Converting Masks of Nyarlathotep to Oriental Adventures:

As mentioned in a previous post, I was considering published campaigns that I could adapt to the Legend of the Five Rings setting for my second, much smaller, group. The one that essentially meets as when I have the time and can be bothered, as opposed to the weekly earth-shaker game.

Kelvin Green, genius that he is, suggested reworking Masks of Nyarlathotep. An awesome idea that I leapt on. I had just finished converting the first chapter, originally set in New York, to work in L5R's City of Lies when I had a revelation (inspired by the excellent blog Ramblings of a Great Khan): Why the hell am I bothering to convert this awesome campaign to L5R, a game system my players have never used, when I can just use OSRIC flavoured with 1^st ed AD&D Oriental Adventures?

So, over the next few days you'll probably come across a number of Oriental Adventures themed posts. Nothing to do with my efforts converting the campaign module itself, I'm afraid. After all, my group has to play through it first. Mostly I'll be taking the mounds of racial and character class information in OA and re-presenting it in a more user friendly format. Last night I had to read through the Samurai class information three times to work out how many starting proficiencies they had.  The “OSRIC” Oriental class artciles will therefore be nothing new or original (with the possible exception of the ninja. I might re-work that class entirely) just a rehash of existing material. Mostly for the benefit of my players, it has to be said, but hopefully there will be something useful in there for you too.

I'll also post maps and a brief key of my version of a fantasy Japan. Though the campaign won't be set in either OA's Kara-Tur or L5R's Rokugan I'll probably use elements of each lifted wholesale from the original. The starting city will still be called Ryoko Owari. It will still be a “hive of scum and villainy” but it wont be Rokugan's Ryoko Owari, apart from a few key locations. I also anticipate building in an area based heavily on L5R's Shadowlands. Blood Magic will also feature heavily (it shouldn't be too hard to work up rules for Blood Magic in OSRIC). So look forward to seeing articles about these over the next few weeks.

Anyway, that's it for me just now. I'm coming down with could be a winter cold. So I'm off to hop under my duvet with a mug of hot toddy and try to beat this thing down before it has a chance to take hold.

Suggestions for a Published Campaign Please?

Played session 5 of the Isle of the Earthshaker last night. Had a blast, sphincter jokes galore! All the more appropriate given that the party consisted of three assassins, two fighters, a paladin and no clerics (Euthalia's player had a job interview to prep for and had to cancel). Given that puts us four players down from last session my initial thoughts were that Wednesday's probably aren't that great for my players - but really we were only two down. Glykeria was also a last minute cancellation - on the grounds that we did have a spare camera/voice PC for a Skype connection. So we would have had eight.

Anyway, I'm digressing. As regular readers probably know I like to have a couple of campaigns prepped at any one time, so that I can offer my players a selection whenever it's time for a new campaign. Given that Pendragon is a very dangerous system (and we've come close to a TPK twice now) I've been looking at other options.

Options 1 and 2, a 2nd ed WFRP Campaign or the post-apoc campaign I was working on before the move, is already sorted.  As these are options for the group that consists of myself, my wife and one other couple (with no regular play schedule and which I have limited time to prepare for) both are heavily based on existing campaigns, albiet heavily modified to fit into different settings and rules sytems.

However, my number 3 option would be a Legend of the Five Rings game. Not sure yet if I would run it with D20 or the new 4th edition L5R rules, mind you. But what I need is a suggestion for a published story or plot based campaign that I can easily convert to run in the L5R setting. It can come from any rules system or setting, it just has to be relatively easy to convert.