Hello everyone,

As some of you know, I've been running a Bushido campaign and so far I've been having a great time with it. I've not run Bushido in over 15 years and I find that gameplay is still very enjoyable. Bushido just strikes a good balance between the gritty and the fantastic.

The group is taking a few weeks off from the game while the focus of the campaign shifts from the rural northern province home of the PCs to the capital in the south. I'm going to run a mini-campaign of Call of Cthulhu while I mull over some elements and then we will get back to Bushido.

Before the campaign shifts I wanted to share some details of what has happened and some nice developments.

The players consist of a warrior born to the samurai caste and servant/distant relative of the local daimyo; the nephew of the daimyo who has turned his back on his samurai heritage to take vows as a shinto priest; a son of a local artisan who studied in the capital and has returned to the village as a magician and not the magistrate his parents had hoped for; a commoner warrior who was under the command of the samurai, but has slowly become his friend and a yakuza leg-breaker who has been betrayed by his criminal family and now serves as the priest's protector.

The original setting were two northern frontier provinces. The two daimyo's who ruled the provinces have been locked in a bitter struggle for over 20 years. 4 years ago the emperor sent magistrates to end the dispute once and for all. Both daimyo's lost face with the royal court and the player's find themselves becoming involved in the machinations of the two bitter, old men and trying to fix the damage the war has done to their home.

The players have foiled a revenge plot perpetrated against their daimyo, laid to rest a vengeful ghost of a temple maiden murdered during one of the conflicts, fought back an invasion by an ogre and his goblin henchmen, dealt with a corrupt minister and faced off against yakuza who were smuggling stolen budhist art treasures from China. At the end of their last session the players found some clues which linked the corrupt minister, the smuggling ring, and the wife of a nobleman in the capital. They are on their way to the capital now to investigate. The first part of this campaign seems to have a theme of 'children inheriting disasters created by their parents.' All of the challenges faced by the party up to now are directly linked to the 20 years of war between the two provinces.

As we shift to the capital I hope to add in touches of country comes to town for the players. The characters have become very big fish in their small northern pond, but once they get to the capital I'm hoping it will seem as if they are starting all over again. I've promised the players that during our downtime the characters will get about 4 months of training 'downtime' in game which will represent them getting settled in the capital. The magician is particularly excited about this training time since he wants to study with fellow mages. The training will certainly make their characters a bit more powerful, but they will still lack connections in the capital as well as the cosmopolitan attitude. In short they will have to battle the stigma of being 'hayseeds.'

By the end of the year I hope to see them returning to their home province. Some of them will no doubt succumb to the lure of the big city and others might meet an untimely end in a grubby alley behind a lowly tea house or some seedy gambling den. I wonder when the campaign does finally come full circle and they return to their tiny frontier province if they find the people they grew up with to be backwards and unsophisticated or if they will be happy just to be back home.

Sounds like a great story.  

I wouldn't worry about the characters when they return to their province - they'll be the new lords of the realm!

Awesome.  I love Bushido, and ran some great games with it, back in the day.

Nice to see it still in play.
=

Glad to see Bushido threads...cool game.
Thanks for posting this! Love to have ideas to mine for scenarios...

Which edition of Bushido are you using? Are you running it RAW or have you houseruled chunks?

Quote from: Spinachcat;476211Which edition of Bushido are you using? Are you running it RAW or have you houseruled chunks?

I'm running the FGUI edition (I believe that's 2nd ed.). I mostly 'run as written,' except there are aspects of the game that the GM is expected to flesh out. Accordingly I've created my system of 'okuden,' which are special techniques attainable by masters in various skills (ex. there is a Naginata okuden that is called 'The Resounding Bell' it allows the master of Naginata to execute a parry that effects both front and back facing spaces. It can also be stacked with the Naginata 'arrow-cutting' technique). Over the years I've also added to the spell lists. These new spells are considered very exotic and players have to do some serious research and exploration to access them. They kind of act as okuden for magic users.

The only major place I break from the game system is that I don't allow ninja as player characters unless the campaign I'm running is solely about a ninja team. It's been my experience in the past that if you have a sole ninja character within a group of players it will inevitably lead to complications that really bog down the game for everyone. If I have a player who wants to play a sneaky or roguish character I steer him to the yakuza profession.

Bushido was a fun game. I played it almost 30 years ago. I'd play it again if I had a chance.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;476311Accordingly I've created my system of 'okuden,' which are special techniques attainable by masters in various skills

Very cool! Have you posted them online?

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;476311The only major place I break from the game system is that I don't allow ninja as player characters unless the campaign I'm running is solely about a ninja team.

We did that too. It was always weird in both Bushido and Oriental Adventures to have the samurai traveling around with somebody the clearly know is a ninja.