I've added a page in the wiki for a short summary of where our tangled web of subplots stands right now, just to keep track of developments in multiple story strands. Make some noise if I forgot anything.

The Sparrow is essentially an Elisha Collier-type flintlock revolver with a primitive double-action trigger. Still a hell of an upgrade over muzzle-loading single-shot wheellock pistols, which is essentially what "conventional" Hanse handgonnes represent.

Yes, Kagemaru took a moment to loot from Ueki's stash, too - and he brought a couple of Eagles to share for those who want one. The Eagle is a few decades shy of a Roper repeating shotgun, using handmade laquered paper cartridges and the same overly complicated "reservoir of gunpowder in the grip is dumped in the pan by working the action" mechanism the Sparrow has, since we're still a fair few years away from cartridges with proper primers, but for all game purposes it functions like a four-shot repeating shotgun, just a quite unreliable and fragile example.

I forgot to mention this because I'm a forgetful forgetter who forgets, but you're all going to Level 12 here.

Here's a better look at the aforementioned repeating shotgun, for those who care.

What a perfect application of Adam's Law...

Adam's Law
When the players are up against the main enemy, they will instantaneously kill him with one lucky shot.
Corollary: If they do not kill him within the first 3 rounds, they will all die.

I seriously dislike how FantastCraft handles crits, and how the monsters are balanced against it.

All the main NPC have large amounts of hp, but not necessarily a lot of wounds. A fight can take forever if you don't roll a crit (and many of my players are remarkably unlucky in that regard), or it can go like the Firebolt fight just did and be amazingly anticlimactic.

I'd prefer a double damage rule to that, and a better Table of Ouch.

Let's hope Spycraft 3 switches things up a bit in that regard.

I'm perfectly okay with a good Departed-style headshot circus.

Sure, for a Departed-flavored campaign, that is fine.

But not for epic fantasy (which I'm assuming is what Gatac is aiming more for with Shinobi). That's kind of like allowing a headshot circus in a wushu movie.

Well, to be fair, it's not like I'm shaking my fist at the skies here, raging against the heavens. I set it up, I rolled the dice, it's an acceptable outcome to me.

That said, I'd totally prefer it if critical hits and the Table of Ouch switched places. As it is, you gotta work really hard to even roll on the Table of Ouch and get one of those nice flavorful injuries, but crits happen a lot and other than somehow loading up on crit immunity (which gets to the aforementioned vitality slog, then), there's really no scaling defense against them.

We'll see how Spycraft 3 does it.

Let's dally as long as we reasonably can in case Kagemaru 1) needs help and 2) is able to get a signal to that effect where we could see it, but we don't want to loiter to the point where they're like "why ain't they gone yet?" So let's go back.

You know what time it (finally) is.

That said, we're gonna have a few quiet moments yet. If there's anything you guys want to get off your chest before Toshi is declared Emperor, now's the time.

This isn't quite the end. There's more wrapup to come. But I figure with the big bad finally defeated for good, it's as good as any a moment to try to find some closure with the game.

It took a little more than 10 years from the first post to here. That's a, pardon my French, fucking long time. Longer than I thought and, maybe, longer than it should have taken. Still, this makes me incredibly happy. We did this, guys.

I wish I could say I had a plan for all this. I mean, I had a very rough idea, but I'm more of a Chris Carter method type of GM. I throw a lot of balls in the air. Some, I see you guys catch and then go with that. Some I catch myself and file away for later use. Quite a few just thud into the ground and don't get picked up again. If you manage to somehow read all this from the beginning again, some details won't all line up, I'm sure. Still, I've tried to keep my eyes on the big stuff and have plot throughlines that carried us from what started as a simple, small assassination mission into an epic supernatural quest to save the empire. Though the wrapup is still ahead, I think - I hope, for everyone who had a personal stake in their corner of the plot and stuck me out to the end - that I can give you all a sense of achievement.

The setting, I'm afraid, bears the scars of my lack of focus. At points I tried quite a bit to evoke historicity, but especially towards the end, the supernatural and industrial revolution aspects came forward, in pursuit of making the game more...fun, I suppose. It kinda makes sense to me in that we went from a very provincial corner of the empire to its capital. In the end I guess we're somewhere close to the Avatar series? I can live with it. It's probably not gonna win any prizes for respectful representation, though.

And don't get me started on FantasyCraft. That proved to be a boat anchor on the game and you can see in the last third or so that there's steadily less rolling and less explicit mechanics use. Amazing crunch to look at? But I had a lot more fun engaging with the NBA system in Wildcard and I think that shows. As is, I think this wasn't satisfying for the people who just wanted to play ninjas and vagabonds in a fantasy setting, nor for the people who wanted an actual FantasyCraft game. If I was gonna do it all over again, I'd definitely pick a much lighter system.

But! All my kvetching aside, I really did have a good time running this. It was a ton of fun coming up with weird NPCs and setpieces and seeing you react to it all. I'm not a 100% weeaboo but I really do like this type of setting (moreso than your standard-issue Western Fantasy stuff) and I think it made for a lot of good moments.

Thanks to everyone who has been a part of this. Hope to see you in another game...speaking of, I guess that means I'm currently no longer GMing anything here. Weird feeling! Not sure if there's still enough active interest here to start something new, though. Open to your ideas!

Again: thanks.

Thank you for running this, sticking with it, and adapting to help us stick with it as best we could too. It was a huge job and you pulled it off! A lot happens in ten years and for me that meant not really being able to participate in PbP games beyond cursory posts. I'm glad I could limp across the finish line with the rest of you all.