Rob Hobart

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The conclusion of the Iuchiban arc is probably the second-most lethal module in the campaign overall (behind Face of Fear) and holds the HoR1 record for the most characters killed at a single event (the premier at GenCon 2002). Unlike Face of Fear, however, this module made no attempt to conceal what it was or what was at stake – the fate of Hantei Sotorii and the outcome of the Bloodspeaker Cult’s attempt to resurrect Iuchiban in Sotorii’s body. Players went in with their eyes open, often willingly accepting the deaths of their characters in order to accomplish their goals. We had at least three tables at GenCon where 4 or 5 characters died but the survivors made it out with Sotorii safe and sound. Even more surprising, a majority of tables managed to kill off all of the remaining Bloodspeaker leaders, including the body-hopping Asahina Yajinden (I deliberately made this very, very difficult), effectively shutting down any further plotlines involving the Bloodspeaker Cult. Also to my surprise, a majority of tables also managed to rescue Kuni Vistan from the penaggolan, so he went into a long-awaited honorable retirement instead of dying the canonical bad death which he suffered in the Tomb of Iuchiban box set.

The climax of this module, in which the PCs explore the Bloodspeaker caves and then confront the massed cult during the ceremony to possess the young Hantei, was lifted more-or-less directly from my home campaign, but the first half – in which the PCs track down the cult – was written from scratch. Originally, when I was planning the arc, I intended the fifth module to end on a literal cliff-hanger, with the sixth mod picking up with the PCs in pursuit of the Bloodspeakers. However, once I decided exactly how Kanrinrin’s Duty would be structured, I realized this was no longer an option and instead had the sixth module pick up a few weeks later, with the PCs among the thousands of samurai scouring the Empire for Sotorii and his kidnappers. This created a new challenge: how to have the PCs pick up the trail when no one else did? Initially I planned to have Kuni Vistan find the clues and then enlist up the PCs, but that felt too much like the PCs were just “along for the ride” while Vistan solved everything. The solution I found was to take advantage of Rokugan’s mystical nature and bestow visionary dreams on the PCs, giving them the clues they needed to track down both Vistan and the Cult. I also sent along a couple of other NPCs (one of them the magistrate Shiba Osugi from an earlier module) so the PCs would be not quite so overwhelmingly outnumbered at the end.

I was fully prepared for a “failure” outcome in which Iuchiban would possess Sotorii and commence terrorizing the Empire. This would certainly have changed the later storyline a great deal, although it would have had no immediate effect on the next few modules – in order to do the “Lion and Crane” storyline and be able to deal with the RPGA’s module-submission requirements, I assumed Iuchiban would go into hiding for six months to a year, gathering his forces before attacking the Empire.

After it was all over, I found myself wishing that a majority of the tables had gotten the “intermediate” outcome in which Sotorii is rescued but the mask of black corrupted jade is stuck to his face. This would have made for a great atmospheric plotline in which the Emperor’s only son and heir skulks around the palace with his face always concealed beneath the Tainted mask that cannot be removed… however, since no tables got this outcome, it didn’t happen. In later years, I came to realize the solution to this would have been to create only two choices (masked Sotorii is rescued, or Sotorii is possessed) so that either way the result would be awesomely terrible.

Since this module was both extremely deadly and very high-stakes (rescuing the Emperor’s only son), I made the rewards correspondingly generous. All successful characters got a Kaiu Blade (and because many players said “that’s nice, but I’ve already got one”, the Kaiu and Kakita Blades got moved onto the list of banned Advantages). The table-voted best player instead got an actual nemuranai, the Blade of Akodo Minobe (the sword of the Lion who helped defeat Iuchiban at the Battle of Stolen Graves). However…

One character, judged by me and the other GMs as the best player at GenCon, only THOUGHT he got the blade of Minobe. Instead, he actually got a new campaign-created fifth Bloodsword, Treason.

Now, it may seem odd that the best player at GenCon was “rewarded” with an accursed item that was going to doom his character. However, this in many ways epitomized my approach to L5R in general and the campaign in particular: the goal was to create compelling samurai stories – which meant, in many cases, stories of adversity, tragedy, and defeat. Getting a Bloodsword would doom the character, but it would hopefully prove to be an awesome and memorable doom that would contribute to the overall storyline of the campaign. Thus, our choice of “best player” was based not only on how well they role-played at GenCon but also on our judgment of how well they would handle the challenge and opportunity created by the Bloodsword. On that basis, we ultimately chose Parvez Yusufji and his character, Otaku Taro.

Side-Note: Planning The Lion and The Crane Arc

Due to the oddities of the RPGA’s deadlines, in mid-April of 2002 I found myself caught up and with plenty of time before the next set of mods (for CogCon) had to be submitted. I used this time to start roughing out the next story arc. My assumption at this point was that I would still be more-or-less paralleling the Clan Wars arc in broad ways, which meant inter-clan conflict and especially the iconic Lion-Crane conflict were on the menu. (The decision to combine the Clan War with the War Against the Darkness came about six months later.)

However, I had already long since decided I would not do the Scorpion Clan Coup. The Coup itself was the sort of event that worked a lot better in a card game than in an RPG, and it was doubly troublesome for a living campaign. It just did not seem right to force an entire faction into becoming ronin without any choice for the players. The absence of the Coup meant I needed to handle the Fall of the Akodo differently as well – and again, I did not want to force an entire faction to become ronin. I had already laid the groundwork for that by planting the Bloodsword Passion in the campaign. My plan was that Akodo Kage (the Kolat master) would give the sword to Toturi, and it would eventually drive Toturi into irredeemably shaming himself and, by extension, the Akodo name. (The Kolat’s motivation here was the “last Akodo falls, so falls the Hantei” prophecy – their goal, after all, was to bring down the Hantei Dynasty.) With the module deadlines cut from six months to two months (except for Origins/GenCon), I decided to make the next arc much more reactive than the previous one, with individual modules having the ability to change subsequent aspects of the storyline. For example, the initial “Prelude” modules in the Lion/Crane arc had the potential to start a war between the Lion and Unicorn, which would have changed almost all the subsequent events. I also planned to have a climactic “battle event” at GenCon to depict the major battle in which Toturi would fall – this plan, however, was derailed by the campaign’s departure from the RPGA in 2003, and the battle took place at Origins instead.