Last time, I talked about sketching up the characters for a one-shot and mapping out their relationships and the complications that I would throw at them. This time, I am going to talk about the main plot line.

I have sketched out how I want the session to play out and the kinds of scenes that I want to have. These are very genre specific - the scenes that would make a great super heroes game are very different from the scenes that would make a good brooding vampire game, which are, in turn, very different than those that would make a good pulp adventure game. In this case, I am writing a samurai game. Because I want the game to be an actual samurai game, not Dungeons and Dragons with katanas and Japanese names, there are several things I want to see happen:

1. The players are going to have to make at least one difficult decision, where the tenets of Bushido are in conflict
2. Combat should be brutal and deadly - at least one PC should die during the climactic battle scene
3. There needs to be a climactic battle scene
4. Sacrifice is a big theme in this genre, so I want the PCs to have to decide between their own personal good and the good of the Empire
5. Social conflict in the samurai flavor is very cool, so there should be a scene where the party's courtier will have to work very hard to not get everyone in a lot of trouble or dead by saying the wrong thing or pissing off the wrong person.

That is a fairly long list to cram into a single 4-hour session, but I think I can pull it off.

Note that the rest of this post contains some light spoilers, so if you do not want to read them, stop reading now.






Ready? Ok.

The basic plot, without giving much away, is thus: the PCs are entrusted with a highly sensitive letter that they must take to the Emperor's brother, who lives at another court and then aide the brother in whatever he decides to do after receiving the letter.

This means, basically, that the party will start off at the Imperial palace, travel to the Scorpion Court (where the Emperor's brother lives), and then travel somewhere else to complete the mission, where there will be a dramatic confrontation.

Now from that plot outline, we can see that goals 2 and 3 are already sorted by the conclusion. However, I want to foreshadow what the stakes are and give the players an intro to the combat system, so there will be a minor skirmish during the trip to the Scorpion Court. This skirmish will also hit one of the sub plots and so may also touch on goal 1.

For those of you not familiar with the L5R setting, the Scorpions are the "scoundrel" clan, and get up to all sorts of nefarious plots and schemes. A court scene at the Scorpion Court will hit goal 5 nicely. One of the sub plots in which two of the characters are involved revolves around a particular member of the Scorpion Court, so it is likely that I will also be able to hit goal 1 here as well.

So, with that brief blot overview, it looks like I am going to be able to meet all 5 of my story goals and deal with both sub plots.

Next time - Planning for the Unknown (a.k.a. "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Accept Cat Herding")