It's hard to believe we're one session away from being done with Doyce's lengthy Oriental Adventures/Rokugan D20 saga (a/k/a "OA"). I'm not sure how long we've been doing it -- since earlyish 2002, I think -- but it feels like forever (in both bad and (mostly) good ways).

While I find myself not the best at juggling a huge number of NPCs, appearing in multiple sessions, all of them with similar-sounding names, I've learned to live with it. In fact, I've been having more fun than ever with Shishiko, the bakeneko thief, over the past few months. She's my current "Fool" character, and it's fun not only to be able to ignore all the courtly manners stuff, but actually, legitimately, and naively tweak them (furiously ducking Mushi's fan -- whap). Honor, politeness, avoiding touching dead bodies -- Shishiko doesn't have to worry about any of those things. Nor have I felt any obligation to make her angst-ridden, which is certainly a change of pace. And, amazingly enough, nobody's been trying to set her up on courtly dates, either. Heh.

And doing 6d6 backstabbing damage is nothing to snort at. Though, as a rogue, she's easily fragile enough to be taken out in one or two good whomps by some of the bad'uns we've faced, she almost always has gotten one good hit in by the time she's slapped down.

I feel like I've been finally getting a sense of her voice, after a year or two of playing her. And, from Shishiko has come two kid's stories, with a third on the way, that, if I get my act together, I will actually turn into a children's book for Kitten.

And, after the next session (scheduled for Friday night, I think it turned out to be), she's put into hiatus. Doyce hints darkly of a future campaign, but the current OA saga will be wrapped up, to make room for Jackie's Necropolis (yay!) and my IDC (Spycraft) in the schedule.

No more Shishiko fixes.

*sigh*

Well. One way or another, Shishiko will ride again. I guarantee. It's hard to keep a good kitty down.

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Man, I'd love to play in an OA game. [sigh]

Well, if she lives on in stories, I would love to read them.

From all that I have heard from those playing in the OA game, it seems that Shishiko is the funnest to play (having all the rest of the PC's and NPC's around as handy foils).

It's funny, because she's certainly not central to the plot. She's not samurai, or noble. She's not involved in the intricacies of court; the goals of honor, or even of glory, are not so much hers. A lot of her actions are relatively predictable, in kind if not in specifics. She'll never marry into the royal family, she'll never become landed, she'll never go on to be a demigod or the one about whom great epic poems are written.

On the other hand, she is a lot of fun to play. She's perfectly happy not (usually) being the plot focus, and if she doesn't get a lot of the bennies of the setting, she definitely doesn't get a lot of the drawbacks; like the court jester, she gets away with a lot that would cost the others their heads.

And she gets laughs,which is personally satisfying. All I have to do is say, "Shishiko has written a haiku about this," and the table dissolves in anticipation.

I suppose, in cinematic terms, she's a great character role, but not something that would ever be up for an Oscar (even supporting). She's C3PO. She's Pippin. She's Chekhov. She's Q (Bond). She's Marvin (from Hitchhiker). She's the comic relief. She's not the one on the movie poster (except maybe way in the background), but she's the one with the good lines in the trailer. And that's been just fine for me.

Of course, that get's back to this, which is something I'm also bearing in mind for my next character. (Actually, had an interesting short story/novella idea that ties into that the other day in the shower.)

I've never been in a OA game, but I've run Bushido and own RQ Land of Ninja. Being a big fan of Kurosawa and the other filmmakers of that ilk (hmmm...The Last Samurai is opening soon...), I've toyed with running a game in that setting again.

I'm currently involved in the World's Slowest RQ Game. A number of factors are keeping it slow, not the least of which is the only date we seem to be able to make it means that 50% of the players miss every other session (myself included!). Persistence, persistence!

OA (and Rokugan, which we're using the D20 supplement for) is an odd mixture of Japanese and Chinese mythology, probably more than the other two. But oriental mythos adventuring of any type is certainly interesting.

Please tell me where could i find more information about bakeneko. Did see some horror anime where was one and I was instantly W00 :D OA would be nice but my friends don't like the idea :/

Well, you can probably find anime that turn any bit of Japanese or Chinese mythology into either (a) slavering horrifying multi-tentacled naughty creatures, or (b) incredibly cute and saccharine sidekicks of all that is good.

I'd hit Google if I were going to do any research on bakeneko.

I can understand folks' reluctance about OA -- it's a serious departure in tone, goals, and monster sets from "traditional" FRPG. But it's certainly worth pursuing. Perhaps a short cross-over would work (party wanders into cave, finds itself in Rokugan, must find an old witch-hunter in the Scorpion Lands who can tell them the way home (something involving Jade slippers, no doubt).