A Podcast About Outlaws of the Water Margin

Outlaws of the Water Margin is the roleplaying game that initially made me want to write my own frp game set in Imperial China. It is also an early example of a ‘culture rpg’, a kind of role-playing game that is really different from our usual escapist games.

I have recently discovered that the podcast “Ludonarrative Dissidents” had covered the game, in particular the cultural environment in which it had been created.

Enjoy the episode!

Asian TTRPGs

Except for Japan, there aren't many Asian tabletop RPGs out there. Here are a few links to Asian tabletop RPG companies/individuals that I have found online:

Cadua Sirmata, from the Philippines (facebook)

Ginintuan: Legends of the Golden Sea (fantasy setting based on Philippine culture)

Curious Chimeras, from Singapore (web-site):

Tales Of Saintrest and the Three Paths System (South-East Asian Hindu-Buddhist rural horror fantasy.)

划拳 huá quán (duelling martial arts TTRPG)

Liquor Canini, from the Philippines (web-site)

Karanduun (fantasy TTRPG)

Megaladon Games, from the Philippines (facebook)

Yore Campaign Setting, for D&D 5th ed.

Role Over Play Dead, from Malaysia (blog)

Ech0 Micro-RPG (GM-less TTRPG for kids)

Summerhaven Games (drivethruRPG shop)

Knife to Know You (a teen pulp horror module for D&D 5th ed.)

Sword Prince Games, from the Philippines (patreon)

Arch Angel Dating Simulator (Romance and the supernatural)

undeadR (drivethruRPG shop)

Ramayana Run, for D&D 5th ed.

Vorazunbrews, from the Philippines (facebook)

D&D 5th ed. supplements

Tetsubō News

Tetsubō is one of those games that “almost happened”. Time and time again, it was on the brink of publication, and then for various reason it got cancelled. First in the 80s as a Japanese-flavoured Warhammer supplement, then putatively as a Dragon Warriors supplement, then two years ago it went back to its original scope and again almost got published as a Japanese-flavoured Zweihänder supplement (so much that it even got its cover that was circulated on Twitter; it’s the picture I am showing here), and now its authors are revealing that they may eventually publish it as a stand-alone role-playing game powered by the same engine as Paul Mason’s Outlaws of the Water Margin – which would be über cool since I really like the latter.

What can I say at the moment? Be patient as a Zen monk; wait and see!

Return of the Basic Role-Playing Ststem! New! Improved! With OGL!

My three or four faithful readers may remember that the reason my historical role-playing game set in Imperial China The Celestial Empire isn’t available any longer is because its original publisher, Alephtar Games, lost the licence to publish games using the Basic Role-Playing System, owned by the Chaosium, as their engine.

However, the Chaosium have just announced an Open Gaming Licence for the Basic Role-Playing System (all the details are on my other blog), meaning that The Celestial Empire might return, probably under another form, should I finally manage to finish the manuscript of my East Asian 16th century setting.

Watch this space!

Rise of the Yōkai Koku - PDF Only Supplement

Alas, the crowdfunding campaign for Rise of the Yōkai Koku (a Sengoku Jidai-themed campaign by Alephtar Games) did not reach its target goal, meaning the supplement will only be released as a PDF rather than a fully-fledged book. ETA is September 2018.

Rise of the Yōkai Koku - Crowdfunding Campaign Has Started

The crowdfunding campaign for Rise of the Yōkai Koku, by Alephtar Games, has started on ulule. Rise of the Yōkai Koku (妖怪國) is an adventure/campaign setting for Revolution D100 set in 16th-century Japan, at the time of the feudal anarchy known as the Sengoku Jidai (戰國時代, "Age of Warring States").
Although the campaign is specifically tailored for Revolution D100, I believe you can easily adapt it to any D100-based role-playing game.

my character from the play tests

Here are three excerpts from the ulule blurb:

"After his defeat at the hand of Oda Nobunaga, the great Daimyō Azai Nagamasa commits seppuku. The only hope for what is left of his retinue is a secret alliance with the Takeda clan, the only one strong enough to oppose Nobunaga. However, Takeda Shingen demands a hostage to guarantee the loyalty of Nagamasa’s former retainers. The hostage must reach the Shinano province without Nobunaga being aware of his presence, but the road passes through Oda territory. A group of brave adventurers must accompany the hostage in his dangerous journey."

The first part of the booklet contains two different methods to generate Japanese characters suitable to the Sengoku Jidai era – including some unusual ones – and specific rules for roleplaying in the period, and in Japanese culture in general: Buddhist schools, the influence of Shintō practices, Japanese martial disciplines and so on. The second part is the adventure itself, in which the player characters take the role of protectors of the hostage at the court of the great Takeda Shingen. The campaign is divided into ten chapters between which the players will have plenty of opportunities to evolve their characters along their preferred path.

Other information about the product:

• Expected size 64 to 80 pages, letter format.
• Standard character generation option based on Background and Occupation.
• Questionnaire-based character generation option which defines your character abilities and history according to the answers you choose.
• Stunts for Japanese swordsmanship and other martial techniques.
• Statistics for Japanese weapons and armour.
• Simple magic powers based on Buddhist meditation techniques.
• Different flavours of Buddhist schools, from highly orthodox Zen to the weird practices of Shugendō, with all shades of esoteric Buddhism in between. Each school provides slightly different magic.

Monsters & Magic Back In Print

Sarah Newton (Monsters & Magic's author) has announced today that her seminal Old School feel/New School mechanics fantasy role-playing game would be launched soon as a print-on-demand book on DriveThruRPG / RPGNow.

Edit 17 May: here's the relevant link on DriveThruRPG.

She has also announced that there would be some new M&M announcements coming up shortly!

The Celestial Empire No Longer Available

Unfortunately, for reasons way beyond my control, The Celestial Empire won't be available from Alephtar Games any more, as they can no longer offer items with a Chaosium trademark on them.

On the other hand, Chaosium can still sell the Alephtar Games books and PDFs. However, it seems they have disappeared from Chaosium's catalogue on their web shop.

Bottom line: if you're interested in TCE and see the book in a shop or on a web-site, do purchase it! It will become impossible once the current stock has been sold out.

Also, given the amount of work that it would involve, I have currently no plans whatsoever to re-write the book to make it compatible with another set of D100-based rules. I'm also way too busy with writing and playtesting Oriental Monsters & Magic.

Wind on the Steppes – Preview

A seven-page preview of Wind on the Steppes is available on Alephtar Games' web-site. I suggest you pay particular attention to the bit about shamans, which are one of the key aspects of nomad life.

Wind On The Steppes Available For Pre-Order!

Wind on the Steppes, Alephtar Games' latest supplement is available for pre-order. Here's the publisher's blurb:

Be they Huns led by Attila, Turks, Kipchaks or the most feared of all – Genghis Khan’s Mongols, the nomads are surging from the depths of Central Asia! And they have just one goal in mind: raiding and pillaging everything in your campaign. So have your player characters get ready to face the fight of their life, for there is no escape route… unless they belong themselves to the horde.

Wind on the Steppes is a supplement for Basic Roleplaying describing the features common to all nomad tribes and the peculiarities of each nomad ethnicity or empire. Within it you will find inspiration for fleshing out powerful enemies for your fantasy or historical campaigns based on other Alephtar Games supplements. But its use is not limited to providing you with more detailed “bad guys”: Nomads can be fascinating player characters, too. The harsh life of the steppe and the unique flavour of their shamanistic approach to the supernatural world will give you plenty of great roleplaying opportunities.

This book requires the Basic Roleplaying core ruleset, available from Chaosium Inc.

Book + PDF bundle to be ordered at $29.90 from this page.

Wind On The Steppes Cover Art Unveiled

Alephtar Games have unveiled the cover of their upcoming steppe nomads BRP supplement, titled Wind on the Steppes, on their Facebook page:

The art is by famous Italian fantasy artist Riccardo Rullo. At the moment, the exact availability date and retail price are still undisclosed.

Scarlet Heroes Kickstarter

I am wary of Kickstarter projects now. Most projects are late or haven't delivered, and I prefer the time-proven tranquillity of the product that has been written and playtested by its author before it eventually hits the shelves of my FLGS. I know, I'm old-fashioned.

However, I did back the Scarlet Heroes Kickstarter project, and for several reasons.

First and foremost, because of the south-east Asian setting. Second, because Sine Nomine Publishing has a solid history of delivering on time. Third, because I am curious of the sandbox tools, of the "adventure tags", and of the one-on-one gaming rules that will be part of Scarlet Heroes.

Outlaws of the Water Margin

This post is about Outlaws of the Water Margin— no, not the book: the role-playing game. Set under the Sòng in the milieu of the derring-do outlaws of the Rivers and Lakes, this is in my opinion the best 'Oriental' role-playing game ever. It was actually a combination of Outlaws of the Water Margin, for the immersive cultural context, and of Rome: Life and Death of the Republic, for the system engine and the layout, that spurred my working seriously on The Celestial Empire, whose manuscript had been sleeping in draft format for such a long time, in the first place.

The only problem is that Outlaws of the Water Margin has never been published. Paul Mason started to work on it years ago (before widespread use of the internet, when there still were paper rpg fanzines) and, Paul being the procrastinating perfectionist that he is, the fully-fledged game never saw the light.

Some draft versions of it did circulate as PDFs generously handed out by the author, but alas there isn't much left online.

Draft versions of the main chapter are available here. I don't know if these are the latest PDFs that have circulated, but it is a good start. Paul would also often discuss progress in the game in the pages of imazine, the fanzine that he edited and published until 2002.
The gaming system was extremely simple, efficient, and elegant. Success of an action would depend on an ability plus a modifier and the roll of 2D6 against a given difficulty; in case of success, the highest of the 2D6 would also give the degree of success. Today this is the bread-and-butter of a lot of games, but at the time (the mid-90s, when elegant design and a single mechanism to cover all game-related actions were almost unheard-of) this was quite a revolution.The game also stressed the importance of a PC's family and guānxi, again at the time when this was not exactly what game designers had in mind. Wealth was an abstract measure, not the exact computation of how many coppers and silvers the PC had amassed; again, something really, really revolutionary at the time.

Paul also made available the write-ups of a series of gaming sessions, which have also been extremely inspiring when I was writing TCE. The write-ups are available here.

Viktor Haag is known to have GM'ed an Outlaws of the Water Margin campaign, whose sole [as far as I know] campaign log-cum-fanzine is available here.

If you find more information about Outlaws of the Water Margin, please let me know!

New Rules, New Campaign

I am currently writing a new East Asian-flavoured role-playing game. This new book won't use the Basic Role-Playing System like The Celestial Empire does, but the Effect Engine (used in Monsters & Magic) by Sarah Newton.

Another major difference with The Celestial Empire is that the new book, whose working title is Oriental Monsters & Magic, will focus on a particular time period, namely the 16th century. Also, instead of having China as its central focus and depict the neighbouring countries from a Sinocentric point of view, Oriental Monsters & Magic will try and focus in equal mode on the four civilised countries that surround the East China Sea: Míng China, Joseon Korea, Muromachi/Azuchi-Momoyama Japan, and the Ryūkyū kingdom.

I have started a playtesting campaign for the new rules set in Míng China. You can find the campaign log here (beware, it's in French!).

TCE Review on RPG.net

Wow... The Celestial Empire has just been reviewed on RPG.net and has received the following marks:

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

The funny thing is that, although I am happy with what the reviewer wrote on the cultural part of The Celestial Empire, I disagree with him on most of the technical or game engine-related comments!

A Sad Piece of News: Lynn Willis Passed Away

Lynn Willis, long-time Chaosium employee (he was the third person to become a Chaosium employee, starting with the 1978 wargame Lords of the Middle Sea, and moving on to the über successful Call of Cthulhu line) passed away.

Here is the relevant page on Chaosium's web-site.

R.I.P. Lynn Willis.

Free Adventure

Well, not from me, sorry.

I have already mentioned RuneQuest 6. It is the latest incarnation of the original RuneQuest rules, which gave birth to the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) system back in the 80s. And of course you know that The Celestial Empire uses BRP as its 'engine'.

Now the earlier version of RQ6 was called Mongoose RuneQuest II, which was re-released as Legend after Mongoose lost the licence to using the 'RuneQuest' name. There are many non-Gloranthan settings available for the Legend game, and one of these settings is called Samurai of Legend and lets you play in Heian Japan.

Mongoose has just made available on DriveThruRPG a free scenario for Samurai of Legend, which is really good. From the blurb:

Beneath and Opal Moon is an introductory scenario for Samurai of Legend characters. It takes place in an isolated village in a southern Honshu province and is designed for between three and five characters, which can be samurai, sōhei, a mixture of the two and include a priest.
The scenario should provide a couple of strong sessions of play and produce ideas for future adventures.

You can download the scenario and play it as is (Legend and TCE are highly compatible, as are all D100-based role-playing games), or you can adapt it to your Imperial Chinese campaign game with the following suggestions. Note: do not read the following if you are a player, as it contains spoilers.

 - Set the adventure in Táng China— because of the nobility.
 - Set the adventure in South China— because of the rice fields.
 - Rename the families; Sakoda becomes Xīguō, Taira becomes Píng. Both are aristocratic families.
 - sōhei (僧兵) are Japanese Buddhist warrior-monks with no Chinese equivalent; still, you can use the Buddhist Monk profession from p49 of TCE.
 - kami (神) are Japanese nature spirits, again without any Chinese equivalent. For the scope of this adventure, however, the local kami can be replaced with the Village God (土地公 Tǔdì Gōng) and his wife, Earth Grandmother (土地婆 Tǔdì Pó). The Chinese Village God also has a shrine, like the Japanese kami, which is central to the religious life of the small community.
 - rokuro-kubi (轆轤首) are human-looking yāomó that feed on live human flesh during the night. The GM can stat the rokuro-kubi using the stats of the èmó (p116 of TCE) with the following modification: INT 3D6, and with the following demonic features: Extensible neck (the neck can extend and the head can attack up to several metres around the creature, delivering a bite attack), and Regeneration at level 3 efficiency (p159 of BRP), or he can simply use the stats provided with the adventure. A description of the standard rokuro-kubi (without the detachable head and guts form) can be found here.
 - A mujina (貉) is a sort of huòmó (p118 of TCE), except that her victim loses INT instead of CON characteristic points. The mujina in the adventure is quite intelligent (INT 14), much more so than the average huòmó.
 - The fact that placing blood in a kami shrine would pollute it is a typical Japanese belief; however similar beliefs did exist in ancient China. The GM may either keep the same incident, or devise another one (the statue of the Village God has been broken, or refuse has placed on his altar, or a piece of his golden ingot has been chipped away...).
 - Wandering Shinto Priest — to be replaced with a travelling Daoist monk. He's on a pilgrimage to Mount Qíyūn, one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Daoism.
 - gaki (餓鬼) is the Japanese form of the Chinese word èguǐ (p125 of TCE).
 - Replace the Lore (Shinto) skill tests with Knowledge (Religion [Daoism]) skill tests.
 - Replace Purity with Daoist Allegiance.
 - The Wild Man can be healed by the spirit of Tǔdì Pó or, as written in the adventure, by his wife's poetry or through a long period of spiritual healing in a Buddhist monastery.

RuneQuest 6: Firearms

In terms of a rules engine to power your Celestial Empire games, I have already mentioned RuneQuest 6 as a viable alternative to the Basic Role-Playing 'Big Gold Book'.

RuneQuest 6 has been available for a few months now, and I really wish I had the time to write an in-depth study of the consequences of using RuneQuest 6 as the engine of your TCE games. Some day I hope I'll be able to post something.

In the meanwhile, I really urge you to download the free Firearms supplement for RuneQuest 6 on the Design Mechanism's web-site.

Page 12 should be of particular interest for pre-European contact games, or for encounters with very early Portuguese or Dutch colonists.

New Version of Magic World

The Worlds of Wonder boxed set, published in 1982 by the Chaosium, was their first shot at providing the Basic Roleplaying generic system (at the time much smaller than its current incarnation) with three genre-based settings, viz, fantasy, super-heroes, and science-fiction. Magic World was the name of the fantasy setting.

The Chaosium has announced today that Magic World would be re-published this summer as a stand-alone product (if I do understand correctly the phrase "self-contained fantasy role-playing game"), which means that there could be yet another alternative engine for The Celestial Empire, on top of the already mentioned BRP Quick-Start Edition, Renaissance, and RuneQuest 6.

RuneQuest 6: Mysticism

In his February 2012 update about the upcoming RuneQuest 6 fantasy role-playing game, Design Mechanism author Lawrence Whitaker announces the following:

RQ6 will have five very different magic systems: Folk Magic (Common Magic as was), Animism (spirit magic), Mysticism (brand new), Theism (Divine) and Sorcery. [...] Mysticism is completely new and aims to allow characters to replicate all manner of wuxia, martial arts, ki, and other powers that focus on self-realisation and potential. Its not a spell-based system, but it does have a very wide range of different effects/talents to offer considerable flexibility.

This is obviously a very interesting piece of news for any Celestial Empire fans. Knowing the work of the authors of RuneQuest 6, I expect RuneQuest 6 to feature a very kinematic combat system. If you like the historical or literary approach to Imperial China, keep the current BRP-based implementation of the rules. But if you like to centre your games on combat and action, you may well be advised to check RuneQuest 6 out when it's available and consider it as a possible replacement to the BRP.

More on this when RuneQuest 6 is finally available!