For many years, L5R has been a subject of pain for me. Grief, regret, loss. All those things that make your heart pine and pain. All the work I put into the project, all the love I put into it. I’m pretty monogamous when it comes to creative projects; I can only give my love to one at a time. For almost four years, my heart belonged to L5R and L5R alone.
As the years went by, Wizards of the Coast and Five Rings Publishing took more control from my hands, taking away the thing I loved. At first, it was small things, but as time went on, larger aspects of the world were taken out of my hands. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I quit the project to work on something else. I told myself I was done with samurai, that I had said all I wanted to say, but I knew that wasn’t true. I turned to another source of inspiration – pirates and swashbuckling – to distract myself from the fact that the thing I created that made so many other people happy was no longer mine.
It wasn’t easy.
As I began work on 7th Sea, I found the same frustrations would manifest. After proving that I could create a world that people loved, the management at AEG kept taking control out of my hands. What started out as a small game, a game that could build into something larger, became an epic task of Herculean proportions – all because I wasn’t trusted or allowed to make the world I wanted to make. My frustrations were amplified by watching Ree struggle with Rokugan, trying to maintain the story she wanted to tell, hit from above (WotC) and below (the fans). WotC wanted complete control of Rokugan and thwarted her at every turn. The fans kept pelting her with “John wouldn’t do it that way,” and I felt that pain.
It was during all this that I met Jennifer. Actually, near the end of the first storyline, I met the woman who would become my wife. Someone who understood the L5R story on an intuitive level, understood the things I was saying, understood the drama and tragedy of the Kachiko/Hoturi affair, and what it meant. Understood everything I was trying to say. Within a year of knowing each other, we were married and working on 7th Sea together. And becoming more frustrated as control of the game was plucked from our hands.
I finally quit AEG, completely frustrated with a company that refused to trust my judgment anymore because I wouldn’t make either of my games dungeon crawl hack ‘n’ slash fests. Because I wanted to make games that told stories, that asked sophisticated questions, and presented the players with moral dilemmas instead of the games that my employers understood. I never wanted to look at samurai again, never wanted to learn anything more about pirates, the Restoration, or read Alexander Dumas.
In revolt to everything I’d done before, I made the most iconoclastic game I could, so specialized and personal, that I would be the only one who could understand it. Jennifer hated Orkworld because it represented a time in my life where I didn’t want to listen to anybody. Not my friends, not my wife, nobody. I knew what kind of game I wanted to make and I made it and fuck the world if they don’t like it.
Well, as it turned out, it sold out on value of my name alone, but it created a wound in my marriage I don’t think ever healed. Many years later, when Jennifer told me she didn’t want to be married to me anymore, I think of what orks say about looking for trouble – it’s already looking for you – and I know that all of this was brought on by my own pride.
So, I’m alone. Six months of being alone in a little apartment with no tv and no phone. My job laid me off because I break down and cry every ten minutes – and I’m collecting unemployment. I have nothing. My friends have all chosen to side with my wife, after promising me that “nobody’s here to take sides, John.” All I have are a few friends who don’t really even know my wife; they just know me from the last days of our marriage when we were already estranged, although living in the same house.
I have nothing. No job. No future. No desire to write. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to write. Don’t want to do anything. There’s a sense that dying could be an option, and for a short while, I consider taking it. I’ve done it before. It wasn’t hard. If there isn’t anything to hold me here, why am I holding on?
It was a dark, dreary time. The dead of winter in California means rain, and the black, wet skies poured misery on my head. I didn’t go out, I barely ate, I never slept. And all the while, I knew Jennifer was re-building her life. She’s got too much gypsy in her to hold on to the past. And I know she’s with some other man, laughing and enjoying a movie or just lying together on the couch, watching TV. I know this because in the first week after she tells me she doesn’t want to be married anymore, I come home on a Friday night after I’ve already decided to stay out for the weekend, and she was with someone on the couch, snuggling together, watching TV.
“You can’t even wait for me to move out,” I told her.
“You said you were going out for the weekend,” she told me.
It was like Rokugan all over again. Someone else holding the woman I loved, making her happy. Someone else using the world I created to make people happy. It was too much. I left that night, left behind everything I owned, told her to throw out anything she didn’t want, and left.
The six months in that tiny one room apartment gave me time to think. What did I really want to do with my life? I didn’t want to write anything ever again. Didn’t want to risk my sanity by throwing away my creative effort. Didn’t want to do anything.
Then, Neopets called. They liked my resume, liked my writing sample, liked me. They hired me to write stories for the site. And before I knew it, I was thrown into a creative burst of energy I didn’t know I had. Didn’t know I had left. I find a gaming group and play games again. After a long time of hating gaming and gamers, I start gaming again.
Then, one of them asks me to run L5R.
I balk at the proposition. That’s the kind way of saying I was too terrified to say “Yes.” But, Hyrum convinces me to give it one good try. Just one. “They’ll hate it,” I tell him. Hyrum shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says.
So, I run the game – just once. A one shot. That’s Saturday night. And we play until two in the morning, and they don’t want to stop. So, we meet again on Sunday, and finish up the story I tried to finish in one night.
And they want to play again.
That’s how all this started. Hyrum asking me to run a one shot L5R game, so he could play his favorite game with the guy who wrote it.
And for almost a year, I’ve been taking you guys through each of the clans, showing you the world I helped create so long ago. And you’ve shown me something I’d forgotten.
I love to tell stories.
I’m glad you guys enjoyed the Coup, but more importantly, I wanted you to know this:
You’ve reminded me why I love Rokugan, why I love telling stories, and why I love gaming. For the longest time, I believed losing Jennifer meant there was no reason to tell stories anymore. Everything I wrote, I wrote for her.
The Coup showed me that wasn’t true. Before I met her, I was telling stories. Now that she’s no longer a part of my life, I can still stretch a pretty good yarn.
I wasn’t telling stories because I loved her. I tell stories because I love stories.
Thank you guys for helping me remember that. And helping me heal. And helping me fall in love with Rokugan all over again.
