I'd like to lay out
my reasoning for creating Chanbara, explain a bit about the design
process, and show what I did differently from other games that I
think will make this game worthwhile for you. I hate 'marketing
speak' and I tend to be too honest at times which makes me terrible
at sales. Still, I think I'm not just blowing my own horn here, and I
am proud of this little game of mine, so I'm just going to lay out
what I'm proud of and hopefully that will be enough to excite your
interest.
Shortly after
Flying Swordsmen came out, I thought about making a companion game
for a feudal fantasy Japan setting to go with the fantasy Golden Age
China setting of FS. At first, I thought I'd just stick to the Flying
Swordsmen system, just with a few different class profile options and
a different roster of monsters and spells. And I tried that, but it
didn't work so well. To be honest, I had limited myself when making
Flying Swordsmen since it was a retro-clone of Dragon Fist. But I
quickly realized that a pure a la carte special ability system like
in FS wouldn't work well in a game with stronger divisions in what
samurai, ninja and the various spellcaster types should do in the
game.
The next version
had twelve classes arranged in a triangle pattern of
combat/trickery/magic abilties. There were demi-human classes with
evenly divided abilities (tengu was fighter/mage, kappa was
fighter/ninja, and kitsune was nina/mage), one class that was pure
(samurai was pure warrior, ninja was pure sneak, yamabushi was pure
mage) and a class that was primarily X with a bit of Y (sohei was
warrior with a bit of magician, kensei was warrior with a bit of
sneak, etc.). There were three separate lists of special abilities,
and different types of spells, and... It was a mess. And confusing.
The early play test was fun, but I spent a lot more time than I
wanted trying to explain things.
So the final
version I tried to make as simple as possible. I went back to the
idea of a base class with profiles from Flying Swordsmen, with three
classes: Bushi (warrior), Shinobi (spy) and Mahotsukai (magician).
The demi-humans (with the addition of the tanuki) were relegated to
an appendix as optional. Instead of an a la carte list of special
abilities divided into power levels, every few levels you get a
choice of two special abilities for your profile [which leaves room
for myself or others to create more options for each profile in the
game]. With the divorce of the idea that profiles needed to partly
overlap with other class type abilities (it's still there a little
bit), I was able to come up with some different ideas that fit the
genre. I'll talk about the classes and profiles, and the inspiration
behind each archetype, in another post.
Figuring out the
character class options was hard. I figured that would be the hardest
part of the game. But it wasn't. Flying Swordsmen has a stunt die
mechanic (inheritted from Dragon Fist) where the die size is
determined by your ability scores, and increases as you level. You
can roll one every round of combat and they have several effects.
It's fun and chaotic and works well for Wuxia gaming...but for a
chanbara-themed game, it's not what I wanted. I tried several
different dice mechanics. I tried having each character (and the
monsters) have dice for fighting, magic and stealth/trickery, at
different die sizes by class specialty. I tried having decreasing
dice (if your Might [strength] die is d8, after you use it once it
becomes a d6, and so on). It was also a pain to keep track of.
Finally, I decided to simplify the dice. Bushi (warriors) get Combat
dice. Mahotsukai (magicians) get Magic dice. Shinobi (spies) get
Skill dice. Each character gets a pool of these dice to spend each
game day, and many of the profile abilities are dependent on using
one. It worked really well in play, and is similar to the 5E Battle
Master Fighter's Superiority Dice.
And even harder
than the bonus dice mechanic was figuring out how to motivate the
players to actually play according to genre tropes. Of course,
classic D&D works because the motivation is in the XP system.
Kill monsters, get XP to level up. Collect treasure, get XP to level
up. It took me a while, but I eventually came up with the Allegiance
System. All characters will have some allegiances. They can be to the
character's family, lord, temple, gang, teacher, trade union, etc. As
long as it's an NPC individual or organization, it's fine. Having
allegiances ties the characters into the game world. It helps you as
a player define your character. As a DM, it helps you flesh out your
game world. It allows for conflicting motivations (your lord wants
you to eliminate a distant clan member, but your clan of course does
not!). But that wasn't enough. I needed a way to tie it to XP,
because it's really XP that motivates players.
Eventually, based
on some insightful posts on Japanese fantasy by my friend Ted at his
blog, I got the idea that I should keep XP for defeating (not
necessarily killing) enemies as in D&D, and use a variation of
the 'carousing' rules used by many OSR bloggers. Characters in
Chanbara only gain XP from treasure if it's donated to a liege.
There's also a third way to gain XP, by playing to genre tropes of
choosing humane actions over duty. Since many gamers may find the
concepts hard to gauge, I recommend in the book that the group
nominate players for this kind of XP bonus, and the group vote if it
should be awarded or not. It's a bit story-gamish, and fuzzy, but I
think the game will play just fine if players don't worry about this
third type of XP (or if the DM just hands it out when he/she feels
it's justified). Anyway, the idea that you can advance faster by
serving your lieges' interests (along with advice to the DM to use
liege conflicts to good effect to inspire difficult choices) makes
the game stronger. It's definitely better than the 1E OA Honor
System, which is pretty much a straight jacket for roleplay, or 3E OA
with advancement based only on combat.
So to sum up, I
think Chanbara is different from other Asian fantasy games mainly in
its use of the Allegiance System tied to XP advancement. Its
selection of classes and special abilities, including the special
bonus dice system, is also fun and helps set the game apart from
other OSR games.
