Your Shadow Scar Starter

In ages past, the Kotoamatsukami, the First Great Spirits of the Land, created the peaceful land known as Nakatsukuni. All was well in this land until the Great Mother Spirit Izanami died giving birth to the Spirit of Fire. Her husband, Izanagi, attempted to retrieve her spirit from Yomi No Kuni, the Afterlife, and appeared to have succeeded when given permission to return her by the Ruler of the Dead. Unfortunately, Izanami has been corrupted by the Ruler of the Dead, and she brought with her an army of twisted souls and horrible monsters and after corrupting the minds of the Yokai, Izanami set out to destroy reality. The peace was at an end and the war known as the Hundred Years of Sorrow was only won by a combined effort of Izanagi and the Kami. It was a victory won at great cost. Although Izanami was cast into the Void—or the Inbetween, via a Shadow Scar rent in the fabric of reality, her monstrous minions were scattered across the Mosaic, a vast array of worlds and realities that to this day remains unexplored. These Yokai continue to do the bidding of Izanami on these worlds, often served by human agents and cults, most of whom have no idea who they are serving or the true nature of reality that is the Mosaic. Whilst there a few worlds that fortunate enough to be free of Yokai, both their presence and their influence, there are many which are infected by both, and there are even more where the situation remains unknown. On Nakatsukuni, an organisation was established by the Kami to counter the threat of the Yokai. This is the Shadow Scar Agency, an order of Shinobi—or ninja clans—trained by the Six Great Clans of Shadow. Its task is to investigate potential signs of activity of both the Yokai and their human servants across the worlds of the Mosaic, stop such activities when discovered, and prevent the inhabitants of those worlds from learning about either the Yokai or the Mosaic. The Shadow Scar Agency still fights this Veil War today.

This is the set-up for Shadow Scar, a new roleplaying published by R. Talsorian, Inc., best known for Cyberpunk RED and Castle Falkenstein. It is a world/parallel Earth hopping setting across what Shadow Scar calls the Mosaic in which modern day Ninja, armed with high tech tools and magical artefacts, leap from one world to the next to defeat the Yokai and other minions of the corrupted Great Mother Spirit Izanami. The Player Characters—or Agents—are these Ninjas, members of the Shadow Scar Agency, a secret organisation dedicated to keeping reality safe. The Ninja must conduct their assignments in secrecy and ‘Maintain the Veil’, both to keep the civilian population safe and prevent any mystical monsters from learning of their presence and activities until they absolutely have to reveal both to the targets of their operations. It was introduced in Shadow Scar: Eyes in Darkness as part of Free RPG Day 2024, which provided a basic primer for the setting and rules as well as scenario to play and the Player Character Agents needed to play it. The scenario in Shadow Scar: Eyes in Darkness is a prequel to ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’, the scenario in Shadow Scar Starter Set, and although it is not necessary to play through ‘Eyes in Darkness’ in order to play ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’ and the contents of the Shadow Scar Starter Set, ‘Eyes in Darkness’ serves as a good build up to it.

The Shadow Scar Starter Set comes as a solid box containing three booklets, six pre-generated customisable Player Characters, a pair of maps and tokens to help play out the action of its scenario, and a set of Shadow Scar six-sided dice. Beside the dice, the first thing that you see upon opening the box is the ‘Welcome to Shadow Scar’ sheet. This is a sperate sheet tells the reader what to expect from the roleplaying game and starter, that the Player Characters will learn the ways of Ninjitsu, assassinate deadly foes, foil complicated plots, work with powerful factions, explore the Mosaic, and hunt down rogue agents, and tells the player where to go next. On the back is a glossary. Altogether, this primes the player up, ready to learn to play, and the Storyteller ready to learn to run Shadow Scar.

The first of the three books in the Shadow Scar Starter Set is the twenty-eight page ‘World Lore’ booklet. This introduces Shadow Scar Agency and expands on the on-going Veil War as well as explaining the nature of the Mosaic and the Utsushiyo and the Kakuriyo. The former is the Unveiled or Material World, whilst the latter is the Unseen or Spirit World. To most mortals, the Kakuriyo, home to spirits, Kami, and even spirits that fail to pass and become monsters, is inaccessible although it does mirror the Utsushiyo in an exaggerated way. Every world has its own Utsushiyo and Kakuriyo, but the Kami can traverse between the Kakuriyo of one world and the Kakuriyo of another. Some mortals can see into the Kakuriyo and sometimes monsters and dangers can find their way out of it. The Mosaic itself is described in broad detail, but the accompanying shows the rough relationships between just a few of the worlds within it and the links between them. Several of these worlds are described in some detail. These include the primary base of operations for the Shadow Scar Agency, Nakatsukuni, which remains an archipelago of islands—many floating—shattered by the war against Izanami and her minions. The others include ‘Steel Court’, a Grand Victorian Empire in which the Stewart Steam Turbine Engine has powered fantastical industrialisation and inventions even as revolt foments the Empire’s ‘Protectorates’; ‘5th Street’, an early twentieth century world recovering from the Great War that would seem to be utterly mundane except the masked vigilantes on the rooftops and the racial inventors working in their workshops; and ‘Refuge’, a world so blighted by the Yokai that humanity has been forced to retreat to a Lunar Colony and massive station orbiting the moon. All three locations will be visited as part of the scenario included in Shadow Scar: Eyes in Darkness. Thumbnail descriptions are given for the three worlds as well as the Shadow Scar Agency and the six Shinobi clans. These consist of the war at any cost Arashi Clan; the spiritualist Futsumashi working to pull the world back into balance; the fire-using Hibana; the espionage-focused Kuromaku; the Tantei clan which works to free Yokai from Izanami’s grasp; and the Yokai-hunting Wanami clan. These are not the only organisations detailed in ‘World Lore’. ‘The Hollow Eye Syndicate’ is a secret criminal organisation that offer a refuge to ‘nukenin’, those missing ninja who have left the Shadow Scar Agency. The Shadow Scar Agency takes a very dim view of the ‘nukenin’. Lastly, there are some details of the Yokai.

The forty-eight-page ‘System’ book is both a rules book and a bestiary for Shadow Scar. First, it breaks down a Player Character, which has three attributes, Mind, Body, and Spirit, rated between one and five. Each attribute has six associated skills, each of which is rated between one and three. He has Techniques, Mikkyo, and Quirks. Techniques are special abilities, such as ‘Nimble & Quick’, which increases an Agent’s speed, whilst Mikkyo are secret techniques taught by the shinobi clans which require an Agent to expend Ki to trigger, such as ‘Duplicates’ which enables the caster to create silent duplicates himself that he can control.

Mechanically, Shadow Scar is a dice pool system that uses six-sided dice. Every roll of a three or more is a success, whilst a roll of six is equal to two successes. If the number of successes is equal to or greater than the Difficulty Value, the task is successful. An average task has a Task Difficulty of two, Challenging has a Task Difficulty of three, Difficult has a Task Difficulty of four, and so on. Bonuses and penalties adjust the number of dice a player has to roll. To reflect that the world of Shadow Scar is pulled in two directions by different forces of nature, an Agent has access to ‘Inyo’—Japanese for Yingyang. If an Agent fails a task by a single Success, he can call upon the power of ‘Inyo’ to gain that much-needed Success. Or he can use to inflict an additional three points of damage upon a target. However, when the Agent draws upon the power of Inyo, he draws only upon one side. In response, the other side draws back and the Storyteller can draws upon the Agent’s Inyo to make him fail a task by one Success or have an enemy inflict three extra damage on the Agent. Once that has happened, the Agent has access to Inyo again. Essentially, the fortunes of each Agent swings back and forth quite literally.

Combat is an extension of the rules, with Initiative Order being determined by an Awareness Check. During a turn, each Agent can conduct two actions. Some fifteen possible actions are detailed as are the conditions and hazards that they might suffer. The hazards covered include environmental, mechanical, and magical. When an Agent is reduced to three points of Vitality or less, he suffers the Grievously Wounded Condition, and when his Vitality is reduced to zero, in combat, he can either be killed or knocked out. The latter reduces his Vitality to one rather than zero. If an Agent’s Vitality is reduced to zero or less, it is possible to become a Wandering Spirit, but an Agent equipped with a Spirit Lantern can collect and protect a Wandering Spirit. At the end of a mission, if the other Agents return with a dead Agent’s body and his Wandering Spirit in a Spirit Lantern, the Agent can be resurrected. Otherwise, a new body has to be created.

Over half of the ‘System’ book is devoted to a ‘Rogues Gallery’. This describes some sixteen or so creatures. There is a good mix of the mundane and the monstrous to the book, all of which appears in the ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’ scenario.

The six pre-generated Player Characters in the Shadow Scar Starter Set come from each of the six clans who contribute to the Shadowscar Agency. Each is done in full colour and as a folder. Each comes with an illustration, background, and history of the Player Character, full stats and abilities, and options for improving the character over the course of the adventure. It also includes a set of bullet points suggesting why a player might choose to roleplay a particular character.

The longest of three books in the Shadow Scar Starter Set is ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’. It is ideally run as a sequel to ‘Eyes in Darkness’ from Shadow Scar: Eyes in Darkness as that already gets the players and their characters involved in the scenario. Of course, it need not be, and either way, the scenario opens with the Player Characters being introduced to a fellow member of the Shadow Scar Agency prior to the briefing. This Agent Jasmine Gamble, who has been investigating a notorious Yokai and crime lord, Green Demon, whose activities and network spreads across the four known worlds that the Shadow Scar Agency has ready access to and is suspected to spread into others unknown. Her work has greatly been enhanced by a notebook that Agents recently uncovered (this is mission is detailed in ‘Eyes in Darkness’) and she has begun to decode. Her notes so far point to a Green Demon operative working in a pleasure quarter on one of the floating islands of Nakatsukuni. This set-up scene is designed to introduce Agent Gamble as she plays an important role in ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’ and ideally the Player Characters should come to like her. This needs a careful portrayal by the Storyteller to make her as likeable as she is written and to build up a relationship between her and the Player Characters.

The missions in ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’ will take the Player Characters from a pleasure house in Nakatsukuni where tensions between a pretentiously arrogant noble scion, the staff, and other patrons, helped by a mischievous kami, get in the way of capturing the target Green Demon operative all the way to Refuge in Lunar orbit where they have an opportunity to capture one of the Green Demon’s most loyal lieutenants before he is assassinated! In between, they must travel to an abandoned island infested with venomous ghost centipedes left over from the Hundred Years of Sorrow; investigate Green Demon activities on Steel Court only to discover that the Green Demon has been investigating them; and dive into an ancient, submerged, and of course, puzzle and death trap-filled Olmec temple in the Gulf of Mexico in 5th Street, which holds a magical artefact said to give access to the Hollow Earth.

‘The Mask of the Green Demon’ is a fun exciting adventure, with a good mix of action and intrigue, that also showcases both the different worlds of the Mosaic and some of the history of the roleplaying game’s setting. It also hints—just a very little—at how ruthless the Shadow Scar Agency can be. The adventure is designed to be played through in roughly five to six sessions and make use of the tokens and maps included in the box. Notably, the booklet does begin with some excellent advice for the Storyteller on how to run Shadow Scar and ‘The Mask of the Green Demon’. Much of it will be obvious to experienced Storytellers, but it is still worth reading and it is good advice for anyone running Shadow Scar Starter Set as her first game. However, what the Shadow Scar Starter Set does not do is give any advice for the players. The Storyteller has her role explained, is given tips, and then advised on how to run Shadow Scar. There is no similar advice for the player, except for the ‘Welcome to Shadow Scar’ sheet at the top of the box, which does not do as good a job.

Rounding out the Shadow Scar Starter Set is a set of maps. There are four of these, depicting various locations in the scenario. Using in conjunction with the two sheets of tokens, these are bright and colourful, done by Loke BattleMats, which previously created The Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats for use with Cyberpunk RED. Lastly, there is also a ‘Reference Sheet’, which includes rules for everything up to and including the assassination manoeuvre, and ‘The Armoury’, a sheet of traits, gear details, and information about artefacts that will play a role in the adventure.

Physically, the Shadow Scar Starter Set is an attractive product with a pleasing heft and sturdiness. All three books are on thick paper and all have card covers. Similarly, the maps and tokens have a good physical presence. The artwork is excellent throughout, having an anime style that reflects the genre of the Shadow Scar setting. Particularly attractive is the piece showing players sat round playing the game itself, but there is also plenty of artwork show different scenes across the Mosaic as well. However, the Shadow Scar Starter Set does need a further edit as it feels slightly rushed in places.

Shadow Scar is both a spy and a ninja roleplaying game, a sidebar for the Storyteller noting that it is inspired by the anime series Demon Slayer and Naruto as much as it is the James Bond and Men in Black films. Mix in martial arts, magic, and the supernatural and it offers a stealth and action orientated genre mashup—all of which is on show in the Shadow Scar Starter Set. The result is that the Shadow Scar Starter Set is a very well presented, fun and exciting introduction to the Shadow Scar setting and roleplaying game.