Creating Scenarios

Earlier, we discussed how scenes require three ingredients to be worth slowing down and running in real time: goals, obstacles, and stakes. On a small scale, these three things form an encounter or scene in the story, one of many in a given roleplaying game session. String together a series of scenes with multiple goals and obstacles, with evolving stakes, and you have the nuts and bolts of an adventure—in writing terms, a narrative arc, or scenario.

However, roleplaying games differ from novels or movies, because the “audience” (the players) get a say regarding which goals their characters want to pursue, how their characters try to overcome those hurdles, and whether their characters can affect the stakes!

Devising Goals

The goal, or motivating desire, is the most basic element of narrative. In forms of media as ancient as medieval poetry and as modern as video games, goals are often framed as quests. In roleplaying games, goals might also be called quests, but in Rokugan, they are more often framed as aims. These aims are necessary because if a character doesn’t want anything—or doesn’t want to accomplish anything—then the events of the story simply happen to them. If a character moves through a story unaffected emotionally, they are static, and do not really change, for good or for ill.

Given that goals are so important, how does the GM come up with goals for the characters to pursue in the game? In the L5R RPG, two goals are built into every character at character creation: their personal goal, or ninjō, as well as their duty to their lord, or giri.

Ninjō is fairly straightforward: the character wants this thing, and they will be pursuing it during the campaign, sometimes even through pivotal scenes.

Giri should also contain an actionable goal, and GMs can create adventures by creating obstacles that make those goals harder to achieve. Sometimes these obstacles may even be a lord acting against their own best interests, forcing a character to decide whether to disobey their lord to better serve them!

Although these goals don’t have to be mutually exclusive, some conflict between ninjō and giri can make for great roleplaying inspiration. Choosing between one’s desires and one’s duty can make for a thrilling story.

Erecting Hurdles

Goals wouldn’t be interesting if they weren’t difficult to achieve. Completing a goal may only require a character to do one thing, or they may need to break down their goal into many smaller tasks, or sub-objectives. Both the original goal and sub-objectives must have hurdles, or obstacles, that the PCs must overcome.

In RPGs, hurdles typically take one of these forms:

Martial Hurdle: Do they need to fight someone or something to achieve it?

Social Hurdle: Do they need to talk to someone to achieve it?

Investigative Hurdle: Do they need to find out more information to achieve it?

Explorative Hurdle: Do they need to go somewhere to achieve it?

Logistical Hurdle: Do they need to get something to achieve it?

Emotional Hurdle: Do they need to change their beliefs or personality to achieve it?

You should consider giving your players some leeway to determine how their PCs try to get what they want (choosing between types of hurdles and their approach to overcoming them). If there’s only one “correct way” to solve problems, players usually feel that their agency to exert influence over the story has been taken away. “One correct way” also goes against the spirit of the mechanics themselves, as elemental approaches showcase the idea of solving a challenge through different methods.

GMs can brainstorm a list of steps needed for PCs to achieve a goal and work backward from there, or they can also use the different types of hurdles to help them brainstorm the steps. That way, the GM can plan to have their socially focused group be met with NPC adversaries, while their martially inclined group gets to enter into combat in order to accomplish their goals. The different types of goals are explained broadly below—it’s up to the GM to translate the general ideas into specifics for their campaign depending on the exact characters, places, and objects included in their story. The GM should also remember to incorporate specific Bushidō tenets into at least one hurdle per session to keep the constraints of the warrior’s code at the forefront of the players’ concerns (see also Dramatizing Bushidō, on page 286).

Martial Hurdles

Martial hurdles result when two or more entities have competing interests, and only one group can achieve them. This means that the other entity must be eliminated or incapacitated long enough for the competing party to prevail. In Rokugan, creatures, supernatural powers, and especially other characters can all form martial hurdles. Perhaps some guards have been tasked with protecting a valuable item or important person, or a wild beast is preying on the local populace. Martial hurdles can only be overcome through violence, although not all confrontations need to be lethal. Often, injuring or subduing an opponent is all that is needed, but in cases where use of force would be illegal or shameful, characters may be forced to leave no witnesses or tackle the martial hurdle from another angle. In game terms, these confrontations can be modeled using duels, skirmishes, and mass combats.

Which NPC stat blocks will you use, and which will you need to create from scratch?

Do you want to explore a particular subset of the rules in the encounter, such as a specific terrain type or condition?

What are some ways players can spend on their Initiative checks, and what sensory details can you provide to help evoke these possibilities in the players?

What environmental or emotional factors may cause complications during the confrontation?

Social Hurdles

Social hurdles result when characters have competing interests and must be persuaded to abandon those interests or yield to the characters competing with them. Persuasion, intimidation, negotiation, and begging are the weapons wielded in these types of hurdles, with parties extracting promises or trading threats to achieve their aims. Intrigues are a more complex way to model these types of interactions in the game; otherwise, roleplaying can yield the same result if the players can figure out sufficient motivation or leverage to sway the opposing characters.

Which NPC stat blocks will you use, and which will you need to create from scratch?

How do the PCs compare to the NPCs in terms of honor, glory, and status? What does this mean for how the NPCs treat the PCs?

What advantages and disadvantages do the NPCs possess that players can discover and use?

What are some ways players can spend on their checks, and what details can you provide to help evoke these possibilities in the players?

Are there any special voices or mannerisms you can adopt to make the NPCs distinctive? Provide one memorable, unique detail for each.

Investigative Hurdles

Investigative hurdles result from missing or withheld information. Who or what did this thing? How did they do it? Where and when? Why? For characters who have been trained in the Kitsuki Method, an investigative hurdle could entail investigating a room for physical evidence, whereas shugenja could lean on their relationships with the spirits to catch a glimpse of supernatural clues. Characters may also have to consult certain sources of written information, such as a character’s pillow book or scrolls in an exclusive library. In most cases, testimony is also required to piece together the missing details. In this way, investigative hurdles intersect social hurdles when a character has the desired information and must be persuaded to give it up.

What information is absolutely necessary for the characters to progress to the next step? Any story-stopping hurdles should be accessible to the players without a roll.

What details might the PCs notice right away with various vigilance scores?

What bonus information is accessible in the scene that isn’t necessary to advance to the next hurdle? What additional context or implications does it provide? What skills can be used to unlock those extra clues?

Are there any other entities who are following the same trail, and what will they do if they discover the PCs are also interested?

Are the PCs collecting the information in a socially or legally permissible manner? Remember that the testimony of an honorable samurai trumps evidence in the Rokugani justice system.

What political ramifications does the unearthing of buried information have on social harmony? How will different factions react?

Logistical Hurdles

Logistical hurdles result when the characters do not have the tool, skill, or guide they need to complete a task. It’s the physical version of the investigative hurdle. The characters may need to figure out where they can get the required item (resulting in an investigative hurdle) and then figure out how to get it. In Rokugan, common methods of acquisition include barter, payment, and even doing errands or tasks in return. Sometimes getting to the needed item is the hurdle, which can make the hurdle martial, social, or explorative as well.

Are there other items that might suit the needs? Sometimes, the best-suited items are also the hardest to acquire, and vice versa.

Who is the current owner of the thing, and how important is it to them? Can the PCs pay for it or requisition it on behalf of their lord?

Is there any history surrounding the thing itself (competing claims of ownership, curses, etc.) that complicates its acquisition?

Is it illegal or socially frowned upon for the PCs to acquire the item? If so, how much honor will players need to stake to acquire the thing?

Does the item need rules, and can you use existing rules for it or invent new ones?

Explorative Hurdles

When the setting or environment itself is the barrier, the group is met with an explorative hurdle. Maybe the area is difficult to navigate or hard to traverse due to its physical characteristics, requiring that characters be fast, strong, or agile to overcome barriers. Environments may also serve as a barrier when the characters don’t know the route to their destination and must blaze new trails to find what they are looking for. Explorative hurdles intersect with logistical hurdles if the characters need to outfit an expedition, and they can become martial hurdles if the terrain includes hostile inhabitants.

What limitations does the environment impose on the characters’ senses or capabilities? Can they use their advantages to overcome them?

How dangerous is the terrain? Are there any areas that are especially dangerous or potentially safer, and what are those effects?

What are some ways players can spend on their checks, and what sensory details can you provide to clue players into these possibilities?

Do you want to explore a particular subset of the rules in the encounter, such as a specific terrain type or condition?

Who or what inhabits the area? Are there animals, people, or spirits, and are there NPC stat blocks you can use to represent them?

Emotional Hurdles

The last hurdle is the most difficult one to dramatize (that is to say, illustrate in the fiction of the game as opposed to explaining outright), as it takes place inside a character’s mind. In the emotional hurdle, the character must change their own behaviors in order to succeed. Perhaps they have refused to give up on a certain goal or way of thinking and have become obsessed, and so they must let go in order to move on with their life and find mental peace. Or maybe they have refused to take a certain path or try a certain activity because of their prejudices, and they must learn to let go of their bias in order to grow and improve themselves. Disadvantages are especially well suited to becoming emotional hurdles, as they are stumbling blocks the player has already singled out as things they want to engage with during play. Note, since emotional hurdles happen in a character’s mind, players and GMs may need to get in the habit of describing what their character is thinking to interact with them.

What are some situations that might force the problematic emotion or disadvantage to become apparent?

What types of NPCs or personalities will exacerbate (or soothe) the problematic emotion? How can they be worked into the situation?

How will NPCs and society react to the character when they express this emotional hurdle?

What does the character need to do in order to counteract the effects of the problematic emotion or disadvantage? Is there a way that the character can unmask to temporarily overcome the hurdle, and what are the consequences?

If this were a movie, what setting backdrop or props might the director choose to further illustrate the emotions in the scene?

Raising the Stakes

The final component to crafting scenarios is the stakes: what will or won’t happen if the characters succeed at their goal or fail to accomplish it. Put another way, these are the risks the character could incur as consequences to their actions, and the rewards that they might reap as a result. Risks and rewards can take the shape of various physical, social, mental/emotional, and spiritual effects. Players are great resources for coming up with potential risks and rewards, since they usually know what they want their character to get, and what would feel like a punishment. And often risks and rewards are the very things that shape a character’s desires in the first place.

GMs should remember that failure, too, must be interesting. If the characters don’t achieve their goal, the story should still proceed—there’s no “game over” screen in roleplaying games. What happens next? Certainly, the PCs might be put into a bad spot or have to sacrifice more resources in order to get what they need, but even in rare cases in which the entire group gets killed (such as in a skirmish or mass battle), the river of time still flows in Rokugan, and their deaths will have an impact on the fortunes of their lord and their families.

Physical risks include injury, disease, and death, as well as loss of wealth or property. On the other hand, while Rokugani society considers physical rewards less impressive or important than other motivators, “getting stuff” can still be a powerful reward. Weapons and armor, equipment, property, and wealth all can serve as a reward and counterpart to physical risks.

Social risks include embarrassment and shame, loss of position or reputation, losing friends and gaining enemies, or at its worst, exile. Social rewards include glory, titles, allies, and successful romance. Social rewards may also come with physical rewards, as status and property are often interlinked in Rokugani culture.

Mental and emotional risks can be presented in the game by gaining new disadvantages, strife, or—more narratively—a character’s unhappiness, frustration, or impaired mental faculties. Rewards can include gaining new advantages, training in skills or techniques, or—more narratively—happiness, pride, and other positive emotions.

Finally, Rokugan is a profoundly spiritual world. Characters can acquire karma from their actions, earn the enmity or patronage of specific Fortunes or spirits of the land, and if they traffic with foul forces, they might be afflicted with the Shadowlands Taint. Most spiritual risks and rewards can be represented in the game through certain advantages and disadvantages.