Peasant Problem

After a session that seemed to work better than most, last session was clunky.

I had two interludes that were mostly about thematic justification for character sheet changes, but they offered opportunities to interact with NPCs.  And, we know how that often goes.

As a reward for fending off the Imperials, first interlude was “gain a free emphasis of Etiquette” scene with established NPC the players didn’t care about being outed as (retired) high level political operative.  Then, because I got to thinking about how thematically appropriate it would be to have the PCs actually prepared for their next mission rather than just being dumped into an unfamiliar situation, interlude 2 was training by former Dragon Clan NPCs to get PCs ready to meet with … Dragon Clan NPCs.

None of that has anything to do with the problem with peasants.  Well, there’s not just one problem with peasants, but today’s problem does get into a more general problem with peasants.  Those scenes just seemed to add to the clunkiness to me as all three parts of the session saw the players not having specific goals even if their PCs were given goals.

The PCs finally headed off to Sujuko Mura to participate in a trade conference with one significant negotiator NPC on Raven side and five Dragon negotiators.  Along the way, they came across thugs, er, disreputable peasants whose leader was arguing with a farmer and his wife.

The peasants didn’t survive, the one who was flat out fleeing had his head exploded by an arrow.  That wasn’t unexpected nor undesired.

But, resolving the scene brought up a chronic problem I have with using peasant antagonists or Brotherhood antagonists or eta antagonists.  The players’ view is that peasants should just give up as the alternative of exploding into a fine red mist is inevitable.  But, in world, peasants can’t surrender, as they will just get hanged or used to test the sharpness of katana or whatever.  Peasants are no different from goblins, oni, et al, in that it’s entirely kill or be killed … unless they can run away.

Which they can’t.  Why?  I stat things with appropriateness in mind even though NPCs just exist to give players something to interact with.  So, my thugs had Perception 1 (leader was higher).  If you don’t know the system, that means Water Ring 1.  Movement speed is determined by Water Ring.  While thug was stumbling and bumbling 20′ a round, Takeo could just do that as a free action and get two thugchopper strikes in.

But, that is getting into a different problem – that the system actually has some granularity issues where peasants either have too high or too low attributes.  No, it’s back to the thematics of how peasants who would fight PCs are in a kill or be killed mode at all times that inspired this post, but that seems weird to players.  Oh, not terribly weird, L5R is pretty much a kill or be killed world, so players are used to just cutting through anything that dare look at them with any hostility that isn’t higher Status than they are.

We came off a heavy supernatural arc.  I’m trying to ground this arc in more mundane activity, concerns, opposition.  I’m not just going to pop goblins out of nowhere, not even Kappa that are actually established in the province.  I’m not going to suddenly have a bunch of other samurai, even if I did consider an otokodate of ronin.  Why not?  Well, as much as ronin are not as political, there are political ramifications with ronin and end up with a different thematic problem.  And, Naishou Province is pretty secluded with it being hard to hide a group of ronin for very long.

So, peasant enemies make sense to me.  Oh, not as the main enemy in this arc but as a component to the overall story being told in the arc.  Sure, in other L5R campaigns, I would not likely use peasants much, if at all, as actual antagonists.  But, this is the most peasant heavy campaign I’ve been involved in, so peasants make sense as a real antagonist (even if that fight wasn’t terribly challenging, almost like the point of it was something else).

It’s just awkward.  Now, many of my antagonists are awkward, often coming out of nowhere.  I spend a lot of energy coming up with elaborate backstories for my NPCs that aren’t directly opposing PCs, then put little effort into establishing a setting reason why the PCs are suddenly fighting something.  Sure, I had a reason mukade would run into the PCs, had a reason why a Nue was running around [way to be consistent with capitalization), basis for gaki being something to take out in that single, side session.

Peasants interact, IME, poorly with PCs due to the class (essentially caste) difference.  Doesn’t have to be combat.  There’s a reason largely ignore peasants in Rokugan during most play.  I’ve mentioned it before, but veteran players get so wrapped up in being coy in speech that they can’t even interrogate peasants smoothly.  Just ask a peasant a simple, direct question and expect a simple, direct answer.  Samurai beat around the bush because they are rich nobles who lead largely inconsequential lives other than PCs, Crab Clan, and some others who are constantly saving/destroying the world.

I don’t want total annihilation with peasants, yet this group couldn’t be allowed to live from my perspective as they would give away too much information about what was going on … since I didn’t do better preparation.  This is why having someone to talk ideas over with is huge.  Anyone could have pointed out to me that having a captured thug or their leader could have set up something that deserved to be set up.

I’m sure it can be seen that there are other types of characters in other genres, systems, whatever that end up having the same sort of problem.  Military versus civilians, cops versus civilians, weak alien race versus whatever PCs are, etc.

I have so many things to worry about when trying to put together a session that spending time on how to finesse antagonists doesn’t thrill me.  And, this isn’t a big problem in L5R play.  It’s just an awkward bit of play that I happen to find a way to stretch into a 1000 word blog post.