Friday Filler: Rafter Five

Everyone has agreed that the best way of getting off the island is to build a raft. However, nobody can agree on the best way to build a raft, or even how to build a raft. Whilst everyone has also agreed that the best way to get off the island with their treasure is the raft, the raft is so rickety that it is in danger of collapsing and dumping everyone into the sea. Fortunately, there are no sharks, but when you fall into the sea, it is everyone for themselves as they try to rescue their treasure. It is perfectly possible to rescue your own treasure, but not the treasures belonging to your fellow raft builders, and if you lose their treasure, they will get mad at you and throw you off the raft! This is the set-up for Rafter Five, a fast-playing dexterity game for one to six players, ages seven and up. Published by Oink Games—best known for the games Scout and Deep Sea Rescue—Rafter Five is a game that uses all of its components, including the box lid and base, looks great on the table, plays in twenty minutes or so (but probably faster depending on the dexterity of the players), and surprisingly for an Oink Games title, is not a squeeze to get back in the box!

Rafter Five consists of five Rafters, forty-two Treasure Chests, six Penalty Boards, one Raft Card, forty-two Lumber Cards, and the rules leaflet. The Rafters are the game’s meeples, ones that the players will move around from one turn to the next. They are much larger than standard meeples and vary in size and shape, tall, fat, thin, short, and really help to give the game much of its character. Plus, they feel good in the hand. The Treasure Chests come in six colours, so that each player has a set of seven. The Penalty Boards also come in six colours to match the Treasure Chests and have five slots marked with an ‘X’. If a player’s Penalty Board is filled up with the Treasure Chests of the other players, he loses and is out of the game. The Raft card forms the base for the players’ raft, whilst the Lumber Cards are slightly wavey lengths of card, marked with the sea on one side and wood on the other.

Set up is simple. The game’s box is turned upside down, placed in the centre of the table, and the lid to the box is placed on top, also upside down. The Raft Card is put on top of the lid, as are all five Rafters. Each player receives the Penalty Board and Treasure Chests of his colour. In two- and three-player games, each player will be given Penalty Boards and Treasure Chests of multiple colours.

The aim of Rafter Five is to build as big a raft as possible, whilst loading it up with treasure, without it collapsing. When it does collapse, the player who caused the collapse receives all of the Treasure Chests tipped into the sea. He keeps his own Treasure Chests to place again, but Treasure Chests belonging to the other players must be put onto his Penalty Board. If a player accrues five Treasure Chests belonging to other players on his Penalty Board, the game ends, and he is the loser, whilst everyone else wins! The game also ends when there are no more Lumber cards to place or all of the players have put their Treasure Chests on the raft. In either case, the player with the most Treasure Chests belonging to other players on his Penalty Board is the loser and everyone else wins.

On his turn, a player does three things. He picks up a single Rafter from the raft and then a Lumber Card. He must then place the Lumber Card on the raft and the Rafter on top of that. The Lumber Card must be placed so that part of it is on top of another Lumber Card on the raft (except on the first turn, when a player is free to place the Lumber card how he wants). Lastly, he put one of his Treasure Chests anywhere on the Lumber Card he just placed.

Rafter Five is as simple as that, but the longer a game goes on and the more that Lumber Cards and Treasure Cards are added, the more precarious the splay of the Lumber cards that make up the poorly constructed raft grows. The Rafters are the balancing factor, acting as a counterweight to lengths of Lumber Card hanging over the edge of the raft with their Treasure Chests perched precariously on their lengths. Picking the right one can the key to a tense, but safe turn, but pick the wrong one and everything goes tumbling into the sea! Placing a Treasure Chest where it is more likely to tip into the sea, such as at the end of a Lumber Card, dangling over the edge, is a legitimate move, but this highlights the key aspect to Rafter Five. Most dexterity games are about placing one thing or removing one thing to a stack. Rafter Five is about placing three—the Rafter, the Lumber Card, and the Treasure Chest!

Physically, Rafter Five is very nicely presented and packaged. The components are of good quality and the Rafter pieces are nice and sturdy in the hand, and ever so cute! The simplicity of the game means that the rules are easy to read and grasp.

Rafter Five does include a solo-mode, but it is more of a stacking puzzle than a game, so consequently less interesting. That said, the game plays well at whatever player count, with four or five being about right, and it is suited to play by the family, being very easy to teach and learn. Rafter Five is a great filler game, easy to learn, quick to play, but full of tension that grows and grows as more Lumber Cards are added to the raft.

Friday Filler: Souvenirs from Venice

The last two weeks you have spent in the city of Venice have been amazing. You have visited the Doge’s Palace, St. Mark's Basilica, and the Bridge of Sighs, as well as taken a gondola ride on the Grand Canal, explored the Rialto Market, and taken a day trip to the island of Murano to discover its unique glassblowing tradition. The food and wine have been good too, but now your holiday is nearly over. Your flight home leaves tomorrow, but you have one left one last thing you have to do to the last minute—gifts to take home for your friends and family. In fact, you are not really sure that you have enough time to search the shops for right gifts and get to Marco Polo International Airport for your flight home. It is not helped by the fact that the three friends you are buying for, hate it when they are not treated equally, but you have hired a gondola and you are going to search high and low for the right gifts for the right people—or miss your flight trying!

This is the set-up for Souvenirs from Venice, another game from Oink Games, the Japanese publisher best known for Scout. It is a set-collecting game designed for two to five players, aged eight and up, that can be played in thirty minutes, and it is from the same designers who did Deep Sea Adventure. The aim of the game is three sets of matching souvenirs and get to the airport. At the end of the game, each matching set of souvenirs will score points, whilst souvenirs that do not match will lose a player points. The players have to find the right souvenirs, make sure they do not have wrong souvenirs in their hands, and get to the airport. Only a player who gets to the airport in time will have a chance of being the winner.

Besides the rules in French, German, and Spanish as well as English, Souvenirs from Venice consists of forty-eight Souvenir Tiles, thirty Money Tokens, five Summary Cards, an Airport Card, a single die, and five Gondolas. The Souvenir Tiles range in value from five to ten and in turn depict Venetian Glass, Venetian Masks, Leather Goods, Gondolier Shirts, Squid Ink Pasta, and Fridge Magnets. Each Souvenir Tile is actually a shop and items are the goods they sell. Two depict the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’. The die is marked one, two, and three, rather than one to six, and the gondolas are done in brightly coloured wood. The Summary Cards are reference cards for the play of the game.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives a gondola, six Money Tokens, and a Sun. The Souvenir Tiles are laid out in a seven-by-seven grid, or five-by-five if two players, all face down, whilst the Airport Card is placed in one corner instead of a Souvenir Tile. The grid is open as the spaces in between represent the canals of Venice where players’ gondolas will travel, moving from intersection to intersection. All of the gondolas are placed on the Airport Card where they start play.

On his turn, each player must do three things in strict order. These are ‘Research’, ‘Move’, and ‘Buying or Selling’. In the ‘Research’ step, the player flips over any tile face down so that everyone can see it. In the ‘Move’, the player rolls the die and moves his gondola that exact number of spaces, hopping over any other player’s gondola in the way. ‘Buying or Selling’ gives a player two options. If he buys, it can be done in secret, looking at a Souvenir Tile adjacent to his gondola, but keeping it hidden from the other players, or he can buy any face up tile. Either way, he replaces it with Money Token. If he sells, he places a Souvenir Tile in his hand on the table face down, replacing a Money Token which he takes.

If the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’ are both revealed—and they have to be revealed face up when discovered, they force each player to pass a Souvenir Tiles (or a Money Token if they have no Souvenir Tile) to the player on his left. This can mix things up, forcing a player to scramble to find matching Souvenir Tiles with the ones he has in his hand. However, this really comes into play later in the game rather than earlier, as the earlier it happens, the lower the chance it has of mucking up a player’s hand.

Souvenirs from Venice is a primarily a push-your-luck game, although it does have a memory element in that a player may need to remember the Souvenir Tiles he has looked at and where they are. However, what a player is mostly doing is pushing his luck to three sets of Souvenir Tiles, ideally of a higher rather than lower value. Of course, there are more of the latter than the former. Thankfully, a player can choose to sell to get rid of a poor value Souvenir Tile if he knows where one with a better value is or if he simply wants it out of his hand. The latter may be necessary because the other push-your-luck element of game is the timer element. Once all of the Souvenir Tiles have been bought or flipped over and face up, the flight leaves the airport. Anyone not at the airport by then, cannot score any points for the Souvenir Tile sets they have collected and automatically lose. Any player with sets of Souvenir Tiles at the airport gets to score, and the player with highest score wins.

Souvenirs from Venice is decently presented, if as with every Oink Games title, packed tightly into its little box. The quality of the components is good and the rules are clearly written.

Souvenirs from Venice is a solid, satisfying little game. It is a light game, better suited to family audiences and has a surprisingly decent theme that matches that lightness.

—oOo—

Oink Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Friday Filler: Order Overload Café

Ever spent a shift in a café receiving and trying to fulfil ever more confusing orders from probably annoying customers? Being forced to put on your best customer service and make sure that despite the confusion and despite the probable annoyance, the customer receives the right order with a smile? Well, that is what playing Order Overload Café is all about. Published by Oink Games—best known for the games Scout and Deep Sea Rescue—Order Overload Café is a game about memorising confused orders from too many customers in which every employee in the café has to do their very best to remember as much as they can. As the game progresses, the café gets busier and the orders get bigger and more complex. This is a co-operative game and it is designed to be played by between two and six players, aged six and over, with a typical game lasting no more than twenty minutes.

Being an Oink Games title, Order Overload Café comes in a tiny attractive box which is packed tight—but thankfully, not too tight, with the game’s components, Besides the ‘Game Instructions’, these include eighty-four Order Cards, six Special Ability Cards, seven Level Tokens, and six Salesperson Tokens. The Order Cards include a wide range of drinks and snacks—French Toast, Banana, Chocolate Chip Cookie, Banana Milk, Iced Coffee, Iced Coffee without Ice, Room Temperature Coffee, Extra Hot Café Latte, and more. Some of these items are very specific and detailed. The Special Ability Cards, which can be used once per Level, do things like forcing another player to say the first letter of each card in his hand or allow the player to discard an Order Card from his hand. The Level Tokens are numbered from one to seven, indicating ever increasing degrees of difficulty that the players have to beat to proceed to the next Level. The Salesperson Tokens each have a smiling face on one side and a frowning face on the other. It should be noted that the cards and rules for Order Overload Café are given in French, German, and Spanish as well as English, meaning that the game could be used in the classroom as an aid to both teaching and learning another language.

Game set-up is simple. The Level Tokens are laid out in order, from one to seven. Each player receives a Special Ability Card and a Salesperson Token. The latter is placed on the table with the smiling face face-up.

At the start of the Level, the current active player draws a number of Order Cards equal to the players multiplied by the current Level. So, with four players, this would be four Order Cards in the first Level, eight Order Cards at Level Two, twelve Order Cards at Level Three, so and on. At the start of each Level, one player is the Order Taker. His task is to read each of the Order Cards that make up the current order out loud and as he does so, all of the other players have to memorise as many of them as they can. The Order Taker then shuffles the Order Cards in the current order and deals them out to all of the players. A player is allowed to look at his cards, but must keep them hidden from the other players. The player to left of the Order Taker becomes the Active Player, whilst the other players are the Checkers.

The meat of Order Overload Café is checking the order. The Active Player turns to the Checker on his left and asks him if he has one of the Order Cards that the Order Taker read out at the start of the turn. If the Checker does, he discards that Order Card from his hand. The turn now ends. If the Checker does not have the Order Card, the Active Player can ask the next Checker and so on and so on, until either a Checker does have it and can discard it, or no player has it. If no Checker has the Order Card, then the Active Player has failed! The Active Player turns his Salesperson Token over so that the frowning face is visible. The Active Player cannot be the Active Player again, but he can be a Checker. The Active Player can also call out an Order Card in his hand as well as asking the other Checkers.

The aim is for the players—both the Active Player and the Checkers—to discard all of the Order cards from their hand. It does not need to be all of the players, but one player per Level if there are two players, two players per Level if there are three or four players, and three players per Level if there are five or six players. If this happens, a Level is completed and its Level Token is turned over. All of the Order Cards are collected, shuffled, and then dealt out again according to the number of the new Level. Play continues like this until either the players manage to complete the seventh Level or all of the players’ Salesperson Tokens are turned over so that the frowning face is visible. If this occurs, the game is over, and the highest Level completed is the players’ final result.

In addition, the rules do include options for competitive play and for mixing the Order Cards from Order Overload Café—Order Overload: Burgers, Order Overload: Spiel23, and Order Overload: Insects. However, all three of these alternate versions are out of print and difficult to find. It would have nice if there was more variety in terms of the Special Ability Cards, but other than that, are no real issues with the game.

Physically, Order Overload Café is very nicely presented and packaged. The cards are of good quality and the cardboard pieces are nice and sturdy in the hand.

Order Overload Café is not difficult to play and its simple rules means that it is easy to teach and play with the family or with the gaming group. Although it is not difficult to play, it is challenging—or at least it becomes so. The first Level or so is a cake walk, but as one Level is completed and the next Level started, it becomes more and more of challenge as the size of the Order and the number of Order Cards that the players have to memorise increases. Not only that but the balance between the difficulty of the game and the number of the players remains constant, and play progresses, there is the constant feel of success as another Order Card is discarded and the players progress work towards completing a Level, knowing that at any moment, the Active Player might get an Order wrong and move everyone one step closer to failure. And failure is frustrating because you do want to beat each and every Level! Plus, unlike many a co-operative game, there is no alpha player attempting to steer everyone’s turn.

Order Overload Café is not a game that you are going to play again and again. Especially once you have beaten its top Level, but it is a good game to bring out occasionally or to play with casual or new players as the challenge is very quickly obvious and the rules are very, very easy to teach and the play is relying on memory not skill. Order Overload Café is a surprisingly good and challenging filler, best suited for the occasional play.

Friday Filler: Dropolter

Most dexterity games involve removing things from a stack and trying to have the stack collapse or stacking things and not having things fall down, because if you cause the stack to fall down, you lose. Think Jenga or Bausack or Villa Paletti. One of the newest games from Oink Games is all about dropping things. Or rather, about dropping the right thing or things. Dropolter begins when everyone is asleep, but all of a sudden, eerie noises wake them up in the night. A ghostly wail. A thud. A boom. And then one-by-one, ghosts begins to appear from beneath each of the players’ beds. Fortunately, everyone is prepared and has the five charms to hand—quite literally—that will ward off the ghosts. However, the charms—each a little brass bell—have got mixed up with a number of items, including a Ring, a Cookie, a Key, a Seashell, and a Gem—and each player needs to get the right ones out of his hand whilst keeping the bells in his hand. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is far from easy, because each player has to do it only with the hand that he is holding the objects in. In other words, he cannot use his other hand!

That is about as far as the backstory goes in Dropolter—a game designed to be played by between two and five players, aged six or more, and in fifteen minutes—and as backstories go, that is incredibly thin. What it amounts to is that in each round, a player has five objects in his hand. These are a Ring, a Cookie, a Key, a Seashell, and a Gem. At the start of a round, a Theme Card is drawn and this will determine which of the five items each player has to drop from his hand. The Theme Cards range in difficulty from one to four objects. The first player to drop the required number of items from his hand and grab the very friendly Ghost Piece wins the round and is awarded a brass bell. This is added to his hand on subsequent rounds. The first player to get five brass bells, wins the game.

If a player drops a wrong object, he must start again with all five objects in his hand. Worse, if he drops a brass bell, he loses it and it is not added back into his hand.

The objects themselves are shaken in a player’s at the start of each round, and then after that, what a player is doing is manipulating them as they sit on his palm with his fingers and thumb, attempting to push, pull, and tip them from his hand with dropping anything else. This requires no little manual dexterity. There is a delightful sense of shared frustration as everyone concentrates, trying to manipulate the objects in their palm in a manual exercise that we rarely have to attempt, exacerbated when someone drops the wrong object, and relieved when someone drops the right objects.

Physically, Dropolter is as nicely done as you would expect for a game from Oink Games. The rules are easy to read and understand and the components, although small, each have a different shape and tactile feel that aids play.

With its promise of “Ghost vs Palm Muscle” action, Dropolter has a simplicity and physicality that are both a hindrance and a boon. It is simple to learn and teach, making it suitable for a wide audience, but it does not offer a great deal of game play beyond the short term. Its physicality gives it a highly interactive presence at the table, but not everyone has the manual dexterity to play and there are a lot of little pieces which are all too easy to loose. Yet Dropolter is the perfect filler game because it does not take that long to play. It is also the perfect novelty game, its very concept and physicality is intriguing enough to anyone who has not played it to ask, “How does this work again?” What this means is that Dropolter is a great little icebreaker, its novelty big enough despite the size of its box and components to make people want to play.

1983: Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek

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. 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—

It is often forgotten that Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, published by FASA in 1982 was not the first Star Trek roleplaying game. It is often forgotten that Call of Cthulhu, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1981 was not the first licensed roleplaying game. The very first licensed roleplaying game and the very first roleplaying based on Star Trek was Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, published by Heritage Models, Inc. by in 1978. If the first roleplaying game based on Star Trek is all but forgotten now, there is a third roleplaying game based on Star Trek which remains almost unknown which in its own way is equally as important as Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier. For if Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier is notable as the first licensed roleplaying game, then Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is notable for being the first domestic roleplaying game to be published in Japan and the first licensed roleplaying game to be published in Japan. Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek was published in 1983 as a boxed set by Tsukuda Hobby, which at that time was better known for its wargames and model kits. In 1983, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek came as an eye-catching box set that included a twenty-page Rulebook, thirteen-page Adventure Book, fifteen double-sided Character Cards, two twenty-sided ten-sided dice, and one six-sided die. What is being reviewed here is not a copy of the original roleplaying game, as that would be almost impossible to obtain, but rather a translation that has been collated into a slim, fifty-eight-page hardback. The rules though, remain the same, even if the format does not.

A Player Character in Enterprise is defined by his Race, several abilities or traits—Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, Charisma, and Luck, Alignment, and one or more Special Abilities. The roleplaying game’s ‘Alien List’ includes Andorians, Talosians, Romulans, Metrons, Eugenic Superhumans, Organians, Klingons, Medusans, Melkotians, Tellarites, Zetrians, Gorns, M113 Monsters, Horta, and Vuclans. It does not say, though, which of these are suitable for use as Player Characters. All have an Alignment, one or more Special Abilities, and possible ability modifications. All five abilities range on the three to eighteen scale. Strength is both the amount of damage a Player Character can withstand and the chance he has of defeating an opponent in hand-to-hand combat; Dexterity is used to determine Initiative in combat and with the Mechanical Repair Special Ability to disable traps; Intellect determines if the Player Character has the Medical Talent or the Science Talent and can help him gain allies; Charisma to help him gain allies, but from force of personality rather than intellect; and Luck is used to avoid traps. Alignment includes Logical Good, Logical Bad, Neutral, Emotional Good, and Emotional Bad. It is easy to map the characters from Star Trek: The Original Series onto this array. The four Special Abilities are Mechanical Repair, Medical Talent (Treatment), Science Talent, and PSY Talent (ESP). Some aliens automatically have the PSY Talent (ESP), but Humans only have 10% chance of doing so. A Player Character’s chance of having the other three Special Abilities is based on their associated abilities. It is possible to create a Player Character who has multiple Special Abilities or none, depending upon whether the player rolls well or badly.

To create a character, the player selects a Race, rolls four-six-sided dice for each ability and deducts the lowest, and then rolls for each Special Ability. The process is very quick and easy. Alternatively, the player could select a member of the crew of the Enterprise. The roleplaying game comes with a double-sided Character Card for each as well as several opposing characters. Each Character Card lists the various statistics, Special Abilities, and has space for tracking hits, making notes, and so on, whilst on the front is a photograph of the character. There are fifteen Character Cards, three of which are blank for the player’s use, whilst the rest consist of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Chapel, Rand, Commander Kang the Klingon, Stonn the Vulcan, and Subcommander Tal the Romulan.

Name: Rosana Guimarães

Race: Human

Alignment: Emotional Good

Special Abilities: Mechanical Repair, Science Talent

Strength 10 Dexterity 13 Intellect 12

Charisma 15 Luck 16

Equipment: Science Tricorder, Type II Hand Phaser, Communicator, knife and three days water and food.

Mechanically, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek uses percentile dice, but that is about as standard as it gets, and not because the Game Master uses the six-sided die to determine if the Player Character senses something hidden—a door or a trap—and which Player Character an enemy targets in a fight. After that, everything else is a subsystem of its own, each straightforward in itself, but different enough to require referring to a table each time. So to find out if a Player Character discovers a trap or hidden door, the player needs to roll 30% or less, modified by his character’s Luck and to avoid a trap if triggered, is another percentile roll, the number determined by the character’s Luck after consult the ‘Avoid Trap’ table. The chance is equal to 50% if the Luck value is 13, then modified by 5% up or down depending upon the Luck value. However, consulting the ‘Bypass Lock or Trap’ table, the required number is based on Dexterity and the chance is equal to 50% if the Dexterity value is 10. Undertaking tasks such as analysing or repairing a piece of equipment or an artefact requires the Player Character to have the Mechanical Repair Special Ability and his player to roll under the device’s Repair Probability, for example, 20% for a Universal Translator. If a Player Character has the Science Special Ability, he can use a computer or tricorder without any problems. Enemy computers are assigned a percentage, which the Player Character must roll under to be able to use. There are no modifications from the abilities on any of these rolls, so effectively, a Player Character with higher stats has a higher chance of having a Special Ability, but not a better chance of using it.

Encounters with NPCs are either hostile or non-hostile. Hostile NPCs always attack. Encounters with non-hostile NPCs require an Alignment Check. The Game Master compares the Alignments of the Player Character and the NPC. This determines the attitude of the NPC, either Domination, Equality, or Deception, which is kept secret from the player. The player then guesses what the NPC’s attitude is and selects his character’s approach, either Domination, Equality, or Deception. If the player is correct in guessing the NPC’s attitude, he can make an Attitude Option roll, again, either Domination, Equality, or Deception. This is a base percentile roll modified by either the Player Character’s Charisma and Intellect, sometimes both. If successful, the NPC becomes an Ally under the player’s control, joining the party of Player Characters. If the Alignment Check fails, the NPC becomes hostile and attacks, although it is suggested to the Game Master that depending upon the scenario, if the roll is failed, an NPC can still appear to act in a friendly manner towards the Player Characters, only to betray them later or act hostile initially, only to become an Ally later.

The Alignment Check and interaction rules for NPCs are not developed enough to work effectively. There are no bonuses or penalties to determine the effect of the three approaches—Domination, Equality, and Deception—working against each other. Unless the player successfully guesses the NPC’s attitude, the results are binary—failure, if not open hostility and combat. Also, the rules state that, “Regardless of whether or not the Alignment Check is required, the GM should roll the 20‐sided dice. Otherwise, the player may be able to discern whether or not they were right or wrong about the attitude of the NPC.” At this point, it is not clear what the Game Master is rolling for. Only in the accompanying example, does it become clear that the Game Master makes the Attitude Option roll and not the player.

Once surprise and initiative has been sorted, combat begins with dividing the combatants into groups of three on each side and the Game Master the values of a six-sided die to help randomly determine who targets who. Ranged combat is based on range—determined by the weapon’s range bands and distance to the target—and the attacker’s Dexterity. The result is a percentile value that the player or Game Master must roll under. The Game Master also has the option of applying penalties if the target is dodging, lying prone, or behind cover, but there are no standard penalties given. Damage from energy weapons is deadly—a ten-sided die’s worth for a Hand Phaser’s Destruction setting and instant death for the Dematerialise setting. The Stun simply renders the target unconscious.

Hand-to-hand combat involves not so much out and out brawling as attempts by the combatants to knock each other out. The two combatants’ Strength Ability ratings are compared. If they are equal, they have a hand‐to‐hand combat value of 50%, this the chance of knocking each other out. A higher Strength than the opponent will increase the hand‐to‐hand combat value, whilst a lower Strength will decrease the hand‐to‐hand combat value. Being armed with a knife or a stone count towards the hand‐to‐hand combat value. Of the two combat systems, the ranged combat rules are better than the ones for hand-to-hand combat, which really fail to capture the knockabout nature of brawls seen on screen in Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Adventure Book contains a single scenario, ‘The Drifting Ring’. The Enterprise has been assigned to investigate an object called the ‘The Ring’. It is a ten-kilometre diameter toroidal spacecraft and it is currently heading for Klingon space. The origins of The Ring lie at the centre of the galaxy where a race realised that their worlds increasingly in danger from a series of supernovae that would destroy the systems around them. They built a huge generational spaceship, populated it with crew, passengers (mostly in cryogenic sleep), and samples from their worlds, and headed for a safer area in the galaxy. Which to be honest, sounds an awful lot like the plot or at least the set-up, of Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Aboard, the crew will find a society that has regressed due to isolation and lost knowledge, and then rebellion, resulting in the inside of the spaceship being perpetually in the dark. The location where the Player Characters beam aboard has the feel of an agrarian valley, complete with river, mountains, forest, and ruins. The area is home to three different factions which keep apart from each other, some of whom will not be hostile to the Player Characters, some will, and of course, if one of the players is roleplaying Kirk, there is a young girl who will follow unconditionally no matter what the result of the Alignment Check suggests. (That said, given that she is described as a “[B]eautiful 16 year old girl.”, the Game Master would probably want to add a year or two or three…) Much of the adventure is given over to detailing the various locations in the scenario, but the descriptions are lacking, even absent in many cases of describing what something or someone looks like.

‘The Drifting Ring’ does actually feel as if it would fit into a Star Trek setting, given that the series dealt with a number of regressed civilisations, such as in ‘The Omega Glory’ and ‘For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky’. Effectively, ‘The Ring’ is a sandcrawl, the Player Characters free to explore where they want to. It is also more scenario than mission, since there is no real mission attached to the adventure. The implied mission is that the Enterprise crew is trying to stop the flight of The Ring. How that is achieved is left up to the players and their characters to decide. Overall, ‘The Ring’ feels a bit too open, a bit too big to be contained within one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and despite, lacking in easy to use detail.

The Adventure Book concludes with some Design Notes from the author, Tama Yutaka. Notable later as the co-editor of the Japanese version of Warlock – The Fighting Fantasy Magazine, here he states that, “I designed this STAR TREK game as a way to introduce the Role Playing Game ‐‐ currently at dizzying heights in the United States ‐‐ to Japan.” He emphasises the importance of the human, that character should be central, even given the prominence of machines in Science Fiction and Fantasy—especially Star Trek—and this is what differentiates a roleplaying game from a board game. There is tentativeness to the Design Notes, if not the roleplaying game as a whole.

So what is missing from Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek? Fundamentally, two things. First, there is no background on Star Trek at all in the setting. None at all. It assumes that both Game Master and her players are familiar already with the television series to play. Second, the U.S.S. Enterprise. Or, indeed, any starships. They are completely ignored, so very much like the earlier Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, published by Heritage Models, Inc., Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is all about the away missions and what happens on planet or aboard a space station rather than aboard ship. Similar to Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, there is no means of character progression either, even though it is possible to create Player Characters. The combination of this lack of character progression with the limited options in terms of the Special Abilities to select from or roll for—Mechanical Repair, Medical Talent (Treatment), Science Talent, and PSY Talent (ESP)—means that characters themselves feel shallow. It does not help that with no ships involved in the roleplaying game, there are no Special Abilities related to their option, but there are no combat or interaction Special Abilities either. Perhaps a second edition might have addressed these issues and been less of a skirmish roleplaying game, something that not even FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game was able to wholly avoid.

Physically, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek was presented for 1983. Its combination of a box set containing the two books, the Character Cards, and dice would have looked attractive and caught the eye of any Star Trek fan. The translation is clear and simply presented, the Character Cards of the crew of the Enterprise and their foes and allies are decently done, and the maps are workable.

Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek is very much the Star Trek: The Original Series roleplaying game, really suggesting that the players take the roles of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise rather than create their own crewmen. Like the earlier Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, it wants to push away from the wargaming origins of the hobby and like Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, it does not quite do so because it never really gets away from being a skirmish game played out on maps and floorplans. Yet it has some interesting ideas, such as the emotion-versus-logic Alignment system that is very Kirk-McCoy-Spock and the Alignment Check interaction mechanic, that suggests it does want to be more than this. These remain undeveloped though and with a focus on elements of play such as the need to check for traps and hidden doors, on movement, and the like, Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek remains an unsophisticated design that all too often feels as if it has been written through the lens of Dungeons & Dragons and its play style as much as Star Trek. Ultimately, what makes Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek an interesting roleplaying game is not that it is a Star Trek roleplaying game, but that it is the first Japanese roleplaying game.

Friday Filler: Scout

You have been put in charge of the circus and are determined to put on the best series of acts and performers possible in order to wow the audience and make your circus the best. However, the running order has already been set, but you might be able to pull the performers you have out of that order knowing that they will outperform the previous act directed by a rival circus. If that is not possible, then you can scout the previous act and hire its best performer to join your circus, slotting into the running order you already have. Sometimes, you can even scout the previous act, hire its best performer, slot them into your running order, and have them perform immediately to really outdo the previous act. Do all of that enough times, and your circus will undoubtedly be the best!

This is the set-up for Scout, a quick-playing card game from Oink Games. Like nearly all of the Japanese publisher’s games, the game is small, tightly packaged, and comes with simple rules, but delivers terrific game play. The game was a Spiel des Jahres nominee in 2022 and won the Origins Award for Best Card Game in 2023. It is designed for two to five players, aged nine and up, and can be played in about twenty minutes. It is also easy to teach, plays quickly, and it can be enjoyed by the casual gamer as much as the veteran. In fact, its simplicity makes it a good family game whilst still providing a challenge for the experienced gamer. Plus, it is incredibly portable. That said, its theme is about as thick as the canvas on a worn circus tent, but then every card is named, such as ‘Anthony the Clown’ or ‘Jennifer the Bicyclist’. So, there is a personal touch to the game—just about.

Scout consists of forty-five cards, twenty-three Scout Tokens, thirty Score Tokens, five ‘Scout & Show’ Tokens, a Starting Player Marker, and a Game Manual. The forty-five, brightly coloured cards are numbered from one to ten, not once, but twice—at the top or bottom of the cards. In fact, the cards do not have a top or a bottom as such, because they are intended to be played with one number at the top. Notably, the numbers at either end of a card are never the same. This is important because a player can choose which way a card is orientated and thus which number is on display at certain points in the game. The game consists of a number of rounds equal to the number of players. Once the round have been completed, the player with the highest score is the winner.

The game’s key mechanics are ‘Hand Management’ and ‘Ladder Climbing’. Unlike other card games, Scout limits the degree of hand management a player can conduct—adding or playing cards in his hand, but not arranging the order of the card. ‘Ladder Climbing’ has the players attempting to play better cards or sets of cards than those currently on the table. In Scout, this is sets of the same value or runs of sequential number.

At the start of the round, adjustments are made for the number of players and the cards are shuffled and dealt out so that everyone has a hand the same size. A player also receives a ‘Scout & Show’ Token. Here appears the first wrinkle in the play of Scout. When a player receives his hand, he looks at it in order to see the numbers at the top or the bottom. Having done so, he choses one or the other. What he cannot do is change the order of the cards in his hand. The order will not change throughout the whole of the round unless he either plays cards or adds a card to his hand. This has two effects. It constrains what he can play, but it also gives him the foundation of something he can build upon to create a better hand and hopefully outscore his rivals.

On a turn, a player has a choice of three actions— ‘Show’, ‘Scout’, or ‘Scout & Show’—of which he must do one. To ‘Show’, he plays a set or run of cards. A set is multiple cards of the same number, whilst a run is a sequential series, but when played that set or run must be better than the cards in play on the table. If this replaces the current set or run of cards on the table, the player picks them up and adds them to his score pile. To ‘Scout’, the player takes one card from those on the table, which come from either end rather than the middle and adds it to his hand. When he does so, it can be added to anywhere in his hand and with either number. With careful or lucky choice of a card from a ‘Scout’ action, a player can begin to build a bigger set or run of cards in his hand that will hopefully be better than that on the table in another turn. A ‘Scout’ action also scores a ‘Scout Token’ for the player who played the current set or run of cards on the table. The ‘Scout & Show’ combines both actions and is the most powerful action in the game. Each player begins a round with a ‘Scout & Show Token’ which is turned in once a player decides to do a ‘Scout & Show’ action. Once handed in, a player cannot do another ‘Scout & Show’ action, so it is a one-use action.

Play continues until either a player has played all of the cards in his hand or a player plays a high enough set or run that no-one else can do anything else except the ‘Scout’ action and play passes back to the player who played that set or run. Each player determines his score for the round. This is equal to the number of cards in his score pile and ‘Scout Tokens’ he earned in the round, minus the number of cards in his hand. The player who played the last set or run does not have to deduct points for the cards in his hand. Play continues like this until a number of rounds equal to the number of players have been completed.

Scout is simple to play, but it has a surprising amount of depth and requires a bit more thought than at first glance. The inability to rearrange a player’s hand is frustrating, but it presents a player with a challenge as he is forced to ‘Scout’ over and over in search of the right cards that will enable him to create the best set or run that he can. The double and differently numbered cards make this less of a challenge and add some flexibility in the choices available to the players. Also, as a round progresses and better and higher sets and runs are played, the players will potentially—as long as they are on the end of a set or run—have access to the better and higher cards that they need and can acquire via a ‘Scout’ action. Playing a good set or run early on in the game can be devastating as the other players are likely to be unable to outdo it with the hands they have, forcing them to ‘Scout’, and if they all ‘Scout’, the round is over, forcing them to score negative points because they have been unable to play cards from their hands. However, the right card from a ‘Scout’ action or the right card and then cards played with the ‘Scout & Show’ action can be devastating when done at the right time. Plus, a player can benefit when it is not his turn, because if another player does the ‘Scout’ action and takes from the set or run of cards he played, he scores points for doing nothing. So, there is balance between the luck of the cards a player begins a round with and the choices he makes as round progresses.

Where Scout suffers is in the number of players. It is designed for two to five players, but at two players, the players do very little more than ‘Scout & Show’ actions most of the time. It is not as engrossing or as challenging as games played with more participants. It is thus better with three players, but with four or five, it becomes a great game. Then there is the theme, which is really neither here nor there.

Physically, Scout is, for the most part, well presented. The card quality is decent, but it is definitely worth sleeving the cards for repeated play. The Scout Tokens, Score Tokens, and ‘Scout & Show’ Tokens, plus the Starting Player Marker are all bright and cheerful and on good stock cardboard. The rulebook though, is a bit small and a bit flimsy.

Scout is great game. It would be an almost perfect game were it good to play with two players. It is not, so it is merely great. Easy to learn, easy to play, challenging enough to win at its play length, and easy to transport, Scout is a great addition to any games collection and a great go to filler game.

1980: Land of the Rising Sun

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. 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—

Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1980. For the publisher, it predates Bushido, although that was previously published by two other publishers. Designed by Lee Gold, the editor of the long running monthly amateur press association, Alarums and Excursions, Land of the Rising Sun began life as a supplement for Chivalry & Sorcery dedicated to the samurai system of feudal Japan, but ultimately became a roleplaying game of its own. This gives Land of the Rising Sun the distinction of being first roleplaying game to be designed by a woman. It is a Class and Level system, in which samurai and nobles conduct themselves honourably; clerics—Buddhist and Shinto dispense blessings, write scrolls, conduct exorcisms, and more; merchants trade and make themselves richer than the nobility; mages of all types seek to perfect their art and studies; craftsmen make and sell their goods; bureaucrats keep the wheels of government running; and thieves, bandits, and ninja steal, rob, sabotage, and assassinate… This is a roleplaying game set in feudal Japan in which a wide array of character types can be played, including gamblers and geisha, and earn Experience Points for doing so. It presents a rich array of magical traditions, as well as extensive notes on religion and a bestiary of spirits, bakemono, demons, gaki, goblins, kami, and more. However, Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai does use the Chivalry & Sorcery mechanics, and together with a layout and organisation which is ponderous at best, does make this roleplaying game very much of a challenge to learn and play.

Land of the Rising Sun comes as a boxed set. Inside can be found the rulebook and five reference sheets which cover magic and combat. The rulebook itself, without much preamble, quickly dives into how to create a character. A Player Character in Land of the Rising Sun is first defined by his Species. This can be Japanese Human; Hengeyokai or Shapechanger, such as Fox or Cat; or Bakemono, a monster such as Kappa or Tengu. He has a Horoscope—Well-, Average-, or Poorly Aspected, which will primarily be of import should the character become a mage, followed by gender, height, and frame. The seven stats, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Appearance, Bardic Voice, Intelligence, and Wisdom, are all rolled on two ten-sided dice for Humans, but can be modified for non-humans. Lastly, Charisma is the average of all of these factors. He has an Alignment, which ranges from Saintly to Depraved. As well as Charisma, derived factors include Body Points (or Hit Points) and Fatigue Points, then Military Ability (talent as a field commander), Command Level (ability to lead troops), and Personal Combat Factor (ability to fight). The latter is modified by a Player Character’s Class and reflects the size of a weapon he can use and how well. Father’s social class and position determines a Player Character’s initial social class, and from this a player can work out how many siblings the Player Character has, birth order, how much money he has, and what gift his family might give him.

Our sample character is Kugojiro, the younger son of a samurai noble who is a justice of the peace in a small town, a reward for loyal service to his daimyo. The plain, homely-looking Kugojiro is ill-favoured by his family, which has not yet found a position for him, his older brother being groomed to take over from his father. Kugojiro wants to be a warrior, but his family will not support him and he is prepared to undertake less than honourable work.

Name: Kugojiro
Species: Human
Horoscope: Well-Aspected
Gender: Male
Height: Medium (5’ 2”) Frame: Heavy (123 lbs.)
Alignment: Worldly (Corruptible)
Profession: Fighter
Level: 1

Father’s Social Class: Noble (Level 18)
Father’s Clan Lord: Clan Head
Position: Department of Justice (Senior Official) Income: 65
Siblings: 3 (Two older sisters, one older brother)
Family Status: Poor Child
Birthplace: Town (Small Town)
Income: – Money: 72 bu/2 Oban

Basic Influence: 21
Social Status: 15

Strength 09
Dexterity 19 Dex Factor: +10%
Constitution 18 Disease Resistance: +5% BP Regen: +1/+2/+3 FP Regen: 3/6/9}
Appearance 04 Homely (-3 Charisma)
Bardic Voice 20 Orphic (+5 Charisma, +1 Military Ability)
Intelligence 13 Language Points: 3/LVL Detect Factor: +5% Research Limit: VI Remember Spells: 65% Read Scrolls: 85% BP: –

Wisdom 11 Average
Charisma 14 Influential

Military Ability: 7
Command Level: 3
Personal Combat Factor: 10.5

Light Weapons
BL: +1 DMG/WDF: 3 Hit: +15% Parry: -15%
Light/Heavy Weapons
BL: – DMG/WDF: 3 Hit: +12% Parry: -8% Shielding: -12% Dodge: -18%
Dex Bonuses: +2% to hit/Level, -2% to parry/Level; Weapon Specialisation 5, one extra Dodge per turn, two free missile shots per turn

Class Bonus: One free active shield/weapon parry

AC: 3

Body Points: 12
Fatigue Points: 3
Carrying Capacity: 198 lbs.

There is no denying that the end result of character generation is detailed, with the random determination of a character’s social status, family, and position within the family, it is possible to begin to get some idea about who the character might. However, both the end result and the process is far from perfect. It takes both a lot of flipping back and forth through the rulebook’s first twenty pages to get to this point as well as a lot of arithmetic—the author is not kidding when she suggests that the reader requires a calculator. Nor does the Player Character feel complete. Does the character have skills apart from a low chance to hit things—or Personal Combat Factor? Or a low chance for casting magic—Personal Magic Factor—for the Mage? Digging deeper—and it takes a lot of digging—the Cleric at least begins play with one miracle, Purify. The various types of Mage have learned some spells. An Artisan or Merchant begins play with the Production, Trading, and Investment skills, and there is a Dex Skill for Thieves, Bandits, and Ninja. No skills for the gambler or entertainer or geisha though.

Nor do the write-ups of the various professions—Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, Bandit, Ninja, Government, Artisan, Peasant, Merchant, and Other (which covers gamblers and entertainers)—help, since they are all about their place in society and how they earn their Experience Points, and certainly not about what they can do. And the sections on martial arts and fine arts and magic and stealth are all about how to learn them and then be able to do anything of note. In many cases, too much attention is paid to how much money a Player Character will earn and essentially Land of the Rising Sun provides a means to create characters who know their place and role in society, know that they can do things and benefit or earn from doing them, but actually have very little idea how they actually do those things. Roleplaying games are all about things that the characters can do and being able to do cool things, and whilst Land of the Rising Sun will let the Player Characters do them, they have to learn them first.

So what of the mechanics? Land of the Rising Sun is a percentile system. Yet like many roleplaying games of its generation, it does not have a universal mechanic, but rather a set of rules for different circumstances. For example, the rules for Influence and Relationships are based upon the Charisma, Social Status, Level, and Honour Points of the Player Characters and NPCs, and covers ways to increase Influence as well as exert it, before discussing various relationships, from alliances between clan lords and different types of obligations to codes of justice and the nature of seppuku. Magic is broken down into not just a few, but eighteen types of mage, including Primitive, Dancer, Shaman, Medium, Herbalist, Divine, Artificer, Enchanter, Illusionist, Summoner, Symbolist, Poet, Calligrapher, and I Ching Master! Further, Symbolists include Origami, Painter, and Carver Symbolists, whilst Artificers Weaponsmiths, Jewelsmiths, and Weaver Mages. And each type of Mage has his own magic and mechanics, whether that is using I Ching rods to forecast the coming day or the Artificer constructing a magical device—which includes magical or Ego swords by the Weaponsmith. All of these different Mages, despite possessing different mechanics, are all nicely done and would be interesting to roleplay, whether that is the Origami Symbolist folding and animating paper to make it fly or run, or a Diviner reading the stars or writing a horoscope. There is a lengthy list of spells too. Clerics, Shintoism, and Buddhism are all treated in informative fashion. The rules over exorcism plus numerous Miracles, many of which the two faiths share.

The Martial Arts section covers everything from Tessen Jutsu or use of fans to Chikujojutsu or fortifications, and all have a number of skill points which need to be invested in them to be mastered. This is at least one hundred skill points, and because only a few points can be learned through training it can take a while to master a skill. Fine Arts, like Appreciating Embroidery and Dyeing and Playing Go, are treated the same way, but Stealth skills are not. They simply use a combination of a Player Character’s Dex Skill, Detect factor, and Level. Again, this section provides more background, this time about banditry, fences, ninja, and the like. And again, the Ninja is slightly different, first learning Ninjitsu, which of course, takes a while, and then being able to learn another raft of skills.

Combat covers morale, loss of fatigue for undertaking actions, parrying, mounted and a lot more, whilst later, separate sections provide rules for aerial, water, and mass combat. At the heart of combat, attackers are rolling on Missile or Melee Matrices—or attack tables—against an Armour Class rating, which goes from zero to ten. This gives a chance for the attack to succeed, primarily modified by the attacker’s Personal Combat Factor, and there are Melee matrices for different types of weapon and natural weapons. The rules do include a pair of examples, quite lengthy ones, and to be honest, they are necessary, because the rules are not only poorly explained, but there are a lot of them, whether that is aimed hits, desperate defence, attacking with chain weapons, and so on.

Oddly, the author suggests the reader purchase a geographical map of Japan rather than provide one, and instead of looking at Japan as whole, it concentrates on the types of buildings to be found in the country. There is certainly no history given and it would be nice to have some more context for the roleplaying game. Penultimately, Land of the Rising Sun includes a lengthy bestiary, which together with the tables for encounters and intentions of those met, provides the Game Master with plenty of threats, NPCs, and mysteries to present to her players and their characters. Lastly, there is a short bibliography, a handful of scenario ideas, and a piece of fiction, which though it might serve as inspiration for an encounter, feels out of place here.

Physically, Land of the Rising Sun is laid out in the classic wargames style with numbered sections. The layout is generally tidy, the writing reasonable, illustrations vary in quality, but the organisation leaves much to be desired. After covering elements such as character creation and influence and the prices of goods, it wanders off into the thirty-page section of magic, which though good, leaves the reader to wonder how a character does anything except magic, before finally arriving at the section on martial skills and fine arts, which of course, leaves the reader bewildered. It is a case of having to learn the rulebook as much as learn the game. And whilst there is an index, it not always of any help.

—oOo—

Land of the Rising Sun was extensively reviewed at the time of its publication. Eric Goldberg reviewed both of the roleplaying games set in Japan from Fantasy Games Unlimited—both Bushido and Land of the Rising Sun in Ares Nr. 7 (March 1981). He was not wholly positive, but said, “Land of the Rising Sun is an estimable addition to a FRP afficionado’s library. Aside from being well-explained, it is necessary for those who want to fully understand C&S. The care with which Japanese myth has been reproduced is simply amazing.” before concluding that, “It can also be said that the game is impossible to play, and requires too much of the players. Designer Gold achieved her objective, and did it in most impressive fashion. In doing so, however, she may have lost a greater audience.”

Writing in The Space Gamer Number 36 (February 1981), Forrest Johnson praised the roleplaying game, saying, “LOTRS is a very impressive effort. Lee Gold spent a little time in Japan. A lot of time studying the subject. Her game is complete and authentic.” before concluding that, “LOTRS is a beautiful treasure in an unopenable package. Recommended to zealots, and as a source-book to D&D.”

Wes Ives accorded Land of the Rising Sun a lengthy review in Different Worlds Issue 13 (August 1981). He detailed why the roleplaying game was not suitable for the wargamer or the dungeoneer, but for the romantic medievalist, it was, “A decent treatment of all those romantic, alien legends from medieval Japan! The medievalists will justifiably love LRS, even if they don’t have a Japanese FRP campaign to enjoy. After years of reading, in the hobby press (both apa-zines, which can be excused, and prozines, which should know better). treatments of various segments of Japan, held up and analysed in a vacuum, it is a glorious relief to see the strange weapons, the mysterious social classes, and the flabbergasting monsters collected and presented into an integral whole. If your wish is to run a campaign based on medieval Japan, then you will be in the care of someone who lavished as much attention on this set of rules as the Chivalry & Sorcery authors lavished on their treatment of medieval Europe.” He strongly recommended Land of the Rising Sun, describing it as, “It is a complete, entertaining game. Even if you don’t start a campaign based on the culture given, this is a good book to read to find out “How It’s Done When It’s Done Right.” LRS has all of the detail of Chivalry & Sorcery, with the added advantage of being a product of the second generation of those rules, so that the rough spots have been somewhat sanded down and refinished. And those of you who want to run a campaign in Old Japan will be in the best of care.”

—oOo—

There is no denying the wealth of detail about Japan ensconced in various sections throughout Land of the Rising Sun, all of them interesting and informative, but the author never pulls back to look at Japan in any great depth, to give context to the game, instead relying upon the reader’s expectations. The sections on magic and religion and the monsters are all good, but Land of the Rising Sun is lacking in so many other ways. Whether that is the frustrating organisation, the underwhelming, but overly complex nature of the Player Characters, the dearth of advice for the Game Master, they all serve to hamper both learning and playing the game. Land of the Rising Sun: Role Playing game of myths and legends in the age of Samurai is an attempt to do a roleplaying set in feudal Japan and do it well and do it comprehensively. Unfortunately, it comes up short of its goals. There are some fantastic elements in the roleplaying game, but it is too complex for what it is trying to do.

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.

—oOo—

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.

—oOo—

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.

—oOo—

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