The Accursed Game

I've been watching Crossbones on NBC and enjoying it, because 1) I like pirates, B) the acting is good enough and the plot intriguing enough, and III) it's potential source material for 7th Sea, which is a game I dearly love but is, apparently, cursed.

I feel I should take a moment to explain that while I do not consider myself a superstitious person, I believe I have enough empirical evidence that I can convincingly explain that every time I play this game, bad things happen. Come, I shall conceal nothing from you.

First, a Bit of History

7th Sea debuted in 1999 as an almost-but-not-really companion game to Legend of the Five Rings, but while the latter was based heavily on Kurosawa-style Samurai action, 7th Sea was a swashbuckling adventure based in what I like to call "fantasy Europe with the serial numbers filed off, using all the coolest parts of a nation's history" (Elizabethan/Arthurian England, Inquisition Spain, Borgia Italy, Viking Scandinavia etc).  While L5R was very lethal, 7S was of the "whenever possible, use a chandelier" school of heroic over-the-topness. In short, it's a fun game in which it's hard for your PCs to die stupid deaths and it has enough history porn to give Renaissance aficionados massive boners.

There was also a little movie that came out in 2003 that made pirates popular in the media. You may have heard of it.  Despite this, and despite the fact that 7th Sea is culturally accessible to pretty much everyone in the western world, the game went out of print in 2005.  (For the record, the second and third movies of the PotC trilogy came out in 2006 and 2007, so pirate fever was still raging at the time. And yes, you could play as pirates in 7S -- in fact, the first supplement for it was a pirate sourcebook.)

Contra Legend of the Five Rings, which features a culture foreign to most of the world, and is currently enjoying its fourth edition.

Still not convinced 7th Sea is a Jonah?  Fair enough. Read on.

How It's Affected Me

One

I discovered 7th Sea back in '99 or 2000, but the first time I played was circa 2004. It was a fun game, and my players Got It, and we all had a blast. Shortly thereafter, though, I lost my job, was unable to find another, and due to deteriorating health from malnutrition (most of my savings were going toward rent, and so I was eating lots of fast food and Ramen noodles) I moved back to Florida. A friend of mine from college knocked up his girlfriend, and I basically said  "In exchange for a break in rent I'll help take care of the baby." They accepted my offer and helped me move. 

I stored my 7S books with said friend. They didn't have a room for me at the old place, so I slept in my old bedroom in my parents' house while they looked for a new one. During the pregnancy, his girlfriend increasingly froze me out, and this only got worse after the baby was born.  I just attributed this to hormones. and tried not to take it personally. However, when they DID find a house, I asked "Cool, when can I move in?"  and she said "Never. I don't trust you with my baby. In fact, I don't want you coming around at all." Needless to say, I had done NOTHING to deserve this, and when I pressured my friend about it he agreed that there was nothing in my behavior to warrant mistrust or suspicion. But she didn't want me around, and he was a pushover and didn't fight it. So I cut ties with them, because what else do you do when someone basically says "I think you might abuse my baby based on no facts whatsoever"?  That was in spring 2005. 

http://teresenielsen.deviantart.com/art/7th-Sea-Vodacce-64739431

Two

I didn't touch the game for a while. The next time I dug it up was in 2008, when a player in my then-running L5R game was getting tired of running her Star Wars game and wanted something new.  I said, "Hey, have you tried 7th Sea? It's great!" and promptly loaned her all my stuff.  I made a character (detailed here), we played exactly ONE half-assed game, and she never got around to running another. 

Not long after I came out to her about being genderqueer. I figured I could trust her and she would understand. On New Year's Eve, I gave her a kiss at midnight (chaste, on the cheek) because she looked lonely. I didn't ambush her, I just said "Hey, give me your cheek for a moment" and she did, so I figured it was okay.

It wasn't okay. This is odd, because she also drove me home that night, and could have said something about it then, or in any of the days thereafter. You know, like adults do. Instead, she went behind my back for the next few weeks, turning the rest of my gaming group -- who were easily-manipulable horny engineers in their 20s -- against me. I don't know what she said about me, and I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone on the subject. They all looked sheepish and evaded my questions. Personally, I think she told them I was queer and it made them uncomfortable, and she knew it would make them uncomfortable, and she did it because she wanted to be the only girl in the group.

Three

In 2010, I ran a game over Google Wave. It was a bit of a horrorshow, because these people failed to understand that 7S is a game of action, not a goddamn Shadowrun where everything must be planned to a fare-thee-well or else the GM will screw them over. No, I specifically told them "If you act appropriately heroic and dashing, I will give you villains that are equally egotistical and have classic Achilles' Heels," but for whatever reason they couldn't process that.

The game lasted a few months before I essentially said, "I give up. You are taking days to deliberate over things which should only require a few seconds of thought. It is not fun for me to constantly flog you into action. This game has become work, and so I'm ending it." The fallout from this was that someone with whom I was a good friend basically stopped talking to me -- we didn't have a fight, we just sort of fell out of each other's orbits, probably because we had a fundamental disagreement about How Games Should Be Run. Oh, and my girlfriend dumped me without any warning.

Another good friend who played in that game also "broke up" with me, but that was years later. I still attribute it to the Curse, though. 

http://teresenielsen.deviantart.com/art/7th-Sea-Eisen-65778922

Four

In 2012, I attempted to run another online game with another batch of people. I will say that this group, at least, seemed to Get It in terms of playstyle, but the group fell apart pretty quickly: one player decided he didn't have time to play and therefore dropped out of the game after the first session; another basically had a bad attitude about it from the beginning (didn't make a character, and then complained that I "took away all his creativity" when I made a character for him, complained about the mechanics, etc) and was a drain on everyone else, so when he said "I don't like it but I'll give it one more session" I replied "You obviously don't want to be here, so don't bother." I think another player liked getting drunk and/or stoned during play, but he was actually the least of my worries.

The end result of this game was basically the same as before: someone who I thought was a good friend (Mister Bad Attitude), and with whom I had talked over IM for many hours over many months, basically stopped talking to me. Again, no fight, just drifting apart... when someone is constantly marked "Busy" on GChat I respect that and don't bother them, and after that game suddenly this person was busy all the time. The last time he spoke to me was on Christmas, where he asked me for money. Before that, I don't think we had more than 5 minutes of conversation in the previous year, usually me going "Hey, how are you" and he'd reply with "Alright" and then not say anything more.

http://teresenielsen.deviantart.com/art/7th-Sea-Vendel-65130070

I Report, You Decide

I am currently four for four in regards to not being able to sustain a 7th Sea campaign, and every time I play in one, it always results in relationships getting all twisted. Now, to be clear, I am not specifically saying that it is the fault of the game that I lost my job, or friendships went sour, or I was dumped by my girlfriend. Some of those might have happened anyway. Maybe the game brings out something unpleasant in me that drives wedges in friendships Or maybe the game just shows up whenever things are about to get really shitty for me. 

All I'm saying is that 7th Sea is basically a Jonah, a Foul Weather Jack, a Stormcrow, and that wherever it goes, misery seems to follow in its wake -- at least in regards to me. 

So, you tell me: Am I being ridiculous and freaking out over coincidence? Or have I established a pattern of repeatable bad luck through empirical evidence?

And that, dear players in my Traveller game, is why I will never, ever, play 7th Sea with you, either as a GM or as a player: I value my friendship with you too damn much to risk going 5 for 5.

http://teresenielsen.deviantart.com/art/7th-Sea-Pirate-Nation-65929428

L5R Cosmology: Shintao

Now we finally arrive at Shintao, and believe me, the wait was necessary.

In my previous post, I detailed the ur-religion of Rokugan as performed by the first humans, also known as the Tribe of Isawa. Now I must once again fast-forward a bit in our creation story by summarizing thusly:

The nine children of the Sun and Moon fell from the heavens. One of them, Fu Leng, fell away from the others, and his impact was such that he punched a hole straight into Jigoku (hell) and became a Villain To Be Named Later. Meanwhile, the others fell together (and more gently) and landed on Rokugan. When this happened, they immediately lost most of their divinity but still retained much power (demigods at the least.) One of these eight, Hantei, became Emperor and the other 7 swore fealty to him, creating the 7 Great Clans of the Emerald Empire.

Two things are worthy of mention here:

• The Emperor and Clan Founders were also considered kami, because of their divine origins. In order to differentiate them from all the other kinds of kami, we are going to call them kami-sama (respected kami).
• Of the kami-sama,  NONE of them were Shugenja. Just file that away for future reference. 

Having read this, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the socio-religious order didn't change one whit.  The Fortunes and O-kami were still worshipped; there were simply new bosses in town who were stronger and smarter than the old bosses. This is the foundation of the "We are samurai, we are better than you, because we are nobles and real people (i.e. descended from gods) and you are only half-people" caste system (also known as the Celestial Order), which is still present in modern Rokugan. More on this in a moment. 

For the average human, life went on pretty much as normal: you farmed, you prayed, and you tried not to die from disease or starvation or angry samurai... for the first 33 years, that is, because that's when Fu Leng invaded Rokugan with an army of demons. Apparently, the youngest kami-sama (who'd spent decades absorbing Jigoku's power, and basically becoming the god of hell) decided he didn't like how his siblings never went looking for him, or he was angry that he hadn't been invited to the tournament where they decided who would be emperor, or whatever. He was hell's champion, it's not like he needed a reason to attack. But the upshot is that that Fu Leng and his minions proceeded to kick the crap out of everyone and everything. He had slave races of ogres and goblins, he commanded demons, and he knew blood magic which was so powerful that it corrupted the traditional blood magic of the Isawa such that anyone who performed it became Tainted (think cancer of the soul) with the corruptive power of Jigoku.

And just when it looked like the Empire was about to crumble, a little old man walked up to the Emperor and said, basically, "The solution is right in front of you, but you're too blind to see it. Listen to what I have to say and I can solve all of your problems." 

The Emperor said, essentially, "Oh yeah, old man? Prove it."

And the old man, whose name was Shinsei, did just that. He took seven mortals -- not the kami-sama, but humans -- and the eight of them kicked the crap out of a demon-god, routed his armies, and bound him for over a thousand years.

Of course, Shinsei died while doing this, but his lessons -- many of them spoken to the Emperor himself -- were written down, and they became the Tao (Way) of Shinsei. These written lessons formed the core of Shintao, and they revolutionized EVERYTHING. 

There are really only two major tenets to Shintao, and you've already read both of them. The first is the concept of elemental rings, and how there is a progression of spirits from smallest to largest. This is the lesson learned by all shugenja, and without Shinsei, there would be no shugenja on Rokugan. 

The second tenet is the teaching that All Are One, the concept of universal unity through void.  

Big whoop, I hear you all say. We know this already. Yes, but what you are failing to grasp is the true application of these two principles, which is this:

If the void touches and encompasses and unifies everything, then I am everything and everything is me. I am the soil beneath my feet and the air that I breath. I am the tree under which I shelter and I am the fire that keeps me warm. I am the animals I eat. I am you. I am all of creation. 

You know what else is all of creation? That's right, the O-kami. 

Shintao says, "You are god and you don't even realize it. The only reason you can't access that power is because you aren't enlightened enough to access it. Get out of your own way and realize your own divinity."

Now just think about this for a moment. Shinsei says that this filthy peasant here is you. And you are that filthy peasant. And both of you are gods.

Shintao was not the great equalizer, it was the great humbler. It took the notion that the gods were somehow set apart and unattainable to all but a select few, and it threw that notion to the ground and stomped the pieces into dust. This is amazingly heretical stuff, because there is nothing an entrenched caste system hates worse than being told its repressed underclass is equal to them. 

But Shinsei got away with it, precisely because Rokugan needed to topple a god from his pedestal. Because of that, and his success, and the heroic sacrifice of himself and the Seven Thunders, Shinseism became revered and codified into Shintao. 

This heralded the emergence of the first truly ethical belief system in all of Rokugan. It works because it is very simple: "If all are one, then any wrong done to another is wrong done to yourself, and kindness shown to another is kindness towards oneself."

Or, put more succinctly, "Don't be a douche to yourself, dude."

In addition to a moral system, it also unified the Rokugani system of spirituality. Why are the kami amoral? Because man is inherently amoral, because you are them and they are you. Want them to act ethically? Then act ethically yourself. Karma, right action, social order, all of these things came about because a little old man said "I have empathy for you as if you were me."

This puts monks in a very interesting social position. Technically, they are peasants, but they are also highly esteemed due to their religious devotion. Only samurai can become shugenja, because shugenja training requires time and education and resources which non-nobles simply don't have, but anyone, even the filthiest untouchable, can shave his head, join a monastery, and seek enlightenment. At the same time, when samurai reach old age and retire, they often become monks in order to prepare their souls for the afterlife.

Monks are a social aberration because they allow anyone to join their ranks. They are an escape from, and an exception to, the caste system. Yesterday's gravedigger can become tomorrow's abbot who gets to order a freshly retired samurai to clean out the toilets because he's the newest novice.

Of course, despite being (by Imperial Decree) one of the core religions of the Empire, not everyone reveres Shintao equally. Peasants love monks (who are far more approachable than shugenja) but are typically too busy trying to feed their families to tend to spiritual correctness and Right Action. Samurai should be mindful of Shintao at all times, but compassion for others gets a bit... muddied... when bushido states you have to serve your lord faithfully, and he's just commanded you to kill those other people.

Also, frankly, most samurai are douches. There's a Rokugani saying which goes "Samurai are cursed to be reborn as samurai," which basically means that your karmic punishment for killing people in the name of honor is to be reborn as an ass who kills people in the name of honor. It's far, far easier for peasants to achieve enlightenment, or at least escape the karmic cycle of reincarnation, than it is for samurai.

The upshot of all of this is that most samurai pay only lip service to Shintao, because Fortunism is what get things done. This really only changes at the end of their lives, when they realize they may have to answer for all the bad things they've done in service to their lord.


This concludes the Basic Course of Coherent Rokugani Cosmology, and is all you need to know in order to play. More sophisticated topics will be addressed in the Advanced Course. 


If you have any questions, now is the time to ask them. 

L5R Cosmology: Religion in Prehistoric Rokugan

So having gone up the ladder from mikokami to o-kami, some of you are no doubt wondering, "How do humans fit into all this mess?"  I'm glad you asked.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to skip large chunks of the creation myth for now. Suffice it to say that humans were created when the bodily fluids of Lady Sun and Lord Moon fell to the surface of Rokugan and mixed. Therefore, humans are a perfect mixture of yin and yang, or courage and cowardice, or however else you care to explain a union of opposites. What's important is that humans were created and formed a society before the children of the Sun and Moon fell from the heavens and founded an empire, and even before people knew of the kami, they had an atavistic religion.

These humans worshiped the Sun and Moon, of course, because these things are primal. Heat and cold, life-bringer and life-taker; we've seen it time and again in our world. What is unusual is that these people also worshiped their dead ancestors, believing that their progenitors were somehow sticking around as spirits, watching their descendants, and looking after them.

At the same time, these people also worshiped the Seven Fortunes that were mentioned earlier who, unlike all the other kami, represent human agency. Put these two facts together, and we may logically derive the conclusion that the Seven Fortunes are in fact super-powerful ancestors who lived so long ago that practically all humans on Rokugan are considered to be their descendants.*

If you'd like to be a bit silly, just consider the Seven Fortunes to be the first Player Characters on Rokugan and who, for all their exploits, are now recognized as gods. Blows your mind a bit, eh?

Another interesting tidbit about Rokugani pre-history is that they had a form of magic that did not pay homage to the elements. In fact, all of their magic was blood-related. Again, this goes back to the roots of "Religion as a way of brokering a deal with the supernatural to get things done without any trappings of morality to get in the way."

Let's say you wanted someone to fall in love with you. For that, you go see Benten, the fortune of love. But, at least in the early days, Benten is just a powerful ancestor. Sure, she brings romantic success to her descendants, but you aren't related to her. You have to find some way to get her favor, because all of your prayers to your grandparents aren't doing jack.

The simple answer is to use the sympathetic magic. Benten cares about her family because of blood relation. In order to get Benten to care about you, there has to be a blood link between her and you. So, obviously, you ritualistically cut yourself and offer that blood to her. Now you are symbolically related, and clearly you care enough about her to suffer and bleed. The sympathetic principle (like produces like), with a sacrifice to sweeten the deal, ensures that Benten will now accept you as part of her family -- one of her bloodline. After a while, the shedding of blood was no longer needed, but it became institutionalized.

This is how it was for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years: an ur-religion based on bloodshed, power exchange, and material gain, without any of that messy ethical nonsense.

And then Hantei, Fu Leng, and all the rest fell to earth, and screwed everything up.

Next: Shintao, I promise.


* Before you get all up in arms about ancestors becoming fortunes, I have one word for you: Osano-wo. This man was so badass that he became the Fortune of Fire and Thunder in the span of time between his death and when his son, Kaimetsu-uo, assaulted the lands of the Phoenix. This rate of ascension makes the Seven Fortunes look like snails.

L5R Cosmology: the O-kami

Fresh on the heels of yesterday's post, I imagine that many of you are saying something to the effect of, Wait a minute. One giant universal godhead? That sounds far too much like western monotheism and not enough like multi-layered eastern spirituality.

To you, I say this.





All right then. First, the creation story of Rokugan:

In the beginning, before the universe was created, there was only Nothing. The Nothing that existed before the birth of all things was aware, and at some point during its timeless existence, it realized it was alone -- and thus experienced Fear. This unprecedented emotion was the first Sin, and created one third of the world. The realization of Fear also created in the Nothing a sense of loneliness and a desire for a companion. These sensations were the second Sin, Desire, and created a second third of the world. And when the Nothing realized what it had done, it experienced regret and a wish to unmake what it had mistakenly created. This was the third Sin, Regret, and it created the final portion of the world, completing it and ending the Nothing’s existence.

The newly-made universe was chaotic and formless at first, like an egg whose white and yolk had been intermixed. Slowly, the primal elements of creation seeped through the empty universe, and the energies pooled, with the heaviest sinking to the bottom and creating different layers of reality. Above was the Celestial Heavens, while below the mortal realm was born, as were the various other spirit realms and, finally, Jigoku, the Realm of Evil.

In the wake of the Nothing came three entities whose names have never been known by any living creature, mortal or divine, since that time. When they are spoken of at all, they are simply known as the Three Gods Whose Names Cannot Be Spoken.^[1] These three gods looked upon the new realms, particularly the mortal world, and recognized that it must be given form and purpose, an act beyond their means. In order to give shape to the universe, the three gods sacrificed themselves to give birth to a single man and woman, two divine beings who could do what the three before could not, and bring order to existence. Thus were born the Sun Goddess and the Moon God.

Lady Sun and Lord Moon looked down upon the mortal world and were perplexed by its formlessness. Ultimately, they realized they could only give form to what existed there by giving names to all the things that could be found in the mortal realm. They entered the mortal realm and named it, and doing so, they created names for themselves; Lady Sun became Amaterasu, and Lord Moon became Onnotangu. They began to name all they found there, such as stones, trees, deer, and all other things imaginable.

With the mortal realm fully formed, Amaterasu and Onnotangu returned to the Celestial Heavens, and Lord Moon’s ardor for Lady Sun grew more powerful with each passing moment until, driven by his obsessive love, he pursued the Sun across the sky, creating the cycle of day and night. Onnotangu eventually caught up with Amaterasu, and the sky was blackened during the middle of the day. It was at this time, the first eclipse, that the ten children of the Sun and Moon were conceived.

All right, pretty basic stuff here. I included this mainly for the sake of completeness, since there are some folks reading this who haven't played the game and aren't conversant with Rokugani mythology. The only thing that you truly need to take away from that story is this: Lord Moon and Lady Sun represent yin and yang.

Side Note: it bears repeating that kami are not moral creatures. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that Lord Moon is evil and Lady Sun is good. It is far more correct to say that Lady Sun embodies propriety (and therefore honor) and Lord Moon embodies impropriety and lack of honor. Again, divest your mind of the notion that honor = good. Other words for propriety are bureaucracy and stubborn pride, and impropriety is often another term for expedience and candor. 

Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, and passive; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity and nighttime. Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime. 

-- from Wikipedia

Admittedly, many of the attributions aren't perfect, and the genders are switched; we can handwave that by saying "Rokugan is not Asia." That said, the comparison itself is apt: Sun and Moon are polar opposites who nonetheless complement each other, and when they come together they form a perfect whole. Elaborating upon yesterday's conclusion that the Void Dragon is Lady Sun and Lord Moon (and yet, at the same time, not), consider this:

Lady Sun is the white element (Yang)
Lord Moon is the black element (Yin)
The circle that they form is the Void Dragon.

The Void Dragon is the totality of the Four Elemental Dragons.

The Elemental Dragons are the gestalt intelligences of their respective mikokami. 

The mikokami are the building blocks of the universe.
Therefore, Lady Sun and Lord Moon are everything.
As it is written in the Tao of Shinsei, All Are One.

The tremendous implications of this philosophy will be addressed, I promise, when we reach the Shintao portion of this series.


^[1] I believe this to be an obscure in-joke regarding the original creators of the game: John Wick, David Williams, and D.J. Trindle.

L5R Cosmology: Of Void and Dragons

In this installment, we briefly step away from discussions about the kami (sort of) in order to blow your freaking minds. Helmets may be necessary.

Rokugani theology holds that there are five elements which comprise the world and affect the lives of mortals. You have already met four of them, and in addition to their expected physical qualities they also embody certain mental qualities. They are:

• Air is enigmatic and mercurial in all things, and represents an individual’s capacity for empathy and intuition. Those who are aligned with the element of Air possess superior instincts and speed of reaction. Those who are at odds with Air are physically sluggish and oblivious to the nuanced behavior of those around them.
• Earth is eternal, unchanging, and unmoving. It is the element of endurance and resistance, and represents an individual’s ability to withstand whatever trials arise. Those who are aligned with Earth have tremendous fortitude and resolve, while those who are at odds with Earth are frail and weak-minded.
• Fire is the element of dynamic change, energy, and destruction. It is the element of motion and illumination. Those who are strong in the element of Fire are great warriors, brilliant scholars, or possibly both. Those weak in Fire are physically uncoordinated and sluggish of thought.
• Water is the element of rapid change and alteration. It is the inexorable force that can carve mountains over thousands of years and the capricious storm that batters a ship one instant and gently carries it to its destination the next. Those who are strong in the element of Water possess incredible strength and perception. Those who are weak in Water are slow to move and possess dulled senses.

(Copied from the Legend of the Fire Rings RPG, 4th Edition)

All of this is quite understandable and familiar to our western minds. The fifth element, however -- the element of Void -- is anything but simple. There are many ways to explain the concept of Void, but the simplest I have found is just to look at a cup.

As you look at the cup, ask yourself this: What makes it useful for holding water? Is it the cup itself, or is it the empty space in the middle where the cup is not? Without that space, the cup is just a piece of ceramic, incapable of holding anything. The places where it isn't a cup are what make it useful. The nothing makes it something.

Now look again. Is the cup truly empty? Or is it filled with a limitless ocean of invisible air kami? You could have the Dragon of Air curled inside of your teapot and you'd never know. But just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

So the cup is simultaneously empty and not empty. The nothing which makes the cup a cup is actually filled with other somethings. This concept that nothing is something, and something is nothing, is what we call the Void. It's all very quantum, being and not being at the same time, except that unlike in Schroedinger's experiment, looking at it doesn't collapse the waveform.

Void is a bit like the Force, in that it's everywhere and surrounds everything. It's where all the other elements meet, and therefore it touches and encompasses all of them. In a very real way, Void is the incarnation of all of the other four elements simultaneously, because Void exists where they blend into each other: a cliff (air and earth), a beach (earth and water), and a volcano (fire and earth) are perfect examples of Void.

But as I have said earlier, every element is comprised of an infinite number of spirits, and their gestalt is what we call an Elemental Dragon. So if Void is the perfect unity of all four elements, and is itself an element...

... then yes, that means there is a Void Dragon, and it is not only a separate entity in its own right, but also and simultaneously the gestalt consciousness of the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Dragons. One might do well to call that truly immense and alien intelligence god.

And you'd be right, because the Dragon of Void is also (actually, simultaneously, and yet somehow wholly separate from) the O-kami, Lady Sun and Lord Moon, the divine incarnations of yin and yang.

Whom I shall explain in my next post.

L5R Cosmology: the Fortunes

Continuing from this post....

Next up from the mikokami (divine nature spirits which inhabit every object) are the Greater and Lesser Fortunes. These are still kami in that they are spirits, but unlike the others they are neither tied to tangible things, nor can they be controlled. If we were use a western paradigm, these kami are gods.

There are seven Greater Fortunes, copied more-or-less from the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese folklore:

• Benten, Fortune of Romantic Love
• Bishamon, Fortune of Strength
• Daikoku, Fortune of Wealth
• Ebisu, Fortune of Hard Work
• Fukurokujin, Fortune of Wisdom and Mercy
• Hotei, Fortune of Contentment
• Jurojin, Fortune of Longevity

They are attended and served by an array of Lesser Fortunes too numerous (more than a dozen and perhaps less than a hundred) to be listed here. By way of example, Inari, the Fortune of Rice, is subservient to both Daikoku (as wealth in Rokugan is measured in bushels of rice) and Ebisu (because farmers harvest rice). These Lesser Fortunes are somewhere between demigods and lesser gods in terms of power, and because of that, they are often more approachable (more human) than their greater counterparts. In this regard, the Lesser Fortunes are more like the Roman Catholic conception of saints: people you pray to in order to get things done, because they have the ears of the higher-ups.

Although the Fortunes are kami, the differences are evident. These kami have names; the mikokami do not. The Greater Fortunes represent abstract concepts, not concrete objects like "a campfire" or "the river." (Interestingly enough, many of the Lesser Fortunes do embody more specific concepts, like "rice" or "the seashore," further cementing the notion that they act as intermediaries between the concrete spirituality of Ningen-do and the abstract divinity of Tengoku.)

Perhaps most importantly, the Seven Great Fortunes represent human agency* in that -- unlike the O-kami of Lady Sun and Lord Moon, or the mikokami of the material world -- the Fortunes would not exist in a world without people, because there would be no reason for them so to do. In other words, the world works perfectly fine without the existence of a god of strength, or wealth, or compassion. It's only through the intervention of human desire -- hope, fear, love, jealousy, ambition, etc -- that these gods exist. In fact, it could be argued these gods are the creation of human emotion. 

What's fascinating about the Seven Fortunes is that, much like humanity, they are neither inherently good nor inherently evil, and do not require moral conduct from their worshipers: Bishamon smiles favorably upon both an honorable Lion bushi and an honorless, tainted Crab, because both embody strength.

In fact, all kami are like this: just as Lady Sun's light nurtures the crops, her heat also ruins them.Too much water causes flooding, but not enough results in a drought. This amorality of both kami and their worshipers is important to understand, because it informs so much of Rokugani lifestyle. Specifically:

One can be a completely immoral, dishonorable ass, and the kami will still answer you as long as you pay them homage and say your prayers in the proper manner.

It is this lack of morality which resulted in the necessary creation of Shintao, which provided a much-needed ethical basis for Rokugani society, and which is in fact the bedrock of their civilization. However, the complex interplay of Shintao, honor, and ancestor worship will have to wait for my next post.

*Perhaps "human" is too limiting, what with the existence of self-aware races before the arrival of humans upon the face of Rokugan. Let's say "sapient" or "intelligent enough to have a culture."

L5R Cosmology: The Kami

Let's start small -- very, very small.

In Rokugan, samurai priestesses known as Shugenja commune and interact with spirits known as kami. This very simple word has a very complex definition, because it can mean both "god" and "spirit" and has no sense of scale whatsoever; pebbles contain kami, as do rocks, boulders, and mountain ranges. The clan founders are also kami, as well as the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon god Onnotangu, the Seven Greater Fortunes, and the many Lesser Fortunes.

 The easiest way to explain a kami is also the most vague:

[A kami is] any thing or phenomenon that produces the emotions of fear and awe, with no distinction between good and evil.

For purposes of simplicity,  the kami we are discussing today are the mikokami, a.k.a. beautiful tiny gods. These are the "eight million gods" of folklore. We'll discuss the other kinds of kami later, but right now, when I say kami, be aware that I mean "elemental spirit" or "divine force of nature".

Kami live inside all material things, and at the same time are those things. If you can't conceive of something being a thing, and yet not being that thing because it is really the force which lives inside the shell of the thing, then you're going to have severe trouble from here on out. If it helps, think of your mind/soul/sense of self as a kami; without that, your body is just a shell, but at the same time your body is such an extension of yourself that it is you.

Now here is where things get complicated. If we assume that every river is Rokugan has a kami -- which every shugenja will tell you is true -- what happens if you draw a cup of water from that river? Is the river spiritually diminished? Does a new "cup of water" kami spring into existence? What happens when you drink it? Or when the river runs into the sea?

This is a riddle which baffled the Rokugani for centuries, and there are essentially two answers to it, one philosophical and one practical. The philosophical answer, which came about in the early days of the Empire, is that all are one: You are the cup, which is also the water, which is also the riverbank. Everything, everything, is linked and interconnected to the point where it doesn't matter, all of us are also all of creation, one giant god-soul, and once you realize this, you are able to live in harmony with the world because the world is you and you are the world, and the soul always lives in harmony with itself. This is known as enlightenment, and it's also very, very hard to achieve, because humans have all these senses telling them that no, I am completely different from that tree over there. A good chunk of enlightenment is un-learning concepts such as "I am an individual" and "I can trust what my senses tell me." [1]

The practical answer is that kami are infinitely divisible. Take two ladles of water, each containing two water kami, and pour them into a teapot. How many water kami do you have? Just one. Boil some tea, and pour that tea into four cups. You now have four water kami (possibly five if there's still some left over in the pot). Dump it all back into the river, and boom, it's all one kami again. They are aggregate spirits who seek concentration, yet lose none of their power if you divide them up. The smallest drop of water contains the same amount of power as the entire ocean. [2]

Now if you combine these two answers into one thought -- "all is one" and "potency is not lost through division" -- you arrive at a frighteningly powerful conclusion: every single droplet of water in Rokugan is linked to every other droplet of water, meaning that all water everywhere is a single, massive kami. This monstrously powerful kami is what is known as the Water Dragon, and there are other Dragons for the other elements. (Please don't ask about the Void Dragon right now, it'll just break your brain.)

While all kami may technically be called "gods", these Dragons are what humans think of when they hear the word god: powerful, alien, and distant. The Dragons are as far removed from humanity as humans are from bacteria, and understand them about as well. Therefore, every Dragon has an Oracle: a human whose soul is linked to that Dragon, and therefore shares a fraction of its power (and a fraction of nigh-infinite power is still a lot). These Oracles serve as eyes and ears for the Dragons, enabling them to understand from a human perspective all that happens on Rokugan and subtly influence events. [3]

What is interesting about Dragons is that they are dichotomous and somewhat contradictory. On one hand, what separates the Dragons from the Fortunes (other gods which will be explained later) is that they embody concepts that don't require human agency to exist. Objectively speaking, air always has been air and always will be air, and no amount of worship (or lack thereof) is going to change that. But on the other hand, air is more than just literal gas; it also represents connection and empathy. Fire is flame but is also burning passion; earth is determination and resistance in addition to being rock and soil; water is liquid as well as the strength that erodes rocks. It is entirely possible that this embodiment of abstract concepts is the result of the Dragons seeing themselves through human eyes.

Therefore: in Rokugan, there are lots of tiny spirits which are actually big spirits which are actually Dragons who then take human avatars who try to understand the humans who are trying to understand the tiny elemental kami spirits, and in so doing, influence the Dragons which influences the elements which influences the people.

All are one.



Footnotes:
[1] This will be discussed in greater detail under the "Shintao" entry.

[2]  The only difference is how well they apply that power, which is a combination of perception (smaller spirits don't notice as much) and leverage (smaller spirits don't know where best to focus that power). This is typically how shugenja achieve spell effects, by telling the spirits "You can achieve an awful lot if you do X thing at Y time and Z place for me."

[3] As a brief aside for fans of the card game: this "Dark Oracle" business is nonsense. Just because something resides in Tengoku doesn't make it virtuous, as Lord Moon aptly demonstrates. The Elemental Dragons find morality to be a strange, alien concept. Fire is neither good nor evil: it simply is. The waters that flood also irrigate. Air gives breath but also creates storms. Earth shelters, but also quakes.

Also, I pretty much ignore everything that happens after the Clan Wars anyway.

Towards a coherent L5R cosmology

As much as I love the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I have to confess that its mythology makes no sense to me. And I'm not even talking about how the creation story is basically that of Zeus vs. Cronus, but with the names changed to Japanese, I'm talking about the deeply weird and contradictory stuff that you notice only after digging through some the history.

Now, normally I am a fan of the weird and contradictory, but I have a deep-seated need for things to make sense within my games, even if none of the players ever see it. Perhaps this is why I prefer to GM rather than play, because that way I can make sure things make sense to me. And frankly, L5R's mythology makes me so crazy that I actually mailed a letter to John Wick (one of its original designers) wherein I asked, essentially, What the fuck, dude?

Mr. Wick, I hope you'll forgive me for messaging you, but I am a longtime fan of L5R and there is something that's always puzzled me about its theology.

Specifically, how can Togashi be both a kami-who-fell-to-earth-and-thus-lost-his-divinity and a (literal) dragon? The same question applied to Shinjo and ki-rin.

Osano-wo is the Fortune of Thunder, but there is also a Thunder Dragon. I read somewhere they are both aspects of something greater. What would that something greater be?

It's almost like being a dragon or a ki-rin or whatever is more of a spiritual evolution than being a physical thing.... so perhaps Shinsei was the first Thunder Dragon?

Is Amaterasu a dragon? Is she something else? Both? Neither? Cheeseburger?

I love this setting but I can't figure out some of the theology. I get that, in the broadest sense, Fortunism = Shinto and Shinseism = Buddhism, but after that I get very lost. What are the differences between fortunes, kami, and dragons?

Again, I apologize for pestering you with questions about a game you made over 10 years ago. If you'd rather not answer, I understand, and will quietly go away.

To his great credit, Mr. Wick wrote me back:

Hi Erin,
Although I don't get paid to answer these questions anymore, I'll give you a quick one that should solve everything.

Rokugani theology *doesn't make sense*. Much like Japan, who tried to combine various religious traditions, there is overlap, redundancy and outright contradiction. That's why it is so confusing.

Hope that helps!

Well, then. On the one hand, this is great, because now I know I haven't missed something critical. On the other, telling myself "It's not supposed to make sense" doesn't work with me, because of my knee-jerk and admittedly non-Discordian desire to organize things coherently. So what this did was, in essence, tell me "If you think you can make it make sense, go for it."

And I did. Amazingly, my crazed gibbering is hardly noticeable these days.

At any rate, I think I've worked it out, and now I'm going to inflict it upon you, because A), this is my blog, and 2) I like giving back to the RPG community. I hope you like this sort of thing, because it's what you're going to get from me for the next few days.

Kanpai!

I weigh in on "Dungeons and Dames"

So, there's a bit of a kerfuffle going on at Jeff's Gameblog regarding historical accuracy of racism & sexism vs. the fun of inclusion rather than exclusion.

This post isn't so much a rebuttal or a "you're both idiots" post; I just wanted to make a comment that I felt was relevant and felt that if I posted it there, it would be swallowed by the flamewar and never seen again. Plus, if I'm going to wax eloquent, might as well do it here and increase my post count by one.

As anyone who's read my Pellatarrum series knows, I'm a big fan of fun over accuracy, to the extent that one of my mantras is essentially "Please keep your filthy realism out of my game of epic magic and elves and dragons and bigass swords, thank you very much." But I'd like to take a moment to describe a game I'm currently running where there is, in fact, a high degree of sexism, and I think it works within the setting. That game is Legend of the Five Rings.

For anyone who doesn't know, L5R is basically a samurai game with monsters and magic (or if you're old school, it's Oriental Adventures, only better.) One of the key features about this setting is that the structure of the Emerald Empire hasn't changed for over a thousand years. To western eyes, that would appear suffocating and petrified, but to the Rokugani, it's a sign of stability and evidence that their civilizations works properly, thank you very much.

But the thing about structured, conservative caste systems is that they're rather the opposite of the typical "anything goes" style of western fantasy adventure. That means, if a GM is going to make the setting ring true, there needs to be a certain amount of prejudice and -ism in order to make it seem authentic; otherwise it's just D&D with funny names. On the other hand, too much prejudice makes the game un-fun for a significant chunk of the player base. How does a good GM balance this?

It's with no small amount of irony that I haul out a phrase from the Civil Rights era: make things "Separate but equal." This is a lot easier to do in a game system in real life, as mechanical systems are easier to segregate and balance. In L5R, for example, there are only 4 kinds of PCs (character classes, if you will): Bushi, Shugenja, Courtiers, and Monks.

Monks are easy. Anyone can become a monk; just shave your head, join a monastery, and seek enlightenment. Technically female monks are called nuns, but other than that are treated no differently than their male counterparts.

Bushi are warriors of the samurai caste. As history has shown, war is predominantly a man's occupation, and with their greater upper body strength and large reserves of testosterone, they're perfectly suited for it. So in my game, nearly all bushi are male. Note that I said nearly.

Shugenja are the priests of the samurai caste, part wizard and part cleric. They are rare and command immense power. I have made shugenja in my game predominantly female, for much the same reason that bushi are male:

• It provides a counterbalance.
• Magic in L5R is elemental in nature, so linking "the moon and the tides influences menstrual cycles" to "women are better at elemental magic" makes perfect sense to me.
• While the men are at war, the women will be staying home studying.
• First born sons are going to be pressured to be warriors regardless of their ability with the spirits.

Courtiers are politicans, faces, and bards. Since this job is based more on people skills than swordsmanship or spellcasting, both males and females may perform its duties. 

Now let's look at this. Out of 4 classes, two are completely gender-neutral. The other two -- the two most common in PC parties-- are biased strongly in opposite directions. This gives the illusion of in-system sexism while actually only restricting one option in four. 

But wait a moment! I said nearly up there, didn't I?

Yes, if you really, really want to play a female bushi, or a male shugenja, you may. And you might even get away with it if you come from a family that supports such things, like the Utaku Battle Maidens of the Unicorn. But unless you do, you're going to be treated very, very funny.

At first glance this may not seem like a big deal. The only drawback is social in nature and not mechanical?

This is true. Mechanically speaking, a female bushi is mechanically no different than a male bushi. But in the stratified society of Rokugan, this is a huge deal. But a female bushi is regarded as butch and unmarriable, and a woman who will not bear children brings shame upon her family. Shamed familes are huge, huge deals in this setting; it's the kind of thing that can result in angry ancestors, curses, and being cast out (declared ronin). 

Male shugenja don't have it any better. They're regarded as effete crossdressers -- not only unmarriable, but also unmanly in that gay, swishy sense. They will be mocked by "proper" samurai until they are miserable, their abilities doubted and mocked (the equivalent of "Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!") until they finally snap and do something impulsive. And in Rokugan, impulsive samurai end up dead more often than not. 

In conclusion, my point is this: while I understand that sometimes it's necessary to "pick on" certain genders or cultures or races or whatever for the sake of campaign flavor, there are ways to do it that give the simulate unfairness without actually being unfair. Simulation is what is key here. We don't actually want realism in games, we want verisimilitude, the appearance of realism. The same should be done for all the other -isms in your games. 

Pincers (and a call for players)

Still trying to catch up on my blogging, as I've made a promise to myself to try and post something daily, even if it's not what I would consider a "quality" post. The trick to being a writer is to write, as has been said, so the more I write, even if it's toss-off soundbites, the better off I am.

So even though I didn't get much done this weekend other than editing, I went ahead and put up a page for my all-Mantis L5R campaign, which I have named "Pincers" because I am oh-so-clever.*

I am issuing a blogosphere-wide call for players, because one of them has had to drop out of the game for family & financial reasons, and another hasn't spoken to me for something like two weeks. Everything you will need to know about the game and character generation can be found on the handouts there.

Game Details
The game is tentatively scheduled for Sunday afternoons/evenings and will begin as soon as I reach a critical mass of players with already-made characters. Sessions will last approximately four hours and will run every week. The game will be conducted over Skype, with Dabbleboard used for combat and sharing visual aids. If you are interested in playing please contact me: erin dot palette at gmail dot com.

Oh, and a brief warning: Don't assume I will follow the canonical timeline. Every time I have run L5R I have done terrible, horrible things to the timeline.



*No, really. They're caught between the Scorpion clan (has pincers), Crab clan (pincers) and the Crane clan (technically no pincers but work with me here) in what might be called a diplomatic "pincer movement".

Dabbleboard

One of the big problems I had to overcome while planning my L5R campaign was running combat remotely. I had decided that, for various reasons, a webcam aimed at a map and miniatures would not work. The most logical solution seemed to be a Virtual Table Top of some kind.

Problem: VTTs have a high learning curve, are filled with junk that I don't need, and are typically expensive. Why, I thought to myself, can't I just have a whiteboard and magic markers like I used in college? And that was obviously the solution to my problem: I didn't need a VTT, I needed a virtual whiteboard.

After some investigation, I happened upon Dabbleboard. While I have yet to use this application for a game, I took an instant liking to the program just by fooling around with it. Not only is it easy and intuitive to use, it has all sorts of neat features:

• shape recognition
• ability to save images
• ability to upload images
• a grid overlay
• an integrated text and voice chat application

This promises to be really neat. I can upload maps and all sorts of other handouts for the game, and I can mark all over them during combat. And the best part is that it's 100% free!

If you'd like to find out more about this amazing GM tool, here is a tutorial video:



I can't wait to use this for my campaign.

Comfort Zones

I realize it's at least a venial sin to blog about why I haven't posted for a week, but fuck it. This is my blog, and I'll break the rules if I want. Besides, it's not like I have more than a handful of readers anyway...

Speaking of which: whom do I have to fuck in order to join the cool kids' table? I realize my posting schedule is rather erratic and that my topics are all over the place, but I'm certain this blog falls under "general geekery" in that I regularly talk about guns, science fiction, superheroes and role-playing games. I suppose my inability to commit to a certain movement, like the OSR, prohibits me from being categorized as a "gaming blog" or whatnot like that of Jeff Rients or ChicagoWiz, but come on! I prefer to think of myself as a multi-lingual nerdette and would greatly appreciate it if someone, anyone, would include me in their Reindeer Games rather than just exiling me to a random spot on their blogroll.

I'm cute, I'm eloquent, I say "fuck" a lot and I can tell you anything you'd like to know about Larry Hama-era G.I. Joe. Doesn't that get me SOME kind of pass here?

Anyway, a quick explanation about my absence and then I'll pay my Joesky tax*. I'm not sure if it's hormonal, linked to my depression, or just a facet of my screwed-up personality, but there will be times when my patience to deal with the BS inherent in dealing with other people drops to zero, and I want nothing more to become a recluse. I typically retreat into my room where I listen to offensive comedy, read postholocaust novels, sharpen my knives and tinker with my guns. It doesn't happen often -- maybe once every three to six months -- but during that time I simply cannot be bothered to do anything constructive. As you may have noticed, last week was one of those times. I seem to be better now, though I make no guarantees.


It has been over a year now since I've run a game, and it's past time to correct that. Having been in a bit of a samurai mood lately, I've decided to run an L5R game over Skype. What I think will be unusual, though, is the premise. From the briefing I sent my players:

The year is 1120.  You are all samurai of the Mantis Clan, the largest of all the minor clans (which is a bit like being the tallest midget in the room). The Mantis are a clan of seafarers and their holdings are on the Islands of Silk and Spice.

Except for one. The Mantis Isles, while rich in many resources, do not have an abundance of fertile land. They have to trade timber, ore, and other items to buy the rice that feeds their people. Fortunately, they are rich enough that this isn't a problem.

Feeding their people IS a problem for the Crab Clan, however, who are cursed with the troubles of fighting an eternal war against the forces of the Shadowlands (aka Hell on Earth) and lacking the arable land needed to support the largest army of the Empire.

However... while the Crab are shit at farming, they excel at kicking ass. It was very easy for them to march north and claim a fertile village in the middle of unaligned lands for food production. The problem arose in administering it, because the Crab can't afford to garrison troops there when they are needed on the Wall.

Fortunately, the Crab and the Mantis share a common ancestor, and have always looked upon each other as brother clans. In addition, there is a proud tradition of the Great Clans using Minor Clans as buffer states.

So the Crab say to the Mantis, "Here is a village we can't protect. Would you like it? No, don't ask us where it came from, it fell off the back of a truck. Anyway, here's the deal: You protect the village and grow food. We get half your village's rice crop to feed our armies. Everything else is yours to keep or sell, plus you get a foothold on the mainland."

The Mantis agreed.

So here you are, Mantis samurai fresh from the boat, assigned to a new village on the Mainland (A15 on the map). It seems nice enough, but it sits at the intersection of two merchant roads. To your north and west are the lands of the Scorpion Clan -- liars, backstabbers, and cheats, and those are their nice qualities. To the south lie the lands of the Crane -- prissy fops who nonetheless control the machinery of the Empire and who have a wickedly lethal dueling school to boot. To the east are mountains, mountain passes, ronin, bandits, another Minor Clan called the Wasp who specialize in bounty hunting but who might also be bandits themselves. Your best neighbors are some monks to the southwest, but they're close to a hundred miles away.

Into this mess you are tossed, to serve the clan and protect this village. The locals call it Mimura, but your clan refers to it as "Promise Village". Your time here promises to be memorable. As low-level Samurai working for the local lord, you will have ample opportunities for heroism, but few of them will be epic. You aren't the FBI; you aren't even NYC homicide. You're small-town sheriff's deputies.

This will be a "return to base" game, in that at the end of each game session every character will need to return to Mimura. This is so that if one of the players can't make it that night, it's easy for the GM to state that the character had to pull guard duty at the castle (or whatever) and isn't available.

It's often said that samurai movies are westerns with swords instead of guns. If that's true, then this game is the samurai version of COPS. I've also never run L5R as a location-based campaign before; prior to this, the PCs have been wandering magistrates at either clan or Imperial level.  It will be interesting to run a non-epic game for once, where the stakes are small but no less important for all their immediacy.


Plus, with them all being Mantis, it allows me to make terrible "Fish out of water" and "Land-based pirates" jokes. This is an important consideration, because the GM needs to be amused, after all.

So far, I have 4 PCs: 1 bushi, 1 courtier, and 2 shugenja, all of the appropriate Yoritomo schools. I think I'd like to have one more bushi, just to balance things out, but I'm being very picky about whom I choose to play with me. I want this game to be as tightly-knit as possible. 

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is a main source of inspiration, of course, along with Yojimbo and basically any small-town Western, ever. Tombstone seems particularly apt, along with Unforgiven.

I have no idea how well this game is going to turn out, and that thrills me no end. It's exciting to go outside my GM comfort zone and try something new. 

If you'd like to know more about this game, and how the campaign progresses, leave a comment. You guys know I'll always write about things in which my readership shows an interest.



*Basically, any time you whine about RPGs, be it players, DM styles, edition wars, etc, the Tax requires you to post something of creative use in your system of choice. This offsets the entropy inherent in whining. 

L5R: The Shadowlands Taint

So, regular readers of my blog (and I know you all by name at this point) no doubt recall that when last we left our intrepid band of samurai, they had made the honorable-yet-insane decision to go out into the Shadowlands in search of a purportedly powerful yet dangerously under-described and nonspecific ancestral relic whose retrieval would tip the balance of the thousand-year war between the Crab Clan and the armies of Fu Leng.

This was of course the proper thing to do from a Player Character perspective. After all, I'd just shown them a flashing neon sign that strobed Plot Goes This Way and they obligingly followed it. It was, however, not the smart choice. No, the smart choice (from the perspective of the characters they played, at least) would have been to say, "Thank you sir; but no please. May I perform ritual suicide instead?"

Because, you see, while samurai don't fear death, and their lives belong to their Lord, their honor belongs to their families and a Tainted soul... well, it doesn't exactly go to samurai heaven.

The Shadowlands are, quite literally, Hell on Earth. They were formed when a god fell from heaven (which is much higher than geosynchronous orbit), hit the ground, and kept going until he punched his way into Jigoku, which is the spirit realm of pain, corruption, and pure evil. It is equal parts Lovecraft and Heironymus Bosch, with a fair amount of hentai tentacles thrown in. And it had a gateway to the mortal plane.

In the Shadowlands, the air smell like burning plastic. Your eyes sting and your mucous membranes are constantly inflamed. The weather is psychotically unpredictable and often supernatural. Fires burn only a weak, sickly green -- not hot enough to cook food or keep you warm, but bright enough to attract unwanted attention. Wounds don't heal naturally, and special care must be taken that contaminants don't get inside and cause infection. Sleep comes with terrifying nightmares and disgusting visions, so after 8 hours you're emotionally shattered and suffering from sleep deprivation. Predators eat other predators, and the ultimate Apex Predator are demons known as Oni, who come in three flavors:

1. Significant Obstacle
2. Fuck a Party Up
3. Total Party Kill

Then there is the Taint, which is basically a kind of cancer of the soul. You can get it any number of ways: Eating or drinking anything you didn't carry in with you, having unbandaged wounds, or getting injured by one of the many poisonous creatures who live there are all common causes. If you're a shugenja, you can get it from improperly casting spells and summoning a tainted spirit.

Here's the thing about Taint: it never goes away. Ever. You accumulate it in points, and having as little as five means your complexion turns sallow, your hair goes greasy, and you start looking like those creepy people who haunt Wal-Marts at 3 am. At 10 points, you are well and truly Tainted, and you've started to sprout noticeable mutations. Even better, every day the corruption is going to eat away a little more of your soul. Past a certain point, if your character hasn't already become a gibbering cannibal with a vestigial twin growing from his abdomen... well, you've gone to the Dark Side, as they say in Star Wars, and you become an NPC and servant of Utter Eeeeeeeevil. Of course, much like the Dark Side, you can get a lot of cool powers by giving in to the corruption. Sure, you die or go mad that much sooner, but you can accumulate a LOT of raw power.


In short, the Shadowlands is NOT a nice place to visit, and my PCs went there. This is because, as I pointed out in a previous column, players like to suffer. I was more than happy to oblige them and spent the last 3 game sessions flogging them mercilessly. I'll be happy to tell you all about it in another blog post which I will title "Here, Carry This Anchor".

Oh, yes. Before I go, would you like to know the current Taint status of the group?

• Crab Bushi: Untainted
• Crab Shugenja: 1 point of Taint, and paranoid about getting more
• Wasp Bushi: Untainted (and not for my lack of trying! Damn his high Earth ring!)
• Scorpion Bushi: 5 points of Taint... even though he thinks he has 8.... *cue evil laughter*
• Scorpion Shugenja: 20 points. This one is not just succumbing to corruption, but is practically diving in. She will definitely be a victim of this adventure.... the fun will be in seeing if she can drag others down with her...

The Return of Reader Mail

Why are you posting filler, Palette?

Fuck off and die, you elitist asshole.


How was your holiday season?

My Christmas was good. Very good. Shockingly good, in fact, considering that it was the first time in several years both of my siblings were present. Now I can get along with either my brother or my sister, but not both at the same time, for the simple reason that they are much older than I (7 and 10 years, respectively) but there is only a 3 year gap between them. Thus, when they are together, they usually team up against me. I'm pretty sure it's not intentional, but that's just the way it is. And if they're not ganging up on me, they're doing it to my mom (but not my father, aka The Colonel, who Brooks No Shit).

New Years' Eve, however, was a completely different matter. I went to my room at 10 pm to avoid the yelling and fighting, and stayed there until 2008.


What happened to your Khaotica posts? Weren't there some weeks left?

I was planning on extending Khaotica up through New Years' Day, but things got pretty crazy pretty quick in my life (see siblings arrival, above), so I decided to take my own advice and drink a large dose of Chill the Fuck Out.

Now that I've had time to think about it, the notion of giving weekly assignments -- i.e., imposing order -- for a holiday season devoted to enjoying chaos has the stink of Greyface all over it. Of course, I could also be guilty of over-analysis (don't forget, analysis has the word anal in it). So I guess I'll let the concept of Khaotica ferment and bubble in my brain for the next year. Maybe Eris will grant me enlightenment. Maybe she won't give a damn. Goddess likes to fuck with my mind like that.


How's your writing-as-career thing coming?

Slowly, I'm afraid. Far too slowly.

Quantum Mechanix had a good Christmas, I am told (if you bought something from them, THANK YOU!), so hopefully they will have more assignments for me soon.

Project Perseus has undergone a bit of a sea change. The original premise is dead, gone, and buried, due mostly to creative differences I had with my co-author (but we're still good friends.) But I like the name enough that I'm appending it to my newest project, which has less certainty of being published but is filled with far more awesome. No, I'm not ready to divulge details yet.

Heliumpunk is not forgotten, either; it's simply reached a stage where I, as a writer, am not yet skilled enough to pull it off convincingly. I continue to work on it a little each day, either through research or character development or what-have-you, but Project Perseus is getting far more clock cycles devoted to it. Heliumpunk is looking to be my second novel.


How many PCs did you kill in your L5R game last week?

Last week? None. By design. This week, however...

Short version without context for those who care: The PCs are at Winter Court in Crab lands. They are all Emerald Magistrates, so when someone in the castle is brutally murdered by what appears to be Maho, it's their duty to investigate, find the culprit, and punish the guilty. Of course, this being a castle within 100 yards of the Shadowlands, things are never straightforward. In fact, there are many contradictory clues and red herrings. The PCs, of course, insist on following up on every lead and entertaining increasingly ludicrous possibilities. Then, when called before Hida Kisada to report what they find, they make the mistake of waffling, disagreeing amongst themselves, and generally appearing incompetent.

Hint: When the Great Bear asks you a question, you answer. You don't start with "Well, we're really not sure..."

So Kisada has the most likely suspect brought before him, clubs him like a steer, and beheads him in front of the PCs, despite it being pretty obvious that said suspect has been framed. They are then told that if the just-executed man wasn't the guilty party and more maho deaths continue, it's their own damn fault for having let the Shadowlands mislead them. (Moral of the story: Confusion is a weapon of the Shadowlands. Good samurai do not succumb to confusion.)

In situations like this, a typical samurai would request permission for seppuku to atone for such failure. (There's more to the story, of course; they also failed to protect the bride-to-be of a Clan daimyo from the Taint, etc etc.) This being the land of the Crab, of course, ritual suicide is considered wasteful. Thus, they have three options:

1. Be assigned to the very tip of the sharp end on the Great Kaui Wall, where their deaths might actually slow down an Oni for a few seconds.
   
2. Be made Ronin. Fortunately for them, the Crab are having a Twenty Goblin Winter. So all they have to do is go into the Shadowlands poorly armed and armored (remember, with the exception of your daisho, your armor and weapons belong to your daimyo) and kill 20 goblins each for them to be accepted back into the Clan.
   
3. Or they can go on a ridiculously difficult quest -- bordering on the suicidal, in fact -- deep into the Shadowlands to retrieve a lost ancestral relic of the Crab that could tip the balance in the Thousand-Year War. This, of course, is the adventure I have prepared for them.
   

I feel I should note for the record that I'm not deliberately trying to slaughter the party; I do in fact want them to live. But I have a strong anti-stupidity stance, and the moment they cross into Hell On Earth, the dice fall where they may.


Ridiculous question intended to elicit twitters of mirth.

Snarky non sequitur response that enables me to end this post in a sarcastic fashion.

No post today

... I'm busy preparing for tomorrow's game of L5R, which has been on hiatus since November.

I'm sending them to Winter Court, which means that for the next 3 months of game time, they will be stuck in a castle as lots of politics unfold around them. This is a source of amusement for me, as the party consists of the following:

1. One Crab bushi, whose idea of interaction is either getting drunk on sake, hitting things with an iron-shod club until they break, or sleeping;
2. One Crab shugenja, who smells of formaldehyde and even less wholesome things, and gets a particular gleam in her eye when discussing vivisection;
3. One Scorpion bushi, who has the skills to be well-rounded and effective in any situation, but who invariably rolls incredibly poorly;
4. One Scorpion shugenja, who thinks of himself as an evil genius when he's about as predictable as a Bond villain;
5. And one Wasp bushi, who typically acts without thinking and encourages the rest of the party into foolish behavior while admonishing them to "man up".
   

I'm going to send them to Crab lands, where they can spend time in the presence of the Hida Kisada, the "Great Bear" and leader of the Crab, who started killing when he was six years old.

If they perform as I predict, they will fuck up horribly in court, and will ask (or be assigned) to duty on the Great Wall. You know, the single barrier that stands between the Empire and the Shadowlands (aka Hell On Earth).

At least one of them is going to be Very Stupid (tm). And I will mercilessly slaughter that PC, because the Shadowlands do not fuck around. If they are smart, the players will realize this for the object lesson that it is.

And if they are dumb, I will kill them all.

Muahahahahahahahahahahahah!

L5R: Characters

So, last week (for certain values of "last") I was talking about Legend of the 5 Rings. Now that you know the basic mechanics (or "engine", as we in the scene call it), we can talk about characters in part san of this series.

First, you choose your clan:

• The Crab have defended the Empire's borders against the corrupt armies of the Shadowlands for a thousand years. Existing in a perpetual state of war, they have no time for such social niceties as politics, etiquette, or bathing regularly. Their hobbies include hard drinking, building fortifications, witch hunting, and beating demons to death with tetsubo.
• The Crane are the politicians and rock stars of Rokugan. Yes, they have pretty white hair. Yes, they mince around in sumptuous kimono of the finest silk. Yes, they are widely regarded as effeminate. They also have the best dueling school in the Empire and will be happy to cut you to pieces for that insult. You'd be surprised how effectively policy can be changed when its chief opponent is lying dead after an ill-chosen remark.
  
• If you prefer zen and meditation, then the Dragon are for you. Their warriors are practically monastic and their school is patterned after Miyamoto Musashi's philosophy of "Two hands, two swords." Their priests are cryptic and one of their samurai families is actually an order of magically tattooed monks. If they didn't spend so much time contemplating the mysteries of the Tao they'd be a force to be reckoned with.
• "Our chief weapons are honor, courage, and fanatical devotion to the Emperor" -- such is the code of the Lion clan. These guys adhere so strongly to the code of bushido that it's a wonder they can walk, what with that stick shoved so firmly up their asses. Of course, these professional warriors have the largest army in all the Empire and are second only to the Crane in terms of wealth and political power, so maybe there's something to be said for sphincter-lock.
  
• The Mantis clan, depending on which era of the game you use, may or may not be a major clan. They aren't in my game. Besides, they're just a bunch of honorless pirates and yakuza -- pay no attention to the fact that their family tree contains no less than two deities, I'm sure they won't amount to anything.
  
• The Phoenix clan are masters of magic. While this does mean they tend toward seclusion, it also means that if you absolutely, positively, need something smote from the face of the earth, these are the guys to do it... if you can convince them. And to convince them, you have to get past the Shiba, an entire family of yojimbo ready to die in their service. It takes a special kind of courage to die for people who despise you.
  
• There are no ninja in Rokugan. None. It's all peasant tales and superstition. And even if there were, the clan of the Scorpion would have nothing to do with them, because ninja (if they did exist) are criminals and traitors. No no, the Scorpion are the Emperor's spymasters. Truly. Would she lie to you?
• Sometimes you just want to thunder across the steppes on a mighty steed, wearing fur and leather and generally acting like a Mongol. The rest of the Empire regards you as barbaric but fuck them, you're a Unicorn, and your ancestors lived this way so it's honorable. Your clan has been to gaijin lands and came back changed, all in service to the Emperor. You're a misfit, and oddly that means you can get along with just about anyone.
  
• And then there are the Ronin, for people who like having the deck stacked against them when they play. Nobody likes you, everyone thinks you're dishonorable criminal scum, but hey, it's better than being a peasant...
• Finally, there are half-dozen minor clans, which I won't describe due to space and the tendency for them to come and go depending on which edition of the game you're using.

Then, you choose your school:

• Bushi: You whack things until they fall down dead.
  
• Shugenja: You cast spells based on the elements of Air, Earth, Fire, Water and, if you're a badass Phoenix shugenja, Void. (See character sheet for an idea of what effects elemental spells have other than the obvious; for example, Fire can make you more agile in addition to burning things.)
• Courtier: You don't just talk pretty; the Imperial Court is your battlefield.
  
• Other: This wildcard slot depends on your clan. The Dragon have a monastic order, the Crab have witch-hunters, and the Scorpion have ninja actors.
  

Based upon your clan and your career path, you are given a set of beginning skills and your school technique -- for instance, a Dragon bushi learns to dual-wield his Katana and Wakizashi simultaneously, while a Scorpion shujenga gains a bonus to spells that aid in duplicity and information gathering.

You then round out your character with what are essentially freebie points, to be spent on increasing stats or skills or purchasing advantages. You can get more point for taking disadvantages, yadda yadda yadda, if you've played an RPG within the past 10 years you know how this goes.

Now here's the neat thing: you learn the next rank of your school's technique once you have accumulated a certain amount of Insight. Now, insight is not XP; you don't get it from killing monsters. Instead, you gain Insight as you increase your skills. The effective upshot of this is that your big bad killing machine Bushi can in fact reach the next level of martial enlightenment by learning to arrange flowers. In any other game system this would be regarded as game-breaking and cheese-mongering, but in this pseudo-Japanese setting -- where a warrior is supposed to exemplify excellence in all things and be well-read and well-rounded -- it works.

Next: the Setting!

Legend of the 5 Rings: Mechanics

Welcome to part ni of my L5R series. I had originally meant to talk about setting today, but halfway through I realized I was using concepts that really belonged in the mechanics section, so here we are.

Don't worry, I'll be gentle.

Character Sheet
I don't know how many of you do this, but when I pick up a new role-playing game, the first thing I do is go to the back and take a look at the character sheet, because it's a great summation of the game itself. I can see what the designers think is essential information based upon the kind of information on the sheet: where the stats are placed, how big certain sections are, etc. If you are like me in that regard, you can look at a PDF of the character sheet here.

Dice Engine
Now if you haven't been living in a cave for the past 15 years, when I tell you that L5R uses 10-sided dice you'll probably have a very good idea of how this game plays because, yes, it's quite similar to Vampire in that it's a stat + skill kind of game. What's different is how those rolls are made. L5R's core mechanic is what's known as "Roll and Keep", in which you roll your stat+skill but only keep your stat. I think this is very nifty because your skill rating gives you more dice to choose from, or "breadth" if you will, but your stat dictates the "depth" of your roll.

Example
Let's say you want to hack someone into pieces with your Katana. That's an Agility + Kenjutsu roll. Let's say that you're what I like to call "heroically average" and have a 3 in both. In that case, you will roll 6 dice (3 for Agility and 3 for Kenjutsu) but you only keep 3 for your Agility. You roll 6 dice and get the following: 3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10. Since you only keep three dice, you will in all likelihood choose 8, 9, and 10.

But oh! You rolled a 10, and in this game, tens explode, meaning you roll that die again and add 10 to it. If it rolls another 10, then it explodes again, meaning you can get some really heroic rolls. (Or some really gruesome damage totals, because tens explode there, too; you could conceivably kill someone in one hit with a lucky enough roll.) But in this example, when I re-roll it I get a three, which means my total is 13.

So! 13+ 9+ 8= 30, which is quite a good roll. The base difficulty for most skill uses is 15, but when it comes to combat, 20s and 25s are usually the norm.

There are only two other things you need to know. First, if you really need to succeed, you can spend a Void Point, which is measured by -- you guessed it -- your Void stat. A Void point can do many, many things in this game, but its biggest use is in a skill roll. By spending a Void point (and you can only spend 1 per roll), you can roll and keep an additional die. Wow!

Second-- and this is where it gets complicated, so if you want to know more you'll have to buy the book -- you can call a number of Raises on your roll. A Raise increases your difficulty number by 5, but if you succeed, you have a greater or more complete success. In effect, you're stating, "I can hit a 15 with no problem, but I want to do this with style and grace, so I'm going to bet that I can hit a 25." Raises can be used to execute difficult maneuvers, perform called shots, deal more damage in combat, or perform multiple actions in a single round.


That's the basics of the game system. If I've forgotten anything, I'll certainly feel foolish when I bring it up later, but for now I feel like I've blathered on enough as it is.

Tomorrow, I hope to cover the basics of the setting.