Another Topaz Championship - Part I - Deja vu? You bet

Not these three

A new group and a new team is diving towards the Topaz Championship.

 Most of us know the story so let's concentrate on the highlights.

The group

We have Togashi Yoshi. Yoshi is bemused at his attendance but very,very keen to try everything possible and help people in any way possible.

Yoshi highlights include the now obligatory, 'what's a horse?' followed by absolutely whipping the Unicorn candidate and introduced a new level of love for his exciting new animal familiar. I pictured the Monk charging over the course blindly sticking his arms and legs randomly out and  catching every hoop. Her ring approach was also thematic with Yoshi basically walking up to the horse and staring at its eye from a few centimetres away.  The horse was obviously creeped out by this but it undeniably worked. This was doubly fortunate as he was otherwise utterly sucking at the tests having managed a grand total of, erm, zero points up to that point including some utterly glorious, 'ha! Athletics my strength. My magnificent fitness will come to the fore' - followed by zero successes on the roll.

The other highlight was the introduction of a useful new L5R phase 'monksplaining'. When the Ronin were 'attempting' to insult Yoshi he completely misunderstood and started following them around explaining his tattoos in detail, then his background, then what a Monk was. To the utter bemusement of the offensive Ronin who then tried to escape from the nutter (unsuccessfully)

Her own fight with her personal Ronin seemed to be channelling Morpheus's training scene with Neo from the Matrix, 'do you think your strength has any impact here? Stop trying to hit me and hit me!' - except in this case he basically beat the Ronin up instead.

Next up we have Akodo Masoko. She is very focuses on utterly crushing everyone else though showed a distressing wish to get rat arsed before the competition started. Masoko was unwilling to let anything get in the way of winning so refused the ghosts request (excellent…). After all he was admittedly  'light blue'. Masoko did the best at the various first day challenges ending up with five points. Masoko highlights include her basically channelling Jin from Samurai Champloo with the Ronin and just saying 'hmmm' and taking a drink whilst the Ronin was trying to insult her. 

Samurai Champloo's 'Jin', exemplifies calm..

She was so laid back she did not even notice the fight had started and then spent her free water movement action to explain to her attacking ronin, 'no THAT’S not how you attack with a Bokken, 'THIS' is how you attack with a Bokken  - and then rolled a grand total of zero successes. Nonplussed she spent her free action the next round also explaining, ,' just tricking I missed for informative purposes' before actually hitting. Another glorious moment occurred when Masako decided to assist Sakura via the unusual tactic of 'throwing' her Bokken over the room at the Ronin (unusual because everyone could get everywhere in the inn yet she still decided that the actual ideal tactic was basically to throw her weapon away). Equally gloriously she utterly missed thus destroying several expensive bottles of sake at the bar.

Finally we have a second Dragon in Mirumoto Sakura, a badly scarred female Dragon clan potential Bushi.  Sakura loves her two weapon style so much that she attempted to carry 'two' Bokken around with her. The GM was not sympathetic to her request…She also had a mare of a first day at the tests managing a less than stellar two points. Unfortunately only beating Hitoshi creating an amusing situation where she later attempted to cheer Hitoshi up by saying, 'I suck too, though admittedly I have double your points'. Which strangely failed to cheer Hitoshi up. Sakura highlights included spilling the tea in the tea ceremony all over Doji Satsume and then during the fight Sakura was the fastest at disposing of her own opponent and bravely went to assist Hitoshi. This included a rather impressive command to that Ronin to, 'fight me'. Unlike the tea ceremony and most of the first day skill tests this actually worked. Unfortunately this Ronin was holding his Bokken correctly and managed to incapacitate Sakura. Fortunately the other two had also finished off their opponents by then and tag teamed the Ronin to unconsciousness with their fists (Masako having already chucked her's 'somewhere' and Yoshi hadn't bothered even drawing his)

Ronin. Not that clean. 

Other Stuff

The group utterly misunderstood Ryu's comment that he had' fallen into the river after seeing his dead master floating on it' and rather realistically assumed his dead masters corpse had just floated past. Considering what actually had happened this would indeed have been unexpected. Perhaps followed by the Emperors…and he's not even dead (yet?). GM descriptive fail..

The groups arrival in Tsuma was also auspicious though Yoshi's offer of his room to Hitoshi was actual literal as he was going to go outside to sleep there instead. As it wasn't necessary they shared instead. Rather than go straight to bed Masako wanted to get drunk. Yoshi on the other hand decided he would go to the temple to meditate on why his Daimyo was mad (he's the living embodiment of one of the Kami….not mad….)and Sakura then decided to join him. Rather than drink on his own this then caused Masako to also go and meditate so we had all three at the temple of Ameratsu.

So for the second session will Sakura pass her gempuku or does a job at 'ricedonalds' await if she fails?

Can Yoshi stop being quite so cheerful and willing to fail at everything and totally not be bothered.

Will Masako indeed beat everyone to gain eternal glory and can she find her Bokken before the second day starts.

GM Notes

A smaller group and it worked far more smoothly with three player characters though that's more an indication of my own GM limits than anything else. One player has 3rd and 4th edition L5R RPG experience and two L5R newbies though one is a very experienced D&D DM (Yoshi) and the other also has a lot of other gaming experience. It is also a narrative group which is lovely though that might also be helped by the small group size.