OOC Chat — "Hoshihige Most Auspicious Inn"

[GreyWolfVT]

great....

[Rex]

Kenta will work on recovering the sword once Osaru is safe.

[Starbeard]

Also, if I hadn't made it clear enough, Osaru is back to full activity, he was just stunned for the one round of combat.

Since I assume the whole party/player group wouldn't want to push forward without at least trying to retrieve the sword, it's just a matter of tactically deciding how to go about it, knowing some of the dangers of the water.

Senichi might have spells to help locate or retrieve it, I haven't checked (just reminding everyone of that because L5R spells don't have many D&D parallels so remembering what you can do with them is always an issue).

[ffilz]

Assuming Sense Earth will work for locating the sword, Senichi will use that, do I need to consider any raises before I roll (otherwise it's an easy 2k2 for TN 5).

[GreyWolfVT]

oh ok i didn't realize i was back "up" again in that case.....jumping back in the water to try and get that sword back...

[Starbeard]

Additional apologies for being dumb and misremembering that I never hit "post" last week.

So, Osaru is now the proud owner of a nemuranai, an item whose spirit has been awoken (basically, a magic sword).

You may recall that Rangaku had a fancy wakizashi in his merchant sack, and Osaru was curious about it. Later, after Rangaku had disappeared, Osaru found that his wakizashi blade was polished anew, and the tsuba guard and handle had somehow been replaced with the ones from Rangaku’s bag. For the sake of this new event, I will retcon this by clarifying that both the katana and wakizashi were improved this way, even though the GM post only mentions the wakizashi.

I had keyed the Lake so that a certain part of it had a magic sword hiding away, but considering the party’s current course, and what happened between Osaru and Rangaku, I decided to move the weapon here and turn that into Rangaku’s blade being awakened when Lady Mizumi recognized it.

GreyWolfVT, your new katana has a couple of features:
- It now has a higher damage rating, 3k3 instead of 3k2 (this makes your total damage rolls 5k3).
- When facing opponents with less Honor than yourself their TN to hit you is increased by 5; but…
- If you ever lose Honor Points, then the sword will not let you wield it for as many days as the points you lost.

[Rex]

Very cool!

[Starbeard]

Magic weapons in L5R are tricky to handle. At least in the earlier editions, there aren't very many examples of specific magic items to work from, like there are in D&D. Instead they just give some generic advice on what magic items are and how magic weapons might work in the game.

Basically, all things have a spirit or tiny god living in them, and nemuranai are items whose spirit has "woken up." Commune spells will work better on them, they'll have an awareness of what's going on around them, and their magical properties will come out. Little insignificant spirits become minor items, but powerful and important spirits make major items. Also, the history of an item will shape it, so that it might get stronger and develop more abilities as it gains renown.

But like D&D magic swords, all items technically have their own intelligence and ego, so the more powerful an item is, the more influence it has on the wielder (and/or the more picky it is about who wields it).

So right now Rangaku's blade is a basic item, a little better than a +1 sword, but the GM is encouraged to tinker with the weapon throughout the game to reflect its status and relationship with Osaru.

[GreyWolfVT]

i appreciate it Sean!

Yes in D&D magical items that are sentient are a trouble thing to deal with. Re-reading Servant of the Shard right now talks of 2 specific items, and they do indeed have an ego and intelligence problem, some have an obsession typically the main goal the item was created sometimes with mixed results like the Crystal Shard an artifact that accidentally consumed the soul of one of the prior possessors of said item, now altered it's sentient ways later down the road.

[Rex]

I like it. Magic items that are a bit different are always cool.

[Starbeard]

I agree on both posts. Magic items that are unique or from left field are very cool; and sentient magic items can be a real headache to put into a game.

One of the things I like about L5R magic items is that the whole cosmology lets you downplay the whole "talking sword" trope if you want to. While magic items are all assumed to be awakened spirits, they still mostly exist on their own spiritual plane. As they grow more powerful they can see into our plane of existence more clearly, but that doesn't mean we can necessarily see or interact with them. So you can simply make a ruling or mechanic for how the weapon has to be handled, and that sort of covers the weapon's ego taking over the character. Or you can roleplay it as an NPC, either way works but neither is required.

[Rex]

I agree, a very cool way to do it. HarnMaster does something similar but the break it into minor (no spirit) and major (some sort of spirit).

[Starbeard]

Hey everyone, I just want to thank you for being so patient with the game during the ups and downs of availability.

I'm making the hard decision to pull the plug. Work has ramped up more than double what I was doing before, and we're starting to spend more time helping an elder relative. I haven't even logged into this game or any of the others I play in for 3-4 weeks. So obviously that means it's time to go into gaming hibernation for a while. I had a really great time running this game, and I'm really bummed that I couldn't at least take us to a satisfying ending point before freezing the campaign.

As for the grand mysteries of the adventure, I think some of you were cutting close to the right track: the bandits you were about to encounter were indeed just bandits; but you would have found evidence linking them to the bandits encountered in the Village of Hot Stones (they had a plot arc too, but it was yet uncovered or set into motion by the party). Had you explored the sacred water caves below the monastery, or the Dragon Springs, or the Temple Shrine (all likely places for your next step), you almost certainly would have pieced together that the mysterious old man Rangaku is indeed Lord Izumi, the Dragon God of the Mountain, lulled into a sleep because of a rift of Shadowlands contaminating the hot spring. The only other large mysteries were of the Strange Howling wind: that one will continue as a mystery for now.

Thanks again for letting me indulge myself with some L5R after so many years, and I look forward to playing games with you again sooner rather than later!

[Rex]

Great game Starbeard and good luck with everything! I really enjoyed myself.

[GreyWolfVT]

I rather enjoyed myself. Thank you Starbeard for the fun

[ffilz]

Thanks for running a great game and good luck.

[ffilz]

Hey, I just thought I'd poke out here and see if anyone who played in this game was interested in playing in other samurai RPGs.

We have two Bushido games (one that I started but handed off to one of the players) and I have recently started Cold Iron Samurai Adventures (which starbeard is playing in).

Frank

[GreyWolfVT]

ffilz (Frank) I might enjoy a samurai game again but how hard or easy is the game system for a newbie? I had my struggles remembering how to properly do rolls in this game if you recall but fortunately everyone else was always good to correct me and put me onto the correct path.

[ffilz]

ffilz (Frank) I might enjoy a samurai game again but how hard or easy is the game system for a newbie? I had my struggles remembering how to properly do rolls in this game if you recall but fortunately everyone else was always good to correct me and put me onto the correct path.

Both systems have their complexities, but I would say making rolls is a bit easier in either. Cold Iron does have open ended rolls, but the way we make the rolls makes the open ended aspect pretty rare (2 in 100 or so). Bushido is almost always d20 against a TN from your character sheet (sometimes modified by something from the GM). All three GMs offer plenty of hand holding. There's also plenty of hand holding for Japanese culture. We have Google Sheets that ease a lot of the calculations for character sheets (I need to go back and improve the Bushido one after learning lots while making the Cold Iron one as simple as I could). I'm particularly motivated to make Cold Iron easy since I'm trying to revive interest in a 1980s college home brew.

[GreyWolfVT]

Personally the easiest system I've played in was Oriental Adventures, granted the general goal was a little strange magic bottle of Soy Sauce. But so long as making it easy for a nwebie like myself I'm happy to give it a go. Anything other than Bushido that you can play as? One thing I liked from OE was the Monk class, and there was another that was semi-similar to Monk....I played it once gave him a big badass staff that had a spiked club on one end or something like that, I think it is called a Tetsubo. At any rate that is something I'd like to play again