Actual Play – A Champion is Chosen (6/28/2010)

GM: Travis Lindquist
Players: Chris, Fattig, Alec, Omar, Steve, Sean and Woodbury (yep, Eric Woodbury)
System: L5R

The Sapphire Championship was held and to our surprise and delight Miyazaki showed up… in the flesh. Travis and Woodbury worked it out for him to show up for one night… and he won the championship! Which was many flavors of awesome.

Here were the trials… as the contestants received them:

Greetings, potential competitors! I look forward to seeing each of you at the tournament, whether you choose to compete or not.

Whoever can strike a petal from a chrysanthemum without a sword, he shall be the Sapphire Champion.
Whoever can sail a Kobune without wind or stars for guidance, he shall be the Sapphire Champion.
Whoever can be the whole of the law, without quoting the law, he shall be the Sapphire Champion.
Whoever can strike a Kobune while bounced on the waves of life, he shall be the Sapphire Champion
Whoever can see the crime long after it’s been committed, he shall be the Sapphire Champion.
Whoever can scale a mountain of paper without moving a stone, he shall be the Sapphire Champion.

What rocked

We got to see some wicked dispensation of justice (at least two verdicts of kill them both, and one was simply cutting them down before either spoke).

We each found creative (and in some cases) crazy ways to sail with no direction and no wind.

I got to have some more contact with my sword and ancestors. Always a plus for Rei.

Did I mention that Woodbury showed up? That was killer!

Our process of dealing with paperwork was hysterical. Most of us farmed it out, stored it away, or in my case destroyed it.

The final score was a tie between Miyazaki and Shimizu. The end result, Miyazaki just barely one and, due to his great obligation and friendship with Shimizu made the boon of the Sapphire Champion include the Sparrow clan reuniting with the Crane. Shimizu is a Kakita once more… and the divorce papers followed only moments later…

Shimizu and Rei were able to do some significant political maneuvering to contain the Yasuki war to the family provinces, rather than letting the fighting spread to the clans.

Shimizu is now an Emerald Magistrate. Rei the General of the Sapphire Legions. Shiko is the Ruby Champion and… as noted before Miyazaki is the Sapphire Champion. Some pretty serious shifts in power here.

The contests were fun, appropriate to the station and pretty quick. It was a good tournament.

The paddle boat was created!  Woot Miya Engineering!

What could have been improved

Eh, there was a time where I thought a point score wasn’t adjudicated as I thought the NPC (in this case Tsuruchi Nadu) would have doled it out (regarding destroying the paperwork). I talked to Travis and he agreed that I should have gotten a couple more points. It’s a pretty trifling thing, but in character it makes Rei happy to know that she was just a point behind Miyazaki and Shimizu.

We didn’t really get a chance to meet Omar’s character and now that we’re back on the battlefield, it will be a while till we have real interactions with him. But frankly there just wasn’t time for more.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php