[00:00:00] Speaker A: RPG Lessons Learned when the game is over, when your players are gone, that's when lessons are learned.
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[00:00:24] Speaker B: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another beautiful episode of the RPG Lessons Learned podc. I am Tanner. I'm one of your hosts, and I'm here with Dusty, your other host. Dusty, how you doing, man?
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Tanner, I cannot complain. It's, uh, it's a beautiful evening, and we just finished a beautiful game.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: We did. We just played our fifth session of Legend of the Five Rings, fifth edition. The one with the funny dice.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Um, that's a lot of fives.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: It is a lot of five. Fifth session, fifth edition. Yeah. That's at least two fives. I had a great time with this one. We continued the journey of kin, Dune, um, your Duncan McLeod stand in. And Rokugan as she got involved with some, uh, monstrous entanglements and, uh, a monstrous, uh, social encounter at the end. What would you give this session on a scale of 1 to 10? I think you were pretty moved by the first two, which I'm more than appreciative of. Did this match or exceed or fall short of those other two?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I really need to write down my ratings because I can never remember what I rated previous things. So all my ratings are. With no regard and no calibration to previous ratings, this was a really good session. If this session were an episode of the X Files, this is what they would call a mythology episode. This is an episode that moves the mythology of the show forward.
And my wife's a big fan of the X Files. And when folks rewatch the X Files, sometimes they'll skip the filler episodes and just focus on the mythology episodes. Episodes. So, my man, I'm gonna go with like, an 8. Maybe an 8.5.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: I would rate myself.
I didn't remember how to do a, uh, calming breath. There's some system stuff that I just didn't remember. I've gotta do a better job of studying systems between sessions. I did that last time. I'd familiarize myself this time. I've been on vacation all week, and I just didn't sit down to refresh myself on the system, so I felt awkward about that. That probably keeps it back from like, a 10, but it was emotional, it was moving, it was deep in terms of, like, character, but also the things I'm trying to achieve in the world. I care about the world. I care about the characters. Yeah, I'm sticking with 8.5. How about you?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: I would give it. Yeah, I'm against half points, so I would give it an 8. But still great, great score. I think you are really into this world now. I think that you have, you no longer have the trepidation of like, what's the right thing to do in this situation? I feel. And maybe you still do. But, uh, it felt to me like you were very much naturally getting in character, embodying Kindune and doing the things that you felt like she needed to do at the time and place. Um, so I think you did an awesome job.
Yeah. Uh, just for those listening to picking up the story, basically Kindu needed to seek some spiritual advice for the castle.
Uh, she went to a monastery. Um, they found out that the head monk was already dead when they got there.
So in the course of recruiting the, the head monk successor, you had to fight a giant snake. And then you had a showdown, a verbal showdown with the Cooney witch hunter who killed your family.
Um, you were on hallowed ground, so you were pretty hesitant to do any violence and you kind of had to feel her out. And you learned a lot more about Kendun's past and about her motivations as well.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: So. Yeah, again, quite the mythology episode that moved the story forward.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: So, um, what did you think of the combat encounter in the Big Snake? I wanted there to be something more explicitly supernatural happening because we kind of haven't had that yet. Closed Shell Castle, the adventure had a little bit of like the spiritual stuff was kind of in the background.
Um, and then you had two. You had in Hirosaka, you had like a sort of action packed episode with the Smiling Tiger's Ronin gang. You had a very courtly episode in the last one in the Palaces of the Crane. And in this one I wanted there to be some action and I wanted it to not feel like feudal Japan. I wanted it to feel like a fantasy world with surprises and stuff. Was I successful in that?
[00:04:47] Speaker A: You were. I enjoyed the combat encounter. Fighting the giant snake reminded me very much of the scene in Conan The Barbarian, the 1980, 82, 84, whatever the 1980s Conan movie.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: He was chopping into that thing. Man, that scene is awesome.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: I love that scene. Uh, I thought of that scene several times.
I think of Kin Dune as being very capable in combat a la kn.
Just keeps getting absolutely battered in fights. Unless she is, uh, very careful to use all of her resources, her void points, the assistance that she gets. Like, I really feel like kind of doing this, scraping out of these Battles by the skin of her teeth, which I suppose is gm, is exactly the feeling you want me to have.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that from a story perspective, too. I don't, uh, like, kin. Dune is a badass, and I don't want that to be undercut too much by me wanting to give you a challenge, too.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: But a giant snake feels totally appropriate that that's a difficult fight.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Yes, for sure. And I did. I did not fudge anything. But I did. Once you dealt a critical hit to it when it was in its water ring, then I had it shift stances to a worse stance.
Um, that still provided it some benefit, and that I did prod you. I'm like, hey, if you use your relationship points with the umay, you can kill this thing right now. I felt like that was a acceptable amount of, like, gm. Um, like, I didn't fudge it. We did use all of the mechanics, like, correctly, but it felt like. Was I overstepping there, or was that unwelcome?
[00:06:20] Speaker A: No, I'm still learning the system, so I'm still learning where all the dials and controls are. If we were in a car hurtling towards, I don't know, something, and you were like, hey, um, you know one of those pedals is a brake?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Uh-huh.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: That would be a helpful reminder, as I'm unfamiliar learning how to drive now. I think where GMs reminding people of things like to extend this analogy is when GMs become backseat drivers.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: But reminding me that there is a brake pedal as I hurdle towards my doom. Um, at this stage of me learning the system. No, you did not overstep at all.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Okay, good. I was a little bit worried about that. Um, but, yeah, it was an interesting encounter. I liked the narrative. I could envision that encounter pretty well in my mind. I hope you could as well. It was a cool setting. Yeah.
And then I intended for the sort of climax of this session to be the moral. Not moral choice, but, uh, a judicious choice of, like, okay, you learned that this woman that you're trying to recruit, this giant snake thing, is going to happen to her, too, and it might happen several decades in the future, but she's a time bomb in the same way that this guy was. Are you willing to still recruit her? And you said, yeah, and it didn't seem like you. I don't think I was successful in making that really much of a deliberation as I intended it to be.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: No, you were not successful at that. I was just like, you made it kind of A center point of these Kyoshi Monks and how they operate. Like, like, this is just kind of how they do business and how they've done business for, I gathered, uh, generations. I was also. We should get into this role playing Ume at the time and not Kendu.
But I don't think either Kindun or Umay are here to, like, change the way the Kyoshi Monks do business.
M. I think they're here to, like, save, um, Twin Blessings Village and close Shell Castle.
So it wasn't a dilemma for me. It just sounds like. And also, frankly, even if I had been role playing Kingdom, I have a similar curse when I die. True. Um, my Shadowlands taint means I'm going to resurrect as a zombie and go crazy unless I am m. Decapitated. Which I meant at the time when I was building my character to like, to add that Highlander Duncan McLeod flavor. Like, I need to be decapitated.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: But I have a similar curse of when I die, uh, a raging monster will be let loose. So I just saw the parallel. It was not a dilemma for me.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Interesting. I think another player playing this character could have seen that, could have had the same background as you and made a different choice about that, though, perhaps, like, I know what it's like to be a time bomb. Um, I don't want to bring another one into the mix, but, yeah, I guess I think maybe I should have. I don't know. Would it have been a better session if that was more of a debate to be had with Kin Dune of like, do we look for spiritual guidance elsewhere, or do we take this very clearly capable person who's also very clearly extremely risky?
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Um, what would have caused me to engage with that?
If there had been a path toward getting her to reconsider using the forbidden scrolls of the Naga for her wisdom?
If I. If. If I had any kind of sense that I could have had a Dumbo's feather moment with her and be like, no, what's her name again? Ashaka? Akasha?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Oscar?
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Asuka. If I could have been like, no, Asaka, the power is in you. Let go of that. Of that feather. Yeah. If I had any sense that that was possible, I might have engaged with that.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: But to me, it was like, I did not see it as changeable. It's another fact about the world that I learned and moved on. I wasn't striving to change it because it didn't seem changeable.
So if you want folks to engage with that, I'd say make it Seem changeable.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Make it something. And, uh, that's kind of the tough thing with Rokugan, because it's such a conservative world that's so set in its ways, and it's more about navigating that than it is about changing that in a lot of ways.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Um, maybe if she said, you know what? I had to do this ritual and take on the same burden and she hadn't done it yet, then. Then I'd be like, oh, you know what? Let's talk about that.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: All right.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's a good, good idea. I like that.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: And I could have. I could have woven that into the story of, like. Okay. To gain this spiritual insight that my master have, I have to do this ritual now.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Okay, Cool.
Good feedback.
Um, I did not Dusty to add your campaign villain nemesis to this session until a couple days ago. I said, you know what would be an interesting wrinkle? If the Cooney witch hunter who killed your family was also at this monastery.
And that was about the extent of my preparation for that. Like, she was just passing through or doing something else.
But that really is what made this.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: I think it would have been a
[00:11:15] Speaker B: far worse session without that. Right.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Are you willing to talk about, uh, kind of the background of what happened in Kingdom's past or. Yeah. Do you want to leave that uncertain for future sessions?
[00:11:26] Speaker B: I'll tell you what KINDU knows right now. How about that?
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: What KINDU knows is that there is this Cooney witch hunter, and in Rokugan, they are the ones that hunt down spiritually corrupted creatures, and they serve the Crab Clan, who are kind of the Night's Watch of. Of Rokugan. They live at the wall to keep the horrors from beyond from destroying everything in Rokugan. King Dune's understanding is that this Cooney witch hunter travels Rokugan, destroys spiritually corrupted samurai and their families and seizes their estates, flips it through a network of merchants and basically fences all of it, all of the money from it, and sends it back to the wall to defend the, uh. To help the Crab clan defend the wall. And kind of his big question right now is, okay, is she doing this only to people who are guilty of these spiritual corruptions, who, it seems like my father certainly was.
Or is she doing this to innocent samurai and making money off of it also is. That sounds right?
[00:12:38] Speaker A: And if. And if the answer to that question is yes, then I am going to attempt to kill her.
Um, if the answer is no, then I don't know.
I Don't know what's next for Kendun if she is not able to avenge her father because her father's not worthy of being avenged. And actually that's kind of been settled like, like you. You narrated a wonderful like nightmare slash dream sequence for me where I got insight into fact that my father maybe wasn't wronged. Maybe he was the wrong doer before I even met the Kunia witch hunter. So I was primed for that. And I've already kind of cast off avenging my. If I go after this Cooney witch hunter now, it'll be because of what she's done to other families, not mine.
To innocent families.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I don't want to reveal too much more, but it sounds like, um, we're both pleased with that kind of wrinkle that's been added to the story.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: It's nice to meet the villain partway through the story in a place in time where it's inappropriate to uh, fight.
Yes.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's kind of why I wanted to put her here. Um, I kind of wish that I'm reading another game right now, Fabula Ultima. I'm going to be running a game of that. Um, that's like Ah, an RPG meant to evoke the stories of tape of Ah, JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Star Ocean and Tales games and stuff like that. One cool rule that that game has is that villains can basically there's like a meta currency that the GM has where villains can escape from scenes.
And I think that that works really well for those types of stories. I almost wish that L5R had some sort of way of like a GM spending some sort of limited resource to make sure that my villains don't die the first time that they meet you. But at the same time I feel like that would almost kind of be betraying the lethality and the grittiness of the setting. Um, so I liked my version better where I created a situation where it would have just been extremely highly inappropriate to do that.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yes. And my, my Highlander was on holy ground, as you said.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: This session. One of the goals that I made was to call for more roles than we have. We had a lovely session last time. I think we rolled maybe like five times total four or five times in the the Crane Clan, um, session last time.
I want. The reason is that I wanted to kind of turn the screws on you a little bit more and specifically like make strife more of a thing. Um, Strife is one of the symbols that can appear on the dice and, um, as you accumulate strife, it kind of represents your character's emotional becoming emotionally off center, I think is the best way to put it. And if you max out your strife, you either can't keep any more strife on die rolls or you unmask and you incur a positive and negative effect as your samurai reveals how she truly feels. So did I succeed on turning the screws on you a little bit? And was that welcome in terms of like a gameplay setting or was it more kind of annoying?
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Um, I liked it. I liked rolling more. Uh, the strife was annoying, but that was clearly an outcome of the dice. Like I rolled out of strife. Um, I wasn't like, oh man, I don't like all this rolling. I really enjoyed it. I felt self conscious that like one roll took a while, but I paused the game to give you feedback mid game to say this world took a long time, but I really enjoyed exploding this dice. And which ones do I keep? And I'm keeping this one for this. I really enjoyed all of that back and forth.
Um, it really is more than any other game. Like we joke about rolling the bones and consulting the bones. We joke about that even when it's just a D20 in this game, more so than any of that are played. We really are like consulting the bones and I enjoyed all of the rolling that we did.
Um, having said that though, is there anything that I would give you negative feedback on the session? Because I don't mean to just in my daughter's terms, D1 glaze you.
I don't know what that means. By the way, if it's highly inappropriate, I'm sorry to the audience. But my daughter, when someone compliments someone, she's like, they're D1 glazing him.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: I know what glazing I don't know what D1 means.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: I think it's like division one athlete. Yeah, I don't know, but I don't actually know either. So we have the explicit tag on this podcast for a reason. Because sometimes I don't know what I'm saying.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Uh, yeah, don't D1 glaze me.
Roast me.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Uh, cooked. Let's see. I almost wish that the ume points that. Wish you would keep tally of them behind the screen and give them to me at the end of the session. And here's why.
Earning UMay points and losing UMe points mid session makes me focus a lot on those.
And I am trying to like influence her and turn her into a good ruler. If you were keeping a tally of that and Then we recapped at the end and you're like, okay, you netted out one more Uma point. You lost one here, you gained one here, you lost one here. It would keep me from focusing on it too much during the session.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Okay, we can try that next time for sure. I like that idea.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: And I think it's partly because, I don't know, I say that Sanderson, you might need to like, if I do something horrific and Umay is no longer willing to support me, you'll have to bring that up. But I'd say barring that, it becomes one more thing to track another point
[00:18:03] Speaker B: that goes up or down during the session. Yeah, I get that. I, I'll. Let's try it next session. And I will keep the subtle stuff to myself. But if there's like a big egregious thing, I think that you'll know it though too.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: I don't think I'm going to fool
[00:18:19] Speaker B: fool you on it. So let's try that next session. I'm going to write, I'm going to make note of that.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Um, it'd be easy for you to describe that diegetically too. Like Umay nods in approval or Umay looks stricken.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Mhm.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: And you wouldn't have to actually say I'm gaining and losing points.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: So these relationship points, they're kind of a thing that I came up with to sort of mitigate the fact that you are one, uh, player and you don't have the same resources that a group of characters would have. And it's sort of a meta currency that lets you add dice symbols as you want. Do you think that that is successful and still fun to play with, like these relationship points, like cashing in for extra successes and whatnot?
[00:19:03] Speaker A: I do. Especially given that it's a one on one game. Like it's one player and not a group of four player characters. I think it's actually, it's above liked. It's necessary to overcome the action economy of the game. So yeah, yeah, I definitely still like it. And I've crystallized my feedback even further. The more specific feedback I would give is when I lost a point with Ume for not having read the Buddha.
That was, that was more. Because I, Dusty, am unfamiliar with the Buddha.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: If it was appropriate for Kind Dune to be familiar with it, like we could have had like an out of character moment to be like, well, you know, kind of would have understood that Uma is asking this question or this question.
So Kendum was getting punished for something that thus he didn't know.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay, that's.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Not only.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: That's.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: That's. And that moment where I lost those points is where my feedback on the points comes from.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: I have a question for you before I want to circle back to Umay. I know that you said that you want to kind of familiarize yourself by brushing up on the mechanics of the game. Have you had any desire to brush up on the lore of the game in between sessions?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Uh, yes, insofar as I watched an episode of Highlander to remind myself how Duncan behaves and comports herself. And then I rewatched the 13 Assassins to get more of a sense of how samurai comport themselves. But you're right, I have not. I don't have a physical book except for fourth edition and first edition.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: I've not cracked a book on Rokugan and memorizing the clan names and the clan. I've not done that.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Do you think that would be worth your time, or do you think your time is better spent getting the vibe and your character?
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Oh, man, I don't know.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: I think it's valid to say. I think me as the player, it's more important for me to understand.
Don't feel like I'm backing you into a corner.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: No, um, no, I'm really thinking about it. If I were going to GM it, it's imperative. You have to learn the lore. You have to learn the lore of the world. I think part of the role of the gm. Like, okay, let's flip this on its head. Vampire. The Masquerade. When someone plays their first session of vampire, they're probably starting out as a neonate.
So now in universe, there's a reason for the GM to explain to them. In universe. Oh, no, no, no, no. He's a brujah. Here's what that means. He's toreador. That's what that means. No, no, no. She's. She's a, uh, ventrue. And there's an in universe reason to explain things as you go, and it's kind of nice. D and D does not have that D and D. You're kind of like GMs know they have to explain.
But I will say D and D has a number of settings and not one holistic setting. The same question is if I'm playing in my first ever Eberron game, because I've still never played an Eberron game.
Do I need to sit down? Yeah. Should I sit down and study Eberron, uh, before I play as a player, or should I have that same expectation of the GM that I would in a Vampire the Masquerade game where it will get explained to me as I get introduced to this world.
I don't know, Tanner, because Vampire has the in universe Reason and L5R doesn't, I think I probably should sit down and learn at least a, uh, de minimis portion of the. Of the lore. Your thoughts?
[00:22:23] Speaker B: I agree. I think these games should also have tools for that. Like, I would love. It's been a while since I cracked open my Eberron book, so maybe it has this. I'm Pretty sure the L5R book doesn't have this, but it should have a one page cheat sheet for players that are like, here are things everybody knows about the world. Here's the tenets of Bushido. Here's what the clans do. Here's what people worship.
Here's the role of different people in the world. Like something like that. Like a cheat sheet that. Like a lore cheat sheet. You know, instead of just a mechanical cheat sheet, I think something like that would be pretty valuable.
Um, especially if you want new players to learn your system. But like you said in Vampire, you're kind of expected to be Dusty entering this new world that's been underneath the surface, as opposed to Eberron or, uh, Rokugan, where your character has been living in this world their whole life.
So I think there's always going to be some friction there. And I think a good GM and good players will never like, try and gotcha on each other about those things.
But I do think that there needs to be, I don't know, a more digestible thing for players because we know that players don't read books unless they're also GMs and other games players don't read books. So there should be, I don't know, like a, a setting reference cheat sheet or something like that.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: I agree.
But I also take your couch feedback that yes, I have steeped myself. And like you, you mentioned I was more sure of myself.
That's true. Because I rewatched Highlander to get more of a feel for Duncan. And I re. And I rewatched. Is it 13 Assassins? I think it's 13 Assassins, the name of the movie, to get a feel for when a samurai decides to break the rules.
When a samurai is like, no, I have to act, even if whatever like that to seat myself in that drama. It's still not Rokugon. So I'm gonna find a way to steep myself and ooh, maybe a fun way to do it. Like, uh, reading fiction is easy. Reading rulebooks is hard for me even when I am, uh, GMing. Maybe I'll go on, like, I don't know, fanfiction.net and read some L5R. Fanfiction?
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Yeah, fantasy, um, Flight. Before they get gave up the license to Edge Games, they made a couple of novellas too.
Um, and they released a bunch of fiction, like short story stuff that. That pushed the story forward. I. I might have some. If you want. I can email you a couple of these. There. There are a couple that are really good and they're all. I think they should all be still free on the website.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: If you're interested, if you want to shoot me a link, that'd be awesome. Cool.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Cool. And, um, dear listener, if I can find the links, maybe I'll include them in the episode description too for you. Oh, last thing I want to talk about that's on my list is you kind of taking narrative control over Ume.
My precious GM PC. Dusty, I control the whole world. But you tried to take this one. No, I'm just joking. You. You, uh, wisely said, hey, you know what? It makes more sense if May does this. And her background is that she's backing up Kin Dune no matter what. So doesn't it kind of make sense if she's doing this? And I said, yeah, I think so.
Do you want to talk about that? And sort of playing two characters lightly again?
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Sure. So, um, you've shared with me that Ume is somewhat based on Jeeves, the character from the Veil Society, the GMPC that I gave you where you could, like, ask about.
Actually, isn't it funny? It was to overcome the exact same issue where you didn't know about Speculatum. M. You didn't know about the Hollow World, you didn't know about mystara. Ah, the setting. So anyway, um, I gave you this Jeeves character that you could ask those questions of. That's the exact reason you gave me Ume.
Um, so that's the origin of Ume, which we've covered in the past, but in this session. Well, actually, let me go back. Last session, we were chastised, quite rightly, by a Crane, because I was taking the lead in Conversations as a Ronin, or Sai Kin Dune was taking lead in Conversations as a Ronin, and Umay was acting as Kind Dunes backup, which goes against Rokugan.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: So then last session, it was like, well, Ume should really take the lead. And that resulted in you having to, like, figure out how to just tell me about what happened in scenes without me role playing in them as much.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Right. Because I didn't want to role play me having Ume talk to another NPC like 2NP. If you ever get into a situation where two NPCs are talking and the player is watching, something has gone wrong, I think.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yes. So, uh, with the crane chassis, that happened a little bit last session. In this session, I just started off with saying, okay, recognizing how uncomfortable it is for a GM to have to role play with yourself.
Why don't I just take Ume for these scenes and you butt in if I do anything egregiously wrong? And you were very open to that. And I think it worked well.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I reminded you of the sort of core three things about her character that I keep as a guideline. Um, yeah, I think it worked well. And it made sense that Ume would be talking in some scenes and Kindoun in the others. I just want to make sure that. That we keep her as the sidekick and Kin Dune as the main character. And I think we still did that. Although it maybe felt a little closer to 5050 towards the end of the session, but. Or I mean, towards the end of the session, kind definitely came back forward. And I specifically, basically had Umay leave at the end of the session so that this would be a Kin Dune moment and not a, uh, Ume moment.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And I didn't feel like Ume was. I mean, it was still me, Dusty playing. So if it's Umay or Kin Dune, like, I'm. I'm good either way. And remember, I, uh, hope you're tracking this. You're thinking about this in some way. One of my hopes is at the end of this whole adventure when Kendun finally does wander off into the sunset and leave the castle and the Twin Blessings village behind that Kendun is leaving behind. And Ume, who is better equipped to one day lead the Reju family.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I am keeping track of that. And, uh, I. I think that's an awesome, like, diegetic goal that you came up with for your character and the, uh, situation, the circumstances that she's in. I think that's cool. Yeah. So we have one more session that is sort of planned in terms of the goals that Daimyo gave you. Um, to seek out a Crab Clan engineer to help refortify the structure of the castle. What does the end of this campaign look like, do you think, after that?
[00:28:51] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know if Kin Dune story with, you know, well, investigating death of her father I think is resolved. Like, she now knows why he was killed, why he was targeted and killed, and she has work to do to figure out more about the Kuni witch hunter.
Um, I don't think we'll resolve that next session, probably. I think it would be a little too neat if we did.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: I think we might learn something that will either have me be, like, spoiling for revenge or willing to walk away because I am going to speak with another crab and rather an aged one who may or may not be a peer of the Cooney witch hunters, given their. Given their ages. I think he's probably going to be even older than her, given that he's in his retirement and she's in her 50s. But having said all that, I keep joking about, like, Kendin's in for a job interview and wants to work for the raging family. If she's offered a position, I don't think she'll take it. I think she's going to wander away. I think for me, the end of the campaign looks like Kendun wandering away. And then maybe we play something else for a while. And if you ever want to run L5R again, we could pick Kendun up as she wanders into another troubled area.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: I like that.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: The. The.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: The wandering gunslinger.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: All right, well, that's all I had. Um, anything else you want to add about that session? I had a. I had a hoot, man.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: I enjoyed the dice. I liked the rolling. I think it being, again, a mythology episode, it was. It was a moving one. I liked the revelation about my father. Um, I liked that you gave me some moments like me choosing to break my father's sword, like you let that happen. Uh, now, I think it was a banger, man. No additional thoughts for me. Lessons learned.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah, lesson learned. Number one, I think that there's something to be said about, um, familiarity with a setting and that being somewhat of a responsibility of both the GM and the players after a certain point.
Um, again, I'm not trying to throw shade, but I think that it does behoove you. It just has a player at the table to have a better understanding of the setting as you go, and I think you're doing that. Um, it would be interesting, though, if I could prep something that would be helpful for that. Right. So that's still tbd, but that's just something that I thought about.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Yep. And at minimum, the lesson is, you know, hey, in vampire, you learn about the world as you go, and it's
[00:31:12] Speaker B: part of the world, it's part of
[00:31:13] Speaker A: the Story and D and D. Maybe you do or maybe you don't discuss that like it's worth players and GMs discussing how much they know about the world and how much homework reading it's appropriate to do between sessions. Because I could even see in D and D, someone might be reluctant to read the setting lore as a player because they'd be like, well, doesn't that make me a metagamer? So. Right.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: They don't want to get spoiled or.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's at least a conversation that players and GMs should have and Dusty on the right thing to do. In this case, right thing to do is for me to go read some L5R fiction or fan fiction to kind of familiarize myself with some clan names and some societal norms.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Next lesson learned, engage with the funny dice.
It's a repeat from last time, but I'm going to keep saying it. Like, I walked in saying I liked numbers. I walked in saying I don't like the funky dice. And the funky dice are enabling us to tell a different kind of story. And in fact, I would tag onto that with a third lesson learned, if you don't mind, and say I'm taking away that L5R 5E is a much better system than I initially thought it would be. But I also think it is very much not for new ttrpg players or GMs.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: I would agree. I think this. I think it feels like an intermediate to advanced system. And it's weird to think about systems or settings like that, but just the combination. Like you. It. It's particular and it's a. It's a weird dish that, you know, if we go to the RPG restaurant, this isn't the one I would suggest you order on the first time, but it's, uh, It's a special one to me for sure.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Is there a fourth lesson?
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Um, fourth lesson, I would say GMs, um, try to engineer a place where your villain can talk to your players and not get killed. Um, again, we want to respect the choice and the unscriptedness of tabletop games and how they don't follow story, uh, rules. Most of them, at least some of them do, but they don't follow story conventions in the same way. But if you can make it happen. Like, it's so cool to have midway to 2/3 of the way through the campaign for the villain to show up and have a interesting tender scene with the players and then go their separate ways before perhaps a confrontation. Or not, depending on what kin dude finds out.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: I agree.
Uh, I've seen YouTube video after YouTube video and listen to podcast or podcast of GMs, um, lamenting their villain dying the first time they meet the players. So if you can work that out, though, man, it's. It's fun. It mimics fiction. It mimics the structure of a novel, which we often talk about. The fun of CTRPGs is that they're not structured, but when it happens, man, it's delightful.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thank you for listening.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: People call them reviews, postmortems, retrospectives.
We call them lessons learned. And we're sharing ours, um, with you.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: M.
