Rob Hobart

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The second half of the Emerald Championship forms the background for this module, which determines which of three potential maidens will marry the Cran Clan Champion, Doji Sarutomo. I’ll confess that at least part of my motivation for writing this module was to have a chance to bring back O-Doji Koneko, who I had already embraced as my favorite NPC of the campaign. This module drops the first strong hints that all is not well in the Crane leadership – Sarutomo has already lost two wives, and comes across as a shallow and rather narcissistic individual, while Koneko shows signs of deep concern and regret over her son and the future of her clan. I had not yet actually decided what exactly was going on with Koneko and Sarutomo – it would be quite some time until I came up with a final decision on their backstory – but I already knew that _something_ was wrong and would eventually be revealed.

This was my first “pure intrigue” module in HoR2, with the PCs getting roped into supporting one or another of the three bridal candidates and then having to come up with ways to support their candidate and undermine the others. Since the PCs were all low-Status/low-Glory nobodies at this early point in the campaign, it made sense for them to be easily maneuvered into having to back one or another of the three potential brides. However, the context of a major event like the EC also meant I could have the low-station PCs rubbing shoulders with major figures such as Koneko. In introduced a few new NPCs here as well, such as Akodo Gintaku’s rather likeable son, Akodo Soto.

The competition between the three bridal candidates was set up to have a “default” winner – the Dragon candidate, Kitsuki Akane – if the PCs did not accomplish anything for their candidates. At the premier, the Scorpion candidate jumped out to a lead but over the course of the weekend Akane caught up and finally took the lead at the end. How much of this was due to tables that didn’t do much role-play (I GM’d one of those myself) and how much was due to actual PC action is impossible to say.

The background for the PCs’ efforts is the finale of the Emerald Championship, with the final iaijutsu duels eliminating the major competitors one by one. I actually went back and forth for a while as to who should win, and considered allowing one of the “good” competitors like Matsui or Koruma to get the title. In the end, however, I decided my overall theme of inept/corrupt leadership had to prevail, and I had Kitsuki Jiro win the tournament. Jiro’s prideful obnoxiousness made him instantly hated by pretty much everyone, which was all to the good.

Unfortunately, this module did suffer from one major flaw – it wasn’t long enough. To be sure, since the mod was heavy on role-playing scenes and light on die-rolling, the playing time was rather dependent on how much the players put into it… but even with active role-play the mod typically ran only 3 hours, and if the players were passive/uninterested it seldom went much more than 2 hours. At the time, I felt “stuck” because the module’s time-limit was created by the remaining two days of the Emerald Championship and there was only so much I could depict as happening within two days. In retrospect, the simplest solution would have been to add another day to the module by having a day-long celebration of the victor. A more complex solution would have been to add a fourth bridal candidate to the story. Either way it would have made for a better module overall.