While you're at it, and if that low, low price of free appeals, why not grab a copy of Tetsubo, the Oriental-themed RPG that Jamie and I wrote originally as a Warhammer supplement. We delivered our first draft the day the commissioning editor left Games Workshop, so it ended up cast into the oblivion of a Nottingham filing cabinet. (Or so I like to think. More likely it just lay on the floor under a desk for a year.) It's only a work-in-progress, and it's full of all that Dungeons and Dragons stuff like alignment, ho hum, but there's enough there to get an Akatsurai role-playing campaign going if you're so inclined.
The Oriental RPG I'm really waiting for is Paul Mason's Outlaws, based on the exploits of the Water Margin heroes. I ran my own Kwaidan variant of Outlaws at just about the time I was writing Lords of the Rising Sun, so (as usual) a lot of the ideas for the gamebook came from our role-playing sessions.
Tetsubo is indeed Very Good Stuff. Cracking source material for Dragon Warriors shenanigans.
ReplyDeleteI agree; I compared it a few months ago with the "Oriental" supplements for D&D and Rolemaster and it holds the distance (of course, some parts are lacking)
ReplyDeleteAfter GW declined to take it, we offered it to a well-known games publisher in the USA. Their reply: "We would like to do a Japanese-themed RPG at some point, but not something like this that goes right down [sic] to the level of the Japanese people themselves." As I see it, they wanted a version of Japan populated by Anglo-Saxons, so it's rather a compliment that they rejected Tetsubo.
ReplyDeleteHad you changed the maximum height allowed, or imposed a Charisma modifier for inscrutability but maxed out Int and Dex? Or were they just being plain r*cs*st?
ReplyDeleteCultural chauvinism is the term I would use.
DeleteSorry to necro this post, but does your "Kwaidan" variant exist anywhere?
ReplyDeleteNot so far. I'm currently adapting Tetsubo, which Jamie and originally wrote as a Warhammer supplement, to use the Outlaws rules, but that's set several hundred years after Kwaidan.
DeleteIs there a semi-current version of Paul's Outlaws floating around, Dave? I've found some html copies on archive.org but a pdf was rumoured.
ReplyDeleteI shall try to find out, Simon. I have a PDF version but I don't know if Paul ever released that -- and he might be reluctant to do so as the game wasn't quite finished, even though it is perfectly playable in its current form and, as Paul Valéry told us, no work of art is ever finished.
DeleteThere are various versions, some more complete than others. Since I haven't been involved in rolegames for 20-odd years I feel a fraud trying to finish writing one, though I have made occasional attempts in the past. But I can dig something out. There are a range of options, from the very old school (everything specified, though designed to wither away in play) to the highly abstract (the 1-page version I published in my fanzine).
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