My players completely derailed the plot, and now instead of going to not!England...

Their fine steel is coveted by swordsmen. The exotic, brutish name "Ulfberht" betrays the elegance and durability of the blades they use. Far and wide, they will come to you, seeking to exchange an array of swords which they claim to be magical, swords named Murakumo, Masamune, Muramasa, Makoto, and Amakuni. They'll make this exchange over the party's corpses, if they must.

>implying stories do not emerge from the PCs’ actions in absence of a pre-plotted story

Get in touch with the local pirates, and start raiding along.

>implying having a pre-plotted story is worse than the "stories" of PCs dicking around.

Late Ming China was something like this (17th C.)

>Rebellions among ethnic minorities in the densely populated southwest
>Missionaries from a far off land bringing expansive maps of the world and a strange religion of only one God
>Frequent pirate raids from Japan, Taiwan, and other outlying islands have gotten so bad that the whole southern coastal population has been forcibly relocated ten miles inland near the walled cities.
>Sea traffic heavily restricted
>Educated people spend their whole lives studying for the imperial exam, most failing or serving out in the provinces with a few making it to the halls of power in Beijing.
>Failed scholars write tales about the ghosts and demons and nine tailed foxes that plague the land, playing tricks on the unwary or licentious.
>Soon, Manchu horse lords in the North will sweep aside the disorganized and beleaguered Ming troops amid a local rebellion near the Capitol.
>The Son of Heaven is put to the sword. In every town the hordes reach, resistance is crushed brutally. Those who submit are allowed to live if they shave their heads and wear the Manchu braid in the back.
> The successor wages a desperate resistance in the old southern capital, eventually being driven into the southern jungles with the last of his retainers.
>Betrayed by the Burmese king with whom he taught asylum, the last claimant to the Ming throne is beheaded in a clearing in the jungle

AMA about late imperial China, shit was lit. I've been thinking of setting a campaign in not!Qing China once I have more experience in dnd.

Duh.

Oriental Adventures.

Good old monster fighting can happen anywhere, user.

Have them attempt to sack a village defended by Seven Samurai

Have them get sandwiched between the not!Mongols, the not!Chinese and the not!Japanese fighting over control of not!Asia

Get beaten up by a wandering monk and at least one player ends up as the monk's disciple?
Lament that there's no good salmon anywhere?
Get blown by the wind to not!Aztec Empire after just one raid?
Encounter a not!Aztec ship that sailed to not!China/Japan?

As they get near !notJapan they run into and get captured by the fleet of !notMongols on their way to conquer the isle. Soon, it appears a pretty fuckin huge typhoon is about to go down. Will they escape the mongorians or help them get through? Will they decide the fate of an empire?

Have them starve to death on their ship.

Use aspects of the plot you originally had planned, but alter it based on the new situation

A violent storm leaves their ship stranded and at the mercy of the ocean... which takes them to not!England.

Railroad those fuckers.

This hinges so much on the GM's ability to improvise that, given OP's situation, if the GM isn't an actual walking encyclopedia of history, culture and possibly even geography, you're going to get a half-assed experience no matter what.

I don't know about you user but I tried doing this with my campaign but my players lack any initiative whatsoever and have to be pulled by the nose to do anything

Why not both? have several story hooks planed out to intice the players and whichever one they choose you can always let the characters wander and still have the story advance.

>guards say goblins have been more bold with attacks
>players want to leave town to the north because townfolk hear rumors there is a goblin camp
>players want to leave west and run into a small band of goblin scouts which give information to lead them north
>players want to leave east and they run into a goblin raiding party with information to take them north
>players want to leave south and they run into a small goblin outpost which gives them information that leads them north
>players want to fuck off to some other city then they later get word of a goblin army that sacked the town
>players want to do some shit for this wizzard then they go on that quest as the army leaves to curb stom those uppity goblins.

no need for invisible walls.

/Thread
Overcome adapt improve

I hope all the groups you railroad will fall apart swiftly.

They start to but i get them back on track.

Maybe style it like the actualy Vikings that ended up in Byzantium / Constantinople.
Like, all the locals are impressed by their size and and battle-prowess, and since they have no strong political or social ties, the local nobles all want them for mercenary-work, and courtly intrigue abounds.

Man I have to say I don't think this would go anywhere near as smoothly as shit did in England.

...

...

>GM accommodating their players' unexpected departure from the plot
>Shit GM
Pick one.

> sailing to not!China...
They have to get there first!
Remember, there was no Suez Canal or Panama Canal until the 19th century, so sailing to the Orient requires either going around Africa and India, or risking crossing the Atlantic to sail around South America and up the coast then crossing the Pacific, or trying to find the North-west Passage, with all the fun that entails. Unless they've aquired a copy of an ancient map, they'll not know of the distances involved, and will have only a rough idea of the relative positions of rhe lands in question.
Unless they're sailing in a knorr, they'll need to land and replenish their water at least weekly, so there'll be plenty of chances for adventures in not!Africa as they try to cope with the climate and natives...

> Unless they've aquired a copy of an ancient map

>they aquire copy of an ancient map
>they can't read it

>not having hooks in every direction
>not having events that evolve in abscence of the players’ involvement
git gud

not to mention that vikings are 9th century and samuray are 16th....

How long did these oni/barbarian horde's rule the land, and what was the resolution that made China what it is today?

Would run the campaign as an accelerated timeline of the shitty times

>Minor conflicts within kingdom
>Rumors of fringe villages being wiped
>Send the players to investigate, minor skirmish
>Return to warn capital, watch it all burn and experience/escape shaving ect
>Massacres
>Join or form a resistance
>Riots/raiding
>???
>Good guys win

it is allready established that this is a fantasy world so you cant assume geography

that assumes that the maps are 1:1. Who's to say their version of not!China isn't reachable by sea?

Put them in the shoes of John Blackthorne, except there is no not!Spanish there, and interpreters will mainly use magic to understand the party.

Forgot the pic.

End of a dynastic cycle in not!China. There are famines and natural disasters, the government is unable to help, and suddenly these weird looking dudes who are good at killing government soldiers suddenly show up.
The problem is that you're not the only rebel/warlord band rising up against the government.

Your players get to painfully introduce the concept of shields to these lands.

The Chinese used shields all the time?

best image in this thread.

would be best ever if it had Buddha slapping a bitch.

Because you present them too many options that don't have clear pro-cons

If it's D&D, they need to go into the dungeons to advance their characters.

The players find Not!England has already reached Not!Japan and then have a For Honor game.

Make them spend the next years worth of gaming sessions sailing there.

Have them fight oni.

Did they? I know the nips never wrapped their heads around it.

They did. The ancient (as in the Jomon-era) Japanese did use shields as well, though they fell into disuse outside of stationary shields in sieges.

Their ship crashes in a storm. They awake on the coast of a Not!Japanese fishing village, being nursed to health. Fast-forward to when the PCs are in "not bedridden" condition and that they and/or the villagers have figured out a means of communication, given them some basic info (this is where you are, we are poor fishers and laborers, the bandits in the hills are jerks but leave us alone).

Then, shortly after they get healthy, get on it.

>I know the nips never wrapped their heads around it.

The Enlish were pretty much the only archery culture that didn't figure out shields.

They join forces with someone like Ching Shih, a woman from China who commanded a fleet of 300 pirate ships and between 20,000 to 40,000 crew.

So... they traded a few days journey for several months?

>outside of stationary shields in sieges.

Field fortifications of all types were pretty normal in their conflicts, their pavis were a component of that.

Depending on the time frame, going to Not!China would be even worse. A massive land filled with armies larger than anywhere else in the world, engaging in titanic clashes of man against man, and generals of martial and tactical prowess unmatched coordinating these literal oceans of soldiers.

Have them encounter a blind swordsmen who works as a masseuse but when shit goes down he can cut men to pieces

Or a wandering swordsmen with a bad case of fleas who is manipulating two families who have been tormenting a small town for ages, trying to get them to kill each other off, as well as another swordsmen who utilizes an incredibly rare and incredibly powerful magic weapon

As much as I love the idea of exploring an unknown Not!Japan fantasy setting, this iis also kind of a cool idea simply because it present the possibility of mashing fantasy England with fantasy Japan. Magic Arthurian knights of old clashing their arcane blades with master samurai who can slice through iron and stone with their base physical abilities, grey old English wizards facing the bizarre spiritual and god magics of the priests and monks of the land, and maybe, if Not!England is bringing their own monsters into the mix, shit like fantasy England monsters facing off with Japanese mythological yokai. Orcs fighting with Oni, dragons fighting gashadokuro, the possibilities are crazy, and then throw a handful of fantasy vikings into the mix? You have the makings for possibly one of the most insane fantasy warring states you could imagine

Add to this, just make Not!Japan a fucking potential warfield to it all. Fantasy China, Fantasy England, Fantasy India, throw it all together and have the players arrive when tensions are at their worst, clashes all across fantasy Japan, and all out war is clearly looming.

Remember Vinland? The Vikings in there didn't have any fun. Any attempt at Viking colonies in Japan would do far worse, considering the difference in tech, society, etc between American natives and Japanese of the era.
And the least is said about the distance the better.

Adding fantasy elements, though. Maybe these Vikings really do have Thor on their side.

I can only get so erect.

Oh dude, what about the vikings have to form an uneasy alliance with the samurai to fight off marauding Yokai and Jötnar.

>Not!King Arthur wielding Not!Excalibur facing off against Not!Oda Nobunaga wielding the Not!Imperial Regalia of Not!Japan

>Mid-way into the massive war between fantasy England, China, India and Japan, with the viking players knee deep in this crazy shit, fantasy Scandinavia just shows up, maybe their entire fucking country being pulled by some Not!Norse gods or some shit, like they turned the entire country into a viking ship, and collided it with fantasy Japan to bring in the Norse and viking fantasy bullshit into the conflict
>And then a land bridge suddenly appears on the other side of fantasy Japan and fucking fantasy Alexander the Great and his world conquering armies come riding across, intent on joining the mash and crushing the other armies
>And then fantasy Genghis Khan and his hordes somehow get involved

>All weab memes aside, Samurai were pretty scary.
how well would they actually fair though? it seems like a good shield wall would hard counter a bunch of sword focused dualists.

>He thinks that samurai were sword focused dualists

> a bunch of sword focused dualists.
Samurai were predominantly cavalry focused on spears and longbows, user.

Probably like every other army faced with shield walls. Archery, mounted spears, or just throwing peasants at it till it collapsed. Samurai were soldiers, and their swords were side arms, their main weapons with long arms the naginatas and spears and horse mounted archery, their armies were still mostly comprised of normal conscript soldiers.

Samurai were not a thing yet when vikings were still around.

Until the late Middle Ages Japan was a dirt-poor shithole where everyone died of epidemics every other year and they couldn't even scrape together enough iron to have enough farming tools.

It's only towards the 12th century that slowly growing prosperity and disease resistance allowed the rise of local warrior strongmen, which became the power base for the first shogunate. Samurai as a class slowly developed around that time, when the age of Vikings was already over.

>Bringing real time scale into a discussion of fantasy
He even mentioned fantasy creatures in his post, user.

Fair enough.

Ironically, so were the english.
>mounted longbow vs. infantry longbow formation
mounted longbow win that one right?
>mounted spear vs. infantry spear formation
Infantry spear formation wins that one, obviously.

Japan vs. the english = a pretty even match? So the side with the best strategist would win.

sorry I thought we where going with popular meme samurai.

even then mounted Spearmen/archers don't like shield walls either.

also why did the japanese abandon shields so early in their development kf armour?

Have you ever read Shogun by James Clavell? Thats what happens to them.

>The viking players end up befriending fantasy Musashi, Mulan Prithviraj and Cu Chulainn, who aid them in making their way through this absolute cluster fuck of a war of cultures and countries

China was like that too. Surprise surprise, spears and mounted archery were literally some of the best shit in ancient warfare (also war chariots)

>So the side with the best strategist would win.

My money would be on the samurai for this one. They spent basically their whole lives studying warfare and were overall far more dedicated to the concept of "victory or death" than most European societies.

Mounted archery, in the old days, were ungodly killing machines. I believe the Mongols, I think, utilized it, and were completely unmatched because of it.

>Fantasy Benkei, who the players may befriend, goes to the land bridge and holds off the whole of fantasy Alexander's army by himself, long enough for the players to get the fuck out of the way, or for the armies to pull back and prepare rather than get slaughtered by his forces.

>also why did the japanese abandon shields so early in their development kf armour?
Can't wear a shield and shoot a bow from horseback
>but Turkic steppe archers-
have you seen the size of Japanese bows?

Pre-mongols, rather poorly. They may not have been sword-focused duelists, but they were duelists from a distinctly feudal society where most foot soldiers were actually levies (rather than the men-at-arms and mercenaries usually used in Meideival Europe). The Samurai fought generally through individual mounted archery duels at the time, and the fact that the Mongols approached mounted archery as a formation was a rather big shock.
By the warring states period in the 15th century, both the Samurai and Japanese warfare had changed significantly with the emergence of the semiprofessional soldier, the Ashigaru, and much higher level of mobilization. But this is in the late 15th century at a time when the Viking shieldwall wasn't exactly in vogue either.

But the English spent more time actually fighting against the French, the Scottish, the Muslims and other English.

>He doesn't know his players well enough to have several alternate plots just in case.

The weird flat pauldrons were basically "hands-free" sheilds

I thought the Viking SOP when facing actual armies was to GTFO and the times they got caught by those armies they got destroyed.

There is this which is literally a pincushion for arrows. Mainly for messengers and important people though.

Yeah for the small raiding clans, though Vikings also occasionally had peer armies of their own, like the Great Heathen army that invaded Britain.

sorta. its true for viking raiders. But proper viking armies where generally effective, composed of relatively high numbers of experienced warriors vs peasant/freeman levies. they did conquer much of england, normandy and much of eastern Europe.

Depends on the size of the force and nature of the terrain. They did conquer and hold significant parts of France, almost all of the British isles, big swaths of Russia, Sicily, etc, and had to face real armies and siege castles to do so.

But yes, their mobility was one of their most powerful weapons and if they were trapped or goaded into a fight where they were terribly outnumbered or otherwise disadvantaged, they often lost.

>Yeah, samurai. Not pesants.
Good luck, I'm behind 90 thousand yari.

>the native martial artists all have elemental powers

>need six dudes to hover a relatively small rock
Sounds inefficient.

>elemental monks vs werebear berserkers

fund it

>Until the late Middle Ages Japan was a dirt-poor shithole where everyone died of epidemics every other year

This describes humanity for pretty much all of its history, safe the current period.

>>mounted longbow vs. infantry longbow formation
>mounted longbow win that one right?

Beside the fact that stual longbows would be an utter bitch to use on horseback, I would argue that a mounted unit will have a severe disadvantage in density. Due to needing space to maneuver and, you know, being mounted, they would need a lot more space, requiring them to get pretty far within firing distance to get a meaningful amount of arrows in. Also mongolian-style horse archery was based on actually aiming, whereas medieval archery in warfare was all about throwing a lot of arrows onto the enemy. With this in mind, I would guess advantage of mounted archers wouldn't actually be that significant.

The Japanese longbow's asymmetry and its odd shooting style are both designed for shooting from horseback. There would be space concerns, but not unduly so. That said, I agree that apart from tactical flexibility there isn't a significant advantage. The Chinese strategy for dealing with horse archers was just a shitload of crossbows, after all, and it worked for over a thousand years before Genghis went beyond the usual Horse Archer wank.
People tend to ascribe the mongol's strength solely to horse archers, but most of the countries in Central Asia they defeated used horse archers too. Where they stood out was a willingness to learn from others and go beyond just horse archers.