Using Lords and Duty

In the Game of Twenty Questions, players are asked to work with the GM to create a lord to whom they have a sworn duty. If a group of players is brand new to Rokugan, you can use this section to design a lord for them. If the group consists of veterans of the L5R setting, you may let the group create their own lords.

One Lord for the Whole Group

The game can be easier to run if all the characters are serving a single lord, as this means they all have the same broad objectives: those of their lord. In this style, all of the characters serve one clan, and usually a single family. In a single-lord campaign, the GM develops adventures that hinge on the fortunes of that lord and their secrets—secrets hidden from outsiders due to the potential for shame or controversy.

The single-lord campaign style highlights interpersonal connections between the characters, who are likely related through blood or marriage, have trained and served together for some time, or grew up in the same region and share memories of the same places and festivals. The GM should provide the group with a central “home base,” such as a castle, magistrate’s manor, town, or religious site; there, the characters can receive their lord’s orders, gather resources, and recuperate between excursions. GMs should encourage players to personalize this home base to make it a memorable part of the game. This can also make the base a prime target for rival forces, escalating the drama.

Multiple Lords for the Group

Although the single-lord game is easier on a GM, players often gravitate toward the multi-lord campaign because each player has a favorite clan they want to represent. This is by far the most common way to play L5R, but it requires the GM to create a context in which it makes sense for the characters to come together and stay together over the course of several scenarios. Two good ways to tie the group together are to create shared goals or circumstances. The GM can use both in tandem to glue the party together even more firmly. See Conflicting Duties on page 294 for more on games where the PCs might be pursuing different ends.

Shared Goals

When characters all want the same thing, they share the same goal. Because they each have their own lord’s goals to consider, this shared goal must supersede any individual lord’s objectives. In Rokugan, this is done through the Celestial Order: If the competing lords are from the same clan, it’s the clan’s interests that take precedence. If the competing lords are from different clans, it’s the Emperor’s interests that supersede all others. In a game dealing with supernatural threats, the will of Heaven or the kami can unify the group.

Shared Circumstances

Sometimes, groups find it enjoyable to play characters who want different things and compete with each other. In these cases, it isn’t shared objectives that bind them together, but their circumstances. These circumstances may be external ones, such as an assignment from their lord or a natural disaster, that compel the characters to stay in close proximity to one another for a set amount of time. The characters appear in each other’s stories because they are so close to one another. After some time, the shared circumstances typically evolve into shared goals as the samurai from different clans work together to overcome their situation.

Alternatively, these circumstances may come from within, such as through interpersonal bonds. One character might be a hostage or ward of another character’s family; two other characters might be married, betrothed, or in-laws; additional characters might be linked as siblings, cousins, or even adopted kin. This presents a shared goal to protect one’s family (even if family members don’t like one another, blood ties often prove strong enough to bind characters together).

Creating a Lord

To create a lord, the GM or players should determine their concerns, what complications might arise to make managing their concerns difficult (and cause them to rely on the PCs), their retinue and servants, and finally, their personal agendas and qualities.

A lord’s concerns are informed by the type of position they hold as lord and comprise the duties for which they’re responsible. This is analogous to a player character’s giri.

Complications are the typical things that conspire to make the lord’s duties more difficult to achieve. These usually come from external forces. For the purposes of creating scenarios, complications can be translated into hurdles (see page 289) as well as stakes (see page 292).

A lord’s retinue sets the resources they have available to solve their problems. The larger their retinue, the less reliant they will be on the PCs for logistical support.

A lord’s personal agenda is the thing that they’ll pursue if left to their own devices. This is analogous to a player character’s ninjō. A lord’s personal agenda may also serve as an internal force of complication to make their job more difficult. When creating scenarios, these can be translated into goals (see page 288).

A lord’s personal qualities include their demeanor, passions and anxieties, and distinctions and adversities, as well as appearance: what they look like, dress like, sound like, and so on. Personal qualities can be any of the things that help them do their job well or, at times, prevent them from effectively administering their duties.

Concerns, complications, and retinue can be determined by a lord’s general role (examples below). After selecting a role, decide on the lord’s personal qualities and how these fit in with their role or clash against it.

Ministers and Governors

Ministers are officials tasked with overseeing a single aspect of a castle, town, or Empire-wide bureaucracy. These lords form the basis for very narrowly focused campaigns, such as those revolving around politics, war, criminal investigation, or mysticism. Ministers include clan magistrates, castle ministers, and spiritual advisors such as abbots and priests, as well as bureaucrats from Imperial administrations. Nomenclature varies somewhat among clans. In particular, the Unicorn Clan has absorbed organizational traditions from other cultures.

One step up in prestige from ministers are the city governors, who are appointed to oversee the administration of a city. A campaign featuring a city governor as lord allows a group to focus on the fortunes of a single location, with the occasional excursion for outside threats. Governors’ complications and concerns tend to be larger, including taxation and environmental concerns, and their retinues include various ministers in addition to lesser functionaries.

Concerns: Executing the responsibilities such as upholding laws and norms, overseeing rites and ceremonies, investigating lawbreakers and heretics, overseeing development projects, and ensuring stability and productivity.

Complications: Expectations from superiors, unclear divisions of power (who is ultimately responsible for a particular thing?), unclear chains of command (who outranks whom?), rivals for promotions, rivals of intent, scandals and cover-ups, lack of resources, and changing laws.

Retinue and Servants: Counterparts overseeing related spheres, deputy ministers, secretaries, shrine keepers, monks, apprentices, bodyguards, household members (such as spouse, children, and parents), household servants.

Provincial and Family Daimyō

Provincial daimyō make up the backbone of the Empire’s feudal system and are the lowest ranking daimyō. They oversee a province, a collection of cities, towns, and the land between them. Campaigns featuring provincial lords focus on a single area but encompass a wider variety of locations, including castles, towns, villages, rural shrines, and wilderness locations.

Each province is known for particular cultural and specialty items, from festivals to foods and arts to geographical features. GMs should determine the primary means by which the province feeds itself, whether farming, fishing, hunting and gathering, or even imports. Most provinces border three to four other provinces, but those in the far-flung regions of the Empire may be relatively isolated, with only one or two neighbors huddling on the frontier alongside them.

Unlike city governors and ministers, provincial daimyō are not appointed but inherit their titles through a predetermined line of succession. There are usually three or four provincial daimyō reporting to a single family daimyō. The family daimyō oversees the daimyō of all their provinces from their ancestral castle, which may also serve as the capital of a province.

In each clan, there is one leading family whose daimyō also serves as champion, to whom all others swear loyalty. A clan champion is technically in charge of their own province as well as overseeing the affairs of several provincial daimyō and all of their clan’s family daimyō, but in reality it simply means that their ministers do more work on the champion’s behalf. The families and clans are those listed in the Game of Twenty Questions, but this template can also be used to model the daimyō of vassal families and champions of Minor Clans, albeit on a smaller scale.

Concerns: Collecting taxes from citizenry and governors (or subordinate daimyō, for family daimyō/clan champions), ensuring security, cultivating and developing the land, levying armies, overseeing the sensei of the clan schools (family daimyō/clan champion), cultivating heirs, and approving interfamily and interclan marriage (family daimyō/clan champion).

Complications: Environmental issues and disease, interests of neighboring provincial lords, peasant revolts, competing interests of neighboring families and clans, incompetent subordinates, meddling family members, Imperial ordinances.

Retinue and Servants: Most player characters who attain the rank of samurai are eligible to serve as members of the provincial daimyō’s court. Provincial daimyō can also oversee city governors, clan magistrates, and ministers.