Purely not by design, but rather
through a twist of fate, rather than start my 43 AD game this past
week, I ended up starting a Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG
campaign. I had a bad feeling that 43 AD/Warband was going to suffer
when Big Darryl informed me he was going to Virginia to visit his
other son and grandchildren the morning of the day I wanted to start
the campaign, but I figured we could switch out and play Lady
Blackbird. Little Darryl has run that a number of times and he'd have
an entirely new group of players willing to try it out.
It was only then that the comedy of
errors really set in, my wife Mona got an infection in her leg
through a cut on her foot and had to go to the Emergency Room on
Sunday, the 15th*, and had a follow up with her doctor on Thursday
morning, the day we were supposed to play. Her doctor was alarmed at
the infection and sent us to another medical facility, in Syracuse,
for some other tests, which kept us away all day. Thursday was the
only weekday I had open for gaming, so that eliminated gaming during
the week for my group. I'd also like to point out that Mona's tests
came back fine, it's a minor infection at this point and she has
another follow up appointment next Tuesday, I realized I was coming
across there as something of a callous bastard, and just wanted to
clear that up. Plus I took her to the Comix Zone that day, although
she didn't find anything she wanted.
That left Saturday or Sunday, I needed
to go with Saturday, because my dad tore his rotator-cuff in his
right arm and he's right handed and we're still not done with all the
finishing work on his garage that we started last summer, but he
won't work or allow us to work on Saturdays because my parents are
Seventh Day Adventists. Unfortunately, Dalton had a job interview
that day and Mona and I needed to go grocery shopping. Darryl had
also mentioned he was having trouble with both his car and his back,
so I started rereading the L5R core rulebook, because that was one of
the games I had put on the table as an option for a one-shot, just
because Dalton and I particularly, were interested in checking the
game system out.
So, we didn't end up getting a start on
things until fairly late in the afternoon on Saturday, Dalton and I
figured out character generation with relatively few hiccups along
the way, since we're the "rules guys" in the group. To my
surprise, my son John wanted to play, and he wanted to play a
Shugenja, a Phoenix. My wife Mona also decided to play a Shugenja, a Dragon, and Dalton
made two characters, a Unicorn Bushi and a Scorpion Shugenja, just so
he'd know how to make both, he played the Bushi though. My daughter
Ashli made a Crab Bushi. I tried to entice Darryl to come out and
play, but it was to no avail.
We got about half way through the
introductory adventure in the book with only one major problem and
one minor mistake. The major problem, which stopped the game for
something like twenty minutes and I still haven't figured out the
answer to, is - What exactly constitutes a fumble? That came up
during the drinking contest when John's Shugenja Isawa Haku rolled a
one when he was down to one die in the contest with Hida Fujizaka;
that was one of the "sidebar add-ons" I thought would be
fun to use, I didn't think it would turn out to be a game stopper
where everyone started looking for the fumble rule for twenty
minutes. I even looked through later editions of the game, because I
assumed they would at least be similar and probably about the same
place in their respective books, fumble is not in the index for
1st-3rd editions and it's not readily seen under the "using
skills" sections either, I didn't see an example of a fumble
anywhere, or any reference except in the text of the adventure. I
actually thought fumbles might have been removed from the game, but
then I checked and saw references to them in a couple of modules that
date as late as "Living Rokugan" era.
So anyone reading this who is
familiar with the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, especially the 1st
edition, but any will do, please point me to a rules reference.
The
second minor rules glitch was one I caught myself part way through, I
was just running opposed rolls against each other instead of against
the opposing character's Trait. My bad, I don't think it really
affected the outcome of anything in the Topaz Championship
Tournament. As it stands, we finished day one before we had to quit
and Dalton had to go home, the two Bushi each have 3 out of the 5
necessary points to complete their Gempukku, the Shugenja are both
sweating it at 1. John's character should have had 2, but he ended up
losing the footrace because of the wasp trap.
Now,
I think the adventure itself is super railroad-ey, but I guess you'll
get that in an adventure that's specifically designed to do the
things it does - teach you the setting and the rules. Now, it was my
intention, if I ever ran an L5R RPG campaign, to make use of my "City
of Lies" boxed set and run the traditional "Imperial
Magistrates" campaign, so they'd get to be detectives and clean
up the city, all the while getting manipulated by wily Scorpions and
outmaneuvered by the horror element, the Maho-Tsukai. The drug
smugglers and and everything else are just so much more corrupt
background there. I haven't read through it extensively though, more
like skimmed it and liked what I saw.
So
now I am hoping that all of the pre-prepared modules and campaign
supplements for L5R are NOT as big a railroad as the introductory
adventure, because prior to play, I had only skimmed it too and
thought it looked like a good introduction to the system without
noticing that it was completely on rails. Nothing the PCs do will
alter the flow of events, they're just along for the ride. Sure,
they're entered in the championship, and the "sidequests"
are available to give some variety to the adventure, but a lot of it
is like a travelogue with the occasional skill check thrown in. I
don't think it needed to be that way.
Next,
today is my birthday. I am 43 years old, meaning this is the last
year I can legitimately claim to be in my early 40s and I'll be
moving into my mid 40s. My birthday often makes me reflect on what
I've done, what I've accomplished over the last year, or at least see
what goals I have achieved or New Years resolutions I've lived up to;
that often leaves me a little depressed after my contemplation,
because, for very good reasons, I have often given up on a goal I set
or whatever. I am sick of doing that, that's kind of a defeatist
attitude, beating myself up for whatever I didn't get done rather
than concentrating on what I DID get done or what I made significant
progress on.
I am
older now, I am out of shape and I did this to myself; I am OK with
that. The road back is harder than road here was, and a lot less fun.
I don't heal as fast as I did when I was 30, much less 20, and I
still occasionally overindulge out of habit or pride** or something.
Don't get me started on the "growing up poor - competitive
eating"*** thing, that made for some interesting habits that
stuck with me for a long time too. I occasionally still find myself
fighting the urge to eat as fast as I can so I can get seconds, even
though I know there will be enough food for me to have seconds (and
probably thirds) if I want them.
On
top of that, I don't really like to limit my food intake or exercise
all that much. I have bad knees and a bad back, I am overweight and I
hate being outside when it's too hot; which is pretty much all the
time since we broke the weather. I remember being a kid and playing
outside all day during the Summer here in upstate NY, the hottest
days were in the 80s, you might break 90 once or twice a year. Now we
get entire months of 80s and weeks at a time of 90s and it starts
pretty much as soon as Winter ends. We used to have four seasons, now
we're down to just the two suckiest; too damn hot and too damned
cold, with about a week of transition in between. We're also
experiencing a drought in upstate NY. That never used to happen. My
lawn is brown and dead. Fields of corn are dead. I wish I could say
this is the first time I'd seen this but over the last decade and a
half or so, it's actually become a fairly frequent sight. I have to
wonder if this is a factor in why all the orchards where I had my
first jobs as a kid picking apples and cherries are gone now too.
Anyway,
enough about global climate change, you either believe in it and the
fact that it's caused by man or you are an idiot who has allowed
himself to be manipulated by the people who have everything to gain
by maintaining the status quo. I just got an email from Darryl the
younger and his dad is back in town and wants to play a game this
week, probably Dawn Patrol. I am going to push for starting the 43 AD
game too though, because I am afraid that if I don't get it started
all of my prep work and buying all those extra source materials and
miniatures will have been wasted because we will never get around to
it. When it comes right down to it the L5R RPG game was supposed to
be a one-shot, just to try the system out and see if we liked it,
like we suspected we would. We do, and everyone who played wants to
continue playing, despite the railroading of the adventure they are
in right now.
I
think I can run two distinctly different campaigns using two very
different game systems and it will be a challenge because neither of
them is in my comfort zone of being old school (A)D&D, so that'll
keep me sharp too, right? Do I lose OSR cred if I am not currently
running or playing in an old school (A)D&D game? Honestly, I am
just looking forward to when Darryl the younger takes over and starts
running the Warband half of the Dual 43AD/Warband campaign we've
talked a little bit about the set up; but mainly I like the idea of
getting to play instead of DM all the time. Don't get me wrong, I
love to DM, but sometimes it's nice to only be one person too; to
throw all of your creative energies into one single character, eh? Am
I right?
*The same day I had to put down our
beloved and elderly English Mastiff Harmony because she tripped and
fell off the porch going down the stairs and broke her right foreleg.
There's no way a 12 year old Mastiff was coming back from that
injury, particularly with the arthritis she already had in her hips,
she already had trouble standing on bad days. Sunday the 15th was a
rough day for me and my family, and it was the day of my niece
Savana's graduation party, which we missed entirely, so I also missed
seeing my brother and sister and my nieces and nephew, whom I rarely
see since they all moved so far away.
**When you are literally bigger than
everyone else, like you are a different scale, people just expect
that you are going to eat more or drink more. Sometimes they'll be
insulted if you don't, sometimes they'll challenge your manhood if
you don't. I am a sucker for a challenge to my pride/honor.
***My dad was a Longshoreman. He got
hurt unloading a ship in November of 1978, less than two years after
he and my grandfather had finished building my parent's house. That
would have made me 9 years old and was 2 months before my brother was
born. My dad couldn't walk for almost a year, the injury was caused
by a fall when a crane knocked him from the deck into the hold when
the load shifted that it was lifting. The fall crushed three disks in
his back and cracked two of the vertebrae, but the Social Security
Administration and Workers Compensation Board here in NY still held
up his getting any benefits until 1983, fortunately, his union had
his back, and supported us through those dark times. My grandfather,
a retired Longshoreman himself, also helped us with his pension as
much as he could. I was young, so the details were not really
apparent to me at the time, but I am pretty sure if it hadn't been
for the Union and my grandfather, my parents would have lost their
house.
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