Weekend in Rokugan 2018 AAR

One week following MidSouthCon was Weekend in Rokugan held in St Louis, MO. This event dedicated to the Legend of the Five Rings game system is one that I look forward to more and more. With Arcanicon's demise, I seem to have fewer and fewer playing opportunity to play those systems I like. The classic AEG game is one I appreciate very much. It was the game I met the gang in Dublin.

WiR is the one convention this year I intend to only PLAY something other than D&D and I look forward to it with growing anticipation.

After a fruitful and rather successful morning of coding learning new tricks with C# and .Net Core, it was time to hit the road. The trip itself was uneventful other than an odd jam at the Pilot gas station in Paducah KY where most of the pumps were blocked and people just left their cars there. For extended periods, enough to create traffic. I jumped to the Marathon next door, filled up, used the facilities, and bought me some candy and a coffee to go while the line barely moved.

I got into Chesterfield (the exact location of the event) around 4:30. With the next slot beginning at 7PM, I drove to my hotel (across the Interstate) and was able to set up, plugged in the laptop, and took a short nap before game time.

The first event was really interesting: two cranes, two scorpions, and a phoenix... Four shugenja and a single bushi! We managed to talk our way through this one. The scorpion Intimidated some guys while I was able to use my pretty crane flowery language to convince others.

I think this may have been the first time I played with Ken-W. Played-played that is, as he GM'd Arcanis for me many times in the past. He and I have similar yet very different characters: from the same school but the similarities pretty much end there.

Stopped for a meal of junk food, then off to sleep.

The morning game, I sat with Ken again! This time we were three Asahina-trained cranes shugenjas! (along with a crab, a mantis and a scorpion). This one was more challenging for our party and ended up having a lot more action, including an somewhat epic battle at the end. Where I spent my time trying to limit the amount of damage our group took against a very tough opponent. It was fun.

As we finished with almost two hours to spare, I drove to Smashburger. I really enjoy they burgers and had a mammoth made for lunch. No fries, no drink, only the burger. While in that little mall, I saw a Games Workshop store. Now I do not think I entered a GW store since the early days of my stay in Louisville, where the GW was around the corner from our house.

To his credit, the guy there was really good and friendly and just pushy enough not to be annoying and to want me to come by his store to learn more. "Lucky" for me, I don't live in the area. One of the things we discussed is that I dislike the sculpting of their miniatures with the many pieces of flair all over them and how they do not encourage me to convert such models. After all, cutting a 2$ is a no-brainer, but when a mini costs you 5 or more dollars, you'd better be DANG sure you can succeed in what you plan to do...

Got back in time for a fun afternoon with more shugenja madness. Three shugenja, one unicorn courtier, one monk and a phoenix bushi. When combat started, the poor enemies were splattered. The Ide and I aced the talking parts and the monk did all the monk stuff.

I took another nap before the final slot of the event. The 1-hour refreshed me and I was ready to go for the whole evening. It was the court larp event. Now I must say that I do not particularly enjoy those events. Most of the time, I figure my character is too weak to be consulted.

This time around, however, they did something I really enjoyed: in addition to the court plot, there was a plot running through the adventure where we felt something was wrong. With the help of Jeffrey-M (whose Isawa shugenja is a frequent companion of mine), we used the divination skill to help us along and discover many things. I spoke with the Emerald Champion and kept him and my clan abreast of everything I discovered and received a cool reward for it: his notice.

This side-plot to me, was the highlight of the event. It gave me a reason to approach some of the NPCs and interact with them, but also made us shugenja have to focus and discover something about what happened that made me feel like a shugenja, like a priest. Big kudos to the admin team on that, it made my weekend.

The rest of the larp went pretty much as expected: I participated in some events: Origami and Performing but did not win. I had fun and that was most important.

Home to snore.

My weekend in St Louis would not be complete without sitting down for what is becoming a tradition: breakfast at Gingham's in St Charles with Philip and Rachel, who this year were joined by Wesley. We talked gaming for hours. It was awesome. The food was awesome and I did not have to eat again until I got home some five hours later.

Yes, I plan to attend WiR again next year. Yes, I will play more Heroes of Rokugan at Gencon. I can't wait.