Rob Hobart

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The preliminary/intro mod for HoR2 was designated as only playable by brand-new Rank One characters (to prevent absurdities) and was set chronologically a year before the rest of the campaign. Note the module numbering system I introduced here… this was obviously in emulation of the old RPGA system, and was designed to make module requests more efficient. The “ST” stood for “Sapphire Throne.”

At the end of HoR1 I was feeling a distinct sense of creative exhaustion when it came to writing individual modules (as opposed to meta-plot planning) and found myself scrounging for ideas on what to write for the initial HoR2 mods. I ended up looking back to the 1st Edition L5R core book and its introductory scenario (called something like “Test of the Samurai” IIRC) that introduced the whole concept of the Topaz Championship. The original adventure had been designed to introduce the various skills and duties of samurai, establish the world of the Empire and its samurai, and let the PCs meet a bunch of iconic canonical NPCs. Why not do an “update” of that scenario that would serve the same function for the HoR2 world? Since the players would be coming in on the ground floor of HoR2’s storyline, just like new L5R players in 1st Edition, it seemed like a perfect match. Deciding this took a considerable amount of pressure off my shoulders heading into GenCon 2005, since I knew I could write up a “new Topaz” module fairly easily in the time between GenCon and CogCon (where the mod was scheduled to premier).

My plan got an unexpected boost when Shawn Carman posted an “official” 3rd Edition update to the Topaz Championship on AEG’s website. His version was fairly generic, but it did include updated versions of all the specific contests, which was the biggest “grunt work” of any tournament-themed module and could simply be copy-pasted into my module. This allowed me to concentrate my own creative energy on the NPC role-play and introducing the setting during the sequences in between the contests, resulting in a very satisfying module despite the rapid writing-time. (However, it did tend to run long due to the number of contests and the need to create “pairings” for each one… and that was even after I cut the archery contest to save time!)

I deliberately chose to introduce a lot of key big-name NPCs in this module and even do a significant meta-plot moment (the murder of the Lion Champion) in order to get the PCs immediately interested in the shape and story of the Empire. My own favorite among the big-name NPCs was of course O-Doji Koneko (who I would later play in an Interactive), but I also had a lot of fun with the two Imperial princes and with the various competitor NPCs, most of whom would make reappearances later on.

From the beginning of this campaign, I had the idea that the PCs’ actions, successes, and failures should all have lasting impact that would show up in later modules, and that the NPCs would also have their own stories which would show the impact of the PCs’ interactions with them. For example, in this module a male PC could have a seemingly consequence-free one night stand with a female ronin, but I knew from the start that in a future module there would be a price to pay for this “fun.” Similarly, if the PCs did not interact with one of the Crane NPCs, he would end up selling out to the Scorpion (and thus compromising himself for the future) in order to win one of the duels. Of course, the most prominent of long-term consequences was the potential for a romance between a female PC and one of the Imperial princes (this happened several times, in fact) which I did very deliberately in order to maximize emotional connections to the princes… although I did not yet know _how_ they would die, I knew they weren’t going to survive.

[Side-Topic: Plot Secrets and Module Text]

The assassination of the Lion Champion (by a ronin from the disbanded Tsume family of the Crane) was actually masterminded by Akodo Gintaku, one of my prospective Big Bad villains. However, the clues for this were deliberately kept very, very sparse, and the module text never explicitly says who was responsible. I would maintain this pattern for the vast majority of the campaign, allowing only limited clues and often writing modules in a deliberately “obtuse” style that gave the GMs only the minimum knowledge required to run the scenarios. As a general rule I only revealed the full truth about the various plotlines when they were coming to their respective conclusions.

The reason for this had to do with storytelling and dramatic pacing. I structured HoR2 very much like an epic fantasy novel (or more accurately, a multi-volume series of such novels), and that meant I was incorporating novel-type storytelling elements such as hidden villains and dramatic reveals. If the modules’ text explained everything that was going on, anyone who GM’d (or who simply requested a module, whether or not they GM’d it) would learn the whole plot and would be robbed of the enjoyment of seeing the plots unfold. Moreover, once they knew what was happening, that information would inevitably leak out into the general population of players – it was simple human nature.

So I chose to write the modules in such a way that even the GMs would not know what was “really” happening until the right time came. In fact, even my wife (who both played and GM'd, and co-wrote three modules with me) didn’t know much more than anyone else.

[End Side-Topic]