Rob Hobart

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In HoR1, the final battle scenario did not really leave anyone out because Courtier PCs were rarer than hen’s teeth in that campaign. However, I knew there were a lot more Courtiers (and social-oriented characters more generally) in HoR2, and I had been aware throughout the campaign that their players felt they did not get enough chances to shine. This was due, in part, to the unavoidable reality that in a “living” campaign all the modules had to be written in such a way that their challenges could be solved regardless of party composition. (Well, unless the mod was deliberately presenting the PCs with a no-win situation.) Thus, all social challenges in modules were written at a difficulty that could be overcome by any PC with decent Social Skills and Traits, instead of being written to the (much higher) level of difficulty that would require Courtier-school PCs to defeat them. I wasn’t entirely happy with this reality, since it meant that the few players who were willing to play Courtiers did not really get rewarded for their choice, but it was unavoidable within the context of a campaign of this sort.

(The flip side of this is that I strongly disliked PC over-specialization, which went against the whole idea that samurai should serve their lords in whatever capacity might be required, so I felt that shugenja and bushi _should_ learn Social Skills, and courtiers _should_ learn to fight.)

The upshot of all this was that I decided about midway through the campaign that I should have a “social finale” as well as the expected Big Dramatic Battle. The exact form this finale would take was something I chewed on for a long time, but eventually I concluded that the goal would be for the courtiers to undermine Akodo Gintaku’s political support within the Imperial Capital, thereby ensuring that the bushi would have a real shot at defeating him in the subsequent battle. The PCs’ actions would not only determine whether the remaining Imperial forces backed Gintaku but also whether the elite Akodo House Guard would stay loyal to him – if the courtiers had failed, the PCs would have faced a much tougher battle and suffered correspondingly many more casualties.

I structured this event as primarily a tabletop scenario in which groups of PCs carry out diplomatic missions to various top political figures in the capital – the Jade and Emerald Champions, the Imperial daimyo, and so forth. I had a lot of fun writing these scenes, and especially enjoyed the end-of-campaign “reveal” that the Otomo family daimyo is actually a mental and physical cripple whose famous plays are written by a loyal (commoner) manservant. (I’d had this idea lurking in the back of my head for years but never found an opportunity to bring it into a module until now.)

I ended the event with a LARP sequence in which the PCs are confronted by Gintaku’s loyal supporter Ikoma Toraku, now serving as the usurper’s Imperial Herald. I played the bombastic, thundering Toraku myself, which was great fun; I was accompanied by several GMs playing as the Akodo House Guard, who I would order to execute anyone who insulted me. This was a deliberate choice to drive the stakes as high as possible in the finale, forcing the courtiers to face the same lethal threat and accept the same spirit of selfless honorable sacrifice as their warrior counterparts. Once Toraku started killing people, the whole tone of the final scene greatly intensified, and the players had to think on their feet with instant death the penalty for any mistake. To their credit, the players handled this with aplomb and ultimately overcame Toraku, driving him out of the court in disarray while the Akodo House Guard committed seppuku.