "I'll catch up tomorrow" needs to be stricken from my mental discussions with myself...
All good GM :)
It's been crazy here too these last couple of weeks, I got seconded for two weeks on a project which absolutely ate up all my time both in and out of hours. Glad that's over now :p
Looking forward to Halloween!! Boo!
Honestly, I'm at a loss on this. As far I can tell, any of these guys can just say 'it's not me, it's him', and we have nothing to go on.
That's ok, we just need to find someone of higher station than both of them that is happy to be bribed, and have them give testimony that they saw both of them engaged in maho, problem solved ;)
Seriously though, welcome to Rokugani's legal system, which the Scorpion developed and have been abusing for centuries!
Lucky thing we have our new-fangled Kitsuki with his strange ideas about 'ev-ee-dance', pish, it will never catch on :p
Hi, apparently my laptop decided tonight was a good time to commit seppuku >.<
Currently sourcing one to borrow until I can build a replacement, will be limited to posting via phone for a few days so please excuse any brevity!
Hi, apparently my laptop decided tonight was a good time to commit seppuku >.<
Right campaign ;)
Have managed to place a porcelain mask on a machine previously thought lost, not as large as the previous incarnation, but this one has glowing runes on the keyboard, what could possibly go wrong!? :D
These men will clearly wiggle around delicate issues with the proper circumstance. Noted.
That's definitely an impression I've been trying to give you about Kuni Eiriasu. Not so much Doji Oruku, though. He's Honor Boy Number 1!
I'm using the two of them to kind of show you the pros and cons in law enforcement in being honorable and.. well.. not as much.
Going full-on Dirty Harry should always be a viable option in response to Rokugan's stifling rules of etiquette getting in the way of doing your duty.
Maintaining high honor isn't hard because it's hard to be honorable... it's hard because NOT taking honor hits sometimes means the bad guy gets to get away...
So anyway. Don't read more into that than I'm saying.. I'm not saying you HAVE to bust in Shirya's door ;) I just thought this situation served as a nice moment for some table talk :)
Heavy work load tonight... I think I'll save the next big development for tomorrow.
Feel free to roleplay travel to the prison and/or speculating with one another. Unfortunately the Thunder Guard don't know what's up... they just doing messenger boy duty!
Question: Are we still on a time clock for this adventure? Or did we stop the countdown by killing the Oni? I am under the assumption the Oni's growing power was the crux of the timer, in that we had until dawn to stop it. At least we were told Ryoko Owari would burn tomorrow.
Another thing, should we go back and enlist the help of the man and his brother? The ones who had us captured then released us? Maybe he would owe for saving his brother?
Just a thought.
Question: Are we still on a time clock for this adventure?
Maaaaaaaaaaaaybeeeee.
Or did we stop the countdown by killing the Oni? I am under the assumption the Oni's growing power was the crux of the timer, in that we had until dawn to stop it. At least we were told Ryoko Owari would burn tomorrow.
Stopping the Oni was definitely a good thing. However, whatever the Moon Cultists are up to is probably still on, since the Oni wasn't (directly) part of their Evil Plan. It was summoned by the frightened Scorpion Cartel guys to get the masks back for the Cultists. Thus far you've tracked the masks through Whisper, but as of yet you don't know where they went to from there.
Although you ended up killing the cultist prisoner, he did give you a clue about what they're up to. Somewhere in those mad ravings of his :)
Another thing, should we go back and enlist the help of the man and his brother? The ones who had us captured then released us? Maybe he would owe for saving his brother?
Just a thought.
Mum's the word from me on whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. But if you find yourselves twiddling thumbs while you're waiting for the torturers to come back with word about what the other prisoners know, that's an avenue you can certainly discuss or explore.
If you're stuck on what to do, we can say you guys discuss options until you hear from the torturers.
It was midnight when you dropped off Shirya, then you went back to his place for a bit to look around, then you got word about the Cultist prisoner and came back for that.
It's about 1 am now (midway through the Hour of the Rat). The guards can tell you to expect to hear word from the torturers by 2am (the onset of the Hour of the Ox).
if you want we can fast forward to that point and see what your new intel is. If that's your wish you can say so in this thread. If you want to propose or support an idea about some plan to do instead in the intervening time, put that roleplay in the IC thread. Discussions about plans won't advance the timeline, but depending on what the plan is the plan itself might advance the clock. (of course sitting and waiting for torturers' intel advances the clock to 2 am anyway)
Oh and yeah. I caught myself thinking about XP, so I'll give out some.
You guys have had a handful of roleplaying scenes since the last time I gave out some awards after killing the oni. So I think 1 to everyone across the board is due.
Plus, I think Akodo Hideyoshi deserves a bonus point. Killing your prisoner did deny you some intel, but it IS what a proud Lion would do in that circumstance. If you do something that is sub-optimal* because it's what your character would do.. then that's what roleplaying is all about!
*=of course, it's debatable whether that was really sub-optimal anyway. The nature of the scenario was that you'd have to accept not killing him, and thus eating the honor loss, to be able to get him to talk. Since Xiaoxing wasn't responding to the honor digs the way the prisoner wanted, you know who was going to be next ;) But the larger point stands... you do something for reasons more in line with your character's motivations rather than the expected rewards, I think that deserves XP!
Awesome GM :)
Completely agree on the whole sub-optimal v playing to your character thing. I was balancing the 'obstreperous player versus playing to character' debate and thought I would err on the side of not closing down a line of inquiry, but on balance it should have been flashing steel and silk in the name of honour first, plot considerations second!
Bravo Hideyoshi :)
Thank you. Wasn't really sure what to do, then I just went with the samurai thing.
I won't get an update posted today.
For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, happy holiday! Those who don't: have a great regular day :)