Spirit Hunters, a Shadowlands Preview

[Masakiyo 73]

On 3/5/2019 at 6:00 AM, Kaiju said:

I am gonna watch "The Great Wall" in anticipation of this book! I ve been playing L5R since the start of 4th edition, and this seems to be the closest thing I ll ever get to a shadowlands book that really services the whole japanese fantasy/oni/demons/samurai-mordor theme. I found 4th edition, especially with the advanced timeline, had sort of never delivered on the "big oni army charging the wall" fantasy, especially since the rules of 4th edition are far less capable of handling such fights dramatically and tactically anyway.

As a matter of discussion, the size and height of the great carpenter wall seems to vary wildly between sources. The current iteration in the 5th edition is going with 100 feet or so, right? Basically, implausibly tall and epic, but not quite GoT-levels Great Wall epic. Is that the height you work with? I have heard more reasonable figures like 30 feet thrown around, but that sounds like a bigger castle, not quite the epic great wall to me.

Also, there once was this adventure-module made by a third party called "Mirror, Mirror". Its an amazing achievement in horror storytelling at the great wall. Anyone ever run it successfully? I am contemplating using it for my new campaign (that launches when I get my grubby mitts on this shadowlands book!)

Did your campaign ever get going?  I'm hoping to do a Shadowlands heavy campaign myself somewhere down the line and I was interested to hear your experiences.

[Kaiju 129]

its going, but player actions have turned the storyline into an entirely different direction. My GM style is not very railroady, so I think we ll be stuck away from the Wall for now.

Sorry to not be able to share better experiences. For what its worth, the campaign is about how to PAY for the wall, and who is supposed to pay for the defense of rokugan in the first place, so it forced me to develop that aspect of the Crab Clan and general Shadowlands defense better, which has been a very popular topic: How do you feed 270.000 Crab Samurai, many of them under daily combat conditions? How do you repair a wall of that size at that height? What equipment is needed to move siege engines, how do you replace the losses, what happens to broken equipment?

If things change and we ever get into actual Shadowlands action, I ll write it here.

[Masakiyo 73]

Important stuff to be sure but I'm surprised players would want a campaign focused primarily on logistics.  But I think that's one of the strengths of this particular game.  It allows for a lot of different play styles and focuses.  Give the people what they want!