SamuraiVille Episode 5.2

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Well, SamuraiVille has come to a close. Yushin's player has been off sick for the last three weeks, and Taro's player had an unfortunate personal emergency to deal with, but I wanted to push on and get it done rather than leave the end trailing for yet another week. Unfortunately, that made things a little lacklustre.


Yuriko got a coded message to meet her clan master at the waterfall at sunset. He warned her to stay away from the untrustworthy fox-spirit, but more importantly, told her that a rival Lord, Kageshima, was poised to invade the province. Although the clan worked for Lord Morinaga, they realised that the battle would be lost, even with the gain of a new musket design, so are planning to change sides. He instructed her to acquire the new muskets, but to pass them on to the ninja clan rather than letting them fall into the hands of the local Lord Morinaga.

Okitsu was at the tea-house, and started impersonating Yuriko. Akira turned up for a drink, and mentioned that he had been sent to seek out his brother, the pirate Kenji (whom Yuriko was to get the muskets off). Okitsu tried to drug him, but he refused alcohol and managed to brush off her attempts to feed him random herbal teas. He left just as Yuriko returned; Okitsu filled her in, and Yuriko followed him invisibly in her young male form.

Being followed made Akira a bit twitchy, but he didn't manage to find out who it was. He began patrolling the coast, towards the smuggler's bay. Yuriko intercepted him, claiming to be a messenger from the castle come to tell him that the daimyo was in danger. Although he resisted the explanation at first, he eventually gave in and returned to the town.

Yuriko arrived at the smuggler's cove, where she met up with the pirate Kenji. She traded the bottled tengu for several sample muskets. Kenji gave the trapped spirit to a black daoist, who seemed satisfied with it. Yuriko headed back to town to hand over the muskets to her ninja contacts.


And... yeah. I ran out of conflicts, and that's how the game ended. I should have done some more exposition at the end (the back-story between Kenji and Akira, the reason the daoist wanted the spirit), but I'd forgotten some of my notes, and I was trying to figure out how to wrap the story. Also, Kenji was showing some Japanese reserve in front of his crew.

All up, my first attempt at Smallville was a mixed success. I made plenty of bad calls, and I still have to stop and think over whether I should contest something or give in. Even so, I'm quite bad at predicting what will happen to the dramatic flow, and I'm still somewhat resistant to tweaking events just for the story. For example, at the end I thought it would make a good climax to have Akira confront his brother while Yuriko was making the deal - we could have had acrimonious exposition, and she could have picked sides. I was hoping Okitsu would be there as well (although my original plan was to have Akira drag Taro along). However, since I got Akira talking to Okitsu, she knew what he was up to and Yuriko turned him away from the path which would have led to that final confrontation. It kind of dramatically deflated the situation, so I probably should have just had him take stress and keep looking for Kenji. Problem is, I'm pretty sure Yuriko's next move would have been to take him out - which meant I shouldn't have tipped them off that he was looking for the pirates in the first place. I was just trying to keep Okitsu involved, but it made things go flat.

It's a little depressing, but I did learn things too. I'm priming to run a political game set in a fantasy renaissance Venice with a slightly different group, so hopefully I can apply what I've learned.

Note: I did a bit of work setting up a new Smallville game called PiccoLaguna, but when I tried to organise a new group not enough people showed up. I still haven't had an opportunity to run it.

Interface Zero: Vegas

Since Rohin fell in love with the Interface Zero setting for Savage Worlds even more than I did, he decided to run a game based in the Free City of Las Vegas, located in the Northeast of Baja Mexico. The city was controlled in equal parts by corporate and organised crime interests. The party would all be working as security and troubleshooters at a strip mall owned by corporate magnate Bob Ho.

We played several sessions in 2012, but didn't manage to resolve the main storyline.

+Andrew played Gerald Rigg, an android security guard.
John played Mr. X, a blind mouse-hybrid hacker.
+Melysa played Kuma, a genetically modified security dog with near-human intelligence.
I played Devlin Monterey, a dog-hybrid rentacop of French-Canadian extraction.


The game started with a couple of us pulling security duty in the mall. A few kids started a food fight, so I intimidated them (and drew my stun-stick) and they ran away. During the ruckus, a virtual graffiti artist dropped a hyper-reality tag on the wall. I think he got chased off by Mr. X.

We were soon called into our boss' office, and given a mission. The daughter of a friend of the company had gone missing, and we were asked to find her. The situation was big and complex. The reference photos for the daughter had been doctored, but we managed to hack her school and find security footage of her. She'd disappeared from an alley in a Triad part of town during some turmoil with rival Hispanic gangs, but we learned she had friends in the Mafia and had probably gone with them. We tracked down the car she'd been taken away in, but it was booby-trapped and exploded. It began to seem as though she might have run away rather than being kidnapped.

We were sent video footage from the kidnapper showing her being sexually assaulted. The man in the video had a class ring. Her father was a member of the same class; we tracked down three other members who were currently in Baja Mexico - a scientist working for a bio-research facility, someone with connections to the European mafia, and an ex-General now working as a fight promoter and manager for a cyber-gladiator.

We ended up at a bit of an impasse, trying to untangle the various webs of stories and connections, and trying to figure out the best way to gain leverage and information hile exposing ourselves to minimal harm. Luckily, we had some other things to keep us occupied...

We received a tip-off that some gangers were going to raid one of our stock warehouses. We waited nearby in our AV, swooping in once they entered corporate property and our jurisdiction. We engaged them with deadly force, killing most of them and destroying their van as they fled using our vehicle-mounted cannon.

We'd been hearing rumours of a Bio-Horror prowling around the city ever since the start of the game, but we finally got a call that it was rampaging through one of our company malls.  We arrived to find it - a mutated giant tiger-like creature - prowling around an upper-storey food court, eating things and people. Some of us engaged it head-on to draw its attention, while the others guided the civilians to safety. It was a tough fight, but we eventually managed to subdue it.

As we transported it to the roof for extraction, a second Bio-Horror, like the first one but twice the size, climbed up onto the roof and, using  voice synthesiser, demanded the return of his "brother." It charged, and I faced it down as the others hurried for the AV. Miraculously, I put one shot into its head and it went down. My elation was short-lived, as it began to regenerate and showed signs of moving. We cleared out as fast as we could.


That was as much as we got through in 2012. My first impressions of playing Savage Worlds are that the dice did tend to feel "swingy" quite a lot of the time. In particular, I had a hard time trying to get decent damage rolls, and it was frustrating to not have the option of spending a Benny to reroll. I spent four or five rounds shooting the little Bio-Horror to no effect, only to completely drop the larger Bio-Horror with a single shot from the same gun. From what I've read about the system since, we probably could have used a few combat manoeuvres other than just repeatedly making attack rolls.

Deciding what to increase with an advance does tend to take a little while, unless you have it planned out. To start with, I guess there were a few Edges on my wish-list that I hadn't managed to pick up at character creation. I found that Skills only start to feel really competent at d10 or higher; starting with d8's, I flubbed more rolls than I would have liked.

Overall it's a serviceable game. I think we spent a lot of time trying to plan our approaches and minimise exposure to danger rather than just diving in, which given the way NPCs tend to fold like card-houses, was probably largely unnecessary. I think we were still in a Cyberpunk 2020 mindset to some degree, where a single bullet can lay you low. While that's still true in Interface Zero, characters are by and large somewhat more resilient.

The VR/HR elements of Interface Zero were also a bit hand-wavey at times; the setting book gives a glimpse at an awesome vision of hyper-reality, but doesn't have solid enough grounding principles to allow for us to extrapolate logical outcomes without relying on GM fiat. Also, the rules for hacking and controlling other people were a bit vague.

I'm actually writing this blog post in April 2013, and I've recently put in for the Interface Zero 2.0 Kickstarter at the PDF level, so it will be interesting to see if the new version addresses any of my concerns with the setting-specific rules.

SamuraiVille Episode 5.1

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Turns out "Yushin" was just coming down with the flu that's been going around, leading to tired crankiness, so it looks like we'll probably go another session or two.

I'm not sure which enemies in particular "Okitsu" wants to permanently knock off; possibly the tengu, although as GM I'd probably be inclined to Give In to having it die if they seriously trap or beat it into submission. I don't think anyone has a permanent relationship to it, and there are plenty more mischievous tengu out there if I ever needed another.

If I run Smallville again with this group, they'll have a better idea of what to expect, and have realised how important it is to tie the Leads together strongly from the start. One piece of advice for new players joining existing groups - if someone has to join later, I'd get them to make their character with everyone else present so the group can help work the character into the game world more comfortably, making suggestions and agreeing to any potentially controversial tie-ins. We made one Lead separately later on, and a few of the connections we came up with sort of chafed with how the established players saw the world and their characters working. Openness and collaboration is key in all aspects of Smallville.

Taro and Akira fight the Giant Gaki with the aid of Okitsu in fox form. The gaki pulls in all of the smaller ghosts to heal itself, but it is defeated anyway. Okitsu steals away the spirit-flame that drops from its remains. She realises it could be used to restore the valley's damaged fertility, or she could give it to Yuriko to trade for the new muskets.

Taro, Akira and Tetsu drop by the tea-house to wind down, while Okitsu and Yuriko go back to patrolling the mountain looking for the tengu. Akira excuses himself so he can return to the castle and report the gaki's defeat to the daimyo.

Taro and Tetsu are returning to the forge when Tetsu has to stop to relieve himself in an alleyway. Mariko appears in the street and talks to Taro - she tells him that Yuriko's spirit-tea WAS responsible for Tetsu's possession. She also tells him that she captured the tengu with the help of the townsfolk, but decided to show mercy and release it. Okitsu interrupts the conversation by running through town as an invisible fox, projecting an illusion of the tengu. Taro runs to the castle to find Akira.

The Okitsu-tengu stands on the roof of the tea-house squawking, but Yuriko shoos her onto the next building so she doesn't drive even more customers away. The townsfolk flee the streets. Mariko hops up onto the roof and confronts Okitsu, telling her not to try anything or she'll harm "the girl." Convinced that Mariko is possessed by the tengu, Okitsu leaps straight at her and attempts to re-possess the shrine maiden. The tengu resists, but gains stress. Before it can throw Mariko's body from the roof, Yuriko leaps from the tea-house next door and pins Mariko down. The tengu is stressed out and flees Mariko's body, and Yuriko captures it in a spirit-bottle.

Things went pretty well, although the confrontation with the tengu was a bit disappointing as it didn't manage to roll very well on either Contest. I could have presented it a bit better dramatically speaking, but mechanically the outcome would have been the same. I could have had tengu-possessed Mariko confronting the illusion tengu on the roof in view of townsfolk witnesses, or even better in front of Taro and Akira returning from the castle, but I only thought of that after the event. Maybe the opening scene of next episode will have Taro and Akira turning up just in time to witness the confrontation on the roof; that should sow a bit of confusion.

For the fifth session in a row, Yuriko has steadfastly failed to gain any Stress - she has come out on top of every Contest she's been directly involved in!

Since we are only getting two hour sessions at the moment, I decided to split Episode 5 in half. Episode 5.2 will be next week. The Trouble Pool and Plot Points are not re-setting, and I've allowed Growth Pools to carry over if people want. I'd been getting the feeling that things were just starting to ramp up and then the session would end, so I'm seeing if this will help the mechanical pacing. Of course, I was hoping the tengu would still be around, but I can move on to focus on other concerns.

>>> Episode 5.2

SamuraiVille Episode 4

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Tonight's session was a bit of a bust. I had a cold or flu over the weekend which I'm still trying to throw off, although my energy levels were fairly reasonable. However, Yushin's player might be trying to fight off the same illness - he flaked out and had to call it a night only an hour in. It sort of petered out after that; there were no Contests, and only one Test. No Challenging, no Stress, no Recovery, no Growth.


Yushin let the tengu go, and persuaded the actual shrine maiden Mariko to accompany him back to the castle to talk to the abbott.

Okitsu stayed at the tea-house overnight. Yuriko received a midnight visit from her contact the pirate captain. He offered to trade her a new model of foreign musket in exchange for the soul of a yokai, but he needed an answer within 24 hours.

Yushin wanted to point out to the abbott that Mariko was being controlled by an outside force such as an evil spirit, since she couldn't remember what happened for most of the previous day while she was possessed. She claimed to be under the influence of Inari. Yushin's player was flaking a bit by this stage, and I found it hard to discern what the aim of the scene was.

In the morning, Tetsu and Taro were visited at the forge by a young samurai, Akira, who'd been sent by the daimyo to investigate the tales of spoiled rice and ghosts. Taro took him to the tea-house to drink the special spirit tea, allowing him to see the spirits.

Yuriko and Okitsu headed up to the shrine to get the tengu and trade it for the muskets, only for Mariko to tell them that it had been released by Yushin. Okitsu assumed the form of a tengu and, followed by an invisible Yuriko, they began searching the mountain for it.

Akira managed to slice a little ghost in half when he and Taro were on their way back through the town, to Taro's surprise. Taro then led Akira and Tetsu to the waterfall, where they discovered that the bags of rice he'd left out there had been completely consumed, and a trail of green ooze pointed towards the valley's rice fields. Okitsu and Yuriko also reached the waterfall, and secretly followed the three men to the edge of the rice fields - where an enormous gaki has started eating the rice harvest.


I think illness and lack of energy took their toll. There were some pacing problems, and Yushin's player was lacking focus before deciding to leave early. He'd displayed some general grumpiness towards Okitsu's player, as their characters have become antagonists; I'm not certain if weariness led to grumpiness or if grumpiness led to leaving early. I'm hoping that people aren't taking things personally, but those two do have a tendency to bump heads a little IRL.

I think the game might possibly go another session or two, or we might call it a wrap there depending on how Yushin's player's feeling. The rest of us discussed how the game was going, and it had a mixed response. "Okitsu" doesn't like that it's all but impossible to permanently defeat something, and that decisive results aren't always forthcoming. "Taro" has some issues with pacing, which was admittedly a bit too lumpy this episode, but otherwise enjoys the system He also lacks much knowledge of feudal Japan, so there can be a bit of a cultural divide in this current game. I don't remember any strong opinions from "Yuriko" (who was starting to pass out on the couch), and I'll talk to "Yushin" later. There was also a general feeling that Growth is too slow, although I think that's a combination of short sessions and not enough familiarity yet to "game" the system for Growth dice.

>>> Episode 5.1

IZ: Scavengers of the Sunken City

I ran a short introductory Savage Worlds game in the Interface Zero setting, just so the group could become familiar with character creation and the basic mechanics before Rohin launched his Interface Zero Vegas campaign. I don't have a full cast list of characters, but the players were +Andrew, John, +Melysa, and Rohin.

We set the game in the semi-sunken ruins of Los Angeles, after the land to the West of the San Andreas Fault slid into the ocean. I cast L.A. as being 10 to 100 metres underwater, with ruined skyscrapers and fractured freeways poking above the surface. Several communities of scavengers, gangers, and the remnants of the LAPD had been built on the elevated land around the city basin.

There was some resistance to the system, especially from Andrew. In particular, needing to read and absorb the entire list of Edges in order to make informed choices at character creation was a big mark against the system. However, the whole point of this short game was to give people a chance to experiment and find the pitfalls so they could make more informed choices when making characters for Rohin's long-term game.

John went through a couple of iterations before deciding on an aquatic hybrid. There was also some uncertainty and confusion about the Interface Zero occupation and income system and how it related to Edges and Hindrances such as Rich or Poverty. He wanted to be a Crime Boss ($25K income) along with the Poverty Hindrance (halve income, can't hold onto cash), but this would still have meant he would be starting with more money than anyone else (mostly $5K to $10K incomes)! In the end, I decided that the Corporate and Crime Boss occupations were only available if you took the Rich Edge, and the Ganger occupation ($2K) was a representation of the Poverty Hindrance.

Speaking of money, IZ lacks a standard exchange rate with the dollars used in the Savage Worlds core rulebook, and also lacks a mundane equipment list! Due to hyperinflation, dollar values in IZ are between 2 and 10 times higher than their modern day equivalents, but it's somewhat frustrating to have to guesstimate prices for everything, especially when gear is a big part of the setting.

We opened with a fight, and I discovered how fragile Extras in Savage Worlds can be.


The group came down to their boats one day to find rival gangers looting them. The fight was brief, and none of my gangers got to fire a shot; I think one managed to crawl behind cover, but it didn't do him much good. 

The characters discovered a hyper-reality data file on one of the gangers - a map, describing the location of what appeared to be a concealed lab in one of the submerged skyscrapers in the abandoned central city. They dialled up a virtual connection, discovering that the lab seemed to contain several prototype wheeled remotes which may be collector's items. However, the HR version of the lab couldn't tell them much about the physical condition of the lab, except that the power was off. They decided to take a couple of boats and go check it out.

Using the map they quickly located the building and began trying to find a way into the sealed lab level. It turned out that it was definitely underwater now, but one of the group was an aquatic hybrid. Before they could find a way in though, they were attacked by several speedboats loaded with gangers.  A big firefight ensued, spanning the building with the lab and the one next door. They managed to snipe, outmanoeuvre, and gun down most of the gangers, but the last survivor took a boat and fled.

They finally managed to cut their way into the lab and recover the first edition remotes, but then decided to explore the upper levels of the shattered building in case there was anything else worth looting. Of course, most of the decent stuff had been stripped decades ago. They ended up disturbing a bio-horror that was nesting in the building; even as a Wild Card, it didn't last long against assault shotguns. They heard more scrabbling sounds from the next floor up, and took that as their cue to leave.


Even boatloads of Extras were little threat to the group, and the powerful weapons in Interface Zero seem to be able to chew through Wild Cards pretty well too. Playing cards worked pretty well for initiative, although as we were seated around a loungeroom rather than a table, it sometimes took more than a glance to see who was up next.

Some of the Hyper-Reality and hacking rules seemed a little vague, and I wasn't really confident in my approach. Oddly, having searched a few forums, apparently the guys at Gunmetal Games haven't fully thought through their vision of virtual reality either, as they mostly seem to say "we hadn't thought about that" and "just do whatever you like" in response to questions about The Deep. I can see a grand vision in the basic IZ hacking system, but it's a little too obscured for me to be able to see it clearly. I prefer to understand things from base principles, but it's tricky to come up with a consistent, understandable interpretation of The Deep that actually matches the rules. I also invested in the Hacking 2.0 PDF, which purports to simplify VR, but I think it takes away some of the charm.

After mostly playing the same game for a decade or so, some of the players were a bit slow on the uptake of a new system. I ended up making little summary sheets on how to make skill and damage rolls.

Up next, we made characters for Rohin's game, set in Vegas - a Free City in the country of Baja Mexico.

SamuraiVille Episode 3

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Last night's session was pretty interesting. We only played for two or three hours, so I didn't have to do any additional Wedging - it was just a matter of letting the PCs bounce around and interact with each other.


Taro and Okitsu (Mariko) left the tea-house as Yushin performed a cleansing ritual on it, exorcising the gaki from the premises. However, Taro discovered that the ghosts were all over the town as well. As he tried to avoid them in the marketplace, Okitsu persuaded many of the townsfolk that the rice-eating ghosts were haunting the town because people weren't worshipping Inari enough. She also turned them away from Buddhism, motivated by the rough treatment she had been dealt by Yushin. Taro tried to convince them that they should secure all their good rice and make a trail of spoiled rice leading out of town to lure the ghosts away, but the townsfolk decided to head up to the Inari shrine on the mountain instead. Taro started lugging rice bags out to the waterfall by himself.

Yushin returned to the temple, where he persuaded the abbott to have the monks abandon the temple and take up residence in the castle with the daimyo. His plan was that, when Inari alone failed to get rid of the ghosts, the townsfolk would cry out for Buddha's help once more. The abbott grudgingly agreed, on the proviso that Yushin not only remain in town to apprise them of the situation, but that he apologise to Inari and the shrine maiden for the rough treatment he handed out in his anger.

Yuriko shapechanged into her young male form, turned invisible, and followed Okitsu up to the shrine. Okitsu rallied the townsfolk, even going as far as to show an illusion of the scene where Yushin grabbed her roughly (and even slapped her!) when trying to find out her identity. Watching from the shrine gate, the invisible Yuriko spotted the tengu hiding in the trees. She tackled him, and they both crashed to the ground, stressing the tengu out. The crowd turned to see what was going on, allowing Yushin to join the mob and become visible. "He" even came forward when Okitsu called on people to seize the wicked creature that Inari had struck down! Okitsu told the townsfolk to go back to town, shutting herself inside the shrine with the bound tengu. However, after barring the door from the inside, she teleported to the tea-house.

Having stacked some rice, Taro sought out his master. Apparently the forge was free of ghosts. Taro was starting to feel remorseful about blaming Yuriko for the possession episode, so they both went to the tea-house to await Yuriko's return. Alas, Yuriko returned in her male form, and they didn't recognise her. Master and student drank the night away on tea and plum wine, while Yuriko and Okitsu talked and relaxed. However, the male Yuriko let slip something about it being "my tea-house" and Okitsu became suspicious.

Meanwhile, Yushin had climbed the mountain to the Inari shrine, only to find it deserted... mostly. He heard the tengu thumping inside, and managed to un-bar the door. The tengu bowed to him, throwing itself on the mercy of the Buddha.

Tag Scenes!

Okitsu-Mariko and Male Yuriko retired to a private entertainment room, where Okisu revealed her fox-girl form Akiko, and Yuriko revealed her true form. It seems that the fox-spirit and the ninja may be forming an alliance.

At the Inari shrine, Yushin bows to ask Inari's forgiveness while contemplating what to do with the tengu.

Having waited in vain for Yuriko to get back, Taro and Tetsu help each-other drunkenly back to the forge. Meanwhile, a forgotten pile of rice-sacks out near the waterfall have been torn open by hungry ghosts, who devour their contents and grow larger...


Not too many rules problems this week. Most of the players seem to be getting used to the way the system works, and we started to get some cool shifting allegiances. Yushin was originally spellbound by Okitsu's magical nature, but now thinks she is a pain in the neck! Okitsu was initially annoyed by Yuriko's tea-house making life difficult, but now sees her as a potential ally. Yuriko once saw Okitsu as annoying but necessary, but now thinks she is a good lady. Taro intends to show his newfound trust for Yuriko the next time he sees her.

One roll-off I wasn't sure on. Okitsu barred the shrine door from the inside and left. Yushin turned up and tried to get inside. I was tossing up whether to make it a Test or to just take it as read (having him not be able to find the tengu inside wouldn't have been as interesting), when Okitsu's player asked if it could be a Contest since Okitsu had barred the door with the intent of preventing entry. I allowed it, thinking back to the tea-drugging in Episode 1. Yushin managed to get in, but I think we forgot to deal any Stress to Okitsu... and thinking back:

• it probably didn't make a lot of sense to stress Okitsu since she wasn't even there, and
• I can't see how a back-and-forth would have been possible to actually keep a Contest going.

So maybe I erred in the other direction, but it worked out anyway. However, I do need to remember that losing a Contest doesn't mean the other person gets what they want.

>>> Episode 4

SamuraiVille Episode 2

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Following on from Episode 1, some conflicts are already in progress: The Taro/Yuriko situation was set off by my Wedge the Tengu in Ep 1, but he didn't have a chance to confront her before the session ended. The foci for conflict in Episode 2 are as follows:

• TARO wants to confront YURIKO about her role in Tetsu's possession last Episode (caused by excessive drinking at her tea-house). 
• TARO doesn't trust OKITSU, so I'm planning to bring the two of them together. 
• YUSHIN has a bad opinion of YURIKO and may confront her about leading the Daimyo astray. 
• YUSHIN wants to find out OKITSU's true identity; he suspects that the dream may have been caused by his childhood friend, Akiko, who is actually one of Okitsu's forms. 
• OKITSU has an axe to grind with YURIKO as well, as her mystical drinks have caused trouble for the town. 

All of the other PCs have Yuriko in their sights, which is good as she didn't get much of a look-in last episode. Mostly it's her dream-wine causing issues. I also want to get Yushin and Okitsu together so they can continue their game of identity hide-and-seek, and see if I can get Taro to react to Okitsu. The Wedges are as follows:

KUROICHI: The tengu has fled to the forest, where he broods angrily. He has cursed the town with a type of Gaki (hungry ghosts) that are invisible but which eat and spoil rice. Drinking Yuriko's dream-wine is one way to let the characters see them, allowing the ghosts to be fought physically. This allows everyone to see the useful side of the dream-wine, and gives Yuriko a chance to help save the rice supply (something of great importance to Okitsu).

TETSU: Upon learning of his possession, he will ask Taro to go find the Shrine Maiden Mariko (one of Okitsu's forms) to perform a cleansing ritual on the forge. He will go to the Buddhist temple where he will meditate and be cleansed, and then ask Yushin to come back to the forge to also perform a cleansing ritual. This will put Taro and Okitsu in conflict when Taro sees his master mooning over the shrine maiden. It also puts Okitsu and Yushin in the same room together, where their suspicions can grow and develop.

I haven't made a list of Revelations before, so here goes:

• The tengu Kuroichi broods in the forest and calls down evil spirits upon the town. 
• If told of his possession, Tetsu sends Taro to find Mariko to cleanse the forge. 
• If told of his possession, Tetsu cleanses himself at the Buddhist temple and asks Yushin to also cleanse the forge. 
• If told the details of his possession, Tetsu will bring news of the tengu to Yushin. 
• Invisible rice-eating Gaki are chewing on rice wherever it can be found. A half-eaten rice cake tainted with a greenish tinge may be found at the tea-house. 
• At the market a rice bag splits open of its own accord, spilling green-tinted rice across the ground. 
• A few terrified patrons at the tea-house will report seeing a ghostly image eating their snacks, leading to rumours that it is haunted. 
• Drinking the dream-wine allows the Gaki to be fought, but there are a lot of them - perhaps too many for one person to deal with successfully. 
• When seriously threatened, the remaining Gaki will form together into a giant spirit-entity, allowing the haunting to be confronted and exorcised once and for all. 

Tonight's session involved an awful lot of people running around and throwing themselves into Contests to build up Stress so they could maybe get some Growth. While it was good to see people challenging each other, and we did see a couple of rewritten Relationships, I feel a bit like we're only just seeing the first half of the episode development. Trouble was brimming with d6, but I didn't get an opportunity to roll it at all - time got away from us, and we had to end the session just as a giant Hungry Ghost came rolling down the tea-house stairs!

Things went pretty much as I noted in the Revelations; Tetsu went off to get cleansed, but Mariko/Okitsu turned up uninvited to investigate the forge anyway. She managed to freak Taro out by asking him to trust her (he doesn't trust women easily), and he ran off through the market to the tea-house. Okitsu pulled the plug on her possession of Mariko just as Yushin arrived from the temple, making Yushin think Mariko was just some ditzy shrine maiden because she was acting disoriented. Taro confronted Yuriko about his drunken master, but she denied any wrongdoing and Taro just about had a nervous breakdown! At his request, Yuriko let him try some of the dream-tea, which led to him seeing a small Gaki eating a rice-cake. Just as that was happening, Yushin and Mariko/Okitsu showed up at the tea-house as well. Taro freaked out because he started being able to see Okitsu/Mariko's fox ears and tail. There was a major confrontation as the monk Yushin confronted Mariko/Okitsu about her true nature, giving her more Stress. Before the situation could be resolved one way or another, some upstairs patrons ran screaming and a large Gaki oozed down the stairs. We had to end the session there.

Taro has seen a couple of instances of tainted rice, and witnessed the Gaki thanks to the dream-tea. Next episode, the gaki will be a clear and present threat to the rice supply; I can also move large ones towards the rice fields outside of town to help motivate Okitsu. Hopefully they will cooperate enough to use the tea to be able to see and fight the ghosts, which should help develop relationships as they demonstrate their useful skills. Or not. I will need to draw up a new Episode Map and explore the current relationships and tensions to see if there's anything else I can throw into the mix.

It was a bit sad to see my Trouble Pool vaporise at the end of the episode, but in a way I can see that emulating a TV show two-parter anyway. At the end of one episode, a massive threat looms... only to be summarily dealt with in the first five minutes of the second episode.

Okitsu's player seems to want to keep her identity rather firmly hidden. I'll have to discuss this with her, as I don't know how long she can keep this up in Smallville... I mean, I guess Clark managed it for a pretty long time, and she seems happy to take the Stress. It just seems like Smallville is a system that's energised towards resolving this sort of thing. Yushin is pressing pretty hard to discover her true nature and identity, but I guess all Okitsu needs to do is fight back and take the Stress, and it can remain unresolved as long as she likes.

>>> Episode 3