Hey everyone! How’s your summer going? Mine’s great, thanks!

Summer means one thing, and that’s convention season. It’s only June and I’ve been working on stuff for GenCon for weeks already. By the time my summer vacation is over (in my day job I’m a teacher), I’m going to need an entirely different vacation. But it will be worth it! Still, since it’s on my mind so much right now, I thought I might share a little bit of our plans for the convention. This year, on Thursday night, we are having a very special event. Together with our stalwart amigos over at Heroes of Rokugan, we’re putting on a unique RPG event, with twenty tables of six players each. This unique event is tied in both to the release of our Second City Boxed Set, which should be available at the show in some limited fashion, and the main storyline event at the show for the CCG. We hope to use the event to allow RPG players a little impact on the CCG storyline (turnabout is fair play, and all that), but we’ll have to see how that pans out. Hopefully you understand that’s a bit tricky!

The Second City Boxed Set

We’ve talked a lot about the Second City over the past few months. Honestly I feel like I’ve been discussing it for longer than I actually worked on it, which isn’t true, but perception is a funny thing. I am more excited than I know how to explain about its release at GenCon, although I suspect we won’t have a lot of copies. Still, I can’t wait to see your reaction to the thing. I hope that it is everything we designed it to be and more. Regardless of all that, there’s not a lot more I can talk about without crossing over into “giving too much away” land, but here’s a few tidbits to enjoy while we run down the home stretch. So far, we’ve previewed the content of the Crane, Mantis, and Unicorn clan mechanics. Let’s have a look at one more!

Scorpion Alternate Path: Sons of Shadow
The land known as the Colonies is a vast and open area, one in which a great many dangers and secrets are hidden. The other clans are interested in those secrets, interested in what resources and power might be contained or unleashed by them, interested in how they can benefit by such things. The clans understand the physical dangers of such things, but only the Scorpion understand the spiritual danger. Only they know the razor’s edge on which they walk, risking the integrity of their souls and honor by examining such things. The two branches of the family, one an order of priests and the other an order of magistrates, have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the danger presented by the Colonies is never fully realized. Whatever horrors they must perform, they accept as a necessary burden to prevent even greater horrors from being unleashed. If all goes as planned, then the other clans will never know the suffering that the Scorpion have inflicted upon them, much less the greater nightmares that they are spared as a result.

So there’s that! The mechanic associated with the description is one that took some tweaking to get correct before it was time to go to press. What we wanted to do, mechanically speaking, was create a bridge between the two Schools maintained by the Soshi family: the magistrates and the shugenja. This Path is available to either and allows each to draw upon the strengths of the other in order to supplement their own abilities. It’s a sort of a way to provide synergy between the two and demonstrate how the family focuses its efforts.

Oh, okay, let’s have a look at one more preview.

Destroyers Air 2, Earth 4, Fire 1, Water 4
Reflexes 3 , Agility 3

Initiative: 4k2
Attack: Bite 5k5 (Complex), Claw 8k5 (Complex, tiger only), Gore 6k3 (Complex, elephant only)
Damage: Bite 4k4, Claw 5k4, Gore 6k6
Armor TN: 20 (tiger), 25 (elephant)
Reduction: 3 (tiger), 6 (elephant)
Wounds: 35: +0; 70: +2; 105: +4; 140: Dead
Skills: Jiujutsu 3, Stealth 4 (tiger only)

Special Abilities:

• Trait Bonuses: Tiger Destroyers gain one additional rank in Reflexes and two ranks in Agility. Elephant Destroyers gain one additional rank in Strength and two in Stamina.

The name Destroyers is something of a misnomer, but given the experiences of the Great Clans during the Destroyer War a generation ago, the misunderstanding is certainly understandable. During that conflict, the Great Clans faced an almost limitless legion of metallic monstrosities created by the Cult of Ruhmal for the purpose of conquest. A much smaller subset of the Destroyers, what were generally perceived to be the more elite forces of the enemy, were large, bipedal beast men that bore a striking resemblance to various mundane creatures. The most common forms of these creatures were tigers and elephants, although there were other forms documented during the war. Since the conclusion of the war and the death of the demon goddess Kali-Ma, whatever malevolent force drove these creatures to war has faded, and they have returned to a more animal-like state. Small numbers of these creatures can be found in the Colonies, typically in the wildest and most dangerous regions. It is believed that these are not natural creatures, but rather some creation of the cult for the purpose of warfare, and have since lost their driving force and become simple beasts.

The so-called Destroyers are large creatures, typically two to three times larger than a normal warrior and larger even than the ogres that dwell within the Shadowlands. They are enormously physically powerful, but do not actively seek conflict with humans. Indeed, the creatures seem to prefer to avoid humans altogether, probably as a vestigial instinct from their previous, mundane existence. When cornered or provoked, however, they are incredibly dangerous and can devastate entire squadrons of well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armored samurai, if they are not prepared to face them.

Mechanics for Destroyers is ironically one of the things I have been asked about the most since the conclusion of the Celestial Edition storyline. Sadly (maybe?), the ironclad variant of the Destroyers are now extinct, all of them having been deactivated or destroyed in the aftermath of that war (although I should point out that there are some related statistics in the set as well), but the idea that the bestial ones just went back to being animals despite their enormous size was one that I found very interesting. I have some ideas on how to use these things in the fiction, but why should I have all the fun? Merry Christmas, GMs!

The Book of Earth

Things are progressing well with the Book of Earth! We are in full blown editing slash playtesting mode right now, and the book will likely be off to layout before it gets much later in the game. I am in a bit of a hurry at the moment, but I did want to share something with you that my colleague Rob Hobart just posted to playtest. I think it’s pretty great! What do you think?

Hiruma Slayers [Bushi]
Rank: 4
Replaces: Hiruma Bushi 4 or Hiruma Scout 4
Requires: Heavy Weapons (Masakiri) 5
Technique: XXX

While most samurai despise the masakari as little more than a peasant axe, the Hiruma found value in its combination of relatively small size and the ability to deliver powerful cutting blows. The Slayer technique utilizes two masakari in tandem, one in each hand, to deliver a terrifying barrage of blows on the foe. You may wield a masakari in each hand; when doing so, you may attack as a Simple Action and ignore all penalties for wielding two weapons. When doing this in the Full Attack stance, you gain an additional +3k0 bonus to your damage rolls.

As you can see, while heavy weapons are something of a focus for the book, we’re not at all abandoning other avenues of development.

The Imperial Histories, Volume 2

The latest thing on our RPG radar, of course, is the second volume of the Imperial Histories, which we are planning for a release early next year. I have received a few dozen entries, and while I haven’t had a chance to read them just yet, the ones I have skimmed over have been very interesting. I’m eager to dive into them, but that’s probably not going to happen before sometime in July, and maybe not even until after GenCon. It seems I was a bit… optimistic… in anticipating my schedule this summer. But my shortfall might be your benefit! If you were thinking of submitting an entry and didn’t manage to get it in under the deadline, you can still submit one. I’m probably just giving myself a bigger headache, but since I have several dozen to read through already, what’s a few more?

Until next time!