Happy Lunar New Year!

It is the Lunar New Year, known as Chinese New Year in many foreign lands such as the USA. And to celebrate, we did what most Korean families do. Get up way too early, go to my mother-in-law's house, honor the departed family members, then eat a bunch of really good food! 

If you'd like to celebrate, why not pick up a copy of Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Jade Players Rules on DriveThruRPG? It's Pay What You Want, so pick it up for free and if you like it, come back and give me a tip. If you want to add Asian-style classes like Kensei (weapon masters), Wu Jen (Taoist sorcerers) or Xia (wandering martial artists) to your OSR game of choice, they'll fit right in. 

And if you're the DM, you can pick up TS&R Jade Bestiary & Treasury to get lots of Asian inspired monsters and magic items. Also PWYW so grab it for free or give me a little LNY gift if you like.

The Book Arrived

 Yesterday, I received my print copy of Joseph Bloch's Swords of Wuxia for his Adventures Dark & Deep retro-clone system. I've had the PDF since I ordered it, but I've only barely skimmed through it so far. Now that I've got the physical book in hand, I intend to dive into it in detail. I really prefer printed matter over screen reading. However, I don't have time to get into it today or even over the weekend. So a review of the content will have to wait. Oh, and if you didn't know, this is Joe's attempt to re-imagine what the old OA book would have looked like if it had take inspiration from Chinese myth and cinema instead of mostly Japanese inspirations.

I will say for now, that this book is well designed. It's got that orange spine that makes it look pretty good alongside the later printings of 1E books. It's a bit darker, but all of my older books are faded to differing degrees so it doesn't look out of place. The print size is a little different, though, with Swords of Wuxia being just a tad taller than the old TSR books. The cover is a nice painting of Sun Wu Kong (the Monkey King), looking like he's about to spring into action to beat down some demon or other. The back cover is text only, with a gradated turquoise (darker at the top, lighter at the bottom) background, similar to the trade dress of the old books. 

The interior is nice and cleanly laid out, with two column text and a sans serif font (Futura like the originals, I assume), and is easy to read. The book contains a lot of tables, and most alternate between three lines unshaded, three lines shaded. At least one table contains quite a bit of information in each cell, so alternate lines are shaded. The interior illustrations are all black and white, but look pretty good. There's a big list of artists, so there are quite a range of styles, some simple line art, some more detailed, a few just silhouettes. I don't find the mix of art styles jarring, but art is always subjective. Most of it looks good, in my opinion. 

The book contains races (two types of human, two demi-humans), three completely new classes plus extensive notes and conversions for all the other classes in Adventures Dark & Deep. There are rules for combat and martial arts, for creating families, Asian-style societies and organizations, and lists of spells and equipment, of course. There are campaign guidelines including wuxing (Taoist 5 elements) elemental planes. There are also lists of magic items and monsters. All this takes us up to page 128. Beyond that, there are some very extensive random encounter tables. Finally, there are some tables for weapons vs armor and the like if you use those rules in your AD&D games, and some inspirational sources. 

I'm happy to see that a lot of the inspirational sources are not only things I've read or viewed, but also listed in Flying Swordsmen. There are a few I'm unfamiliar with, which is always nice. New things to check out! 

So that's my initial impression (unboxing) review. After I've had some time to read through it, I'll of course provide more detailed thoughts, and how I think it compares to my own ideas in Flying Swordsmen and TS&R Jade (maybe Chanbara, too!).

Serendipitous Afternoon

I had my first free afternoon in quite a while. Classes are finished, grading is finished, papers are at the journals. Plus, this morning, we made food to take to my son's school for "international lunch" (we made Kraft mac-n-cheese, plus homemade taco salad). So I didn't go into the office. 

Instead, I decided to sit down and work on my TS&R Jade campaign notes, fleshing out a few more areas to explore. At the same time, my wife decided to watch a show she'd heard good reviews of on Netflix...and I ended up watching it, too! 

I did get some work done on the campaign. Fleshed out the locations and residents of a yokai village near the home town, complete with a threat that the PCs may choose to deal with if they visit that village. Also rolled up a few more random henchmen to replace the ones slain by the evil Coiled Serpent martial arts acolyte the party faced last session.

But mostly, I was watching the show. The English title is Alchemy of Souls (환혼 in Korean). It's a pure fantasy, set in a fictional kingdom of Daeho (Great Lake), where four families of mages run things, although there is also a king. 

In the prologue, the king is sick, and asks one of the mages if he could transfer his soul to a healthy, younger body. The mage is reluctant, but agrees. Somehow, the king ends up stealing the mage's body, and then when the mage's son is born soon after, puts a spell on him to keep him from using magic, and forbidding anyone to teach his son magic. 

20 years later, the son is grown up and on his 12th magic teacher, but still failing (because they won't actually teach him). At the same time, an assassin is trying to kill the (evil king) mage father. She fails, and escapes, but is wounded. She transfers her soul into a blind girl who is about to be sold to a brothel. The mage gets her body (and sword). 

Although she possessed a blind girl, the assassin can see in the new body. She escapes and runs into the son. Somehow, he helps her escape the brothel, by claiming she's his new servant. They go back to the fortress of the mage, but it is attacked by the people who hired Naksu (the assassin) and they steal her body and sword, which she needs as the blind girl's body (her name is Mu-deok) is too weak to perform magic. 

Anyway, that's a brief synopsis of episode 1. We watched part of the second episode as well. I haven't seen a lot of Korean fantasy works before, so this is pretty fun for me. The show uses CGI for the magical effects. Besides soul swapping, there are magical blasts from swords, ice arrows, swirling wind/water attacks, a summoned dog spirit that can sniff out evil spirits, petrification, and some other cool stuff. 

It's a Korean drama, so of course there's also the soap opera melodrama. The four mage houses each have a young heir, each representing one season. The "spring" heir is female, and formerly engaged to the "winter" heir, the son whose magic ability was blocked. The "summer" heir is the winter heir's best friend and seems like a bit of a goofball. The "fall" heir seems to have had some relationship with the assassin Naksu before she went bad...but since her soul is in a different body, he doesn't recognize her. 

And "winter" wants the assassin to unlock his magical abilities since no one else will. So there's the comedy aspect of her playing as his servant when others are around, but him being her underling when they're in private. Maybe a bit of romance brewing between them, as well. 

I have no idea if it's available on Netflix outside of Korea, but if it is, and you're looking for some Asian fantasy inspiration, I can recommend the first 1.5 episodes at least! Season 1 has 20 episodes, and season 2 is broadcasting now on Korean TV.

Nani?

 So, not only did news of "One D&D" drop this week, we also got the announcement of the launch of 5E material translated into Japanese this week. 

It's a pretty decent commercial. And if you don't speak Japanese, don't worry, the video has English subtitles that are a good translation of what's spoken. 

But it is a bit funny that they're launching this right now.

Chanbara: Coming Together

I've been making some mental notes about how to put together a "running the game/GM advice" chapter for Chanbara, as well as introductory text.  This was actually inspired by some of my academic reading, so maybe studying for a Ph.D wasn't such a crazy idea after all.  It's making my game writing better.*

First of all, considering the audience (likely to be primarily experienced RPG gamers), I think the introduction will have even LESS "what is an RPG?/How do you play?" stuff than Flying Swordsmen did, and I cut a lot of that out of FS.  Instead, I'm probably going to go straight to the heart of the style of game and the goals of play (as I see it).

The goals (what the game is about in Story RPG terms) is two-fold.  First of all, the game lets you emulate Medieval Japanese hero tropes battling against traditional creatures from Japanese folklore (and/or Medieval Japanese villains).  That's the surface level game.  Secondly, the game is about exploring social bonds, duty, responsibility, and reciprocity.  This is the deeper game.

Chanbara can be played at a "beer and pretzels" surface level, and hopefully will be fun.  "I'm Hattori Hanzo, you're Abe-no-Seimei, together we fight Orochi."**  Killing monsters and taking their stuff, D&D in funny hats, katana and sorcery pulp action, call it what you will.

But with the Allegiance system, every character will have a family bond, a patron or lord, and possibly another group or professional organization (trade guild, religious affiliation, etc.).  This replaces alignment in the game, and is heavily influenced by the Allegiance system in d20 Modern, but not identical.  Characters will earn XP for defeating monsters and overcoming challenges.  They can also earn XP for treasure acquired IF they donate it to one of their lieges***.  And this is where the deeper game can come into play.

Each family/organization/master will have different goals and desires, threats they must overcome, etc.  They can easily provide adventure hooks to players.  Also, when players donate treasure to them, they can advance their goals, and there should be rewards in it for the characters.  However, it's hard to serve two masters.  Donate all of your wealth to your daimyo, and the head of your family clan may turn against you.  The master of your shinobi clan's goals may contradict those of the trade guild you also serve.  This is built in conflict, and that's a good thing!  Not only does it give the GM and player something to use to spur adventures, it is something players can negotiate with the GM to make the game more fun.

Players that wish to explore the deeper game will hopefully get an experience closer to a lot of the fiction I'm drawing on as inspiration.  Players will go on adventures (sometimes of their own choosing, sometimes at the behest of a patron/liege.  When they're successful, they then have to make choices about which patrons/lieges to support, if any!  After all, in order to build up their own social/political power, they'd want to keep as much treasure for themselves as possible.  Duty, responsibility, loyalty, honor -- some of the main tropes of Japanese fiction right there, folks.

Or at least that's the goal.  We'll see if I can pull it off.





*I kid.  The Ph.D course has been great, actually.  I've learned a lot and actually enjoy learning more about teaching English to non-native speakers.  Even if I never get a position as a professor, it's been worthwhile.

**Hattori Hanzo - famous ninja (historical)/Abe-no-Seimei - famous onmyoji (historical)/Orochi - 8-headed serpent (mythical)

***Thinking of changing the name to Patron as it's an easier term to use, but that's not an exact fit.

Seems I'm not alone

There are some other OSR-type bloggers out there working on Asian Themed RPGs this holiday season (like Dan and Joseph B.).  And here I am, once again starting from near scratch to build my Chanbara game.

Well, thanks to my buddy Ted (here, here and here), I've refocused what I actually want to do with the game.  It doesn't need to be just D&D in funny hats, as it was headed.  Busting monster heads in ruins can still be part of the game, but hopefully I'll be able to make it a bit more than that (like I did for Flying Swordsmen). 

I'm simplifying a few things (character classes), and re-complicating some others (Skill Dice) although not as complex as they originally were.  And hopefully I'll manage to cobble together a game that's fun to play and also evokes and rewards playing to the tropes of Japanese period action movies (the historical and semi-historical stuff like Kurosawa or a lot of ninja movies), but also the weird Japanese supernatural stories (ghosts and bakemono and oni and all that). 

It will also likely be closer to Flying Swordsmen than I originally intended it to be, but now I'm thinking that's not such a bad thing. 

I'm going back to basics.  Three classes: Bushi (Fighter), Ninja (Thief) and Mahotsukai (Wizard), each with two subclasses similar to the "profiles" in Flying Swordsmen to allow them to specialize in certain areas.

Skill Dice will again be linked to ability scores (well, only my play-test group knew that I'd unhooked them, but oh well), with bonuses (increased die type) for using it for your class's main thing (combat, exploration or magic). 

I'll be getting rid of the archetype merger classes, but (in a bit of a twist from how it's normally done), allow humans the ability to multiclass.  Or maybe no to multiclassing, this is still in the idea stage.  But instead of subclasses being a mix of two main classes, each will just focus on doing their thing a bit differently.  So, like I said, more like Flying Swordsmen, only without the magic-user/cleric distinction.

The big change will be in the reward mechanics, which I'm still working on.  More details later as I figure out exactly how I want to do it, but if you read Ted's three posts (especially the second one), you'll get an idea of what I'm after for "goals of play."

Magicians 마법사들

A couple days ago, we had a new member in our Facebook Busan Gamers group.  A guy in Seoul named Kyle Simons.  And he's producing a game that is intended to be both a fun RPG and a language learning tool, Magicians (the Korean in the title of the post is the name of the game in Korean).  As an English as a Foreign Language teacher and as a gamer, I gotta say I'm intrigued.

Kyle is running a Kickstarter for Magicians (who isn't running a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, these days?), but he's already more than tripled his goal, with 28 days left.  So you can rest assured this project is moving forward.  And you've still got plenty of time to get in on this if you like it.

What's cool about it?  Well, it takes the Harry Potter premise of a secret magical world hidden parallel to the mundane world, but it's set in Seoul, South Korea instead of jolly old England.  It also is chock full of Asian folk tales and legends.  And the really cool thing is that the magic system is designed to help you learn Korean.  In order to cast spells, you need to say the correct words, phrases, or sentences in Korean (and he's got a link to a free Android app that will check your pronunciation for you if you don't have any Korean speakers handy while you play).

Also cool is that he's got plans for other language versions.  I've volunteered to help with a Japanese version he's planning.  Kyle also speaks French, so he wants to do a French version as well.  So if you are interested in things Korean, in gaming with an Asian twist, or with learning languages (or using RPGs in your language lessons if you're a teacher), check this one out.

Tenkar also was promoting this one the other day.  Many of you may have already seen it over there, but it never hurts to have a reminder.

Of Monks and Martial Arts

Talysman has been talking about the Monk class this week.  His most recent post gives four options for the "classic 4" to gain some monk-like powers if they accept certain vows restricting their behavior.  I like what he (and Stuart over at Strange Magic too) is doing with this.

I remember the first time I read the Monk class description in the AD&D PHB.  In my mind, it was a Franciscan Friar turned adventurer (I'd been exposed to a bit of martial arts movies on my grandma's cable TV on Sunday afternoons, but not enough to really get it...I was too young to have watched Kung Fu on TV).

Once I finally had an idea of what the Monk was supposed to be, I really liked it, even if it didn't fit well with the standard Tolkien/Howard/Leiber/Anderson European medieval fantasy that is vanilla D&D.  There's always been a little part of me that rejects the monk (and samurai, ninja, xia, and the like) in my medieval fantasy.  There's also another part that says why not?

It's not like there aren't plenty of other non-European stuff in D&D, especially with regards to monsters.

The bigger problem than thematics, however, are the mechanics of the Monk as presented (including the Mystic in BECMI/RC).  They start out extremely weak, then become pretty darn potent because of mystical powers, extra attacks, and speed bonuses.

That's one reason I'm working on Flying Swordsmen.  The base game of my clone, Dragon Fist, takes D&D and makes everyone into a martial artist.  Because it's built on a D&D base, it could play with other D&D games.  Yes, a Flying Swordsman character is more powerful than a similar level standard D&D character (lots of cool martial arts powers, greater hit points), but they've got a few drawbacks as well (the stunt system, which relegates them to only one 'ability score bonus' at a time, lower AC because of armor restrictions, a hard level cap of 10 for all classes, and no increase in Thac0).  Generally, I think they could work in a D&D/AD&D game.  It might not be totally balanced, but it sure could be fun!

I'm slowly getting around to working on FS again (thanks in a large part to Talysman).  Did a bit of editing last week, and a bit of prep for working up the campaign setting.  And I'll likely start posting some bits and pieces of it here on the blog.  I plan on watching a few wuxia flicks, I've been reading up on things on Wuxiapedia and other places on the web, and my grad school courses finish next week so I'll have more time to work on this stuff.

Solo Game with the Wife

My wife, back before we were married, was of course interested in my hobby.  RPGs aren't at all common here in Korea, and in Japan they're known but it's a really small minority that play them.  Most Koreans and Japanese stick to the computer RPGs.

Well, back then, I was still enamored of 3E, but that was just way too much for my wife.  Even buying the 3.5 PHB in Japanese (only 3E era book still own) didn't really help.  Too much math, too many options, too complicated rules.

A few years later, after I'd rediscovered the joys of Classic D&D, we tried that for a while, and it worked much better.  She had an Elf, and some NPC retainers, exploring the Ruins under Zenopus' Tower from the Holmes book.  The Elf died (as did lots of the retainers) and was replaced with a Halfling who I think made it to 3rd level.  But we played during my wife's pregnancy, and the birth of our son ended that game.

Well, our son's nearly 3 now.  And my wife is wondering how to improve her English faster than it has been going.  I suggested we restart that D&D campaign, and she agreed.  This time, to refresh her with the rules, I think I'll have her read through/play the solo adventure in the Mentzer Basic, then run her through the Ruins of Castle Mistamere, also from the Basic Set (with my new completion of it, available for download over on the right side of the screen). 

Oriental Accents: Kakegawa Castle

Haven't done an OA post for quite a while now.  Time to put up something!

Here's a map I made of Kakegawa Castle, in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.  I've been to this castle, and one of the brochures I picked up there had floor plans of the place.  Of course, I turned it into an adventure location.  I ran the adventure with the Evansville Group in the short 1E/2E hybrid OA game I ran for them.  They had a mission to assassinate the lord of the castle, a Kensei, and preferably do it stealthily.  They were doing fine, until one of the ninja, who'd climbed the roofs to get to the top of the donjon used a nage-teppo (hand grenade) to take out some guards!  Despite the alarm being sounded, they managed to off the sword master and escape. 

Quite a while back, I decided to re-do the map as a computer image.  Here's what I came up with:

Ninjas in your Game [Ninja Week]

Well, it's about time to actually talk about ninjas in your game. We'll assume if you're reading this blog you're probably playing D&D, or one of its family of games. If you're playing a skill based game or an indie game, you can pretty much craft a ninja with that system, and you probably don't need much help from me.

If you want to play a ninja in D&D though, it can be a bit tough, depending on which system you're using.

In OD&D, depending on if you're using any supplements or not, you've got the baseline Fighter as an option in the core rules. Not the best choice, some may think, but it's all in how you describe the character and what your DM allows you to get away with. With Greyhawk you get the Thief, and Blackmoor throws in both the Assassin and Monk. These three classes all work really well, even if none are specialized as 'ninja.' Baseline AD&D also gives you these three classes, and the Ranger also can work.

In B/X you're pretty much stuck with the Thief as option #1, and Fighter as a backup. BECMI/RC adds in the Mystic, similar to the Monk. B/X Thief does get a nice bonus in being able to use all weapons, but the BECMI list is good enough (better than the AD&D short list).

Of course, Oriental Advetures has a dedicated Ninja class, but it's a bit complex. The idea is that a ninja should keep their ninja identity secret from the other PCs, so they allow humans to multiclass. You can't only be a Ninja, you have to be a Ninja/something. Needlessly complex, and kinda setting up another Paladin problem, where dick DMs are going to be constantly forcing the Ninja player into situations where they have to either expose themselves as a ninja (requiring them to either turn on their companions or else have the clan hunting after them for the rest of the ninja's life), or else do nothing really for a large part of the game.

2E, with the Complete Ninja Handbook, tried to alleviate some of the problems. The use of 2E kits allows not only a varitey of Ninja class characters (although they're just a variant Thief with slightly different weapon proficiencies and starting skill percentages), but there are also kits for other classes to belong to the ninja clan. That makes an all-ninja campaign possible, but there are still the problems with the ninja mixed with the standard adventuring classes. The book does address some of the problems, and gives a few possible ideas for how to deal with them. All in all, it's not a bad book, even if it does rely on some mechanical choices that I'm not too fond of (kits, proficiencies, etc.).

Now 3E actually, IMO, did the ninja right. In the PHB classes, with the way feats and skills and multiclassing work in that edition, you could use the Rogue (Thief), Ranger, Monk, or Bard even as a base, and with some multiclassing amongst these classes or a few others (Fighter and Sorcerer being good choices, depending on your idea of what a ninja should be), you could craft a fairly good representation of it. That's kind of the strong point of 3E anyway, allowing you to custom build the sort of character you want.

3E's version of OA made another good choice. Instead of adding a Ninja class, they told you to do what I just told you about above. Of course there were ninja Prestige Classes you could take if you just absolutely HAD to have the word 'ninja' on your character sheet [and were too dense to just write it there yourself]. But then 3rd party supplements ended up coming out with all sorts of alternate ninja classes, not to mention the fan-made ones. [I used to spend a lot of time, during my 3E days, on the OA forums over at Wizbro's website.]

4E, I don't know, and it probably doesn't matter if they have a 'ninja' class or not, cause it will play like every other class in 4E.

Anyway, for those of you not playing 3E (I assume most of you), I think the real trick to playing a ninja successfully in a campaign is to avoid the assumed dynamic of 1E OA. Yes, your character is a ninja. Yes, you likely don't want commoners or ENEMY samurai to know that. Yes, you maybe want anyone to know your real name (like Spiderman or Superman, you need that alter-ego). But your adventuring companions should at least know that you are a ninja.

Maybe it comes from the misunderstanding of the concept of 'honor' as the samurai saw it. The reason they used trained ninja for stealth, spying, theft, sabbotage, etc. was because it would be dishonorable for THE SAMURAI to do such. Samurai still wanted all that stuff done, they just didn't want to get their hands dirty. So a samurai would not instantly cut down any ninja they encountered if they learned they were ninja because said ninja was dishonorable. If they were a daimyo, they'd likely be interested in hiring the ninja. Unless the ninja is spying on or trying to assassinate you at the moment, of course, then you'd want them cut down.

Samurai didn't expect everyone to live by their code of honor. So yes, your Samurai character could, and would, assuming a standard D&D type adventuring mindset, travel with a Ninja. It would be the smart thing to do. The Samurai would know that there will be situations that might be easiest to deal with using dishonorable methods. Mr. Ninja, step up please, it's your turn!

More Magic Weapons? (non-ninja post)

Ninja Week will continue, even though I've been getting fewer hits this week. You aren't interested in ninja? Well, too bad. More to come.

Anyway, I've been reading through Myths and Legends of China for ideas for more monsters to put into Flying Swordsmen. And I realized there are a ton of cool magical weapons in the section on the gods.

Considering that just about anyone with a lick of fame could be turned into a god by the Chinese (and they have ranks, Immortals, Heroes, Saints, and actual gods), that means there are a ton. And they have lots of cool powers like blowing lasers out of their nostrils or belching up poisonous smoke, but quite a few of them carry magical weapons as well.

I purposely left out magical katana and, with the exception of pole arms and Sun Wu Kong's staff, other Asian weapons from my Unique Magic Weapons document.

Since it's been the most popular of the series (and I can understand why, although I really like the wands, staves and rods as well), it may be time to work on a sequel, focusing on weapons from Asian myths, from the Middle East through East Asia. Don't know if I could get 100 swords, 100 other melee weapons AND 100 missile weapon entries like the first one, but I could surely put together another list of 100 total.

That might be something to work on after I get the first draft of Flying Swordsmen finished.

Battle of Dongnae Chainmail report!

First off, apologies. I remembered to bring everything with me except my camera. So no pictures of the game. Sorry about that.

In the last two days, Josh had been texting and sending messages on Facebook with tons of questions about the rules. He had volunteered to play the weaker Korean side, and wanted to know all his options. Well, I ended up overcompensating for his weaker forces. I didn't realize the wall would be such a benefit ruleswise. Actually, it wouldn't have been, except that we gave him double the ranged figures he otherwise would have had.

One other change we made was that since Josh's table is only about 3' by 4' (quite a bit smaller than the minimum 4' by 8' Gygax and Perren suggest, but we're in Korean apartments not Midwest basements) and we were using 1/72 scale minis was to change measurements to centimeters instead of inches.

With the ranged units all on the wall in two large groups, he was able to do enough damage with pass-through fire then his normal attack to totally wipe Alex's ashigaru archers in one round, and my ashigaru footmen in a two rounds. At that point, we stopped the game, as none of the Japanese units were large enough to take that punishment and return fire, especially as he had the cover bonus from the wall.

So while it may not have been the best game ever played, we did learn a lot.

a) the rules are simple, elegant, and play well
b) save actions involving walls for 1=1 scale combat
c) try to get a bigger playing area so we can actually maneuver

Even with the change to cm instead of inches, we still had the Japanese forces bunched up with little room to move, and the Korean forces behind their wall, basically just sitting there doing nothing.

It was a good experience, and I think I'll be able to set up some more fair battles in the future. We're looking forward to trying out the Man-to-Man scale rules, and definitely the Fantasy Supplement!

Time to start working on Chainmail: The Siege of Dongnae

My samurai and ashigaru minis from the Michigan Toy Soldier Company arrived in the mail today. Just at the start of vacation. It's not a good idea for me to be trying to paint minis with a rambunctious 2-year-old in the house, but I may pick up a couple jars of primary colors and a brush or two just to give them some unit colorings. I may have more than two players when we do this, so dividing the larger Japanese forces into two or three forces might be a good idea. The Korean player had better think very tactically, and have some lucky die rolls if they want to change history!

In other news, my wife and I just got back from watching Inception. I'll need to think about it over night and write a review tomorrow. I'm a bit burned out after 7 hours in the radio station, doing my normal live show and recording 3 more for the vacation.

My wife is wonderful (gaming related)

My wife just graciously allowed me to order three more boxes of samurai minis from the Michigan Toy Soldier Company. This is in preparation for my "Siege of Dongnae" Chainmail game I want to run.

Sure, I could have filled in the ranks with other minis--using my Caesar Elves, Dwarves and Goblins, or the Red Box Orcs I recently bought, not to mention my 1/72 scale Robin Hood, Moors and Viking minis from way back to supplement the ranks.

But I'd like for the Japanese army to look mostly like they're Japanese. I've got two boxes of Red Box Koreans (heavy and light infantry), so about 100 figs.

I've had a box of Zvezda samurai infantry for years. Now I've ordered the cavalry set from Zvezda, along with two boxes of ashigaru--one of spearmen, one of archers/arquebussiers--from Red Box. That's about 170 samurai figures total.

In the actual battle, the Koreans were outnumbered around 6 to 1, so I'd still need to use some supplemental figures if I want to get that accurate, but I will likely give the Koreans a fighting chance and leave it at that.

Chainmail: The Siege of Dongnae

Looking for fun things to do with my group involving war games, and the 2nd confrontation of the Imjin War (Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea) might be fun.

According to Wikipedia on the battle, 3000 Korean soldiers fought to the end defending Dongnae fortress against roughly six times as many Japanese.

I have nearly enough Korean soldier minis (in 1/72 scale) to handle their side, but not nearly enough Japanese. Vikings, Moors, Orcs, Elves and the like may have to round out the numbers.

I do have this:


It could serve as the centerpiece of the battle, with some walls and slopes around it for the Korean defenders.

This could be fun both because it would allow me to try out the Chainmail rules in a historical setting first before throwing in the ogres and pixies and wizards, and also because it's in our back yard. I've been to the Dongnae Fortress on a field trip with the kindergarten I teach at.

I might see if I can find some time to go back and get a good look around for purposes of study.

[Side note: In the first 24 hours since I posted my documents, I've had 16 people download the weapons one, and 6 each the armor and w/s/r documents. Hope you all enjoy them!]

We're getting the band back together

I've got Josh and Alex confirmed for tomorrow night. We're finally getting the Maritime Campaign going. Dave may not make it, but he said he'll be there if he can.

So I'm pretty pumped about that, and I'm going through all my stuff to make sure I've got enough prepared. I never do, but at least I have enough that I can make it look like I do...

Anyway, getting back to gaming with the guys has gotten me nostalgic about my old gaming groups.

The original group: Todd (best friend #1), Ben (best friend #2, and 2nd cousin), Tim (little brother) and myself were the core. Bridget (my little sister), Josh, Adam & Jacob (Ben's brothers) and the occasional other friend would sometimes play. We grew up in the country, so it wasn't unusual for a 'game session' to be just one DM and one player. We mostly played BECM (Ben had Immoratals Set I think, but we never did more than look at it), and Star Frontiers.

Magic the Gathering and some members of my university gaming guild who were the stereotypical gamers you don't want to game with kept us from playing much in college, but after graduating I fell in with Tim (not my brother), Kenny, Jason and Steve. Tim and Jason were co-workers with me at Circuit City, Kenny was Tim's roommate, and Steve was a friend of theirs. We played a lot of short lived campaigns that were a mish-mash of 1E and 2E AD&D, including me running a game set in Feudal Japan for a few sessions. This is the Evansville Group.

Then I went to Japan, and after a couple years 3E came out. A few other teachers had also played, and we were all curious about the rules so I picked up the PHB when I was at home for the summer and ordered the DMG and MM when they came out. With the nature of the expat life, we had a bit of a revolving membership, which included Billy, Chris, David (he's Puerto Rican so it's pronounced Da-veed), Nick (who was actually the exchange student at the high school I taught at), and Gene. This is the Toyama Group. We played 3.0 D&D.

I moved to another part of Japan, and Billy, Chris, Gene and I tried gaming online with voice chat and OpenRPG, but it didn't go so well. We did get to try out d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars though.

After a few years, I got to talking with some other gamers in Tokyo on the Wizards message boards, and we formed the Ebisu Gaming Club. The members were Steve (not Steve from Evansville), Pete, Gene (from the Toyama group, he'd also moved), and toward the end Tim (number 3). We met once a month at Steve's apartment in Ebisu and played marathon 8 hour sessions on Sundays. We played 3.5 D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Conan, and tried out several Forge Indie games including one Steve was working on himself.

Concurrent to the Ebisu group, I fell in with some local guys who were playing a game of White Wolf's Trinity. This was Paul, Brent, Tanya, Mish, and another guy whos name is escaping me at the moment. The other guy was frequently absent, so they asked me to join up. After that game ended, Brent, Tanya and Mish all left Japan, but Paul and I recruited some other friends and formed a second group.

This second group was Paul, Atley, Josh, Jacob, Michelle, and Mark. Later, Lauren, Rick and Renee joined after Mark left the country and Atley lost interest. We started out with a d20 OA game that I ran, but then switched to a Classic D&D game run by Paul. Another guy named JD also ran a 3.5 game with some of the same players, but I was too busy to join them for that. Collectively, this is the Yamanashi Group.

And then I moved to Korea and fell in with my current Board Game Group.

Oriental Accents -- Three Kingdoms

This will hopefully become a semi-regular feature of my blog. Seems like lots of people are interested in the Asian gaming scene, but there's not much to tell. But if you're interested in adding some Asian-themed stuff (using OA or a GURPs sourcebook or whatever) to your game, you might want a little additional advice on where to turn for themes, tropes, and setting ideas. So we'll start with the book that has probably been the biggest influence in East Asia ever, Three Kingdoms (also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms).

This is a work of historical fiction, relating the fall of the Han Dynasty around 200AD and the rise of three rival kingdoms in its place, and their eventual reunification into the next dynasty. If you're interested in the history, Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start.

Now, for the novel. It's primarily the story of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei--three men who swear an oath to battle some bandits or die trying. They get involved with various warlords and generals due to their success against the bandits, and come to command their own forces. Others, such as primary antagonist Cao Cao (pronounced something like 'tsow tsow' not like a bovine) who is an up and coming aristocrat general, also harbor ambitions of taking the throne as the power of the Han emperors comes crashing down due to constant insurrection, machinations of palace eunuchs, and usurping 'counselors' such as the villainous Dong Zhuo.

There are lots of battles, politics, and adventure early on. Later, once the three kingdoms of Wei (ruled by Cao), Shu (ruled by Liu) and Wu (ruled by Sun) have been established de facto, there's a bit less swashbuckling adventure style, and more military/political drama. Advisor, inventor and master strategist Zhuge "Kongming" Liang becomes the main character towards the end of the book, as most of the battles revolve around him trying to prevent the Shu kingdom from being swallowed up.

There are hundreds of characters in this book, including all kinds of guys who can inspire cool Fighter types, and a few who could inspire spell-caster types or rogue types. If you're into playing a non-samurai OA Fighter, this is a great book for you to read. If you're running an OA game, it's a great source of ideas and inspiration for adventures or NPCs.

Why should you read this book?
Pretty much anyone you meet in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam or Mongolia will at least have a passing familiarity with the major characters and themes of this work, and a large number have read it. It's similar to the Arthurian legends in Western culture in its impact.

Anyone who's been into video games is likely familiar with the matter as well. The Romance of the Three Kingdom strategy games, and the Dynasty Warriors beat-em-up games are based on the characters and battles of the book, and they're pretty popular.

Despite its length (3000 pages), it's a good read and an engaging narrative. I've actually read it three times and the initial volume (my edition is the same Moss Roberts translation as my link to Amazon above, but in 3 volumes instead of 4) a fourth time.

There's not a lot of fantasy, but there's all sorts of action. And it's the sort of action that to me at least makes the setting different from your bog-standard S&S/Middle-Earth/Arthurian D&D setting. Xiahou Dun swallowing his eye, the Peach Garden Oath, Kongming "borrowing" Cao Cao's arrows, the empty city ruse--read it and you'll see what I mean.

If you like Fighters, this book has some real badasses. Guan Yu, Lu Bu, Zhao Zilong. It's also good fodder for any sort of military campaign, even if the milieu isn't Asian.

Korean TV...uh, no thanks

My wife's engrossed in yet another daily KBS 8:20 melodrama. It's different from the last one in that no one in this one, to my knowledge has amnesia (yet). Otherwise, we're looking at another 6-8 months of relatively similar blah blah blah.

I do kind of wish my Korean was better than my current weak level (I'm still better than my 2 year old son, but he's poised to pass me up soon). There are plenty of 'period dramas' and while some are more concerned with the courtly politics and romance, quite a few are action oriented.

Back when I lived in Japan, there were a few of the 'jidai geki' (samurai shows) that I liked to watch. Sure, they're formulaic (every episode of Abarenbo Shogun):



Shogun goes in disguise into town, finds out a daimyo is up to bad shit.
Confirms that said daimyo is up to no good. But as shogun, he's powerless because he'll upset all the other daimyo if he steps in.
Goes to confront said daimyo in his disguise. Daimyo laughs at the 'ronin' challenging him.
Shogun says, "Take a good look at my face." Daimyo recognizes him and realizes he's up shit creek, so he orders his men to attack.
Men attack 1 or 2 at a time, or else shogun's ninja bodyguards join the fight. Ass is kicked, end of show.

But darned if I didn't find them fun to watch, and they made me want to play an OA game (which I did with 3E for a while).

Minis? I lived in Japan for a decade...

There seems to be a lot of excitement about the big Labyrinth Lord/Otherworld Minis team-up.

I would be more excited, I guess, if it weren't for my time spent in Japan. Japan is the home of the cheap(ish) pre-painted plastic miniatures. While I was there, my minis collection went from a few odds and ends from my childhood to a huge whopping collection of cool monsters, adventurer types, normal animals, and movie/game tie-in figures that range from anime goofy to down right bad-ass.

Thanks to a place called Mandai Shoten (affectionately known to me and my friends as either "the geek shop" or "The Mummy's Ghost"--the latter due to their having the movie poster painted onto their building's facade), I was able to get lots of them dirt cheap. But I spent plenty of time buying the prepackaged, random collectibles first hand in convenience and toy stores, as well as buying lots of Coke or Pepsi when they had Final Fantasy and Star Wars figures attached to the bottles.

So while it would be nice to have some of those great looking Otherworld Minis, I'll stick with my cheap, light and already painted (for the most part) collection from Japan.

And just to note--while Japan is a wonderful place to be a gamer who likes minis, Korea seems to have nothing of the kind. Bummer.