Rob Hobart

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This module was built mainly on the campaign’s sub-plot about “Crimson Flower,” a cocaine-like drug brought to the Empire by the Thrane. Previous modules had included gossip elements revealing that the Emperor was officially outlawing the drug, and I figured the covert alliance between the Thrane and Mantis (the Three Old Men plotline) would result in the two groups conspiring to continue smuggling the drug into Rokugan, thus creating hidden income that they could use to fund their nefarious plans. Naturally, this draws the attention of Daniel Hatchermann, tying this mod back into the earlier Shipping Lanes scenarios.

Corrupted Region allowed me to finally bring back the strictly traditional Phoenix magistrate Shiba Gyuji, who had appeared way back in Year One in the module Scholarship. That module allowed the PCs to gain Gyuji as a Sworn Enemy if they went behind his back to investigate the case of Toritaka Yamamiya, and I had been waiting a long time for an opportunity to bring him back and let the PCs deal with the consequences of their earlier decisions. Here at last I was able to do it by setting this module in Toshi no Omoidosu and promoting Gyuji to being the clan magistrate for that city. The PCs’ investigation is significantly more difficult if Gyuji hates some of them – he can’t actually _stop_ them since they are acting on Imperial authority, but the investigation is definitely a lot easier with his cooperation.

Since this module featured drug trafficking and smuggling, the yakuza theme from earlier stories reappeared along with Hatchermann, and the PCs can get crucial clues from both of them (in particular, this was the first module where Hatchermann could contribute significantly to the PCs’ efforts instead of just being an interesting walk-on NPC). I also worked in a lot of complex and difficult investigations for the PCs to undertake in the course of trying to trace the flow of Crimson Flower and pin anything on the ones responsible. In some ways, this module can be seen as a bit of a Rokugani tribute to works like “Miami Vice” or “The Wire” that depict the struggle to control drug trafficking.

That being said, the investigations in this module often proved difficult and frustrating for many table. The clues and linkages were less clear than in other “mystery” modules, in part to reflect the difficulty of unraveling drug networks, but this made it easier for the PCs to get caught in frustrating dead-ends or to go off on weird unproductive tangents. Ultimately, I think I just didn’t construct the investigative options as well in this module as I did in others.

[Side-Note: A Humorous NPC Evolution]

This module required the PCs to be acting on Imperial authority in order to be able to investigate in the Phoenix lands (and potentially get into conflict with Shiba Gyuji). However, while a fair number of PCs had become Emerald Magistrates by this time, there was no guarantee that such a PC would be present at every table. My solution was to insert a “conditional NPC” who could fill the role – but in order to keep this NPC from taking over the module, I had to make sure I picked a complete incompetent. I picked Toku Irui, a Monkey samurai-ko who had briefly appeared back in Compassion and whose distinguishing feature was that she was a shallow, vapid clothes-horse. Essentially, Paris Hilton in Rokugan. One of our GMs subsequently ran with this idea by depicting her as carrying around a pet – a little yappy-dog that was constantly barking during all of her scenes. I liked this so much that when she appeared again (in the module Undignified Death) the yappy-dog was written into the module as a canonical aspect of her character.

[End Side-Note]