[Fanzine Focus XXVI] Stray Virassa

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support. Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is a little different. Penned by Zedeck Siew—author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor—and drawn by Munkao, it is the fifth title published by the A Thousand Thousand Islands imprint, a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project, one which aims to draw from regional folklore and history to create a fantasy world truly rooted in the region’s myths, rather than a set of rules simply reskinned with a fantasy culture. The result of the project to date is eight fanzines, plus appendices, each slightly different, and each focusing on discrete settings which might be in the same world, but are just easily be separate places in separate worlds. What sets the series apart is the aesthetic sparseness of its combination of art and text. The latter describes the place, its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness with a very simple economy of words. Which is paired with the utterly delightful artwork which captures the strangeness and exoticism of the particular setting and brings it alive. Barring a table of three (or more) for determining random aspects that the Player Characters might encounter each entry in the series is systemless, meaning that each can be using any manner of roleplaying games and systems, whether that is fantasy or Science Fiction, the Old School Renaissance or not.

The first, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, described the Death-Rolled Kingdom, built on the remains of great drowned city, now ruled by crocodiles in lazy, benign fashion, they police the river, and their decrees outlaw the exploration of the ruins of MR-KR-GR, and they sometimes hire adventurers. The second, Kraching, explored the life of a quiet, sleepy village alongside a great forest, dominated by cats of all sizes and known for its beautiful carvings of the wood taken from the forest. The third, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, takes the reader into a forest where its husband Time moves differently and the gods dictate the seasons, Leeches stalk you and steal from you that which you hold dear, and squirrels appear to chatter and gossip—if you listen. Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain, the fourth, explores a vampire kingdom desperate for trade.

Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is another island, lost at the tail of an archipelago. Ironically it is known as Lodestone, for it cannot be found or reached by conventional means of navigation—a ship has to set sail in a random direction and get lost. Which does not always work… Yet many have reasons to go there, primarily to gain access to the skills and abilities of the magicians of the isle, which is said to be very great indeed. Such petitioners typically have a great need, for the price charged by the magicians is also great. The strangeness of Stray Virassa is primary presented through NPCs, first those who are travelling to the island, second through the magicians themselves, and lastly, through the citizens of the island’s port city, Ka-Lak-Kak—and this is done in two ways. First in random tables to generate NPCs and second sample ready to portray NPCs.

So a traveller to Stray Virassa could be going there because they have been cursed by a business rival that whenever they speak, they cough up maggots. They do not seek a cure, but a reciprocal curse. Besides their strangely fouled mouth, they are known for the crooked wig which constantly slips from their sweat-slicked head, and whilst travelling light, their neck is heavy with brass amulets to ward off bad spirits. The magicians include Diffa Fu, an overly worldly twelve-year-old and fertility specialist who can put a baby in any women—or man, who also collects skulls and whose word is final for any descendant of such skulls she owns!

Ka-Lak-Kak itself is a ghost city and city of ghosts, solid during rainstorms, transparent under direct sunlight, which might lead to the disappearance of a floor several storeys high! It is the Fourteenth Hell, the Hell reserved for those lost at sea. None of these have feet, but simply fade away below the knee, so in life, one might have been a soldier who died fighting pirates and is armed with a crossbow with a string made of ectoplasm which fires bolts of flame, and as a ghost, has a hand whose fingers end in crab claws that they constantly click. Now, they herd the floating lanterns that replace ghosts too lazy to manifest and are philosophical about their new existence, except for a hatred of their husband, who constantly cheats on them. The irony of the soldier’s situation is that Ka-Lak-Kak and Stray Virassa is a pirate port. Not to traditional pirates, but ghost pirates whose raids are never planned and always unguided. When ghost pirates weigh anchor, their boat capsizes. Only to right itself somewhere on the water, be it a river canal or a mountain lake, to raid and reave before capsizing their vessel again and return home! If the wreck of a lost ship can be found—pirate or not, the nails which hold its thick planks together can be harvested and if used to construct another ship, will ensure that the new vessel never sinks—for no ship ever sinks twice. 

Ka-Lak-Kak and thus Stray Virassa is also home to the largest settlement of Mu-folk, outside of ancient, lost Mu, including its last potentate, the indolent Xeng Xin, whose days are spent running spirit dens and taking his share of the island’s pirate raids when not in a haze of opium. He also occasionally still claims that Mu is rightfully his, though he has no word from the old country in some time. Perhaps a loyal lieutenant might employ someone to bring news and even an individual from the former kingdom? As with previous issues, accompanying Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is an insert, a foldout poster of extra tables. These include tables for determining the details of ghosts who have wandered the sea-floor for decades, and a drop table of ‘Memories of Mu’ to flesh out questions that the Player Characters might ask whilst on Stray Virassa.

Physically, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is a slim booklet which possesses the lovely simplicity of the Thousand Thousand Isles, both in terms of the words and the art. The illustrations are exquisite and the writing delightfully succinct and easy to grasp.

As with entries in the Thousand Thousand Isles series, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is easy to use once the Player Characters get there. There are hooks and plots which the Game Master could develop and engage the players and their characters with, and the setting is easy to adapt to the world of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is a domain on the Demiplane of Dread that is Ravenloft for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or a remote kingdom in nautical setting such as Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport: The City of Adventure or even a lost isle in H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, whether for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or another roleplaying game. However it is used, if the Game Master can get her Player Characters to its borders—and its randomly accessed nature makes that relatively easy—Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell is creepy and magical and weird, simply, but evocatively and beautifully presented and written pirate and ghost haven intentionally lost.

—oOo—

The great news is that is Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Kraching, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain, Stray Virassa: The Lost and Fourteenth Hell, and the others in the Thousand Thousand Isles setting are now available outside of Malaysia. Details can be found here.

Leagues of Infidels

As the title suggests, Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan is a supplement for use with both Leagues of Cthulhu, the supplement of Lovecraftian horror for use with Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age! and its expansion, Leagues of Gothic Horror. Published by Triple Ace Games, it presents a guide and a gazetteer to the little understood country of Afghanistan in the Late Victorian Era, not just the history and the geography, but the Mythos and the folklore, and more. Although it is not a comprehensive guide—being relatively short at just forty pages—it presents more than enough information to bring a campaign to the British Empire’s North-West Frontier, whether a supernatural campaign for Leagues of Adventure or a Lovecraftian investigative horror campaign for Leagues of Cthulhu. In addition, what few stats there are for use with the Ubiquity system are easy to interpret and adapt to the system of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is Cthulhu by Gaslight for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, Trail of Cthulhu, or Victoriana.

Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan explores a country which has been much contested over its long history, many times conquered, including by Alexander the Great and the Mongols, but never truly tamed. Sat on the Silk Road between the East and the West, it has been an important crossroads for both Central and South Asia, not just for trade, but also for learning and faiths. Previously a great centre of Zoroastrian and Buddhist learning,  in more recent times the Emirate of Afghanistan has become known as a fiercely independent Islamic state which despite defeating the British Empire in the First Anglo-Afghan War has become a British protectorate under the sway of the British Raj in India following its defeat in the more recent Second Anglo-Afghan War. Essentially Afghanistan has become a buffer state between the British and Russian Empires as part of ‘The Great Game’. Though mountainous and remote, with only one real point of access—up the Khyber Pass after a thousand mile journey by rail north from Bombay, what this means is that the crossroads of Asia are open to the intrepid explorer, adventurer, historian, and archaeologist, should they be brave enough to traverse its dense mountain ranges and deep valleys, all the whilst minding their Ps and Qs, and doing their very best not to offend local customs.

Of course, the region has a history older than some mere ape descendants, and in most cases, older than some mere ape descendants can imagine. In the long geological past, it has been home to an Elder Thing city, whilst in the more recent geological past, the Serpent Men settled in Afghanistan’s lower lying regions, and to this day, the Mi-Go continue mine the country’s higher peaks for rare minerals. In more recent times, Alexander the Great campaigned against the worshippers and entities of the Mythos, but in the millennia since his death, dark faiths, dark entities, and dark artefacts have been traded back and forth along the Silk Road. Many found a home in Afghanistan and almost as many were destroyed by the wave after wave of invasions the country would suffer in the course of its history, most notably under the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Fragments of these cults, the subjects of their venerations, and their blasphemous objects and texts remain; in the libraries of religious scholars, amongst the wares of curio dealers on dusty backstreets, in the ruins of ancient cities and monasteries, and carved into the walls of buildings usually avoided by the local inhabitants or into the rock high up on the side of remote valleys. Some will be familiar to scholars, but some maybe new, whilst others simply hint at something else or something older… Worse still are the secrets that some tribes hide or at least do not talk about. Often things best left assuaged through sacrifice or locked or buried away, not through ignorance, but fear for family and tribe—and more should such things be free once again to ravage the Earth. Though not all such tribes act to protect the world, some do, whilst other tribes and cults are true worshippers, reviled and feared by other Afghans in equal measure.

Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan opens with an introduction to the country. This covers its history, both the outré and the ordinary from prehistory to the modern day of the Mauve Decade; explains how to get there (starting with an airship since Leagues of Adventure and Leagues of Cthulhu are steampunk roleplaying settings); and provides an overview in turn of its geography climate, peoples, cuisine, economics, entertainment, and more. A lot of this will add flavour, such as the dishes that the Player Characters will likely eat, but details such as the lack of ready information sources, that is, no newspapers except those which are weeks old from outside the country, and Pashtunwali, a guide to Pashtunwali, the code of conduct that the Pashtuns adhered are more likely to have an impact upon play and what the Player Characters say and do. Much of this is straight background material, but elements of the fantastic are added in sections of boxed text also. For example, The Book of Arda Viraf is a Zoroastrian Mythos tome, Pashtunwali is detailed as a Code of Conduct, and a new League of Adventure is described. This is ‘The Alexandria Club’, whose members are dedicated to locating and excavating all of the many cities built across Asia by Alexander the Great.

The Gazetteer covers just some of the various ancient sites, monasteries and temples, rock inscriptions, natural features—from the Hindu Kush Mountains to the Khyber Pass, and settlements to be found across Afghanistan, all given a paragraph or two each, and a rating for their Eerie Atmosphere, with most accompanied by an adventure seed. For example, the Mountain of Genies, lies in south-eastern Afghanistan, its barren heights inhabited by a tribe known locally as the Sky Devils, feared for their stealth and their propensity for stealing away animals and people without trace, though sometimes mutilated bodies are found in the valley below. The disappearances include British troops committed to the region during the Second Anglo-Afghan War and almost every expedition since has failed to reach or map the mountain and its surrounds due to disaster and mishap. Indeed, the adventure seed involves a member of one such expedition staggering into Kabul, raving about “winged devils”, “monoliths from beyond time”, and so on. Elsewhere, the members of the Prospectors’ Club have explored too deep below Mes Aynak, which sits atop the country’s largest deposits of copper and come across the last remnants of a very ancient and alien civilisation, whilst Zorkul, a lake in the Pamir Mountains lying on the contested border with Russia, was noted by a Chinese explorer as containing an idol of sea-green stone depicting a ‘water dragon’. Perhaps the lake was the site of ill-fated Sarnath and when rumours spread of a ‘dragon’ statue seen in the lake following a drought, perhaps the Player Characters have the opportunity to confirm this?

The Mythos itself is kept fairly light in Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan. Mentions are made of various entities, such as knowledge of Shub-Niggaurath having been brought into the region with the Persians and Yog-Sothoth via the Zoroastrians. Two or three cults are mentioned, such as the Cult of the Black Hand which works to set the Russians and the British at each other’s throats and the Illuminated Fraternity of the All-Seeing Eye, which seeks world domination, but these are mere mentions and left wholly undeveloped. The Cult of the Silent Fire, whose members take a vow of silence to violent, self-mutilating extremes, is given a more detailed wrote-up, as is one of its leading cultists, and also a Mythos horror, the Darkness from the Void, a collective intelligence which takes the form of a thin, black sludge which comes down from space and infects organism after organism. The Cult of the Silent Fire seeks to spread its inner truths to all those who will listen and then learn the reality, whilst the Darkness from the Void seeks to infect all in an attempt to acquire all knowledge and come to a true understanding of the universe. That all said, the author also simply advises that at times, the monster need be no more than a tentacle, whether emerging from some cold deep lake, or the blackness of a tunnel.

Numerous stock NPCs are detailed, such as Afghan Craftsman, Russian Spy, and British Junior Official, whilst Afghan War Veteran—very Doctor John Watson, and Correspondent-at-Arms are written up as sample Player Characters. Perhaps the most entertaining NPC detailed is one Peachy Carnehan, an ex-British army sergeant, Freemason, and adventurer, now a crippled and scarred beggar wandering the streets of Kabul with a strange bundle in his arms. Devotees of Rudyard Kipling and likely Sean Connery and Michael Caine will enjoy this inclusion.

Physically, Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan is decently done. It needs a slight edit here and there and whilst light on illustrations, it at least comes with a map or two. These are very useful, especially given the lack of familiarity that many a reader of the supplement is likely to have with Afghanistan during this period. It would have been useful if the previous region guide, Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Cumbria, also had such maps.

One obvious issue with Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan is that its subject matter is likely to be contentious, since it deals with the Imperialism and racism of the period. Fortunately, the author addresses these issues and handles them with some care. For example, it is suggested that the attitudes of the Victorians towards the natives be reflected not in actual expressions of racism, but rather that all Afghans initially suffer a Bad Reputation Flaw because of the poor attitudes and ill-informed opinions of the British and other Europeans towards them. Then this can be roleplayed initially, but as the Player Characters interact, they can learn otherwise and it effectively fade into the background and not be applied. The other advice is for the game play to be respectful of ruins and holy places, lest offence—in game and out—be caused. Overall, simple, but justified advice.

Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan has much in common with the earlier Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Cumbria in that it combines a solid overview of the region and its people with the Mythos worked deep into the fabric of the country. However, there is less of an emphasis upon folklore and myth and superstition behind which the Mythos can be hidden than there is in Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Cumbria, perhaps because of the lack of familiarity and far away strangeness of the setting. Most of the manifestations of the Mythos in Afghanistan are relics from its long and ancient past, though there are some which are active, but whether relic or active, they are underwritten and will need no little development upon the part of the Game Master or Keeper to turn into a full mystery and bring to the table. The disappointing lack of a bibliography will not help the Game Master to that end. 

Overall, Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan is an interesting and informative introduction to Afghanistan during the late Victorian era, especially given our general lack of familiarity with both period and region. There is no denying that Afghanistan deserves its own supplement for Lovecraftian investigative horror, but in the meantime, Leagues of Cthulhu: Guide to Afghanistan is a good, if imperfect, starting point.

[Fanzine Focus XXV] Andjang

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support. Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain is a little different. Penned by Zedeck Siew—author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor—and drawn by Munkao, it is the fourth title published by the A Thousand Thousand Islands imprint, a Southeast Asian-themed fantasy visual world-building project, one which aims to draw from regional folklore and history to create a fantasy world truly rooted in the region’s myths, rather than a set of rules simply reskinned with a fantasy culture. The result of the project to date is eight fanzines, plus appendices, each slightly different, and each focusing on discrete settings which might be in the same world, but are just easily be separate places in separate worlds. What sets the series apart is the aesthetic sparseness of its combination of art and text. The latter describes the place, its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness with a very simple economy of words. Which is paired with the utterly delightful artwork which captures the strangeness and exoticism of the particular setting and brings it alive. Barring a table of three (or more) for determining random aspects that the Player Characters might encounter each entry in the series is systemless, meaning that each can be using any manner of roleplaying games and systems, whether that is fantasy or Science Fiction, the Old School Renaissance or not.

The first, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, described the Death-Rolled Kingdom, built on the remains of great drowned city, now ruled by crocodiles in lazy, benign fashion, they police the river, and their decrees outlaw the exploration of the ruins of MR-KR-GR, and they sometimes hire adventurers. The second, Kraching, explored the life of a quiet, sleepy village alongside a great forest, dominated by cats of all sizes and known for its beautiful carvings of the wood taken from the forest. The third, Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, takes the reader into a forest where its husband Time moves differently and the gods dictate the seasons, Leeches stalk you and steal from you that which you hold dear, and squirrels appear to chatter and gossip—if you listen. the fourth takes you into the mountains.

What rumours do you hear from Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain? That it is taboo to put down old racing dogs, but bad luck to keep them, so they are sent to the dog heaven that is the Mountain. That you will never see a graveyard there. Instead the dead are dumped in their rice paddies, one corpse per field. Which why their rice crops are so rich. That witchery runs in the people’s blood and they like to buy minor curses from you. Andjang is a place of mystery, but its wan and thin inhabitants want to trade. They want metal goods, wine, fabrics, livestock especially, even slaves, and in return, their meaty black rice is known for its capacity to boost energy and the circulation of the blood, the region’s strangely red loam soil always guarantees that the next crop is a bumper one, and the rattan puppets that bud fruit from the top of their heads when a certain spell is cast. The puppet will obey anyone who eats the fruit, and the locals use them as ‘beasts of burden’ instead of the animals they strangely lack. Perhaps, the Player Characters can sign on as guards on Risala’s cattle train?

If the Player Characters visit Andjang, they will find the kingdom to be stranger than the rumours. None of the villages, each nestled in a valley below the mountains has any animals. Weapons, some murderous, some gossipy, others cranky, have settled into retirement in Andjang, but perhaps they might be traded or stolen out of retirement? The villagers live by three laws. The first is a blood tithe paid in a monthly parade. The second is the recognition of the kingdom’s boundary, marked by megaliths bearing the dog sigil, part of treaties signed with the gods which invading armies lose their way, carnivorous beasts losing their senses, wild spirits freezing… The third is obeisance to Andjang’s prices and princesses, their wishes are law, and they are the only ones who will arrange audiences with the Queen, their mother. And they appreciate gifts.

Yet untold numbers of the kingdom’s Royalty are dumped into the forest to die. There they learn to work together, then hunt to survive, and then they hunt each other. When they leave the forest, they are scarred, but worthy of a name. They are marked though—some have eyes that shine at night, loud joints that constantly pop, a servant trailing behind constantly touching the gold paint which covers them, a detachable head which can reattach to any decapitated corpse, and more.

The palace stand high atop a crag above the valleys with their single villages. Seemingly ruined, it is home to the languorous Queen who spends each day stretched out on a throne that is as much day bed as it is throne, accepting visitors and petitioners who have trailed their way up the mountain and waited weeks to see, her nights stretched out in her boudoir in the mountain cave behind the palace, her open air bath containing two pools. One is full of water, the other is of blood. Below, the caves stretch into the mountain, beginning with a grotto containing a lake of blood… Elsewhere in the palace, the kitchen appears connected to the palace gaol, the treasure house is full of weapons clamped to their stands and pardons from the lowlander cities, and every guest room has a tap out which flows blood. Time may seem to pass differently from room to the next, breathing and knocking seems to come from the walls, and children marked with a tattoo of open eye wander from room to room…

Besides a poster map of the palace, the Game Master is accorded table upon table to add detail and flavour to the encounters, personalities, and things found in the valleys and the palace. These add to the atmosphere of the kingdom, which is one of the oppressive Gothic, heavy on the suggestion that the Queen might be a vampire, but never openly stated. There is a creepy weird feeling throughout, of being watched, of blood being vital to the kingdom, of paranoia, and more. However, much like the earlier Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, the issue with Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain is not immediately easy to use. Again because of the remote nature of the kingdom and because it is difficult to engage the Player Characters until they climb up to Andjang. That is its biggest weakness. It has the hooks—both ethnographic and cosmological—but it is a matter of getting the Player Characters there, but once there, the kingdom oozes a creepy charm of its own.

Physically, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain is a slim booklet which possesses the lovely simplicity of the Thousand Thousand Isles, both in terms of the words and the art. The illustrations are exquisite and the writing delightfully succinct and easy to grasp.

In terms of story, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain is easy to use once the Player Characters get there. There are hooks and plots which the Game Master could develop and engage the players and their characters with, and the setting is easy to adapt to the world of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is a domain on the Demiplane of Dread that is Ravenloft for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or a remote kingdom in Hollow Earth Expedition or Leagues of Adventure. However it is used, if the Game Master can get her Player Characters to its borders, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain is creepy and weird, a beautifully and simply presented vampire kingdom off the beaten track.

—oOo—

The great news is that is Upper Heleng: The Forest Beloved by Time, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Kraching, Andjang: The Queen on Dog Mountain, and the others in the Thousand Thousand Isles setting are now available outside of Malaysia. Details can be found here.

Sinister Shanghai

Shanghai—the ‘Pearl of the East’ has been a distant star in the Call of Cthulhu firmament. Yet since 1984 with its introduction as a chapter in the superlative Masks of Nyarlathotep, it has been an all-too far away, exotic destination, rarely visited beyond the confines of that campaign. Arguably, it was too strange, too difficult to research effectively, and in more recent years fraught with the dangerous possibility of portraying the inhabitants of the great city—whether natives or incomes—as stereotypes. That said, in more recent years, writers—both professional and amateur—have taken Lovecraftian investigative horror to Shanghai in scenarios such as Robin D. Laws’ ‘Shanghai Bullets’ from the anthology Stunning Eldritch Tales for Trail of Cthulhu, examinations of the original campaign in the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion, and finally, in that campaign’s update, Masks of Nyarlathotep, for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Yet as these campaigns, scenarios, and supplements have in turn shed a light upon the forces of the Mythos and their activities in the city, there has yet to be a definitive supplement of Lovecraftian investigative horror which focuses entirely upon Shanghai. That is, until The Sassoon Files.

The Sassoon Files: A Sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu and GUMSHOE Role Playing Games was published by Sons of the Singularity following a successful Kickstarter campaign. With the initial print run being infamously destroyed by the Chinese authorities, it presents an overview and history of the city, a campaign framework and four scenarios which take place between 1925 and 1929. The four scenarios can be run as one-shots or together they work as a rough campaign, and are in addition supported by factional campaign set-ups and drivers each of which would put a very different spin upon the four scenarios.

Written by members of the China RPG community, The Sassoon Files opens with an overview and history of Shanghai, focussing in particular upon the ‘Century of Humiliation’ suffered by China at the hands of the Western powers which saw the rise of the city from a small town located in a swamp near the mouth of the Yangzi River into a metropolis, rent geographically and politically. Geographically between Concessions and Settlements controlled by the Western powers, and politically between the Communists, the nationalists of the Kuomintang—by 1925 led by Chiang Kai-Shek, and the meddling Japanese. All whilst the Triad gangs, such as the Green gang, led by the infamous Du Yue Sheng, ‘Big Eared Du’, feuded for control of the city’s gambling, prostitution, and opium rackets. This includes a timeline which runs from 2050 BCE to 1949 CE, a list of notable locations and buildings in the French Concession, the Chinese City, and the International Settlement—a merging of earlier British and American Concessions, and a list of the dramatis personae to found in the pages of The Sassoon Files. The latter includes historical figures and figures fictional to be found in the supplement’s quartet of scenarios, but it is one of these historical figures who is key to those scenarios.

Sir Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet of Bombay, is an enormously wealthy businessman, a historical figure who owned large swathes of Shanghai and built the famous Bund. Not only is he aware of the Mythos, but he is both corresponding with Doctor Henry Armitage of Miskatonic University and looking to thwart its influence and its agents’ activities in the city. Thus he engages the Player Characters—or Investigators—into looking into situations and cases of note, which he and often his equally rich friends believe to be odd or inexplicable. Essentially, Sir Victor will act as the Investigators’ patron who will call upon their services again and again.

The four scenarios follow the same format. This is as a spine of scenes and clues as is standard of Trail of Cthulhu, laid out at least in the first scenario, as a diagram. Throughout each scenario—and the book as a whole—mechanical elements for Trail of Cthulhu are in black as is the rest of the book, whilst those for Call of Cthulhu are in red. This makes them a lot easier to spot. Where particular locations are referenced, excerpts of the main map are used, and since the Investigators will be visiting several of these again, these map excerpts appear more than once. Throughout the Investigators will encounter actual historical figures and the supplement does include notes for the Keeper on how to roleplay them. 

The first of the scenarios in The Sassoon Files is ‘Strong Gates, Hidden Demons’. A strange body and a supposed cholera outbreak lead the Investigators on a MacGuffin chase between the International Settlement and the French Concession, to the site of a bloody massacre and back again. This is a fairly straightforward scenario, but begins to pull the Investigators into the city and its atmosphere. However, the second scenario, ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’ is a whole lot more complex, starting with a flashback, and then comes back to the present for an even bigger, even more complex Macguffin hunt—or hunts—as Victor Sassoon wants to recover a recent purchase at an auction house and find out why it was stolen from him. Although the scenario requires a little effort in terms of set-up, there is a bravura quality to it, involving as it does the last Empress of China and a lot of tea. This potential for some weird, creepy moments too and a ‘what the hell?’ moment once the Investigators and their players realise quite what is going on.

Inspired by a traditional Chinese folk song of the same name, ‘There is This One Girl’ also ups the action scene upon action scene as the Investigators are sent haring after a gangster who seems to be winning at the racing track and the card table with unerring accuracy, this time because friends of Sir Victor want to reduce their loses and cannot account for the gangster’s success. The scenario presents an alternate interpretation of a Call of Cthulhu entity classic to Shanghai, who may well not be inimical towards the Investigators, as well as the opportunity for them to potentially find allies in their efforts against the Mythos. ‘There is This One Girl’ is also really the first part to ‘Curse of the Peacock’s Eye’, the fourth and final scenario in  The Sassoon Files. This has a weird flashback and has a quite linear sequence which is repeated. Although ultimately, the Investigators have funny choices to make, which may lead to the end of the world or not…

In terms of tone, the four scenarios in The Sassoon Files are presented in Purist mode. However, some scenarios do push at the dividing line between Purist and Pulp modes, and it would be very easy for the Keeper to take the campaign into a Pulp style of play. Certainly, as a city, Shanghai lends itself to that and there is advice in places on how certain Pulp Cthulhu abilities would work in particular scenes. Doubtless, pushed into the Pulp mode of Trail of Cthulhu or run using Pulp Cthulhu, and The Sassoon Files could be run as a rip-roaring campaign in the ‘Pearl of the East’. Either way, the Keeper is advised to check the chase rules for whichever roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror she is running and probably prepare some obstacles suited to the streets of Shanghai.

Using The Sassoon Files is not without its challenge. Obviously its remote location means that its four scenarios are not easy to add to an ongoing campaign and the timeframe for those scenarios is fairly specific. The most obvious and the easiest way to use the supplement is a standalone campaign. However there are other possibilities. One is to run the scenarios as sequels to a campaign which has ended in Shanghai after playing Masks of Nyarlathotep. That campaign runs throughout 1925 and The Sassoon Files begins at the end of 1925, so there is crossover potential. If the Investigators decide to leave Shanghai after completing Masks of Nyarlathotep, then The Sassoon Files could be run as an alternate timeline, the final scenario in the quartet, ‘Curse of the Peacock’s Eye’, supporting that possibility.

Being spread out over the space of four years, the quartet of scenarios in The Sassoon Files make up a loose campaign, so there is scope for the Keeper to add other scenarios she had adapted or written herself in between the given four. The Sassoon Files is both helpful and unhelpful towards that end. Helpful because it includes ten scenario hooks which the Keeper will need to develop herself, unhelpful because it is not the definitive sourcebook for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror on Shanghai and its environs, and so does not explore the presence of the Mythos in the city and beyond, leaving the Keeper to develop that her self.

Each of the four scenarios in The Sassoon Files is accompanied by five pre-generated Investigators. These are okay for the most part. More interesting is the discussion of the factions involved in the four scenarios. These include the Locals—consisting of Sir Victor and his fellow expatriates and allies, the Communists under Zhou Enlai—later first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, and the Green Gang—Shanghai’s largest Triad gang, Japan’s Genyosha or Dark Ocean Society, and others. The discussion is accompanied by the options, hooks, and drivers for each of the four scenarios in The Sassoon Files for the players to roleplay members of the Communist party or the Green Gang, as opposed to allies of the Locals. The supplement also adds ‘Lore Sheets’ which provide both backgrounds and act as a resource or dice pool, equal to a couple of points, which a player can use to gain an advantage related to the Lore Sheet, each one of which is kept secret by its player. Although the end mechanical reward for fulfilling the objectives on the Lore Sheets feels bland, at the very least they provide more personal backgrounds for the Investigators and background information for their players.

However the publishers do miss a trick or two. For a supplement of this type, weirdly, there is no bibliography. Also, there are no maps of individual locations, which would have made the scenarios easier to run, and whilst as the scenarios proceed it becomes clear that they form a campaign, it is not clear at the outset, which again means they need more effort to prepare. Another issue is that whilst The Sassoon Files does provide a detailed overview of Shanghai, it is lacking when it comes to the kind of details and flavour which would help the Keeper portray the city on an ordinary, day-to-day basis. It is almost if the supplement needs a table of random encounters and events which would have helped the Keeper bring the vibrant and raucous hurly-burly of the city to life.

Perhaps the biggest trick missed by The Sassoon Files is when it comes to Investigators. First, there is a dearth of advice when it comes to the players creating their own, which may leave less experienced players of Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu floundering for ideas and concepts. Second—and more disappointingly—the authors do not make enough of the Factions as playable options. Now yes, they are discussed and they do have their own section in the supplement, but not a single one of the pre-generated Investigators which comes after each of the four scenarios is from a different faction. All sixteen are essentially from the Locals faction, that is, the expatriate Europeans who serve as the Investigators’ patrons and their local allies, and as diverse a mix of ethnicities and genders as the represent, what this means is that there none from the suggested Triad gangs or Communist factions. For all that is made of the authors being part of the China roleplaying community and their being familiar with both the setting and the history, this really is a missed roleplaying opportunity upon their part.


Physically, The Sassoon Files is a generally well-presented book. It makes a great deal of use of period photographs and maps to present Shanghai, and is illustrated by some superb pieces of artwork. However, it is in places inconsistent in its layout and very much needs an edit.

There can be no doubt that Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying deserves—whether Call of Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu, or Trail of Cthulhu—a supplement dedicated to Shanghai. Unfortunately, The Sassoon Files is not the definitive guide to the Shanghai of the 1920s for any of those aforementioned roleplaying games. Yes, it presents a good, even comprehensive, overview of the city, but whilst this is enough to run the four scenarios in The Sassoon Files, it is not really quite enough from which the Keeper can develop her own scenarios or content without input from other sources. However, this is not to say that the background information will not serve as the spur or inspiration for the Keeper’s creativity.

Although far from perfect, and not really a definitive guide to the city, The Sassoon Files: A Sourcebook for the Call of Cthulhu and GUMSHOE Role Playing Games does something that no other supplement for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror does, and that is present a campaign in Shanghai. It successfully combines both the history and noted inhabitants of the city with the Mythos for a quartet of entertaining and engaging scenarios.

—oOo—

Currently, Sons of the Singularity has a Kickstarter campaign underway for Journal d’Indochine. This is a supplement of ‘Horror and Intrigue in French Colonial-Era Vietnam in a campaign for the Call of Cthulhu TRPG’.

An Exalted Quick-Start

As its title suggests, The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart, is a ‘jump-start’—or quick-start’—for Exalted Third Edition, the high fantasy anime-inspired roleplaying game published by Onyx Path Publishing. It is set in a forgotten age when the world lay flat atop a sea of chaos, when the elements were sharply defined culturally and geographically. The gods made war upon the monsters that forged this world and give their human champions the gift of Exaltation, their divine power which granted them amazing gifts and fortitude. Led by the Solar Exalted, mankind would defeat the monsters and inaugurate the First Age of Man, but the Dragon-Blooded Exalted grew jealous, threw down the realm that the Solar Exalted had built, slew them one-by-one, and locked away their powers of Solar Exaltation. The Dragon-Blooded empire has ruled over a Second Age—an age of sorrows, warfare, and strife—for centuries. Now as lesser nations chafe at the Dragon-Blooded empire’s grip and the Dragon-Blooded empire has been wounded by the less of its immortal empress, Solar Exaltation has returned from its long banishment and death, its champions unleashing the powers of the Unconquered Sun upon the world anew. Will they bring light to the world or set it alight?

In The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart, five Solar Exalted will follow their dreams into mystery from ages past. It provides five pre-generated Solar Exalted player characters, an explanation of the core rules for Exalted Third Edition, and ‘The Tomb of Dreams’, a short scenario. It is designed to introduce the Game Master and her players to both the setting and mechanics, as well as proving a starting point for an ongoing Exalted Third Edition campaign using the full rules. Besides The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart, the Game Master and her players will need between ten and fifteen ten-sided dice—preferably per player, and copies of the character sheets and their explanation.

In Exalted Third Edition, a character or ‘Exalted’, ise defined by various traits. These include nine attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance, Perception, Intelligence, and Wits; Skills such as Archery or Socialise; Merits such as wealth and political power, and traits of a singular nature; Willpower—representing mental fortitude as well as being spent for various things; Essence—magical potency, consisting of personal and peripheral motes which fuel mystical powers and can be committed to power ongoing effects; and Limit and Limit Trigger, representing the curse twisting an Exalted’s soul, levied when they kill the enemies of the gods. He will have Intimacies, what be believes and cares about, used in social interaction. Health and Defence cover static values such as Parry, Evasion, Defense, Resolve, and Guile. Now some of these elements are not used in The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart. These include the Merits, Limit and Limit Trigger, Experience, amongst others. 

Mechanically, a player will be rolling a pool of ten-sided dice, typically formed by adding an Attribute and a Skill together—each being rated between one and five. Each die result of seven or more counts as a success with ‘double tens’, or rolls of ten, counting as double. A character may need to beat a given Difficulty, again rated between one and five. One notable way of increasing the number of dice a character rolls is a stunt, earned by a player giving an evocative description of what his character is going to do. Stunts range in value from one to three, and can simply add dice to a pool, raise a Static value, or grant an automatic success. The point of stunts is to make situations and their outcome exciting and grant players a greater degree of narrative control.

The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart focuses on three aspects of the Exalted Third Edition rules—combat, battle groups, and social influence. Combat can be divided into two types of attacks which are rolled against the opponent’s Defence static value. These are ‘Withering Attacks’ which seize the flow of battle and steal an opponent’s initiative and enable to the attacker to use it as his own. Decisive attacks inflict damage directly on the opponents, and are typically used after a few Withering attacks have been made. An opponent reduced to an Initiative of zero is forced into Initiative Crash and is limited in his actions. The combat rules also cover rushing into a fight, withdrawing, and taking cover, as well as aiming, making flurry attacks, full defence, and more. Flurry attacks enable a character to act more than once in a round. There is a sense of escalation to combat, of attacks and high action going back and forth between the opponents, until one side or another manages to make enough Withering attacks to follow them up with a Decisive attack.

Battle Groups are designed to handle anything from a squad or a band to a mob or a formation. They have their own values—Size, Drill (training), Might (supernatural power, if any), and Magnitude (health). A Battle Group inflicts Withering attacks, does not gain the benefits of ‘Double Tens’, and only gets one attack per round. Essentially, the rules for Battle Groups treat them as Mooks, making them dangerous, but not as dangerous or powerful as the NPCs who lead them and whom the Exalted player characters are likely to face on the battlefield. The rules for Social Influence work with the Intimacies which are divided between Ties, attachments to people, places, and organisations, and Principles, beliefs and ideals. For example, ‘My Mentor (Grudging Respect)’ or ‘I am the greatest swordsman who ever lived.’ They can be used increase a target’s Resolve against efforts to influence him, change a target’s feelings and beliefs, and threaten, inspire, and more. 

Lastly, an Exalted can tap into the real power of Creation, which expresses through his Anima Banner. This exhibits first in the caste mark on his forehead and then grows into raging glow around him, becoming more and more as an Exalted uses motes of the Essence that underlies all of creation—either his Personal Essence or Peripheral Essence drawn from around him. These motes are used to fuel various Charms and Spells, for example, ‘Excellent Strike’ ensures an automatic success and lets a player reroll any ones, which requires three motes, whilst ‘Death of Obsidian Butterflies’ costs fifteen sorcerous motes and one Willpower to a create a torrent of razor-edged black butterflies which can inflict a Decisive attack!

The five pre-generated Exalted all come with character sheets and a couple of pages of description and explanation, which includes an illustration and some background. They include Volfer, a pit-fighter; Karal Fire Orchid, a retired general who once served the Dragon-Blooded; Iay Selak-Amu, a witch from the Windward Isle; Faka Kun, a desert pygmy acrobat-thief; and Mirror Flag, a revolutionary actor. They are a reasonable mix, though they do lack personal motivations as to their involvement in the scenario.

‘The Tomb of Dreams’ scenario in The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart begins with the player characters arriving on a strange island, seemingly walking out of the ocean along a reef. They are drawn here by dreams of their legacy of their recent Solar Exaltation, and must find their way between the ongoing, ancient struggle between a god, an elemental, and a demon. Their ultimate goal is to locate a cache of ancient weapons and more, but to do that, they will need to determine the motives of the three antagonists. This is key to uncovering quite what is going on the island, but the likelihood is that they will need to enter into a few battles too. The adventure is not quite linear, a couple of options being given which vary according to which of the NPCs the Exalted meet first. Overall, this is a decent scenario which hints at the long history before the Third Age, though it could have done with stronger hooks for the given player character Exalted.

Physically, The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart is well presented and well written. The artwork is good, some of it excellent, though some of it is slightly cartoony. The four characters are given some fantastic abilities to bring to the game and often the battlefield, both high action and high fantasy.

What The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart is not, is a quick-start. Although it drops various elements of the full Exalted Third Edition, there is still a complexity to the mechanics of the roleplaying game which requires a careful read-through upon the part of the Storyteller. In fact, the Storyteller would be advised to sit down and run an example of the various mechanics herself prior to bringing it to the table for her players. Otherwise, The Tomb of Dreams An Exalted Third Edition Jumpstart is a serviceable introduction to Exalted Third Edition, which though requires a bit of preparation, enables the Game Master to bring anime style high action, high fantasy to her gaming table.

Friday Fantasy: Lorn Song of the Bachelor

Published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is an Old School Renaissance fantasy scenario for the roleplaying game of your choice. If choosing a retroclone, it works with any that use ascending Armour Class, and in terms of setting, it would work with any which involve elements of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies, such as the East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. So it would work with Arion Games’ Maelstrom as much as it would Triple Ace Games’ Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age! or the same setting as Hot Springs Island or that of Crypts of Indormancy. It would also work as far off location in Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. The scenario does also mention the use of firearms, but they are not integral to its play and the Game Master can easily ignore their inclusion.

Obviously, the scenario’s themes of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies are contentious issues, even difficult ones for some, but the author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor makes clear that they are unavoidable given the legends and history of the region that the scenario is based upon, and that they are open for the players and their characters to explore and make choices about. To that end, no obvious incentive is provided to involve the characters in the situation detailed in Lorn Song of the Bachelor.

Although it is a sandcrawl of sorts, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is quite different to the previous sandcrawls published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld. It is as far away from the Hill Cantons as can be imagined, being a riverine and dungeon crawl inspired by a story from the island of Borneo. It shares much with the lovely fanzine, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom—crocodilian gods, forgotten monkey-empires, dangerous waters, and exotic fantasy—and indeed, they share the same author, Zedeck Siew. And just like MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Lorn Song of the Bachelor feels humid, sweaty, and sun-drenched, strange, and exotic.

In essence, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is all set-up. At the far reaches of a river, in the lands of the tribe known as the Gleaming Fins, grow great trees from whose heartwood can be extracted a valuable incense, Dreaming Agaru, which aids divination of all sorts with flashes of true inspiration. So the Company sends trade factors and loyal mercenaries—all bad teeth and bad breath—up river to trade and harvest the heartwood of these trees. Yet that trade is threatened by the Bachelor, a giant albino crocodile, which has been the scourge of the river for centuries, having killed all of the other crocodiles. Long has it preyed upon the boats of the Gleaming Fins tribe, upending them and tipping the men into the water to be snapped up. Many times the tribe has hunted the great riverine beast, even killing it, but always it returns. Is the Bachelor a god? Is he immortal? Now it takes the Company’s boats too and so threatens its investments and revenues.

The most obvious way into this for the player characters is to be hired by the Company—akin to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—but what they will discover is faction upon faction within the lands of the Gleaming Fins. The one-armed, silver painted Vartu Si Sartu, Gleaming Fins chief wants the Company gone; the untattooed, jade finger-nailed and abacus-wielding Company merchant, Machivir Sanna Krau, wants the Bachelor dead; and the wrinkled, incense-infused, firefly surrounded witch and midwife, Sati Wu Sati, wants the curse of the Bachelor on the river lifted and the breaking up of the crocodile cult dedicated to him. These are not the only factions and not the only motivations threading their way through Lorn Song of the Bachelor. The player characters will need to weave their way through these to learn the secrets that lie at the literal heart of the Gleaming Fins territory.

Lorn Song of the Bachelor is presented in a sparse fashion. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, often supported with a table or two of further elements waiting to be found and interacted at each location. There is often a bullet-point or list-like quality to the writing, making it accessible and easy to work with. In terms of scale the adventure really only consists of eight locations, each roughly a half day apart, and a small dungeon of just seven locations, a ruin left over from the Monkey Empire. Here the descriptions are richer and weirder, perhaps even more wondrous.

Of course, the presence of the Bachelor, the albino god-crocodile, lurks throughout the scenario and will become an active threat whenever the player characters are on or by the water. Unsurprisingly, this is very likely to occur given the location of various places in Gleaming Fins territory, and ideally it should, since the Bachelor is mystically linked to parts of this land and should he be hurt, there are repercussions for these locations. This perhaps one of the two weakest parts of the scenario in that it does not seem quite strong enough in effect and will need to be carefully worked in by the Game Master. The other is that the solutions to the scenario, there being several given the number of different factions present in the region, are not clear. Now part of this is intentional, as after all, they should not be obvious, but the players will need to work as hard to get at them as the Game Master will in presenting them.

Physically, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a lovely little book. It is well written with its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness being described with a very simple economy in terms of its words. Whilst the cartography is clear and strong, the minimum of description in the writing is paired with utterly delightful artwork, light, if not ethereal, ranging from the inhabitants of the Gleaming Fins lands and the weird objects found there to the strange vistas of the Monkey Empire ruin and the bestiary found at the back of the book.

The isolated and exoticism of Lorn Song of the Bachelor does mean that it may not be easy to add to an ongoing campaign, since it may well be far away from the campaign’s main locations. However, that does not stop it from being a lovely little adventure, a mini-sandbox into which the player characters can come and explore and perhaps aid one faction or another. It is simply presented with artwork which evokes so much of the strangeness and exoticism of the Gleaming Fins lands. Although the formatting means it looks simple, there is a lot of detail and flavour to Lorn Song of the Bachelor which together evoke visions of a very different world and of a very different fantasy to which a Western audience is used.

1979: Bushido

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Bushido is significant for being the very first Samurai role-playing game set in Feudal Japan. Designed by Robert N. Charrette and Paul R. Hume—who would go on to design the highly regarded Shadowrun in 1989—and originally published in 1979 by the short-lived Tyr Gamesmakers Ltd., it is best known from the 1981 boxed set published by Fantasy Games Unlimited, so it this version that is being reviewed here. Drawing upon the Japanese film genre of ‘sword fighting’ or samurai cinema known as ‘Chambara’, it is set in a semi-historical heroic, mythic, and fantastic version of Japan, in which Bushi, Budoka, Yakuza, Ninja, Shugenja, and Gakusho seek to serve their liege lords or masters, and do so with honour and loyalty. Notably, as much as there is an emphasis in Bushido on sword-fighting and magic, myth and history—almost like any other roleplaying game—the roleplaying game places a strong emphasis upon the player characters’ honour and social position.

The 1981 boxed set comes with two thick books, a map of Nippon marked with its provinces, a Game Master’s Screen, and a character sheet. The books consist of ‘Book I, The Heroes of Nippon’, which provides rules of play and the players guidebook, and ‘Book II, The Land of Nippon’, a Gamemaster’s Guidebook. Both are black and white books, lightly illustrated, but filled with dense text. ‘Book I, The Heroes of Nippon’ covers characters, skills, the core mechanics, and spells, whilst ‘Book II, The Land of Nippon’ covers NPCs, battles, treasure, places of Nippon, non-adventuring activity, and a scenario.

A character in Bushido is defined by six Attributes—Strength, Deftness, Speed, Health, Wit, and Will; Saving Throws—derived from the Attributes to determine the success of an action using a particular Attribute; Abilities—derived factors such as health and learning; Capabilities and Skills. The Classic Man in Bushido has a value of ten in each of the Attributes, which can actually range between one and forty. A character will also have a Profession and a Level—Bushido being a ‘Class and Level’ roleplaying game, although with just the six Levels of Experience. The six Professions are Bushi—honourable warriors, the classic samurai, Budoka—martial artists, Yakuza—gangsters and folk heroes, Ninja—status-less, dishonourable thieves, spies, and assassins, Shugenja—Taoist-style wizards, and Gakusho—either Buddhist or Shinto priests. Each Profession provides a character with Attribute bonuses and has its own skills as well as Ki powers, each fuelled by a character’s inner spiritual reservoir. Notably, the skills are divided into Bugei or combat skills, Fine Arts, Practical Arts, Ninja skills, and Magical and Mystical skills with a lot of attention paid to each. Lastly, a character has On, a measure of the respect that the character has for himself, gained by winning contests, battles, and duels, being heroic, going on pilgrimage, and so on, but lost for acts of cowardice or dishonesty, rashness, and the like. On is necessary—though not for Ninja—when gaining Levels in a Profession, but if too much On is lost, a character can lose Levels. Lastly, Status represents a character’s standing in society.

Now creating a character in Bushido is not an easy process, primarily because it is not presented in what would be regarded as a logical order. The actual explanation of the process does not come until half way through the eighty pages of ‘Book I, The Heroes of Nippon’. The first forty or so pages of the book are devoted to explaining the stats, skills, Ki powers, and Professions, basically everything to do with the make-up of character, but without a starting point. So it feels backward because essentially, a player has to read so far into the book in order to actually begin the creation, but then go back to the beginning of the book to continue it, plus there is a lot of flipping back and forth as part of the process.

To create a character in Bushido, a player rolls to determine his character’s caste, which determines the Professions open to him, his initial On, and starting funds. If he rolls low he will be of Samurai class, but if he rolls high, he will be of the Eta caste and can only be a Ninja. Otherwise, a player is free to choose whatever Profession he wants for his character, though there are social and other consequences, for example, a Samurai who chooses to become a Yakuza , loses half of his On. The character’s caste will provide some initial skills, whilst his Profession will add more plus Attribute modifiers, starting goods, and Hit Points. A player also needs to distribute sixty points to his character’s Attributes. Numerous factors, including skill values, are then derived from all of this.

Name: Eiichi
Caste: Heimin (Farmer, Low)
Age: 20 On: 5
Profession: Yakuza Level: 1
Status: 10

Strength 10 ST: 4 Enc. Cap: 20 lbs. Dam: 0 Unarmed: 1d3
Deftness 20 ST: 7 BAP: 10
Speed 15 ST: 6 MNA: 1 BMA: 5
Health 15 ST: 6 HPT: 20
Wit 20 ST: 7 FIS: 20 Per: 6
Will 20 ST: 7 Power: 20

Learning Rate: 2 Zanshin: 1

Capabilities
Brawling: 6 Climbing: 10 Leaping: 7 Magic: 40 (8) Swimming: 5

Skills
Commerce 40 (9), Fishing 60 (13), Gambling 60 (13), Katakana 70 (14), Massage 40 (9), Popular Dance 55 (12), Sumai 50 (11), Tantojujitsu 55 (12), Yakuza Dialect 70 (14)

Goods
Dice, aiguchi (d3), 4 silver

Mechanically, Bushido uses a twenty-sided die for its resolution system. Originally, this would have been in the days of twenty-sided dice with the numbers zero through nine marked on it twice, so players and Game Masters alike would have needed to mark their dice accordingly. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls against the Saving Throw of an appropriate Attribute, Capability, or Skill. The Saving Throw of any Attribute is approximately a third of its value, the value of a Capability an average of three different Saving Throws, and the Base Chance of Success or BCS of a skill equal to a fifth of its value, skills being rated as percentiles. If the skill is a bonus skill for a Profession, then the character’s Level is also added. Critical successes are possible on a roll of one and failures on a roll of a twenty. The quality of any skill test can be determined how much the result is under the adjusted Base Chance of Success.

Combat uses the same mechanics with a character being able to do between one and three actions depending on his Speed Attribute and taking into account the character’s combat awareness or Zanshin. Combat takes into account various types of attack, including bash, butt stroke, disarm, strike, thrust, and more, but ultimately it involves the player rolling against the weapon or Bugei skill being used, its BCS adjusted by the opponent’s Armour Class, which ranges from zero for ordinary clothing up to ten for master heavy samurai armour. Damage is inflicted directly from a character’s Health with a critical success in combat potentially causing double or triple damage, and a high chance of a special effect which might be the loss of a limb or even death. Conversely, a critical failure might see a character might injure himself. Overall, combat in Bushido is potentially really quite deadly, especially against unarmoured combatants.

Magic in Bushido is used by two different Professions. The Shugenja knows a number of basic spells or powers, like Magic Detection and Astral Senses, but his more powerful spells come one of the five schools based on the elements—Water, Fire, Wood, Metal and Soil, plus some common spells. Every spell has a minimum in terms of the knowledge of the school required as well as the Level of the character. The other Profession is the Gakusho or priest, whose powers vary according to whether he is a Buddhist or Shintoist. Instead of the five schools of magic, the Gashuko studies the Five Yoga—each of which corresponds to one of the five elemental schools—and sacred texts, ‘Sutras’ for Buddhists or and ‘Norito’ for Shintoists. Both Shugenja and Gakusho take a degree of commitment upon the part of the player and the Game Master to play. Ninja in Bushido possess the expected mix of stealth and combat skills, but can also manufacture Gimmicks like flash grenades, blowguns, blinding powders, and so on.

Apart from the initial selection determined from a character’s caste and Profession, a player is free to choose the skills he wants for his character, that is, if he can find a school and a teacher which will accept him. Certain Professions provide bonuses to learning certain skills, but there is a certain emphasis on combat skills in Bushido, only exacerbated by the inclusion of Okuden, secret combat skills or manoeuvres such as Piercing Thrust or the Lightning Stroke. All six Professions also have their own Ki powers—focussed and unfocussed—the former requiring concentration, the latter not.  So for the Bushi, that might be Damage Focus, Distant Death for the Budoka, and Lore Master for the Shugenja, but all enable a character to do amazing feats.

To progress, a character needs to earn experience points or Budo and have a minimum level of On. On though, can go down as well as up, so what this means is that as much as it is gained by winning contests, battles, and duels, being heroic, going on pilgrimage, and so on, but is lost for acts of cowardice or dishonesty, rashness, and the like. So characters are encouraged to roleplay the positive aspects of the setting and so will be rewarded for it. Besides this, progression is not just a matter of adventuring, but studying and learning too.

In addition to the mechanics of the roleplaying game, Bushido includes background on Nippon, the structure of its society, customs, religious beliefs, the place of women in society, and details of weaponry—including a good illustration of them all together on the back cover of ‘Book I, The Heroes of Nippon’. ‘Book II, The Land of Nippon’ covers creating NPCs as well as a bestiary of creatures mythic—legendary and supernatural—and mundane, a discussion of events the player characters can get involved in, places in Nippon, jobs they can take in addition to adventuring, and the benefits and duties of being in particular groups, such fiefs, schools, ninja clans, yakuza gangs, and so on. The advanced game covers founding and running these as the player characters gain status. Lastly there is an adventure, ‘An Evening at the Inn of Restful Sleep’, a fairly simple affair in which the player characters are victims of skulduggery when they stay at an inn. It is at least a good reason to introduce the characters and get them working together. Overall, the setting of Nippon manages to be just about fantastic enough without detracting from its not too historical feel and flavour—it is not strictly speaking a completely historical treatment of feudal Japan, but then neither is it wholly fantastic either. Bushido owes this to its Chambara origins as much as it does the authors. 

Physically, Bushido is a densely presented pair of books. The layout is generally tidy, but the editing is wanting. If there is a real issue with Bushido, it is that there is no index for either book, whilst a glossary would have been useful. The roleplaying game could have done with more examples, but above all, it needed better organisation and more clearly separated sections of rules. The result is often a frustrating mess, as players and Game Master alike are forced to search for a rule or other content. There is a solid game here, the organisation is a hindrance to that aim.

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Bushido was reviewed extensively at the time of its publication—by all three of its publishers. Steven L. Lortz reviewed it in Different Worlds Issue 3 (June/July, 1979), comparing it to the leading roleplaying games of the day, “RuneQuest and Dungeons & Dragons typify two styles of role-play which are very different in mechanics and philosophy; specific expertise versus general experience levels, character specialization versus character classes, spell points versus Vancian magic, and static versus dynamic hit points. In Bushido, Hume and Charrette have produced a well-knit integration of elements from each of these styles and provided a fairly complete and playable social milieu for the characters to operate within. For these reasons, I highly recommend Bushido to people who are interested in running a fantasy campaign based primarily on the Japanese mythos and to people who are interested in the art of RPG design. However, the Basic Chance of Success mechanism is a reversal of the die rolling conventions of both RuneQuest and Dungeons & Dragons, so some work would be required before a person could adapt from Bushido into a campaign based on either of these two systems.”

In Dragon #34 (February, 1980), D. Okada noted that, “With the exception of M.A.R. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne, virtually every game that comes out has a common outlook. Each game is based on a view of life (whether in fantasy or science fiction) that draws its roots from Western culture. This is to be expected. The largest, if not only, market for games is found in the Western world. But now the gamer is offered a new choice.” Which of course is Bushido. He commented though, that, “...[T]he game is not perfect. There are a horrendous amount of typographical errors in the rules. While the game does not always suffer from these errors, there are times when they do hamper understanding of what is supposed to be going on.” before concluding that, “Despite these faults, the game is worth the price to the person interested in developing a more cosmopolitan outlook. After all, while it’s fun to be Conan or Gandalf in D&D, there is also a time to try and be Miyamoto Musashi seeking perfection in the use of the sword, don’t you think?”

Conversely, writing in The Space Gamer Number 29 (July, 1980), Forrest Johnson was distinctly dismissive, stating that, “Students of Japan may be irritated by such things as misspellings, the translation of “on” as face and the omission from the map of the island of Hokkaido. The metaphysics seem more Hindu than Japanese and some of the monsters (trolls, vampires, ogres) are distinctly round-eyed.” before concluding, “Karate fans and samurai fans may dig this one. Serious students will just have to wait for something better.” 

Similarly, in Ares Nr. 7 (March, 1981), Eric Goldberg was critical of the character generation method, saying that, “The mechanics for character generation represent two contradictory theories. The point distribution system is intended to promote equality among the characters. The caste and rank system randomly creates great disparities between them. There is a logical argument for both methods – even in conjunction – but one’s purpose defeats the other’s. Furthermore, restricting one profession (ninja) to those who are of that caste (a 15% chance) limits those unfortunate characters who cannot be a ninja to four professions. (Also, a character who is of the ninja caste is almost forced to be a ninja, unless he feels no qualms about throwing away an advantage.) I am surprised the designers did not extend their point assignment system to that the players could “buy” caste and rank, thus ensuring that everyone would have free choice.” It is notable that this is exactly what the designers did with Shadowrun.

Nevertheless, Eric Goldberg was slightly more positive in his conclusion, saying that “Bushido’s strong points are the inventive game mechanics (for the time), the “feel” of Japanese culture, and the tentative emphasis on playing a role. Most FRP games rely on the players to determine in which direction their characters will go, and often force them into stereotyped roles. Hume and Charette were players turned designers, and remained aware of the difficulties they had met in previously published games.” and “A quest for knowledge about Japanese culture would not begin with Bushido, partly because of the interpolation of mythic beliefs into the background. However, the players of the game do not wish to know all the ins and outs of that country, however interesting they may be. Bushido is a nice enough meld of a surrealistic and D&D-style flavor, and has a game system sturdy enough to support this impression.” 

Reviewing Bushido in White Dwarf Issue No 32 (August, 1982), Mike Polling was wholly more positive, exclaiming that, “If you’re for the ultimate Fantasy Role-Playing Game, look no further. This is it.” before awarding both Bushido and the separate adventure, Valley of the Mists, a score of ten out of ten.

Bushido has also been the subject of a number of retrospectives. In Dragon #134 (June, 1988), it was reviewed again, this time by Jim Bambra and alongside reviews of Land of Ninja, a supplement for RuneQuest III and Oriental Adventures, the supplement for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In light of the other two supplements being reviewed, he was more guarded in his praise, stating that, “The BUSHIDO game was the first game to open up the mysterious East to roleplayers  –  but at a cost. While admirably capturing the flavor of medieval Japan, the BUSHIDO game is densely written and difficult to grasp. It is a game for dedicated gamers who, in their pursuit of Oriental action, are willing to struggle with rule books that make advanced nuclear theory texts seem like light reading by comparison.” before concluding that, “If you’re looking for a stand-alone system, then check out the BUSHIDO game. But if accessibility and ease of use are your primary requirements, stay well away.”

In ‘The Way of the Warrior, The Way of Bushido’ in The Last Province Issue 1 (October, 1992), Paz Newis said, “Ah, the early eighties when a game system said complete rule system, by jingo, it meant it... However the initial rush of joy is likely to be short lived. Upon opening one of the books the level of undertaking becomes apparent. You want to authentically simulate feudal fantasy Japan? It might be quicker to move there and join their Sealed Knot equivalent.” The reviewer was otherwise positive about the game. Similarly, Bushido was described Arcane issue 6 (May, 1996) as having, “...[C]aptured the spirit of the  Samurais’ [sic] greatest era: feudal Japan.” and that, “Politics and action went hand in hand with Bushido and the game had an innately epic scale.” Editor Steve Faragher’s obvious enthusiasm should be tempered by the fact that he had been part of the Games of Liverpool team which published the scenario, Takishido’s Debt, for Bushido in 1983.

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As the first roleplaying game set in feudal Japan, Bushido is groundbreaking, providing a lot of information about the setting, the types of characters which can be played, and what they can do. There is a lot of flavour and detail in Bushido, especially so in the descriptions of the various types of skills—Bugei or combat skills, Fine Arts, Practical Arts, Ninja skills, and Magical and Mystical skills—but also in the explanations of society and customs, and of course, in the On or personal honour rules which encourage roleplaying and immersion in the setting. Yet as much as it set a standard in terms of background for the characters, who they and what they do, Bushido got just about everything wrong in terms of how a roleplaying needs to be presented. The density of the text, the explanation of terms before they are needed, and the dreadfully poor organisation of the rules—exacerbated by a lack of index—made Bushido inaccessible. Instead of needing to be read, Bushido needed to be studied, its textbook-like layout and structure also making the game difficult to teach.

Bushido had the potential to be a good roleplaying game and a great treatment of its genre. Yet from the start, Bushido needed a second edition of the Fantasy Games Unlimited version to rip the organisation of its contents apart and put it back together to make it accessible. It is a shame that this never happened, for it let other Oriental-set roleplaying games shine in its stead.

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With thanks to Steven Ward for granting me last minute access to The Last Province #1.