GameMaster's notes

Specific notes about the adventures (how they ran, things I'd change if I ran them again and so on) are listed in the game history page. Here I'm going to try to give some insight into the aim of the game, what I tried to achieve and how to run a campaign in medieval Japan using these adventures or ones of your own design.

 

So, why run a game in Medieval Japan?

Well, I wanted to run *something*! But truth to tell, medieval Japan was not my first or favourite choice. I much prefer novel settings. However, these days (like most people) I have limited time and running a game in a setting of your own invention - however personally satisfying it might be - takes a lot of time. Something that GM's don't appreciate often enough is that it requires time from your players too. Unless players feel that they know the world in which their characters are adventuring, they tend to feel adrift. It's harder for them to get the feeling that their actions really count for anything and as a result they usually don't get into character. Unless you play frequently, details from games tend to blur, so it's much harder to generate that "real-world" feel where people care about their characters and about the world in which they interact. Without that feel, gaming may be fun, but it's never going to be intense.

So, choosing a background familiar to most of your players immediately makes your task easier. It adds a level of depth that you really have to work hard to generate on your own. The flip side of this is that if you want to run a game based in a real life setting, you have to know a decent amount about it. You don't need to be an expert, but you have to be able to give out *some* response when information is requested. Use a few japanese words in play (there's a glossary provided) to add atmosphere.

And that brings us to the third point. Sengoku is not really set in medieval Japan - any more than most movies or stories are. It's set in Medieval *movie* Japan. The tight restrictions placed on association and movement in most of Japan in this era make it harder to accomodate 20th century player characters. So, if you want to run a successful game, you want to be familiar enough with the setting to give the "feel" of time and place - but don't sweat the details too much. Read reference books for sure, but also watch some chambara movies, read some manga and if your players don't already do so, encourage them to do the same. Not only will it broaden your mind, but it'll help painlessly bring your game to life.

 

OK, that's "why". Here's "how".

Well, as I commented above, one of the more important things about getting a game to run well is giving the background some atmosphere. If your players are familiar with the setting, you're halfway there. The other half can be helped by a few simple rules:

Atmosphere

It's no use setting up an atmosphere if you are then going to run a truck over it. While you don't want to get bogged down in the minutae of Japanese life (who cares how many Netsuke carvers there were in Osaka anyway?) don't set things up which are blatantly out of period either. One of the attractions of the era for gaming is Japan's setting with haughty samurai and crafty ninja. This poses a problem if some players want to play non-samurai types. In real life the association of people of different classes was tightly restricted by custom and practice. Now you can ease this a little (in the interests of game play) but having a peasant character tell off a social superior stretches things too far (in real life that merited the death penalty), and it happens easily in games where the *players* are used to interacting equally. In situations like this, you can encourage roleplaying. A peasant character can still interact with samurai characters, if the player is prepared to roleplay obsequiousness. When you're setting up the game, take the time to discuss social status with your players - it's one of the biggest stumbling blocks to games set in medieval Japan. In much the same vein, encourage characters to react in a typically Japanese way. Boastfulness and loud over-reaction (both characteristics of many player characters) should be discouraged. Having people shun such characters or have them challenged to duels by irritated samurai both work pretty well - and don't be afraid as a GM to do it properly. Maybe they'll act more sensibly in their next life..... On the other hand, reward appropriate play. Extra experience point awards are always good, although I offer Karma points instead. Each appropriate act earns the character a Karma point which is worth 5 experience points bonus to their *next* character. This encourages - especially among samurai - the proper disdain for death. A glorious death in the service of your lord cannot fail to earn extra points for your next character, which means the player loses little, and may even gain.

The other rules for running a successful medieval japanese game are the same as for any other game. To wit:

The care and feeding of player characters

Everybody has to have fun. Don't force your players to do things they really don't want to. If they want to play stern samurai warriors, give them lots of ashigaru to cut into mulch. If they want to play ninja, let them sneak about in the shadows and give them intrigues to further. If some oddball wants to play a chonin (merchant), then write in some scenes where his particular strengths (knowledge skills, bribery, etc) come into play. Just don't let them off too easily. Make them sweat for their victories and make them bleed a little. They'll thank you for it in the end - really!

One of the advantages of setting your game in feudal Japan is that it gives you more control of your player characters. The set roles defined for many classes make it easy for you to guide the action - at least initially. You can send your players off in the right direction by simply having their lord, or headman tell them to do something. Once the action starts to roll, it's generally easy to keep the player's interest and the game humming along.

Adventures

Learn to pace adventures. Many players like a little combat, but an evening which is nothing but a brawl doesn't really excite most people. Moreover, fights are generally most fun when you're fighting for a reason. So, let combat develop logically out of your adventures. Let players figure out clever ways around set-piece fights if they want to. Include other things for players to do.

Don't make plots too complex. Something that seems obvious to you - armed with all the background information - is often totally opaque to players who may have completely different preconceptions. The best adventures are often fairly linear. It should be obvious to the players (at least after a little while) what their aims should be - the challenge is in achieving them. This doesn't mean that things should be totally obvious - indeed, the feeling that there is more to things than meets the eye helps give a game a feeling of more depth. When players achieve one goal, they will often find out that there is far more to do. However, it's better to define goals than routes to a goal. While most players hate feeling at a loss for what to do, they equally loathe being forced into something. If it is obvious to the players that there is only one course for them to take, they should feel it is as a result of their own actions.

In other words *don't* write adventures that depend on a single clue being found and interpreted the right way. Don't make the revelations of a single old man crucial to unravelling the adventure. They may never meet him, they may not trust him, they may even kill him. There should be multiple ways to get to any crucial point in the game and multiple pointers to important individuals.

A good way to keep a game rolling along is to have some over-arching goal. In the case of Sengoku, I aimed the players at the simple goal of serving a young lord treacherously deprived of his fief and helping him regain it. Along the way, I dropped clues that there was more to things than a simple battle for territory in an obscure corner of Dewa province - which will let me expand the adventures further if and when they ever reach that goal (it's going to take quite a while!). While a good overall goal helps you plan the pacing of adventures (and often inspires the plotting of new ones), it soon gets wearying if everything in the universe revolves around it. A good rule of thumb is that not much more than half your adventures should directly advance the cause of the main campaign goal. Otherwise the players will get tunnel vision, seeing everything and everyone as being related to the "main theme" of the campaign. Allow yourself (and your players) room for adventures that lead in different directions. It keeps things fresh.

Running adventures in an "open world" setting requires flexibility in planning adventures. You can't assume that the players will fall in with all your desires. The approach I take (which has served me well for the last two decades) works like this:

As long as you have a good idea of the area where things are happening and the NPCs involved, nothing the players do can really throw you off your stride. Be flexible! Nothing is wasted in your preparation. Stuff you don't use in one adventure helps you build up a familiarity with your game world, and can easily be reused. *Use* your player's actions. If the players eluded the Moroboshi brothers then they may also have offended their dignity - and the brothers may come seeking vengeance later (there's an easy set up for an evening's play when you have nothing else planned). If you don't want to do that, change their names and weapons and use them as a trio of renegade Yamahoshi in another adventure. Hell, you could use them and still do this. If the descriptions are different, no-one will ever notice.

As long as you know the basic terrain and the basic goal you want the players to achieve, you can give them the illusion that they are wandering in the wide world - and the game will be the better for it.

Combat

In heroic level games like this, the players are often wearing little or no armour, are usually armed with sizeable killing attacks and combat is a frequent occurrence (we're not playing a game based on Maison Ikkoku after all). You normally don't want to kill of large numbers of player characters. There are a couple of ways I approach this. One is to "funnel" opponents at the players. I let the players meet a number of inferior opponents that don't greatly outnumber them - and as they cut them down, another bunch arrives. Or, set up the fight up so that they can use terrain (doorways and so on) to decrease the advantage of numbers. That tilts the odds heavily in favour of the players but still gives them plenty of action and the illusion of fighting massed foes (it also makes things easier on the GM, who only has to run 12 bad guys at a time, not 36 all in one bunch). As well, my lower level opponents tend to use smaller weapons - light spears, short swords and so on, so that wounds are usually trivial rather than fatal. This way, players tend to get whittled away rather than killed outright - just like in the movies. It also allows them an opportunity to do something about it. Whatever you do, *don't* assume that the players can cut down large numbers of opponents just because their characters have superior CVs. All it takes is a streak of lucky or unlucky dice rolling and your player's characters are sashimi. You can get away with fudging a few dice rolls, but it soon becomes obvious if you do it a lot and then the oomph goes out of combat - and usually out of the game.

However, from time to time, you *want* to scare the players with a really tough non-player character. Easy enough to do. First, design these guys so that they *can* be hurt by the players - just make it difficult. Second, provide the bad guy with a few flunkies, or a setting which lets *him* offset the player's advantage in numbers. Even a really tough villian can get swarmed when he's fighting alone. Flunkies slow the players down long enough for your bad guy to demonstrate just how bad he is on one or two of them before they get him. If you want your bad guy around for later episodes, provide him with a plausible means of escape so he can kick a little butt and then leave when the flunkies are all dead. Nothing fires player characters' blood like having an identifiable foe they owe a butt-kicking to (especially if he taunts them as well).

Use "set piece" combats. A fight on a road is one thing - but after a couple they tend to blend together. Do something different. In movies, set piece fights often use unusual settings - rope factories, the roofs of tall buildings and so on. So the same! Let your players fight in a dye factory with bubbling vats to fall into, and where open space is oscured with flapping cloths. Or use a temple with many columns and open beam work where fights can occur high above the floor. They'll remember that!

Finally, chambara combat is usually fast and furious in the movies, and it should be in your game too. The high damage to to protection ratio helps in this. As well, I have some house rules for speeding up combat - and easing the strain on the poor old GM's brain - in the house rules section, which have been thoroughly tested and which have allowed us to have multiple combats in an evening's play involving over 40 participants in some of the fights.

 

 

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