In Thunder's Echo (Legend of the Five Rings Quest)
Well, that was extremely unsatisfying.
Part of the issue to me is that no one seemed really all that interested in the whole "Nothing Conspiracy threatens the Realm" plot. Mostly because "Conspiracy Threatens the Realm" stories are kinda done to death across hundreds of stories and settings and whatnot. Including some quests on SB/SV, most likely.
Doing some actual politicking, wheeling and dealing, on the other hand, was comparatively new and interesting, hence why that got the majority of the attention, with the Nothing being more like an unpleasant obligation we *had* to deal with before getting back to the actually interesting stuff. Or at least that's the impression I got from player posts and discussions.
Maugan Ra could've easily taken notice of that and adjusted his plot and game style accordingly, but apparently he didn't have any interest in that, or keeping the PC alive. It wouldn't exactly been much of a hardship for him to post a quick question about whether we want to use Void points or Free Raises some people still had lying around. Chances are plenty of people would've said "yeah, let's go ahead", even if it would have been because of political considerations in regards to the Mantis, Phoenix, and ourselves, rather than any suspicions about the Nothing. A Free Raise on the Focus roll would've made all the difference, with Naoto going first rather than turning it into a Karmic Strike.
Overall a rather disappointing performance of the GM, in my opinion.
Not sure if I'll bother reading the epilogue. I might for completion's sake, but it would probably just tick me off again, so probably not. I know that after this I'm not gonna bother with any of his other quests or stories, though.
Part of the issue to me is that no one seemed really all that interested in the whole "Nothing Conspiracy threatens the Realm" plot. Mostly because "Conspiracy Threatens the Realm" stories are kinda done to death across hundreds of stories and settings and whatnot. Including some quests on SB/SV, most likely.
Doing some actual politicking, wheeling and dealing, on the other hand, was comparatively new and interesting, hence why that got the majority of the attention, with the Nothing being more like an unpleasant obligation we *had* to deal with before getting back to the actually interesting stuff. Or at least that's the impression I got from player posts and discussions.
Maugan Ra could've easily taken notice of that and adjusted his plot and game style accordingly, but apparently he didn't have any interest in that, or keeping the PC alive. It wouldn't exactly been much of a hardship for him to post a quick question about whether we want to use Void points or Free Raises some people still had lying around. Chances are plenty of people would've said "yeah, let's go ahead", even if it would have been because of political considerations in regards to the Mantis, Phoenix, and ourselves, rather than any suspicions about the Nothing. A Free Raise on the Focus roll would've made all the difference, with Naoto going first rather than turning it into a Karmic Strike.
Overall a rather disappointing performance of the GM, in my opinion.
Not sure if I'll bother reading the epilogue. I might for completion's sake, but it would probably just tick me off again, so probably not. I know that after this I'm not gonna bother with any of his other quests or stories, though.
@Kelenas
A free raise would have had us win the strike maybe, with the void spend. But winning the strike wouldn't have stopped our assassin from murdering us. So it seems like kind of a moot point?
That said, I absolutely understand being dissatisfied, wanting to win and to live to enjoy your win, is reasonable, and not being interested in the cosmic horror plot is also reasonable.
Just felt compelled to answer your criticism, not because you can't feel that way, you absolutely can, but for myself it worked.
A free raise would have had us win the strike maybe, with the void spend. But winning the strike wouldn't have stopped our assassin from murdering us. So it seems like kind of a moot point?
That said, I absolutely understand being dissatisfied, wanting to win and to live to enjoy your win, is reasonable, and not being interested in the cosmic horror plot is also reasonable.
Just felt compelled to answer your criticism, not because you can't feel that way, you absolutely can, but for myself it worked.
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Not really?
Unless Naoto got a RIDICULOUS amount of exploding dice on damage, enough to one shot a Nothing murdermachine with a high resistance to mundane attacks, it was always going to hit him. And given that it hits like a Mack truck and Naoto's not exactly the party tank...
Edit: Shoshuro'd by gman
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Though really that doesn't make it much better? I mean, there was an almost-completely-sure death behind the options given. Like, twice we were given a chance to challenge him as a main option, and Maugan knew that if we chose it there'd be, like, a really, impossibly high chance we'd die without having done anything, seeing as it was only our high roll that didn't mean we died a useless death. Instead we died a useful death, which is somewhat better but wasn't actually mechanically likely.
It was like those CYOA things where one of the two options leads to an instant bad end. That's usually why CYOA adventures don't actually 'keep' bad ends, or allow the reader to go back.
- Location
- Leeds
Increasing our damage dice would have changed literally nothing because we'd deliberately pick dice that don't kill. Unless we're working on the assumption that we spotted and decided to kill the Unicorn.
On the other hand, we did kind of ignore the fact that even our most badass delegation head, died to these things, she didn't get all of them, and that they can change faces. That isn't something we didn't know, it's just not something most of us thought about.
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Yes?
I mean...Maugen gave us the opportunity to step in as Mariko's champion and we jumped on it, that very likely would have led to Naoto getting mulched by a Matsu Valkyrie if Brokita the Fortune of Wingmen hadn't jumped in and saved us from the consequences of our actions.
To be a samurai is to live three feet from death, and to play L5R is to always have a choice that can kill you lurking somewhere in the wings. It is what it is.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's the thing. We almost chose to fight to the death.
Dying from that wouldn't be surprising and would have been rather heavily signposted.
I mean, it's right in the name: "Do you, the voters, want to do a fight to the death where if you do it you have a good chance of dying?" And we first voted yes, and then chose to back down.
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From my (admittedly limited) understanding, Iaijutsu duels follow different rules mechanically than Kenjutsu fights. IIRC her sword would still have been in the sheathe after Naoto struck, or at best partially unsheathed, so if she'd tried to attack after he already moved and won, it would have been immediately obvious to everyone and prompted the Lion bushi into action.
So, Naoto winning the Focus roll seems like it would've changed a great deal about the outcome.
Might be "realistic", but in my opinion it makes for a bad story.
So, Naoto winning the Focus roll seems like it would've changed a great deal about the outcome.
There's also not really anything we could have done about it. Unless Hanzo immediately came up with some sort of truth-seeing spell or the like, literally anyone, at any time, could be an agent of the Nothing, including Hanzo or Pale Oak (forgot his real name already). There's not really anything one can do if anyone who happens to have a weapon and comes near us could suddenly turn around and launch a one-hit kill attack like that.
Might be "realistic", but in my opinion it makes for a bad story.
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Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
No, that's not what happened at all.
We didn't choose to back down from it, we got beat down from it by a Kakita Bushi.
Let's confine ourselves to the facts here, okay?
- Location
- London, England
Well, if you want a meta reason for the way the Quest ended like it did...
I was stuck.
I tried to juggle way too many sub-plots and conflicting agendas from among the various NPCs, got it tangled up in my head and then wrote myself into a corner. Trying to keep track of who wanted what and what steps they'd each made to acquire what they wanted and who was trying to stop them was, as it turned out, too much for me to keep track of. Mistakes crept in, previously established facts got overlooked, and every time I started to write something I'd figure out a way it didn't make sense given previously established facts and had to start over again.
This is what lead to the 3-month hiatus you might have previously noticed.
Actually, you did notice, @Kelenas, since you were the one who posted a message on my profile asking about it, and I replied that that I'd written myself into a corner and was trying to sort out where things would go from there.
Now in retrospect I can see where I went wrong and how that lead me to get stuck - I shouldn't have done the 'plan out a week a day at a time' thing for example, and my decision to use units of resources without easily defining what exactly you wanted in return wasn't the best idea. If I do another political maneuvering-based Quest in the future I'll remember the lessons I learned here and not repeat the same mistakes. But at the end of the day, why I got stuck is much less important than the fact that I was, in fact, stuck.
Having wrestled with this for a fair while, I realized that I only really had two options. I could either give the whole thing up as a lost cause, or I could take steps to simplify the issue.
So in the end I shrugged, moved the planned attack from the Nothing forwards a few days in the schedule (it was originally going to reappear during the Festival of the Moon's Wrath) and resolved that one way or another this would simplify things. Either you'd uncover the creature and destroy it, thus letting me cut out the rest of the Nothing's plans from the court, or it would kill you and the Quest would at least have a conclusion rather than just dying slowly in a long hiatus.
This is where the aforementioned 'you didn't tell anybody about the Nothing or try to prepare for it in any way' thing came in, which combined with some unfortunate rolling ended in you getting decapitated by a shape-shifter.
I was honestly expecting you to go looking for other Shugenja to help or design some kind of subtle plan for Hanzo to test people or even just get your hands on some crystal and subtly poke people with it or something. Even if I had to switch things around off-screen to reward a clever plan that I hadn't foreseen, I would have been happy with that, but no... no one even suggested a plan.
Now as it stands, from an overall perspective Naoto still won here. The Nothing's plans were derailed, it's existence and abilities uncovered to the Empire and the Scorpion Clan was provided with enough information to figure out what was going on and warn the Emperor before the canon 'kidnap and brainwash' incident. Naoto is a hero of the Scorpion Clan and his parents are very proud of him, despite their earlier estrangement. It just cost him his life.
It's not a perfect ending, I know, but it's the best one I could come up with under the circumstances. I just figured it was better to give the story an actual ending rather than let it slowly choke to death on the way-too-many plot threads I wove into the story.
It's easy to say 'oh just adjust the plot and game style without contradicting or abandoning anything you've said before now', but try as I might I just couldn't figure out a way to do it.
So... sorry, I guess?
Not really.
It bears repeating- the difference in time between the two strikes in an Iaijutsu duel is half a second at most even if someone wins the Focus. A samurai can draw and strike from the sheathe in an instant, or close enough that it makes no difference.
The Lion bushi would have reached and probably killed her- about two seconds after our head hit the floor.
As it is, the Lion bushi probably reached and killed her- about two second after Naoto's head hit the floor.
I'm not really sure what you concretely expected us to do. We passed on the information to the people who'd make sure it would get around without tipping off the Nothing too much as a whole (ie, our superiors), and set our spy to do his, well, spying. Crystal is IIRC difficult as hell to get, and any precautions involving it or Hanzo casting spells seem like they would be unsustainable. There also wasn't exactly much material around for Hanzo, or any other Shugenja, to study, what with the bodies disappearing.
And we didn't have anywhere near enough information to have suspicions about who might or might not be involved (comes with not knowning most of the NPCs here), or what might prompt the Nothing into action in a manner we could actually predict.
So... yeah.
I suppose we simply could have called everyone together and told them everything we know, rather than just our superiors, but I'm still not sure what that would have actually done, given how they simply could've turned into some unobtrusive servant and slit our throat at night, or whatever.
Maybe there was something else that we overlooked, but as a whole it seemed like our actions and possibilities in that regard were extremely limited.
I'm not seeing why you couldn't have simply decided that the creature died during its attack on our boss, to be frank. As far as I can tell it would have solved the issue easily and neatly.
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
You know, just me personally, speaking from the heart...
But getting all up in the QM's business "Well I don't understand why you, person doing this for no compensation whatsoever, can't just retool the plot and the story and the everything else to be the way *I* want it to be"..
Some people might look at that and go "Or YOU could try not being such an entitled spoiled brat."
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I think he does have a point that I don't really see what we could have done differently without more knowledge than we had.
I mean, in terms of actually uncovering the Nothing. We obviously could have not fought, though I have explained why it seemed sensible at the time.
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- Location
- Earth
@Kelenas : You feel what you need to feel. That's how feeling work, we don't choose them, we just feel that way. As for Ra, I'm content. By l5r measurments we did fine and we got a fine result. Getting assasinated because you derailed a plot that was a danger to the whole of Rokugan seems like a good way to die. If that does not change how you feel, then I am sad you feel that way.
As for Meta data, Maugan did the best he could. Which, in a plethora of abandoned quests is damn good inded. So I am going to leave this story content and look forward to his other works. If you did not like this, then simply avoid his writing in the future. You've said your peace, now go in peace. Happy reading.
@The Laurent: I could have been properly paraniod. I think I would have thought of a Nothing Assasin if I was. But I was off my game and it killed us. I just did not expect the Nothing to put such a high value on our head after we've had days to spread the word. For all it knows we told lots of people. Frankly I was expecting an attack duing the days of silence and that expectation blinded me to this assasination attempt. If you want to blaim someone, blaim me. I was not under "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" like ususal. Oh well. We may not have been a legend, but we did very well.
As for Meta data, Maugan did the best he could. Which, in a plethora of abandoned quests is damn good inded. So I am going to leave this story content and look forward to his other works. If you did not like this, then simply avoid his writing in the future. You've said your peace, now go in peace. Happy reading.
@The Laurent: I could have been properly paraniod. I think I would have thought of a Nothing Assasin if I was. But I was off my game and it killed us. I just did not expect the Nothing to put such a high value on our head after we've had days to spread the word. For all it knows we told lots of people. Frankly I was expecting an attack duing the days of silence and that expectation blinded me to this assasination attempt. If you want to blaim someone, blaim me. I was not under "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" like ususal. Oh well. We may not have been a legend, but we did very well.
And if that was only me, then yes, I might perhaps be an 'entitled, spoiled brat' as you put it.
Except that, as I said, going by player discussion and posts it seemed like almost everyone was more interested in the politics and diplomacy rather than the conspiracy/infiltration plot. Maybe I missed a post or two, but I don't recall anyone expressing much, if anything, in the way of enthusiasm or interest in running some investigation-style plot to uncover the conspiracy and its infiltrators, other than as an obligation.
Most GMs adapt their plans/games at least somewhat to their players, because that's what makes it actually a game with players, rather than a story with readers. And it appears like Maugan Ra was even going to do so, given he said that he was looking to simplify things because it was one of the reasons he got stuck. Except that said simplification ended up with the PC dead, which was kinda foreseeable, if the Iaijutsu skill alone is any indicator for the rest of the creature's stats. With the only reason he accomplished anything other than dying utterly pointlessly being pure, dumb luck.
The end result is that a fairly unique and interesting story ends on an abrupt and disappointing note. I don't see why I shouldn't express dissatisfaction, and wish that the GM had things done differently, especially since I was hardly being offensive or vulgar about it. You're free to disagree, of course, but getting all up in my business about it and launching personal attacks because I DARE to have a different opinion from you...
Well, in your own words; some people might look at that and go "You shouldn't be such a spoiled, self-entitled brat who thinks he can force his opinion on others".
Out of curiosity; how would you have tried to defend against shape-shifting assassins, if you had thought of it? The way I see it there isn't really any real way to defend against an enemy who could take anyone's face and, for example, approach us as Tani, or Pale Oak, or Hanzo, in order to get us alone somewhere and murder us there instead of the open court like what happened.
Well, short of some sort of permanent "True Seeing"-like spell or magical item, but I don't know whether something like that exists in L5R, or how accessible it would be if it did.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Lets not play the 'blaim' game
On the other hand, here's what you get when you play as a courtier when you a bushi. Let's invest points in intelligence, they said, it would be cool, they said.
Do not get me wrong, I really like this quest, just talking about the point that annoyed me the whole way. All duels in quest were really exciting.
Do not get me wrong, I really like this quest, just talking about the point that annoyed me the whole way. All duels in quest were really exciting.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Honestly, from what we got, it did make sense to tell everyone in earshot OOC-wise. The Nothing's kind of crazy like that. It doesn't really go in for revenge, it doesn't have recognizably human emotions that way. If we'd told everyone we met about what we knew, it wouldn't have killed us, as there would be no value in doing so.
But on the other hand, we are of the Clan of Secrets. Telling everyone we know isn't in our nature as a Scorpion.
But on the other hand, we are of the Clan of Secrets. Telling everyone we know isn't in our nature as a Scorpion.
