L5R: KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN
The GM started things off (pre-started things really, it began in an e-mail), by giving people the option to protest Nadu's cheating in the big magisterial debate through Seppuku. One player took that offer: Al-Saleen's player. Al-Saleen (now Tsi Hojatsu) committed seppuku, with significant emotions from all players. With the stain of a subordinate's seppuku on his victory, things changed pretty quickly for Nadu.
The party split up for a time to attend to their own personal business. Mostly folks visited family. Then we met again in crane lands for the solemn duty of bearing the armor of the topaz champion to the topaz tournament. Things went well at first, we did some light recruiting and played the court for a time, and then....
The party was walking through the streets when a band of "merchants" approached us. They turned on us with deadly intent, and the head merchant whispered something to a passing samurai, and with a cold, robotic expression, the samurai turned on us as well. Combat ensued, the party managed to drive off the assailants, but not before learning that Kan, my character's brother, was behind the attack.
What was good
I'm actually gonna include the combat in this section. Short explanation, we played through the fight twice; it was deadly as hell the first time, but manageable the second time (we took out an npc the second time). I think we learned a lot though, and even though combat went pretty crazy, the GM rolled with the punches like a champ.
What was rhymes with good but means the opposite
Ok I lied it turns out I'm also including combat in this section. I had an abstract familiarity with some of the design complaints about high level combat, but this game made them real for me. It's funny because in talking about stuff afterwards, we basically managed to hit on all the things I've read about on the L5R forums as problems: Additional Attacks being insane, defense not scaling with offense, and initiative being increasingly huge as things get more deadly. We talked about some ways to deal with this though, so I think we're going to do just fine. Interesting side note, the one hot topic from forums that didn't get mentioned in game was honor as a stat. (It's hyper powered at low levels and lackluster at high ones). I think that's because we don't have any honor based classes represented.
The party split up for a time to attend to their own personal business. Mostly folks visited family. Then we met again in crane lands for the solemn duty of bearing the armor of the topaz champion to the topaz tournament. Things went well at first, we did some light recruiting and played the court for a time, and then....
The party was walking through the streets when a band of "merchants" approached us. They turned on us with deadly intent, and the head merchant whispered something to a passing samurai, and with a cold, robotic expression, the samurai turned on us as well. Combat ensued, the party managed to drive off the assailants, but not before learning that Kan, my character's brother, was behind the attack.
What was good
I'm actually gonna include the combat in this section. Short explanation, we played through the fight twice; it was deadly as hell the first time, but manageable the second time (we took out an npc the second time). I think we learned a lot though, and even though combat went pretty crazy, the GM rolled with the punches like a champ.
What was rhymes with good but means the opposite
Ok I lied it turns out I'm also including combat in this section. I had an abstract familiarity with some of the design complaints about high level combat, but this game made them real for me. It's funny because in talking about stuff afterwards, we basically managed to hit on all the things I've read about on the L5R forums as problems: Additional Attacks being insane, defense not scaling with offense, and initiative being increasingly huge as things get more deadly. We talked about some ways to deal with this though, so I think we're going to do just fine. Interesting side note, the one hot topic from forums that didn't get mentioned in game was honor as a stat. (It's hyper powered at low levels and lackluster at high ones). I think that's because we don't have any honor based classes represented.