天哪!

Scarlet Heroes

Scarlet Heroes, by Kevin Crawford, is a little gem of an old school FRP that I have already very briefly mentioned here at the time of its crowdfunding campaign via a Kickstarter.

The coolest thing with Scarlet Heroes is that it is really three products in one, and three that could have very well been sold separately.

The first 'product' is the setting itself: the Sunset Isles, a slightly Kara-Tur-like vanilla Oriental setting with a few original twists, like:

1- The Red Tide, a mysterious wall of demon-haunted mists that is slowly infecting the Sunset Isles.
2- The Shou, the savage aborigines that are being displaced by the more civilised races.
3- Non-'Asian' exiles that have fled their lands and invaded the Sunset Isles: the European-like Eirengarders and the Persian-like Eshkanti.
4- Spells that are different from the usual Old School D&D-ish spells.

The setting also has a slightly more south-east Asian feeling to it than your vanilla Oriental setting. Because of all the previously-discussed aspects, I think the Sunset Isles would actually work great in conjunction with Kenneth Hite's Qelong setting: I am pretty sure Aakom could be linked to the Red Tide, and the Varangians are an obvious match to the Eirengarders.

The second 'product' is a game system centred on one-to-one play, that is a referee with a single player. As a result, the single PC is a larger-than-life hero that can easily fell several opponents in a single round via the fray die mechanism.

The third 'product' is a very Old School (i.e., lots of tables!) system that enables you to play in solo mode. But this is no pre-written Tunnels & Trolls solo scenario or Choose Your Own Adventure book: this is a set of gaming aids that allow you to improvise as you go. Basically a solo narrative game but with Old School mechanics. Quite impressive.

Bavarian State Library's Collection of Digitised East Asian Books Available On-Line

Well, the information is in the tile :-)

The Bavarian State Library has a huge collection of 'Sinica' (i.e., China-themed) books, and apparently they have finished scanning them and making them available on-line. My German is rusty but apparently the collection contains 230,000 printed books and 3,000 manuscripts. At the moment they have digitised more than 1,000,000 pages... quite impressive!

Here is the link: Digitale Sammlungen Ostasien

There is a nifty search tool that accepts Asian characters, and I have already started looking for cool editions of the Water Margin [水滸傳]. Have fun!

Random Prefecture Generator

Judge and Retainers

Whenever I have been GM'ing using The Celestial Empire or Oriental Monsters & Magic, I have found that character parties built around a judge accompanied by retainers, bodyguards, etc. have worked really well in a Chinese context.

In a highly civilised society such as China, with little personal freedom, little motivation to transgress the boundaries of what one is restricted to, and especially in a society that frowns upon the use of violence, the only possibility for the kind of anti-social behaviour that RPGers enjoy is law enforcement.

Well, a judge in China was assigned a city where he would work as a magistrate, carrying out sentences and settling disputes, but also collecting tax, repairing broken bridges, repressing banditry, and suppressing unorthodox cults.

So the first thing to draw up for your judge PC and his fellow PCs is the prefectural seat he's going to spend the next three years in! For that purpose, I have developed a hack of Éric Nieudan's own more generic classic fantasy random wilderness generator.

What you need:
 - A standard 52-card deck with French suits (♠♥♦♣); remove the jokers and the 2's.
 - Dice.

1. Draw cards to make a 7×7 grid; leave centre of grid empty. The centre is your city:

2. Terrain the remaining 48 areas according to card suit; face cards mean there is a steading. See tables below:

Terrain
♦ plains or steppe
♣ woods or swamp
♥ hills or desert
♠ mountains or canyons

Steadings
Jack: village, hamlet or camp
Queen: temple, shrine, other holy place
King: manor or mansion
Ace: town or harbour

Choose or draw another card for subtypes, e.g.:

Second Card Drawn	Village Sub-Type	Temple Sub-Type	Manor Sub-Type
♦	Hàn Chinese	Confucian	Retired Mandarin
♣	Hàn Chinese	Buddhist	Guildhouse
♥	Hàn Chinese	Daoist	Head of Local Lineage
♠	Ethnic Minority	Folk Religion	Wealthy Landowner

Third Card Drawn	Buddhist Sub-Type	Daoist Sub-Type
♦	Pure Land	Complete Orthodoxy (Zhèngyi)
♣	Chán	Quánzhēn
♥	Tantric	Xié
♠	other	other

3. Encounters and events. Now, whenever the judge and his companions are travelling throughout the prefecture, random encounters may happen! For each card, roll d20 and compare to card value (Jack = 11, Queen = 12,  King = 13, Ace = 14). If the die roll is ≤ card value, look at the encounter on the table below.

Variant: Use a d10 in the light grey area.

Die	Civilised Encounters Die roll < card value	Events Die roll = card value
1	Farmers ♦travelling ♣foraging ♥poaching ♠fleeing
2	Fishermen ♦working ♣mending nets ♥famished ♠building a dam
3	Merchants ♦caravan ♣lost ♥being robbed ♠loaded with silver	Ambush or trap
4	Monks ♦preaching ♣looking for help ♥begging ♠on a pilgrimage	Impromptu market
5	Soldiers ♦labourers ♣conscripts ♥militia ♠press-gang	Freak weather
6	Ethnic minority ♦mercenaries ♣traders ♥confidence artists ♠clan	Blocked roads
7	Nomads ♦Steppe ♣Forest ♥Desert ♠Mountain	Fire
8	Adventurers ♦bruised & beaten ♣hostile ♥friendly ♠richly equipped	Flood
9	Indigenous people ♦warband ♣migrating ♥raiding ♠hiding	Battle
10	Koreans ♦merchants ♣ambassadors ♥prisoners ♠seamen	Ghosts
11	Bandits ♦river raiders ♣on the run ♥hiding ♠carrying plunder	Country fair
12	Thieves ♦street thugs ♣running from the law ♥spies ♠burglars	Bandit Lair
13	Vietnamese ♦merchants ♣ambassadors ♥prisoners ♠pilgrims	Siege
14		Plague

Feedback and suggestions welcome.

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.