L5r general

But without the context of the L5R general no one would be able to distinguish it from any other generic fantasy setting. No samurai doing samurai things, just a generic Imperial Magistrate having the group disappear an airship with everything going wrong. If anything it sounds like Shadowrun.

Holo

Yes. Ran a Lion Clan Military Campaign a few years ago now (back in 2014 I think?). Had three players, Ikoma Mayu (Akodo Bushi), Kitsu Yamarashi (Elite Spearman) and Matsu Homare (Matsu Berserker). They were three young officers who got appointed to General Akodo Bao in a very blighted region during the Great Famine, rife with trouble against the neighboring Scorpion Clan south of the River.

There was something of an Only War mentality to it. They had orders to fulfill, but given a shortage of food and resources, and soldiers who were half-starved peasant ashigaru, it was up to them to fulfill their duty in a way that saw order was kept. Bushido was sometimes compromised, and the war slowly came to be more about petty egos than anything else.

Things got bad, a cursed sword opened a gate to Toshigoku, many Lions fell on their swords and an entire army was made ronin due to the party's foolish actions. Without a master the three tried to find their own way to survive in a huge no-man's-land they helped create. Mayu was killing other samurai and collecting their swords, having lost his mind and an arm in a Mass Combat roll that saw him kill 40 men on horseback. Yamarashi got involved in some banditry and ended up killing the leader of the Forest-Killers in a knife fight, naked, in a rain storm. Homare tried to help people but ended up with the People's Legion for a bit.

Eventually they all joined up again, blackmailed by someone who knew what they did. After they murdered that man, they tried to rescue a Lion's Shadow who could've helped them regain their honor. Said Lion's Shadow de-boobed one of Homare's goods and left her for dead in a cave. They decided to help the Scorpion win the war instead.

They were ordered the new Lion General brought in to pacify the region. Homare couldn't deal with being an assassin and alerted the General's yojimbo, only to fall on her sword in shame. Mayu and Yamarashi killed the General and then joined the Rokugo.

>airship

A flying ship, not an airship. As a legit, keel-and-sails, it-is-supposed-to-run-on-water, decked-for-waves kind of ship. But it was flying in the air because magic, and not floating on water.

There is obviously more to this story, but I was not in the mood to do storytime. We had a thinly veiled political conspiracy around the flying ship with backstabbing Phoenix samurai, a Hantei shugenja having a crisis of faith, the captain of the flying ship playing for multiple sides, and a pair of mega-salty Kenku trying to crash the flying ship with no survivors.

But yeah, this setting tends to go with Noblebright instead of the canon Grimneutral, but in my personal experience, it is a change for the better.

It was a fun romp, and I'll say this much. The Mass Combat rules, as written, can allow for some crazy shit to happen and personally I don't care for them.

The more room you can give your players to make officer decisions, the better. And making resources a thing they need to fight for, and how honor can be compromised by just trying to keep the army marching. Let them take part in atrocities, and let them make friends on both sides of the battlefield; before things fall apart.

Make things worse the further the war goes on. Traps, desperation, strained resources. Worse off environmental hazards are great. Rockslides, typhoons, winter storms in autumn or spring, earthquakes. Floods.

Award titles and nicknames, they mean a lot. Have a batman die tragically trying to avenge their master after he loses a horse or gets an injured leg. Have the low man on the totem pole collect arrows from the battlefield, hear the whispers of the kansen and Toshigoku, maybe be attacked by a zombie of a man who was not decapitated.

Let bandits play a role, and petty politics among officers to divide resources and cost men lives. Let the players be the sane men in the war, because they're the ones out risking their lives while everyone else is sitting behind their castle doors and talking about honor when they'll just kill themselves when the war takes that holding.

Have the players take a hostage samurai, and have them have to stop him from killing himself. Have them deal with the issues of getting an eta to torture a samurai, how that sullies them. And how if they indulge in torture themselves, they'll just be bad people.

Just go crazy with war being war.

Another advice is to keep meta-gaming out from Mass Battles. Impose some sort of limit on the Battle Skill, because the Mass Battle Table sucks ass. If you don't watch out, the min-maxed character will win every battle all by himself while the rest of the party will be Disengaged all the time and do nothing. You might up the (pretty disappointing) bonuses from Heroic Opportunities or something too.

Currently running a magistrate campaign. They were hunting a bloodspeaker in a thick forest who had been kidnapping farmers from middleofnowheremura. They heard a pained moan through the underbrush and some slight rustling and one of them decided to immediately fire an arrow at it from the bow he'd had readied in case of ambush. Hit the villager that had managed to escape captivity and killed him.

Also the Kakita decided to hire every Ronin he has deemed honorable (Read: hasn't tried to stab him) to act as Yoriki. I'm still not sure what EXACTLY his plan is, but he mentioned wanting to go back to Ryoko Owari (where they first were at) and "fuck those gangs up."

He's got like 10 of them now. And no way to get back to the city soon. And winter is almost there. And he's almost broke.

How would Rokugan fare if these guys showed up?

It's Oda Nobunaga, Shimazu Toyohisa and Nasu no Yoichi

It might be an interesting theme for an era. The celestial realms are coming unstuck and everyone is ending up just about everywhere.

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>I'm still not sure what EXACTLY his plan is
Are you sure he has a plan?

>he mentioned wanting to go back to Ryoko Owari (where they first were at) and "fuck those gangs up."
>10 ronin
So let him go for it.

youtube.com/watch?v=6ciMcPolld0

Should turn out something like this.

Nice and fun. Just some shenanigans in a bandit besieged city. My badger bushi had some great moments. Shame that the group split when the new college semester started.

He insists he has one. I've played with him for over a year now, and given that his most elaborate plan ever ended in the destruction of a major national landmark and all of us being forced to fake our deaths (In a supers game, no less), I doubt it.

I pray for this level of success.

Well Totori was basicaly Nobunaga, Nasu no Yoichi would either be a Tsuruchi or a Shinjo horse archer and Shimazu Toyohisa might be a Matsu.

And the Ancestors return causing chaos happened in the Spirit Wars.

So nothing new.

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