Kozakura, homebrew and a lot of fun
I am posting this because someone asked to elaborate on another post under a meme.
This is the campaign I am running now, starting with me taking over for a DM going on leave, or wanting to play themselves.
The start: A shadow-fey (extremely unseelie) yoinked the players from their current campaign and deposited them in Kozakura with the promise "If you rid this land of its three evils, you will each get a black pearl" (Black pearl referencing a perfect wish, no monkey paw nonsense, just you say what you want and it happens)
Three evils in question:
\- Tengu emperor (arracokra archmage
\- Kitsune (changeling super spy)
\- Oni samurai (swordsmen with spell-like abilities, think fireball but, slashing damage and teleporting in the middle of the aoe)
players eventually get their footing, get some coins, understand the basics of the land and its politics. I mapped out each province, with a capital and 3 factions within the province who have stakes, like merchant guild, monestary, ronin, imperial fort, dwarves, nature spirits and so on)
Phase 1 of the campaign recently started where they took a mountain stronghold/abby from some rogue monks and turned it into their base of operations. doing some personal quest things to set up the next phase
Phase 2: The emperor has fallen, long live the emperor. The Oni (a personal enemy of at least half the party) turns out to be a man, a werewolf who has some sinister power behind him. Who has killed the emperor and usurped the throne, causing all the clans to revolt and setting up their own shoguns.
Phase 3: The party has put forth their own shogun, a follower of some long lost general who is actually a native, unlike most players. They are starting to make alliances with a neighboring city. Both the players and the city are being threatend by the pirate queen (based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng\_Yi\_Sao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao) ) And they have prepped for defenses of the siege.
1st siege
Prep work was everyone got 14 rolls, 7 weeks of prep with a halfweek per "concept" things that were worked on:
\-chain across the river to protect the hinterland
\-casting of cannons and explosive shells
\- putting pikes and stone points just below the bays water so some ships will crash
\- fake lighthouses to confusing enemy ships into running into reefs
\- making of a submarine with a deck cannon
\- spending a vast amount of wealth buying of a kraken (they rolled lucky) to sink enemy ships.
\*wealth concept\*
Partially stolen from Whitewolfs Storyteller system is where players invest 1K gold into "something" that makes them money over time. But instead of doing a whole spreadsheet and profitability nonesense they get 1 wealth point. 1 wealth point can buy
1 guard (medium strong ally)
10 ashigaru (levied peasants)
0.25 hamamoto samurai
0.5 cannon
many....many more options.
If one of these things dies or gets lost, the wealth returns since the enterprise does still make a profit. It is just a way to drain money from the players without giving a huge hassle on calculations and it took me about 10 minutes to explain them what they can and cannot do (make more wealth with wealth). Whenever they sack a caravan or loot bodies they are counting the coins to see if they get more wealth, so their personal army grows.
I am likely forgetting a bunch of things, but here you.