OA1: Swords of the Daimyo

In the other post, Sam Curry comments that OA1 is one hell of a module.  He’s right.  I confess I don’t read a lot of OSR blogs.  Maybe someone has talked about OA1: Swords of the Daimyo before and I missed it.  But I suspect that, like many classic D&D modules, you can’t praise it enough, and it certainly deserves to rank up there with The Keep on the Borderlands, Night’s Dark Terror, and The Vault of the Drow.  If you don’t know this one, you should.  It’s an extremely well done wilderness hex-crawl.  David “Zeb” Cook comes through in a major way here.
I’ve been meaning to blog about this thing for more than two years, but I really wanted to play/run it first, and that never quite got off the ground.  Still, better late than never.  Hopefully someone can use this thing with the class summary charts

the province book: hell yeah

Swords of the Daimyo comes in two parts: the Adventure Book, which is terrible, and the Province Book, which is amazingly good.  Briefly, we get a run down on the Miyama Province, a politically important region in Kozakura (“Fake Japan”).
The first twelve pages of the Province Book contain a sketch of Kozakuran politics, which is basically a four-way struggle for power between the Emperor, the Deputy Emperor, the Shogun, and the Deputy-Shogun.  The prominent families in the Miyama Province are aligned with these imperial factions, and they’re all scheming against each other for influence.  If only there were some ruffian adventurers to take care of dirty work with plausible deniability–or a group of noble heroes to sponsor in a way that brings glory to your house…
(These same twelve pages include some boring stuff about climate, trade resources, etc.)
It’s the last twenty pages, though, where the Province Book really kicks ass.  A gazetteer of the Miyama Province, the Province Book provides several adventure hooks, and provides a hex-by-hex view of the setting in large terms.  Here is a typical entry:

1124.  Stone-Icicle-World.  At the base of the mountains, hidden in the deep woods, is a narrow, rubble-clogged cave mouth.  This is the entrance to a vast series of caverns that underlie all of Miyama Province and more.  Although the exact location is unknown to the general population, there are a few hengeyokai and korobokuru who can guide one to the site.According to local legend, Stone-Icicle-World is the place where O-Miyama-no-Mikoto, a local deity, entered the Realms of the Dead to visit his mother.  The caverns are believed to extend for hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles beneath the earth, magically reaching even into other planes and dimensions.  It is also said that the caverns are filled with all manner of horrible creatures, although this is somewhat uncertain as few tell tales of this subterranean region.

As far as names go, “Stone-Icicle-World” kills “the Underdark.”

 

In broad strokes, Miyama Province has three major population centers.  Tamanokuni is the provincial capital, prosperous but beset by feuding yakuza gangs, samurai rivalries, and religious squabbles, while the noblemen plot to wheedle more money out of the shogunate which they can dispense to their underlings to buy loyalty.  Kuda, the former capital, is a large city across Kobawan Bay from the horrors of Kuroijo Castle, where the demon-master Aga wrought untold horrors more than eight centuries ago.  Okahira, to the north, is relatively isolated and has fallen under the control of a Shou Lung (“Fake Chinese”) wizard who is using a figurehead governor to hide an invasion force.
Lurking around are several bandit camps, a ninja village, your obligatory ruins and abandoned mine shafts, and wilderness monster lairs.  There are numerous shrines–including one where a blind saint is teaching fake-Buddhism to a gaggle of goblins.  The former shogun has gone into retirement at a heavily fortified monastery, though he still receives messages from court and continues to meddle in high politics.

 

Numerous villages exist, most plagued by problems which their (naturally) incompetent or corrupt mayor cannot or will not solve.  One of the cool things about the Province Book is that administering your lord’s villages, and making sure the mayors are doing their jobs properly, is an important responsibility for a mid-level samurai.  The idea seems to be that a campaign could be run as an itinerant 7th level Samurai & Friends, roaming around between the daimyo’s manors to make sure everything is cool, bumping into weird stuff on the road and hoping to winter at one of the more comfortable towns.

not everything is perfect

While I’ve said nice things about this product, the Adventure Book that comes with it is . . . well, it’s not good, but it’s 1986 TSR, so you probably shouldn’t expect too much.  It contains a trio of railroaded vignettes which lack all interest.  It does contain eight pre-generated 1st level characters, and maps of typical buildings.

The Province Book’s political situation is a little too complicated for my taste–and much of it happens off screen or by proxy through families in Miyama.  The wilderness encounters are often flavorful, but some could stand to have stronger hooks.  (That said, there are so many laughably corrupt, or slovenly, or undisciplined, or sacrilegious NPC’s that role-playing these doofuses would be a lot of fun, even if there’s no dungeon to loot.)

Also there is a town named Bingo.

how can this be an OSR blog without the occasional C&D letter?

So the problem with Swords of the Daimyo is that the versions available on the secondary market often don’t have the maps.  Let me fix that for you.  Wizards of the Coast, when you put this stuff up for sale again, I’ll gladly take down these scans which are offered solely to help those who have legitimately purchased this on the secondary market.Miyama Province, SouthwestMiyama Province, NorthwestMiyama Province, Southwest

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