ACKS and Oriental Adventures: The Samurai

My future campaign setting, Spirit Island, is heavily themed on feudal Japan.  I'll post bits and pieces here on the blog and file them under 'Spirit Island' and 'Oriental Adventures'.  While I work out maps and provinces in the background, I'm starting by posting a rundown of classes and character options here on the blog.

The most fateful decision I've made is to build the game using ACKS as the rule set - Adventurer Conqueror King. The career arc that's strongly supported in ACKS - dungeon and wilderness exploration transition to campaign roles and domain management - perfectly fits my goals for the campaign.  The proficiency system in ACKS provides sufficient customization to the core classes to model archetypes from feudal Japan using core classes.  I am strongly biased towards using existing classes where possible, since it encourages compatibility across editions.  Where there's not a good fit, like new race-classes for an Asian setting, then I'll build them using the ACKS player's companion.

First off, let's look at one of the core classes in the setting, the Samurai template for the fighter class.  We previously discussed here on the blog that the fighter covers everything from Roman legionnaires, Mongol horse archers, European knights, to the Samurai.  ACKS does the fighter justice, equipping the class with extra damage, built-in cleave, and proficiencies to customize the fighting style.  Between extra damage and cleave, a mid to high level samurai will be able to wade through lesser opponents in the finest Chanbara film style.

Perhaps the biggest reason to make the Samurai a fighter is the inherent social mobility in the historical period I'd like to emulate.  During the Warring States period, there are many examples of common-born warriors distinguishing themselves on the battlefield, getting promoted into the ranks of the samurai, and eventually founding their own clans and daimyōs.  Samurai shouldn't be a "class" that you have to start at level 1; if you’re not born into a noble family, you can still get a promotion to samurai status through service to a lord and feats of arms.

That's the essence of excellent old school gaming - where character is something you become through play and survival and advancement, and not fully formed at the beginning of the game.

The Samurai - A Fighter Template for ACKS
The samurai are the military elite of feudal Japan.  The role is defined through service to a lord as a vassal.  A samurai is oath bound to follow a moral code called bushidō, which requires loyalty to lord and family, martial prowess, maintenance of honor, and willingness to die in service.  A samurai is expected to be an expert rider, archer, spearman, swordsman, and versed with various meditative arts, such as gardening, calligraphy, ink-painting, poetry, and the tea ceremony.

Suggested proficiencies
Riding, and either two-handed weapon fighting or precise shot

Suggested equipment
O-yori armor, kabuto helmet, katana (long sword), wakizashi (short sword), yari (spear), daikyu (great bow), quiver and 20 arrows, additional equipment - kimono robes, sandals, rice ball rations, canteen, riding horse, saddle, pennant (sashimono)

What's missing?
Perusing the standard ACKS proficiency list, there are not many gaps.  One of the famous elements in the samurai media and literature is the quick draw capability, the techniques of iaijutsu.  An encounter moves from parley or verbal confrontation into a duel at blinding speed, with katana whirring from their sheaths and striking down opponents all in one fluid motion.

Iaijutsu:  The character excels at quickly drawing his or her weapon and making an immediate attack.  The character gains a +4 bonus on initiative rolls during the first round of combat, before weapons are drawn.

The huge importance placed on etiquette and artistry seem affectations of a later time period, when court politics rose in prominence, but Zen has a long history throughout the period.  I'm on the fence whether an etiquette proficiency should be added (even if a player believes calligraphy, tea ceremony, poetry, and so on is important for his samurai character); most likely, I would just treat arts proficiency as covering the samurai arts, and diplomacy covers etiquette.

The primary samurai unarmed technique was jujutsu, comprising a series of chokes, armbars, throws and holds, the forerunner of modern judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.  ACKS has a proficiency that boosts unarmed striking.

Jujitsu:  The character is skilled at chokes, armbars, wrestling throws and holds.  When the character attempts to wrestle in combat, the normal penalty of -4 on the attack roll is reduced to -2, and the opponent receives a -2 penalty on the saving throw to resist the maneuver.  (Note:  I realize this is exactly the same as the 'combat trickery' proficiency, which actually does cover wrestling - I like the updated name for flavor).

Over on the Autarch forum, Alex (the author of ACKS) had posted a system for reputation that he uses in his home game; it would work well here and I'll see if it can be cross-posted.

Other proficiencies that make sense for fighters on the samurai career track include combat reflexes, command, fighting style, unarmed fighting (atemi waza!), and weapon focus.  Useful general skills include art (samurai art skills), diplomacy (etiquette), intimidation, leadership, manual of arms, military strategy, and riding.

Intimidation raises a good question - what about the 'psychic duel' from Oriental Adventures?  This was the idea that two swordsmen would have a battle of wills before a fight, with the loser admitting defeat before a sword was even drawn.

I can imagine a few different (and simple) approaches working for psychic duels; perhaps it's generated as a reaction roll modified by charisma, Intimidation skill, and reputation (since the reputation modifier is a factor of experience level and deeds).  The character that gets the highest psychic duel roll in the stand-off gets a bonus on attack rolls if the fight actually happens.  The loser has an opportunity to bow out before initiative is rolled.

Alternatively, Psychic Duel could be a new proficiency that allows a character with the proficiency to force a morale check before combat even starts with a successful throw.  Like the Intimidation proficiency itself, it would be limited to working on lower level flunkies only.

LOTFP does Oriental Adventures

How would you go about running Oriental Adventures using a simple, BX D&D type system? That is the opportunity I'm considering.  ACKS has a toolbox for building new character classes (in the as yet unreleased Player's Guide), which I plan to use to create detailed versions of the Oriental Adventures classes, as an exercise to get practice using the ACKS stuff.  For now, let's look at them in a simple BX system.  I'm using the LOTFP flavor of a classic D&D style game for reasons that will be evident.

Fighter:
In LOTFP, the fighter is the preeminent combat class, quickly surpassing everyone else in the ability to kill things dead with sharp objects.  Samurai are represented as fighters with o-yoroi armor and daisho - the matching swords.  If a player wants to tell me he or she is also good at calligraphy, haiku, etiquette, and performing the tea ceremony, that's fine.  The game will be about stabbing monsters in the face and recovering loot like regular D&D, but we can make systems on the fly if a player feels the need to win a poetry contest or something in between trips to the ruins.

Ashigaru, the footsoldiers of the time, are fighters.  Kensai, traveling masters of the sword - you got it - also fighters.  OA has a class called "bushi" for peasant warriors, they sound a lot like ashigaru to me, but it doesn't matter, because they're also... fighters.

Warrior monks, sohei, and yamabushi were warriors dedicated to defending temples and monasteries.  They swing weapons and kill things dead - they're also fighters.

Cleric:
Clerics in the setting are priests.  I don't know that it really matters whether the primary religions (assuming a faux-historical setting) are modeled after Shinto, Shugendo, Buddhism, or something different; the setting will have Kami, a spirit world, and clerics are clerics are clerics.  If a cleric player wants to call himself a "shugenja" because they saw that title in another game system, that's fantastic - shugenja are also clerics.

Magic Users:
I'll just assume for now there are sorcerous figures in Japanese mythology and folklore like the Western archetype, and that'll be fine.  I don't know where the inspiration for the Wu-Jen came from, but creating a d100 list of interesting taboos is too cool to pass up.  Wu-jen are magic users.

Specialist (Thief):
LOTFP really shines for modeling thief characters in this kind of setting, using the specialist class.  If you dress in black pajamas and kill people, you're a specialist.  If you cover your arms in tattoos and work for the mob, loyal to an oyabun, you're also a specialist.  The guys in the pajamas are ninjas, the guys with the tattoos are yakuza, and they both sneak around and kill people.

On a more serious note, the flexible skills in LOTFP let you focus more points into climb, stealth, and sneak attack, modeling the stereotypical ninja just fine; the rest is fancy specialized gear, and those black jammies that were popularized in movies from the 80's.  The yakuza flavored-thief would focus a bit more on the other specialist skills, like search and tinker and sleight of hand.

Demihuman Classes:
The 1E Oriental Adventures book presented a couple of ideas for non-human classes - Hengeyokai, Korobokuru, and Spirit-Folk.  I'm eminently lazy, and also don't get excited about designing classes and races, so the laziest approach is to take a virtual sharpie marker and cross out "Dwarf" and write in Korobokuru; replace Halfling with Hengeyokai;  replace Elf with Spirit-Folk; voila, they run mostly like the BX or LOTFP equivalents - albeit with heavily changed flavor text, culture, and appearance.  When I look at the ACKS class design stuff, I'll l put together unique race classes for these guys.

Other candidates could be 'rat people' - anyone remember the rat people ninjas from Magic the Gathering's Kamigawa block?  Maybe it's all a big Ninja Mutant Turtle in-joke.  But 'rat people' would be a good fit for the Halfling replacement - stealthy and difficult to kill - and it would leave the Hengeyokai as a monster race.  I'd consider crow people too, ie, Tengu, but I'd also prefer to keep them as potential monsters.

New Systems:
I don’t think any new systems are absolutely necessary for using BX D&D or LOTFP in an Asian setting, but a pair of ideas come to mind, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about them in the weeks ahead.

First up is an approach to implementing honor or reputation.  It was a big part of Oriental Adventures, and it seemed to be important to L5R, too.  I plan on picking up Bushido and some of the other recommendations in the comments of the other thread, and seeing if any simple systems make sense to me.  There's also a S&W game that went down this path, Ruins & Ronin, it may have something on honor as well.  My expectation is that I'd use honor or reputation as another type of charisma modifier for reaction rolls.

The other one is martial arts. Regardless of the inherent coolness in sumo or jujitsu, I don’t see them moving the dial on a battlefield - and yet, early jujitsu did grow out of the need to disarm, trip, throw, and toss armored opponents and finish them off on the ground with a knife, the tanto replacing the misericorde of western chivalry.  The player expectation is that ninjas and samurai and warrior monks will be able to toss people around with their mad skills when the need arises.

Just off the cuff, I'd consider treating unarmed attacks just like any other version of D&D, but using the pip system (2 in 6, 3 in 6, etc) to let a player roll a d6 when they make a successful unarmed attack; if they make their skill check, they can convert their unarmed damage to lethal damage (if using a hard style martial art) or add a kicker like a trip, throw, knockback, or hold, if using a soft style.  It seems like that would be easy to implement and works with the LOTFP skill system.  All of the amazing supernatural abilities you see in Kung Fu Theater (Eagle Claw! Dim Mak Death Touch!) would be omitted for now - no Shaolin Temples here.

Next Steps
I came to a recent epiphany on my approach to blending D&D and Horror; the ideas are still taking shape in my mind, but it would dramatically change my approach to Harrow Home Manor, and explain some things about the evolution of The Black City campaign.

I don't get excited about rules and house rules and minor tweaks; the OSR world is flooded with them, everyone has their own (like opinions), they're valuable and sometimes necessary, but just not that sexy.  That's why my first approach is always, "How do I adapt something that's already built (like BX or LOTFP) and just use it in the new context?"  Setting is our final frontier.  That's the challenge here, to create a setting that works with D&D's tropes and expectations, but takes place in a fantastic version of feudal Japan.  What a fun problem.  First up:  building up my library and getting in the required reading; my current "knowledge base", such as it is, comes from Kurosawa films and samurai cinema, Miyazaki movies, and a passing interest in martial arts (primarily judo and jujitsu).  Time to get historical!

Edit:  I thought of this after posting - didn't L5R have a 'rat humanoid' race?  I don't have any L5R books, but that seems really familiar to me - I'll check it out when I get the chance.

Cherry blossoms and ashes

One of my gaming bucket list items is to eventually run a good Asian-themed D&D game.  I love the interchange between Western tropes and samurai cinema, the way you can do Shakespeare in feudal Japan (Ran) or draw parallels between American westerns and the movies of Kurosawa (The Magnificent Seven).  One of the ideas in my back pocket is to transpose elements of Arthurian myth, like the Grail Quest, or the Excalibur story (more the sword in the stone than the Lady in the Lake), into a D&D campaign set in the far east.

Here’s a simple premise - perhaps during the early medieval period, when native peoples like the Ainu of Japan were being driven out, a massive cataclysm was brought down on the imperial palace as the natives unleashed the fury of their gods, or the primal spirits punished the ruling caste for hubris; the imperial castle was destroyed, the surrounding province was turned into a wasteland, the remnants of the populace in that area are monsters - transformed into goblins, enslaved by demons, hateful shades of the spirit world, it could be any number of things.  The legendary sword of the last legitimate shogun is lost beneath the ruins of the old castle (perhaps even stuck in a stone anvil awaiting the next shogun…)

Bam!  You have a kind of leaderless chaos in the larger setting, where the remaining noble families vie to make their lord and head the new regent, but they all secretly fear if the sword of truth were recovered, everyone would unite behind the rightful shogun.  Small groups that represent the clans and families, essentially parties of adventurers, venture into the forsaken province and scour the ruined castles and dungeons to find clues to the location of the lost sword.  Everyone hopes to be worthy of recovering it, thus proving their worth to the emperor back in the new capital; the possessor would be named shogun.  It's as if the movie Excalbur has a love-child with The Hidden Fortress and you throw in a hex crawl and megadungeon.

One thing I'm learning in The Black City campaign, I love the ambiguity of competing human encounters, and the scheme here would let the DM populate the forsaken province with bandits, brigands, rival adventuring parties, hostile samurai, enemy ninja, and so forth.

It's essentially a limited sandbox, because one thing I struggle with when thinking about a sandbox game based in a pseudo-historical feudal Japan is whether it would pass 'the tavern test'.  The group members are probably servants of a daimyo, and they have autonomy as long as they're doing the larger meta-quest given as a mission by the boss - finding the lost sword of truth.  But how much personal liberty did a samurai have during different periods of feudal Japan?  How much must credulity be stretched to have a mixed caste party?

I don't even know if a campaign like this even has "taverns", per se:  "Ahem, can I have your attention?  I am Noboru-san, and my friend the Korobokuru and I would like to hire a pair of ninjas and a Wu-Jen (er, Shugenja) to go with us into the forsaken lands.  Are there any ninjas for hire having a drink here?"  Pssst:  the two guys in the corner dressed in black ninjutsu gi's look interested.  No wait, they're just struggling drinking without taking off their masks.  Joking aside, the whole premise of The Seven Samurai is hiring guys to defend a village from bandits, which implied a degree of freedom to adventure and places to hire mercenaries, so maybe it's not that far off.

Yeah, so I don't know much (anything) about Japanese medieval society and the social classes, beyond what you see in movies, so I have to plead temporary (but cure-able) ignorance.  I'm sure I'll be reading the related Osprey/Turnbull books I recently got.  Either way, the limited scope sandbox is a way to finesse a setting with a rigid caste system while giving the players autonomy on the frontier where they can carry out their explorations.  The trick is making something that meets the needs of traditional D&D - exploration, solving puzzles, resource planning, tactics, monsters.  If I wanted it to be all tea ceremonies and how good is your calligraphy… well, there are already games for that kind of excitement.

I don't have a name yet for this hypothetical setting… chances are it would be done using a BX type game like LOTFP or ACKS, I'd just want to add better unarmed martial arts to fit my preferences (I'm a big fan of judo and the predecessor arts, jujitsu and aikijutsu) and a mechanic to track reputation.  Some of that could even be borrowed from AD&D's Oriental Adventures.  I really like the modern trend towards "a day in the life…" history books, but haven't read a good one for feudal Japan (yet).  I've heard the old FGU game "Bushido" actually did a good job of laying out a setting, so I'll check that out as well.  I'm not expecting to do much around this setting soon, there's a bit of background reading and research to do first and I'm doing a ton on the Black City, but it's another one on the radar.