While you're here, why not get yourself a gift?

 My blog traffic has been up, by a LOT lately. I'm getting four to eight times the hits I usually get on my posts. Fingers crossed it's not just Russian or Chinese bots. 

If my new readers are actual flesh and blood humans (get those Voight-Kampff tests ready), and you haven't yet, why not check out my RPG store on DriveThruRPG? 

Here's a handy link! 

That's where you can find Chanbara, my OSR RPG of fantasy feudal Japan. 

And Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins, my OSR fantasy heartbreaker. 

It contains the Ruby Players Rules (classes, equipment, spells for Euro-fantasy), Jade Players Rules (the same for Asio-fantasy), Ruby and Jade Bestiary & Treasury (monsters and treasure for both Euro and Asian fantasy campaigns), the Game Master Guidebook (rules to run games for either Ruby or Jade), Ruby and Jade Rules Reference books (handy table lookup books for the two sets). 

And then there are my printable paper minis! I've got character types and lots of monster types, covering the Basic and Expert (BX/BE of BECMI) monsters, including all the dinosaurs and weirdos from the Isle of Dread. 

Chanbara is reasonably priced (digital or print), the paper minis are cheap (digital), and TS&R books are all pay what you want (digital only for now). 

So why not get a gift for yourself and help a brother out? Let's see if I get a small sales spike, or if these really are just bots.  

Operationalizing Honor

Last week, noisms of Yoon Suin fame wrote a blog post about a "single class paladin campaign" except he's not really talking about a single class paladin game, he's talking about how to operationalize honor for RPGs in a way that will facilitate and motivate a game built around honorable heroes doing honorable things. He admits that various character classes could be used in such a game, as long as the game revolves around matters of honor and correct, heroic behavior, rather than typical D&D "adventuring" or "murder-hoboing" or what have you. Instead of everyone being the Paladin class, they all are behaving by a code of conduct and in service to some greater power.

I was definitely interested in what he had to say, as it's something I've had to deal with with only limited success in Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara. Yes, FSRPG includes notes about the xia code, and what is expected of a wandering martial hero in Chinese stories/movies. But that's it. The XP system is still revolving around defeating enemies (of any type) to gain XP, and doesn't stipulate that the combats need to be won honorably. And granted, there are anti-heroes or those that skirt the line in wuxia fiction, and they don't necessarily need to be penalized. 

I think I got a step closer with Chanbara. I re-conceptualized the carousing rules from Arneson's original campaign. But instead of saying you're spending your hard earned treasure on drunken debauchery and flashy displays of wealth until you're broke and need to go adventure again, it's explained as donating that hard earned treasure to your various lords, patrons, and clan to aid them in their endeavors. That's a step up from "hey, just role play it!" but I admit it still leaves something to be desired. Collecting the treasure is still a necessary step in play. If we're really wanting to make our campaign seem like the legends of King Arthur and Charlemagne, or of honorable samurai loyal to their lords and so on, "getting the treasure" seems out of place.

So, what sorts of rewards could we offer in a game that would encourage players to play Captain America instead of The Punisher? Galahad and Percival instead of Fafhrd and the Mouser? That's not an easy question to answer. 

So what's been done before? Marvel Super Heroes, the old 4 color resolution chart game from TSR, had a huge list of dos-and-don'ts that could earn you Karma points, or take them away. The 1E OA book also had a big long list of "honorable and dishonorable" actions, which earned or reduced honor points. 

I'm not a big fan of this method. For one, it's fiddly and arbitrary. It also requires everyone to be paying attention to a level of detail in the game that can hurt immersion. Finally, it polices play, rather than encourages it. XP for gold and fighting monsters encourages play. It tells players what the goal is, but not how to go about achieving the goal. Lists of "Thou shalt not..." doesn't give you a goal, it just mediates your choices in game. And giving a goal of "be honorable" doesn't spur action the way "get gold" does. 

I don't have a lot of history with the Palladium or White Wolf systems, but from what I remember, Palladium has a lot of strictures for keeping your alignment a la the MSH Karma and OA Honor systems, but I don't remember if that had an effect on XP or not. It's been a while since I've done anything with that system. 

For White Wolf, I haven't played Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, or Changeling. I've played Trinity and Street Fighter. In both of these games, at the end of a session (and the end of an adventure that takes place over multiple sessions), certain criteria are given or questions asked, and determine how much XP each character earns. This, I think, may be a better way to handle XP for the sort of "all paladin" game noisms wants to run. 

For those that don't know, players get 1 xp just for taking part in the session, and then additional points if they can demonstrate that their character learned or matured in some way, a point for good role play, a point for sticking to the character concept well, a point for heroism (at least in Street Fighter, which I have). If I remember, for Trinity there was one criteria for using your powers to aid the mission. 

This seems like the way to go to quantify honorable behavior to me. Make a list of criteria. The Chivalric Code. Bushido. The Way of the Jiang Hu. The Cowboy Code. Klingon Batlh. Probably best to keep it to under six tenets (the Cowboy Code as often shared on the internet these days has lots of pithy sayings that basically boil down to the same few concepts). At the end of a game session, go through each tenet and ask each player how they felt they upheld that tenet. Award chunks of XP for each tenet they upheld. 

Of course, WW games use XP as a spendable currency to develop skills and abilities, rather than a measure of progress in class level, but that can be adjusted. If someone wants to keep the D&D class & level paradigm, either adjust XP values needed to level up down (divide by 100, maybe?) or tie the amount of XP awarded by the criteria to the level of the character.

Good Press

I was curious about why my Chanbara sales have suddenly been much stronger than before, and I think it may have something to do with Ynas Midgard's post here (and John Higgins' comment). Thanks guys!

Before I stumbled on Ynas's post (I somehow missed it back in July when he posted it) this evening, I found this Reddit thread from a year or so ago. I'm not on Reddit, but occasionally follow a link to info there. Maybe I should sign up as a Redditor so I could comment when things like this pop up in the future. 

First of all, the OP used my cover right under the question, which sorta implies that this is in fact the answer to that question. Nice! 

In the actual post, I'm only third of four options, but still, I'll take it as the OP seems positive towards my little game.

This poster, derkrieger, gives a very nice review of Chanbara. Thanks, derkrieger, if you ever read this. They give L5R a good review as well, but that didn't fit on one screenshot. Also why I had to call them out by handle here. 

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd...it wouldn't be the internet without someone trying to drop a turd in the punch bowl. Granted, I am just some "Western dude" and my game of Japanese fantasy is filtered through my Western cultural perceptions. That criticism is spot on.

But Airk here has obviously not actually perused Chanbara, because I would love to challenge him to show me what in Chanbara is Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Nepalese, etc. Sure, there are some monsters that are pan-East Asian (fox fairies, dragons, and so on), but the version in Chanbara is the Japanese form and name. Also, how it would not be good for the OP's desired "samurai vs yokai" version of something like The Witcher, when one of the three campaign modes I even suggest is "ghostbusting" (page 39).

I don't mean to get my hackles up, especially for something someone posted in the past and will likely never see my response to. But it's hard when the original OA gets panned for claiming to be pan-Asian when it was very highly based on Japanese historical and fantasy tropes, and something like L5R is commonly considered to be Japanese when actually quite a bit of the Rokugan setting (as far as I've looked into it) pulls from other Asian cultures. And then there's my little OSR game which is 100% based on Japanese period and fantasy films/TV, some games & comics influence, my study of Japanese history (casual as it may be), and my experience of living in the country for some time. 

Good Sales

September was the best month for Chanbara sales that I've had since 2018 (the year it was released). I guess talking about my East Marches project a lot has been good for that. Which is a good reminder to me that I should promote my stuff more. 

If you're one of the people who has purchased Chanbara recently, thank you very much. It is appreciated.

Demi-Humans In Race-as-Class TSR East

 I'm still not 100% sure that I want to go back to demi-human classes, at least not for my main West Marches game (I and the players are pretty happy with separate race and class there), but if I ever wrap up West Marches and start East Marches (or start running it as a side campaign), I am leaning toward that, as discussed in my previous post on classes for a pseudo-combined Flying Swordsmen/Chanbara type game. 

The problem I'm having is that I need to pare down the list of demi-humans. Sticking to core rule books, not supplements, BX/BECMI has just three. AD&D has six. AD&D OA has three, but one of them is really a dozen different types, and another has three subtypes. 3E OA has an additional two or three races added on to AD&D's OA races. 5E has the AD&D races plus two more. But AD&D, both versions of OA, and 5E all have separate race and class. So the precedent is for only a few demi-humans in a race-as-class set-up. Sure, I could have more, but then if there are more demi-human classes than human only classes, will it really be a humanocentric campaign? Probably not. 

So, my options, from 1E OA, 3E OA, Chanbara, and my TSR-East rules are: 

Dokkaebi (Korean version of Japanese oni, more or less), big scary looking guys who are sometimes mischievous goblins and sometimes punishers of the wicked. 6-7' tall. Red, blue or yellow skin. Wild hair. Tusks and horns. [TSR-East]

Gumiho (Korean fox fairies, also spelled kumiho, equivalent to Japanese kitsune), tricky creatures with lots of magical powers, who most often are after human souls in the legends, but occasionally are helpful. 4' tall. Red or white fur, but able to transform into human form. Nine tails at full power (more tails = more magic in the legends, and the name is literally "nine tailed fox" as just regular fox is "yeou"). [Chanbara, TSR-East]

Hengeyokai (Japanese for transforming spirit/fairy), animal shapeshifters in OA, but in Japanese legend could be anything from a rock to an animal to a household tool! Gumiho and Tanuki would actually fall under this race if I added them in. OA has the forms they transform into as one of a dozen animal options (mammals, birds, fish), a human form, and a hybrid form. If I add them in, then I'd probably limit the number of forms to animal and hybrid only, and have fewer options for animal type. [1E OA, 3E OA, TSR-East]

Kappa (Japanese water imps), small water creatures resembling a cross between a turtle, frog, and monkey. They like wrestling, cucumbers, and sucking the souls of drowning humans from their buttholes in the legends. 3-4' tall. Green skin. Shells on their backs. The tops of their skulls are concave, and hold magical water that gives them strength in the legends. [Chanbara]

Koropokuru (Ainu fair folk), dwarves. 1E OA has them as gruff barbarians, legends have them as similar to primitive but pastoral gnomes or brownies. 3' tall. Typically tanned skin. Generally good hearted but suspicious. [1E OA, 3E OA, TSR-East]

Naga (Hindu snake-spirits), which are the same name as a monster type, but also pretty much just like yuan-ti. From 3E OA's Rokugan/L5R material, I have no desire to add these guys, but put them on the list for completeness. 10-15' long. Humanoid torso, snake the rest of the way down. [3E OA]

Nezumi (rat-men made up for Rokugan/L5R as far as I can tell), which again I don't feel the need to include these guys, but they appear in one of the sources for this list so here they are. 4' tall. Furry. Stinky. Long tails. Kinda like wererats who can't transform or infect people and not immune to normal weapons. [3E OA]

Shenseng, or Spirit Born (or Spirit Folk in the OA books), which in my estimation should be based on Japanese tales of spirit foundlings like Momotaro, Kaguya-hime, and Kintaro, but are basically half-spirit/half-human "elves" in the OA books. OA has them as bamboo, river, and ocean subtypes. 5-6' tall. Human-like, but prettier. Get benefits from being in the environment of their subtype in OA. Get benefits to interaction/followers in TSR-East.  [1E OA, 3E OA, TSR-East]

Tanuki (Japanese raccoon-dog fairies), are again sometimes tricksters and sometimes protectors/benefactors to humans, depending on the story. Some legends give magical powers to their oversized scrotums, others say they can transform into human form. 3' tall. Raccoon-like fur, dog-like faces (hence the English name). [Chanbara]

Tengu (Japanese crow-men), usually depicted as wild mountain goblins and tricksters in legends, but occasionally legends tell of them training swordsmanship to humans they take a liking to. Kotengu (small tengu) have crow or kite heads and wings, while daitengu (great tengu) have humanoid heads, usually red skinned, with very long noses. 3-4' tall. Feathered bodies with wings and bird heads (or red-skinned and long nosed winged humanoids). [Chanbara, TSR-East]

Vanara (Indian humanoid monkeys), although in myths they are usually described as beast-like, not necessarily monkeys, the most famous mythical vanara is Hanuman, who is always described/depicted as a humanoid monkey. Probably also the inspiration for Son Wukong (Son Goku - yes, this name may be familiar to some of you), the Monkey King of Chinese legendary novel Journey to the West. 4-5' tall. Brown to grayish fur. Prehensile tails. Curious and friendly (at least according to 3E OA). [3E OA, TSR-East]

________________________________

So obviously 11 races in addition to humans is too many, especially when there are only 5 human classes (although with subclasses there are really 16). I already mentioned I'll not be considering the Rokugan races of Nezumi and Naga because they just don't thrill me. So that's down to 9 options unless people in the comments really convince me to keep one or both of these. Also, if I use hengeyokai, again as mentioned above, gumiho and tanuki are already included there so that takes it down to 7. If I don't use hengeyokai, 8 options remain. 

TSR-East already has the Dokkaebi, Gumiho, Koropokuru, Spirit Born, Tengu and Vanara with stats for separate race and class, so it wouldn't be hard to manipulate those into classes, but it's still a few too many options. 

At the playground with my son yesterday, I jotted down an idea to cut it down to Dokkaebi, Koropokuru, Shenseng (spirit born), and Vanara. That's easily doable, but while I don't want to overdo the demi-humans, I also feel like I'm leaving out some cool options. 

So, I'd like to ask you readers what you think. Which of the races listed above would you consider the top three "must haves" for an Asian fantasy inspired campaign? Or should I just stick to humans only, as in Flying Swordsmen or Chanbara minus the last page?

New Project?

 Right before bed last night, I had an idea. It may be a dumb one. We'll see. 

I've spent the past year or so tinkering with my Treasures, Serpents and Ruins house rules to get them to where I pretty much like them (a few tweaks still needed, as we play with them). And after a lot of effort to combine traditional Western and my preferred Eastern fantasy tropes into one simple set of classes/races, I was struck with the idea that I should make a second edition of Flying Swordsmen that is completely compatible with Chanbara. That way I'll have samurai/ninja action as well as Hong Kong style kung fu/wuxia action in one integrated rule set. 

Of course, would it be worth my time to make a completely new game, or just the player facing rules as a supplement to Chanbara? The latter is much easier and more likely to be completed. I added a lot of monsters and spells from FS already into Chanbara, so just adding some rules for martial arts classes Chanbara style might be enough.

Gamma Goodness

 A few weeks ago, Tim Brannon gave a review of 1E Gamma World, or to be more specific, the PDF/POD combo from DriveThru/WotC. I got my start with a bit of GW2E that my cousin had borrowed from a friend. But since he had to return it, we never really got to play it. Oh, and I was in love with the setting from the Endless Quest book Light on Quest's Mountain (one of the better entries in the EQ series, at least as far as I've read). Later, in the early 90's, I picked up the 4e, which I've blogged about plenty before. It's my go-to version of Gamma World. 

But I'd always been curious about the first edition, so after reading Tim's post (link above), I ordered it. I got the PDF right away, of course, but only gave it a cursory skimming. The POD book arrived today. I'm always happy with DriveThru's international shipping rates. It wasn't that much. Also, thanks to everyone who purchased Chanbara. I got this with Chanbara profits. 

The book is slim, only 60 pages, and that's counting the "pull out" reference sheets and map at the back. The quality of the print is good, easy to read. It's perfect bound, so probably won't stand up to too much wear and tear at the table, if I were to run a long term dedicated GW game with it. But I'll probably mostly use it for sprinkling some GW oddness into my West Marches game (I've already got a zone of GW in there, using my 4E rules).

New (old) Projects

 I'm sitting here at my desk at work, taking a break from research, and fiddling around with game stuff. Thinking about what I could do to add some new content to my Hidden Treasure Books store.

I'm still making slow progress on my East Marches megamodule. I have ideas for most of the 120 keyed locations on the map, and the ones I have left to decide on are in the farthest region, which will be for Name Level PCs. I plan to recycle a few small locations from earlier games I'd run of Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara, plus some new ones. The first region (for 1st to 3rd level PCs) has 14 encounter areas keyed on the map. Once I get those areas done and flesh out the home base a bit more, I'll release it as the first installment. That should give me more motivation to keep working on the other four regions (for levels 3-5; 5-7; 7-9; 9+ respectively) and get each installment out sooner rather than later. Once all the installments are done, I'll also be putting it together in a comprehensive package. 

So while I'm doing that, I'm also fiddling around with my TSR and TSR-East homebrew rules. Jeff is rolling up another PC, and was asking if he could have a multiclass with one class from the regular TSR and the other from TSR-East. I hadn't really given that much thought. In fact, TSR-E doesn't even have multiclassing rules yet. So that's something else to work on. And if I'm going to better integrate the rules, I should finally figure out how I want to do the "thiefy" skills. Thieves, Assassins and Acrobats get % based skills, while the Ninja and Yakuza have x in 6 or x in 10 skills. 

I've also still got the idea in my head that instead of selecting class and race, there should only be classes, and each class has sub-classes/kits/archetypes to choose from, and demi-human versions are subclasses. For example, if you're a Fighter, you can be a normal (human) Fighter, or you could choose to be a Ranger or Dwarf Fighter, for example. Then TSR-E would just be adding new sub-class options like Ronin and Tengu Warrior to the base classes. That's a lot of work for very little real gain, though, so I'll probably just keep it as it is now with lots of classes, and races separate. 

I am also working on my DM side rules for TSR-East, and realized that I should give them an edit to make them generic to TSR. Anything traditionally European or Asian can be in separate TSR-East and TSR-West players books and monster/treasure books, if I ever publish this thing. [I was getting some pressure from players to run a kickstarter or something to get this out.

Oh, and I looked through my old Caverns & Cowboys game from a few years back. The play testing on it seemed to work well enough, although we didn't really put the magic system through its paces. I think I might try to find some time to go through it once more (there were a few things players pointed out I could add) and get it up as a cheap PDF/POD game. 

So I'm looking at plenty of gaming-related stuff to work on this year. We'll see how much time I end up with to do these things. C&C is probably easiest, I just need to make a few tweaks, then format it and add in art (which I've got some PD images saved, and Jeremy Hart has done some mock-ups of potential pieces I could commission from him). But at the moment it's the project I'm least enthused about. 

Ghost Castle Hasegawa, the first adventure I made to play test Chanbara, also is in need of a small edit, then formatting, and art insertion. I should get that done, soon, too. Should, I say, but will I? I've been sitting on it for several years now.

Redundancy

 I started work on East Marches again over the weekend. I did a bit of editing to the map (fixing a few errors in numbering, recoloring to make it easier on the eyes on screen but still looking good printed). I also went through and organized the type and terrain of each encounter area on the map. I had used symbols for each type of encounter, and colors for terrain -- but I also have a classic B&W map with the symbols used by BX/BECMI maps too. In my notes, I jotted down each along with the number for the encounter. 

Now, I remembered having gone through and brainstormed ideas for what to put in the encounters for the first difficulty band (up to 6 hexes from the home base). They included a name, ideas for monsters, types of treasures, and connections. But I couldn't find it anywhere. I figured it must have been thrown out. So last night, I jotted down some ideas for the first two zones, very basic ones. 

Today at work I found a pocket notebook in my office, and looking inside, there it was. I'd actually made notes for the same areas in the first two zones many months ago. 

So, now I've got two sets of ideas for each encounter in these first two zones. One set is more detailed, but looking over them, I will probably save some for later zones. Also, there are some similarities among the two lists, although not always at the same locations. 

So, now I get to go through both and evaluate which ones to keep, which to move to further areas out, and which I can drop. I think this is going to be sort of fun. 

I'm also going to try and keep the module as system agnostic as possible, so that I can run it with TSR-East, Chanbara, Flying Swordsmen (maybe)
, AD&D OA, Ruins & Ronin, or what have you.

Outed Myself

 In an AD&D 1E play-by-post game I've been in for years now, the DM started up an Oriental Adventures game section, and I joined in. He also (knowing I was the author) decided to use some elements of Flying Swordsmen in his game. Mostly he's using martial arts maneuvers and monsters. 

Anyway, it had been our secret all along that one of the players in the game was the author of the supplemental rules to the game we're playing (it's still 1E OA, just we get a few extra martial arts powers bolted onto our classes -- I've got a kensai PC in the game). 

Some people have commented on how much they like the martial arts maneuvers, but I'd never let them know it was my work until today. Not sure why, but a new player had joined the game and had no idea what Flying Swordsmen was. Another fairly new player was complementing the game, so I fessed up and gave the new player the link to download the rules. 

And immediately, I got questions about interpreting the rules. I deferred to the DM, of course, since it's his game and his place to decide how to mesh the base OA rules with FS. 

It's been a little while since I've done much with either Flying Swordsmen or with Chanbara. I think I should probably promote them a bit more. My sons have both tried their hands at YouTubing (yes, even my 6-year-old) so tonight my wife suggested I make some videos to promote my games. 

I think I will. Expect a link to a video on the blog some time in the near future.

Chanbara Price

I just reduced the price of the Chanbara PDF to $5.00. If you never picked it up because you thought $10 was too much, now's your chance!

The print version is $15, as well.

Get 'em while they're still sorta luke warm!*

*Chanbara has never really been "hot" but I'm happy with it! Hope you all enjoy it, too!

Should I tinker with Thief skills again?

Thieves. I love them. Love to play them, love to have players play them. It's the whole 'brains over brawn' thing that makes me enjoy them.

But, like many people, I sometimes get annoyed at how they've been presented, and how their skills work. Usually I don't mind the percentage based skills, but the chances of success are pretty low to start. But I've always considered other ways to do it.

In Flying Swordsmen, I copied how they were done in Dragon Fist, which is mostly how they were done in 2E except converted to a d20 roll instead of a percent. The bonuses I gave to the skills were to represent the basic percent chances of a starting thief, and players were allowed to distribute bonuses to the skills when they leveled up like in 2E. That works fairly well, but does lead to some confusion (like the +13 to Climb Sheer Surfaces being thought of as a typo since other starting bonuses are low single digits).

In Chanbara, I use the Ninpo system which is based on 2d6 rolls similar to the Cleric's turn undead chances. I thought it was pretty clever when I came up with it, giving fairly reliable odds of success due to the bell curve, but in practice having to decide the TN for the roll for each situation slows things down at the table unless I've anticipated ninpo being used and included TNs in my adventure notes.

In Treasures, Serpents and Ruins (TSR) I'm currently using the classic d% skills, but using the most favorable progressions.

In TSR-East, however, the ninja was based on the Halfling class in BX/BECMI, so it has hiding 1-9/d10 outdoors, hiding 1-3/d6 indoors (slight variation on the Halfling's 1-2/d6 indoors), 1-3/d6 to move silently (1-2/d6 if wearing brigandine or heavier armor). I also gave them detect traps 1-3/d6 (but not remove traps), detect secret doors/sliding passages 1-2/d6, and hear faint noises 1-2/d6.

The yakuza class can locate traps 1-4/d6 and disarm them 1-2/d6. Also, depending on which mystical yakuza tattoos they select, they could also possibly: detect secret doors 1-3/d6, hide/move silently 1-3/d6, hear noise 1-3/d6, escape shackles or bonds 1-2/d6, climb sheer surfaces 1-9/d10.

Jeff is playing a yakuza in West Marches just to try it out, and it's been going pretty well. He took the spider tattoo so he can climb sheer surfaces, and he's been using it to good advantage. But he's only level 3 so I don't know if dissatisfaction will come into play at higher levels when the scores don't improve.

So now I'm wondering if I should edit my TSR-West rules (the standard D&D classes) to match the x/d6 or x/d10 demi-human class abilities. TSR-East characters start better, but don't improve on their chances as they level, just as demi-humans in BX/BECMI. The whole point of the Thief class is to get that delayed gratification (like with the Magic-User) of surviving to high levels when your skills become more reliable.

So I've got four choices:
1. Leave things as they are and just let the Thief (and subclasses) continue to use d% skills.
2. Flatten the curve, so thieves use d% but start with higher chances but improve more slowly
3. Go with flat x/d6 or x/d10 chances for the character's whole career
4. Go with x/d6 or x/d10 chances that improve at certain stages in the character's career (like when attack bonus and saves improve)

Checking My Achievements

I was looking over my posts from last year. I was surprised that I'd put out seven whole posts in February last year, since I spent almost all of February in the US with my family. But in that last week, I managed to crank out those seven posts.

One of them had this list of goals for 2019:

Now, here are my potential RPG related projects for this year:

1. Converting my West Marches 5E game to Labyrinth Lord. Some players won't like it, but I'm ready to get back to basics. Fewer classes, fewer spells (but often more powerful in effect), and a lower power level; but hopefully more action/interaction.
2. Starting an online Chanbara campaign. Probably with the usual Hangouts/Roll20 gang (Busan Gaming Group plus any of Dean's 5E gamers I can lure into it). If any blog readers are willing to make time on Saturday evenings East Asia/Australia time (Saturday morning North America, midday Europe/Africa), let me know.
3. Finishing up my next set of paper minis (just need to format the book then get it online). It has the Isle of Dread module monsters plus the creatures in BX that aren't in BECMI's Basic and Expert books. 
4. Moving on to the Mentzer Companion Set for the next set of paper minis? Or making a set for OA/Flying Swordsman/Chanbara? Or AD&D monsters? Or AD&D/later edition character types? 
5. Releasing the dungeons/locations of the Chanbara game, plus some for more standard D&D type play, as cheap modules for sale through Hidden Treasure Books.

Overall, I did pretty well with this.

1. I did, sort of. I converted to my house rules Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins, which is BECMI with the serial numbers filed off and some more content inspired by AD&D and 5E. And I couldn't be happier with the game now. Why did I wait so long to convert?

2. I did start the Online Chanbara campaign. Snow Pine Island. I made a map. I made several dungeons. The players made characters. They explored one dungeon. And honestly, I lost interest. I realized later that I'd tried to set up too many factions on this tiny island full of monsters. The players picked the factions they thought would suit their characters, and they were all over the place. Trying to figure out all these conflicting motivations, and goals for each PC that were at cross purposes to every other PC, was just too much work.

Next time, I'll mandate ONE faction that all PCs must have allegiance to, and then let them choose a second one of their choice for some conflict. That way, I can use the shared liege to give them adventure hooks, but let them decide whether to support that goal or try to subvert things for their secondary liege's goals. Make the players do the work on that.

3 and 4. I not only finished the BX Extras/Isle of Dread minis, I also put out a Chanbara minis book. More paper minis this year? Probably not. They're fun to make, but time consuming, and don't really sell that well. What I should do is finally get around to reformatting the Basic Monsters pdfs to match the Expert books, with multiples of monsters usually found in groups to save people the effort of having to print multiple pages to get more than one figure.

5. This is the only one I didn't get done. But I did start in on East Marches, which will likely have recycled content from my earlier Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara campaigns. Hell, even from my old AD&D OA game from 1997, and my 3E OA game from 2006-7. Because as I posted before, there's a lot of stuff that needs to go into this thing. Might as well save myself a bit of effort and self-plagiarize, when things fit.

Next Year's Project

My West Marches game is going well. I plan to continue it. And I've hinted a few times before about an "East Marches" game. I'm going to try and get this out sometime next year.

I've got the map. I've got an outline structure for writing up the campaign in a way that should be intelligible to anyone other than me (my West Marches notes are pretty sparse, because I only need enough written down to jog my memory of what the encounter, mysterious location, or lair is supposed to be about).

Of course, the map has 748 hexes (with six basic terrain types), and I've got 120 "locations" (in five types) marked on it. And there are eight zones of progressing difficulty.

So to make this happen, I need to have four to six wandering monster tables for each difficulty zone (one for each terrain type in that zone). I need to detail 120 locations that can be discovered/visited. I need to come up with hooks and rumors that will drive exploration. I need more monsters.

I plan to make this fairly generic "old school" but primarily for Chanbara. So I'll use Chanbara monsters, and Flying Swordsmen monsters (that aren't already in Chanbara), and probably 1E OA monsters that aren't in either of those games. And some monsters from BX/BECMI (lots of normal and giant animals, giant insects, and general monsters that might as well be in an Asian fantasy setting as a European one). I'll probably need to include  full stats for the monsters for DM convenience.

Oh yeah, and I'll need to write up the "home base" including several Lieges for Chanbara (or just as patron NPCs for other system games). 

So this will be a pretty big book, actually. I figure the difficulty zones should allow for some overlap, and take characters up to at least "name level" if not higher.

Not sure what to make of this

Sorry to get political on a gaming blog, but I need to address this.

Earlier in the year I put out the Chanbara Characters paper minis set on my DrivethruRPG store, Hidden Treasure Books. Now frequent blog readers will know that I'm terrible at self-promotion. It's my Midwesterner background, maybe, or my introversion. If people want what I'm offering, great! I'm happy to provide it. But I don't go posting about them all over the place, all the time here, or in barely semi-relevant comments on others' blogs or forums. If they become relevant, I might bring them up.

Needless to say, I don't check for feedback or reviews as often as I should. The paper minis line has only gotten one review anyway (positive), and all of the feedback about Chanbara was here, aside from one comment on Drivethru asking about the print version when only the PDF was available.

I did check the other day, and found that a guy named David B had posted this:

David B June 10, 2019 12:33 am Asia/Tokyo

Why did you not give them Japanese skin tones or did you not want to lose the opportunity for some virtue signalling 

 

 

I posted a response there, but probably this David character will never check back to see it, since I missed his comment for five months. So David B, if you're reading this and would like to further explain yourself, please feel free to chime in in the comments. 

My response to this was to laugh, honestly. I was pretty up front about the creation process of the paper minis here on the blog. So I'm guessing this guy isn't a regular reader. I'm a pretty poor artist. I never really developed my talent in art. I don't try to create the art myself. I take public domain images and modify them using GIMP. Sometimes that's just cropping out all the background to leave the character. Sometimes, if it's a black and white original, I colorize it. Sometimes I modify them to add weapons/armor or modify the pose a bit. Mostly though, it's selecting the figure I want from the original and deleting the rest. 

Now, with my Basic Adventurers set (see how I did that! Product placement!), I did go to some effort to make sure there were equal male and female figures, and that there were a variety of skin tones depicted. Many years ago, a Filipino friend I was gaming with took a look at my minis and asked me, in all seriousness, "Why are they all white?" And my only answer was that, being white myself, and thinking of Medieval fantasy as typically European-coded, they were all white. Then I stared painting more variety on my minis.

 

It doesn't hurt me in any way to be more inclusive. And if customers appreciate having some choices for fantasy characters that look more like they do (or a chance to use a figure that very much does NOT look like they do), great! Win-win, right?

With the Chanbara set, though, I was collecting Japanese public domain art, and some vintage photographs (also public domain). I didn't need to colorize anything, as they were already in color. The vintage photos were already colorized. 

The range of skin tones found in the Chanbara Characters set are the range of skin colors depicted by actual Japanese artists of the 17th through 19th centuries. In other words, most of these figures are of Japanese subjects as painted by actual Japanese artists. The rest are photos of Japanese people (colorized by someone other than me).

 

And this David B person, since his location lists him as Asia/Tokyo and assuming that he really is posting from somewhere in Asia, should realize that East Asian peoples actually do have quite the range of skin tones. I have students here in Korea who are just as pasty white as my Celtic/Germanic-heritage white ass (one who's even paler!) and some who are so dark they could almost pass for African-heritage. And that's not counting the fake tan "ko-gyaru" in Japan. I'm talking about the soccer club boys or track girls who spent a lot of time out in the sun. 

So I'm stumped as to why David B, if he is actually in Asia and not just using a VPN to make it look that way, wouldn't know this.

I'm also wondering why he thinks I'm "virtue signalling" by this. Makes me think he's just another one of those incel alt-right asshats on the internet, pissed off that someone, somewhere, is doing things without the express purpose of pissing people off. Or even worse, that he's crypto-fascist and doing his own virtue-signalling to his Aryan brothers on one of the most obscure items for sale on DriveThru. Like I've literally sold 4 copies of this thing. That's all. 

 

Now that sounds pretty bad. And I don't like to make wild assumptions about people like this. So David B, if you are reading, please prove me wrong in the comments. I'd love to know what your motivation was for posting that comment. Were you actually offended in some way? Are you (needlessly) defending Asian people from some perceived slight? Are you virtue signalling to the Regressive Right? Or did you just feel ripped off because you're one of those 4 people who spent your buck-fifty on this thing and weren't satisfied with it?

Asian-Inspired Melting Pot Settings

I'm best known in the OSR as the creator of Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara. Or, I should say, people know FS and Chanbara, whether or not they know me. The DM of the PbP AD&D game I'm in was a contributor to Chanbara (he helped edit). He sent me a message the other day that he started working part time in a FLGS and met a guy who has Chanbara. Not sure how the game came up in conversation, but when the dude found out that my DM's name was in the book, he came back and asked the DM to sign it!

Now, that got me thinking of two other projects I've had on my mind for a while. One is revising Flying Swordsmen to be less like Dragon Fist and more like Chanbara. Not sure I'll actually tackle a second edition of FS any time soon, though. Another was an idea to make an Oriental Adventures style supplement for Labyrinth Lord AEC. But I wouldn't want to just clone 1E OA. There were some game design choices I think that would be best avoided there, and it's a bit too heavily Japan-centric.

Which leads me to this. Yesterday (or maybe it was Friday when I started thinking about it) I was considering what sorts of classes would work well for an Asian fantasy-inspired setting. Not "fantasy China" like FS, or "fantasy Japan" like Chanbara. A game that, like normal D&D does for European/Near Eastern fantasy, mixes the best elements for a game together in an "unholy goulash" as James Mal once said.

Today (well, this morning I spent most of the time playing Gauntlet II emulated on my computer until I got bored/controller thumb and quit around level 44) I wrote up eight classes for such a game. I still need to write up the spell lists for the casters, but I've got the classes all lined up from levels 1-15 (to match my current house rules of D&D). I haven't thought of what races to include, but it will probably be a mismash of the original OA, 3E OA, and the optional races in Chanbara.

The classes, and a brief summary of each, are as follows:

Hwarang (Knight): Fantasy Korea needs some love! Historically, hwarang were knights of the Silla kingdom. In this game, they are basically BX/BECMI Dwarves (any weapons, any armor, good saves), but I also gave them the ability to maximize their damage a number of times per day equal to their level (which is from the 1E OA Kensai class). Oh, and a d10 hit die since I use AD&D hit dice for characters in my homebrew. They don't get the dwarf's infravision or detection abilities, of course.

Mudang (Shaman): Again went with the Korean for the name. These guys are based on the Cleric class, but with a few alterations. Their prime requisite is Charisma (since they draw power from spirits/The Spirit Realm). Like Labyrinth Lord, they get spells from level 1. They can use blunt weapons, but only light armor and shields. I tried to simplify the Turn Undead ability, but explaining it makes it sound more complicated. First of all, it also affects evils spirits and demons.
HD less than 1/2 the mudang level: 2d6HD destroyed automatically
HD less than mudang level: 2d6HD flee automatically
HD equal to mudang level: roll 7 on 2d6 to make 2d6HD flee
HD greater to mudang level: roll 9 on 2d6 to make 2d6HD flee
HD greater than double mudang level: roll 11 on 2d6 to make 2d6HD flee

Not sure if this will work out well, since the high level mudang will be able to automatically turn a lot of undead, but then so could the Cleric so we'll see. I may change the 11 to mudang level +4 hit dice.

Ninja (Spy): Instead of basing these guys on the Thief class, I based them on the BX Halfling class. That makes them better in combat, and better at hiding (Halfling hiding is good!), but not able to do all the other thiefy stuff. I took away the Halfling combat bonuses and gave them backstab instead. Along with good noise detection, I threw in detect secret doors, sliding walls, traps, etc. from the BX Dwarf and Elf classes (slightly better odds to detect traps, 1-3/d6). They can use any weapon, but are limited to light and medium armors.

Ronin (Wave Man): Because samurai should be serving their lord, but ronin can go out adventuring any time they like. Based on the Fighter, but I stuck to the BX/BECMI d8 hit die for them. They can use any weapon or armor, but not shields. They get to pick a fighting style that grants +1 damage with a weapon group (swords, spears, bows, axes, bludgeons, chains), with a second style at higher levels, and at even higher levels getting to bump one style up to +2 damage.

Sohei (Warrior-Monk): Again based on the Cleric class, but more martial than the Mudang with a d8 hit die, and slightly slower advancement (1750xp to level 2). They can use any weapon, but only light or medium armor, plus shields. And spells are their only special ability. Their spell list will be a bit more aggressive than the standard Cleric/OA Shukenja spell list.

Wushi (Wizard): Like the Wu Jen of 1E OA, but the name means "magical learned gentleman" where wu jen just means "magic person." Oh, and no wu jen taboos, just the Magic-User with a slightly different spell list. Spellbooks and all.

Xia (Gallant): My take on the wandering do-gooder martial artist type, based on the BX/BECMI Elf class. They can fight (all weapons, light armor only, no shield, and d6 hit dice), and get unarmed damage like a Monk/Mystic. Plus they can cast spells (max at 4th level though). I intend to make the spell list using ideas from the player in my West Marches game who was playing a Muscle Wizard -- spells that would make him better in melee combat. And since it's the wuxia-themed class, flying around on wires and dancing on bamboo branches type spells too.

Yakuza (Gangster): Based on the Thief class, but again moving away from d% specialized skills and instead x/d6 skills. I gave them a find traps 1-4/d6 and a combined disarm traps/open locks of 1-2/d6. They can backstab just like the Thief (and ninja), and at every even level they get a tattoo. I have 20 tattoos that grant various magical effects like bonuses to saving throws, magical resistance, or a 1st level spell effect once per day.

Using this, you could have an East Marches sandbox type game of wandering heroes, or a megadungeon, or whatever. Killing monsters and taking their stuff, Slaughter-Vagabond style, if you like. Or of course getting into the fun politics and urban intrigue/competing martial arts schools, all that jazz.

1E OA has a surprising amount of character options

I am making plans to continue my paper miniatures line with characters for Oriental Adventures.

I made lists of all the race and class combinations. And man, the way the Hengeyokai work, I'm going to have to create a LOT of minis to cover every option!

There are 12 or so animals that are the base form of a hengeyokai, and they have normal human, hybrid and animal forms. I figure for marking their position on a battle mat, the hybrid or animal forms are enough.

There are four classes that Hengeyokai can choose, luckily. Only four. And a few animal types must be evil so can't be Shukenja, and a few must be chaotic, so can't be kensei. None must be lawful, so any Hengeyokai can be a Wu Jen. And Bushi have no alignment restrictions.

I usually do male and female versions of each (the animal form will just get one and you can hand wave any sexual dimorphism in the species). So that's 12 regular animals.

Hybrid forms, however, will require:

24 Bushi (12 male, 12 female)
20 Kensei (10 male, 10 female)
18 Shukenja (9 male, 9 female)
24 Wu Jen (12 male, 12 female)

That's an awful lot of hengeyokai. Especially since for many of them I will need to modify a picture of a human with an animal's head to make it work. There are some public domain pictures of Japanese anthropomorphic animals, but not enough.  Even if I only did one hybrid form of each class for each animal type, it's still 55 total pictures including the animal forms.

And for humans, I was planning to have two of each sex for each of the ten classes. One of each sex for Korobokuru for each of their five classes. And Spirit Folk - luckily I don't think there's that much difference between the three types visually, so just one of each sex for each of their four classes. If I did one for each type of Spirit Folk, that would triple that number.

So if I went whole hog (1 male and female of each class for Hengeyokai hybrids plus animal forms, 2 male and female of each class for Humans, 1 male and female of each class for Korobokuru, and 1 male and female of each class for each type of Spirit Folk), this book would have 172 miniatures in it.

That's a bit of work there. Might take a while. Even if I limit the Hengyeyokai and Spirit Folk, and only provide one male and female each of the human classes, it's still 93 miniature images I need to create.

In the mean time, I listed out the class options of Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara. That's easier to do since everyone's human. A lot of these can do double duty when I get around to the OA set, although I may mix it up a bit to give people more value for their money spent if they buy both. Especially for classes like the samurai where I have tons of pictures that work. Spell-casters and martial artists may get recycled out of necessity, however. We'll see.

I've got all the pictures selected for the Chanbara set. Some are pictures I used in the book, but not all of the book pictures make for a good miniature image. There are two male and two female images for each class/profile in Chanbara. So I should be able to get this book out soon. And I should be looking at the monster lists, too...

ZVP Fan-trailer

I'm off to the U.S.A. for a few days. While I'm gone, enjoy this awesome bit of inspiration for your Chanbara games.

Hat tip to Tedankhamen Bonnah for the link.

Creating original cultural features in OA settings

A semi-random thought hit me earlier today. Thinking about my original Zhongyang Dalu setting, I was considering ways to merge elements of various Asian cultures (and sometimes non-Asian cultural elements) into original cultures. That's basically what Gygax and Arneson did in their campaigns, just with mostly European historical cultures as the basis of their ideas.

In simpler terms, using discrete cultural elements as LEGO bricks and using them to construct a fantasy culture.

Then, something I'd thought about last year came back to me. In 1E OA (and in the 3E book's setting of Rokugan), social status is defined by the Japanese cultural caste system. Originally Confucian in origin (and possibly being influenced by the Indian caste system despite its differences), you get what I used in Chanbara. Nobles at the top, the "buke" (samurai caste) of warriors next, then commoners (in theory anyway), artisans, merchants (money for nothing [interest/mark-ups on goods] makes them rich but gets them no respect), and untouchables at the very bottom.

But in Korea, while there was a hereditary aristocracy, the Yangban, the real movers and shakers were people who could pass the Civil Service exam (in some eras of Chinese history this is also the case). Bureaucrats, functionaries, auditors, inspectors, governors, tax collectors, historians -- these were the influential members of society in Joseon Korea. Well, them along with the Military Service, which was also exam based.

It didn't matter how low-born you were (again, in theory), if you could pass the Civil or Military Service exam, you were made into an agent of the crown. In practice, low-born members like the Korean hero Yi Sun-shin, the admiral who helped defeat the Japanese invasions in the 16th century, faced discrimination and plotting by officials of aristocratic birth. But social mobility was possible.

I think this sort of social structure might be more conducive to an RPG setting than one where you're pretty much set in your social status at birth. Granted, in Japan's Warring States period, commoners who fought well could be granted samurai status. And in the same era and later in the Edo period after the wars were over, merchants with enough cash could purchase samurai status for themselves or more often for their children.

But in Korea, if you studied hard enough, you could rise easily through the ranks.

So, one thing to think about when designing fantasy OA cultures is to consider the social hierarchies and how people moved (or were prevented from moving) within them. The Mongolians had a more egalitarian society. Anyone who was a good warrior and leader could become khan, and you only remained khan as long as you were militarily successful or politically savvy. I'd need to study up a bit more on Philippine and SE Asian cultures, but I would bet the Thais, Burmese, and others may have had different structures as well.

Of course, in addition to politics and social structure, religion is important. And synchretism is the order of the day. There were many native animist practices in most regions of East Asia. There were Hinduism and Buddhism influences from India. There are Taoism and Confucianism (not originally religions, more just belief systems but made religious over time) from China. There is Bushido (again not really a religion but sometimes treated as one de facto) from Japan and Legalism from China. And in practice, they all blend together to some degree or other.

The Chinese conception of Buddhist Heaven isn't Nirvana, it's basically the Taoist conception of the realm of spirits and immortals, just with Buddha added in as the top boss. Shinto (animism) blends with Buddhism and Confucianism in Japan. In Korea, Buddhism was seen as an unwanted foreign influence by the government, who pushed a version of Neo-Confucianism as the primary philosophy for the people. Christian and Muslim missionaries were in China during the 8th or 9th century, maybe earlier.

Take elements from the above (and other belief systems, or made up elements that don't feel off) in various amounts, mix and match, and voila!

With the social/political system and religion of each culture spelled out, it's just a matter of adding some small, unique touches. And since this is fantasy, with magic and monsters and non-human people, adding in some unique touches helps make them feel different than humans. This is something I tried to do in the old 3E OA Zhongyang Dalu setting of mine, before I started retro-cloning Dragon Fist and needed a world with primarily Chinese influences.

As I said before, in most D&D settings, sometimes there are cultures that are very obviously drawn from one primary real world source -- the Known World setting has a lot of these, but other times the cultures don't handily map to a real world culture. And that 's a great thing for a game.

How big is Zhongyang Dalu?

In my last post, poster Reason asked for an estimate of scale. And well, it's a big continent.

I never set an exact scale to it, but I did set a scale to the Yu Archipelago/Jade Islands. Here's that hex map, and the Flying Swordsman map of Zhongyang Dalu again for comparison.

Here are the Jade Islands, the portion of the setting I use for Chanbara. The hexes are 24 miles, which puts the map at about 1200 miles east to west, 800 miles north to south. And the Jade Islands are shorter lengthwise (from Uozu and Rindo Provinces in the south-east to Iida and Kosugi Provinces in the north-west) than actual Japan. I haven't tried to calculate land volume, but considering there's no massive main island like Honshu, and none of the smaller islands rival Hokkaido for size, it's a fair bit smaller.

Here again is the Zhongyang Dalu map from Flying Swordsmen. You'll see the Yu Archipelago (as the mainlanders in Flying Swordsmen call it) is the Jade Islands (as the natives of Chanbara call it...actually the same thing, since "yu" means "jade"). It's the northeast ninth of the map. Which puts the Zhongyang Dalu map at around 2400 miles north to south and 3600 miles east to west.

Pretty massive. And yet, actually a fair bit smaller than real world China. The Chen Empire (all the provinces in the red borders) has a more widely spread population than China, though, as much more of it makes for good agricultural land.