Monstrous Monday: Gaki, the Hungry Ghost

Image from the scroll of the hungry ghost

His belly is huge, his mouth is small, and his hunger is endless.

The Gaki is a kind of ghoul, a spirit returned to the world with unnatural hungers that can never be satisfied.  A quick image search online will turn up "the scroll of the hungry ghost", which shows images of various Gaki in lamentable poses of suffering.  The scenes are reminiscent of the accursed in Dante's inferno; the endless hunger of the Gaki echose the mythological torment of Tantalus.

Gaki are formed from the souls of greedy or selfish individuals who are not able to pass on to a proper reward in the afterlife; there's a Buddhist belief their poor karma has cursed them to return and feed on corpses.

The Gaki
AC as Leather, HD 3, Attacks 2 claws, 1 bite, Damage 1-4/1-4/1-8, MV 6, AL Chaotic.

A Gaki uses a form of polymorph self to live on the outskirts of a human settlement, assuming it's true form to dig up and feed on fresh corpses.  The folklore implies the Gaki can enter enclosed spaces, perhaps using its polymorph ability to change into something small enough to infiltrate a locked room.  A Gaki can be laid to rest by a powerful priest or an upright member of the Gaki's family performing proper ancestor services and offerings.

Dreamblade's Hungry Ghost

The Gaki is an interesting campaign creature; not so much a dungeon encounter as a type of non-combat challenge afflicting towns in the countryside.  The Gaki makes for a lamentable creature that can't control it's urges, a nuisance monster for characters to either drive off or lay to rest.

Monstrous Monday: Nukekubi

If you're like me, you first saw these freaky creatures of Japanese folklore in the pages of Mike Mignola's Hellboy - they're featured in the short story "Heads", and also in the animated piece, Hellboy: Storm of Swords (pictured).  Mignola loves classic folklore and the pages of Hellboy are full of unusual creatures.

Like many supernatural creatures in Japanese folklore, it's ambiguous whether Nukekubi are demons, cursed humans, a kind of undead, or spirits.  They appear almost entirely like normal humans during the day, and often live in a family group of 2-5 members, somewhere remote.  When night falls, their heads separate cleanly from their bodies and fly off in search of human prey.  In human form, a Nukekubi can be identified by a thin red line along the seam where the head cleanly separates from the body each night.

In the Hellboy story, the Nukekubi offer Hellboy hospitality at their remote villa; when he wakes in the night, he sees all the headless bodies sitting in the parlor, grumbles in the usual fashion, and then the heads start hunting him.

Nukekubi
AC as leather, HD 4, attack 1 bite,  damage 1-6, MV 12, ML 10, AL Chaotic.

Nukekubi emit a frightening scream when they fly into combat, causing Fear (as the spell), to panic their victims and break a group apart.  They'll track a target into the night, biting, rending, and tearing the flesh.

A Nukekubi head takes damage from normal weapons, but isn't destroyed when it reaches zero hit points; instead, the head is forced to flee and return to it's body.   The only way to destroy a Nukekubi is to prevent the head from rejoining the body by dawn, by hiding the body or locking it someplace secure.

Nukekubi are another cool monster for the future Spirit Island campaign, and also a contribution to Tim's weekly Monstrous Monday in honor of Halloween:

Monstrous Monday: Children of Mukade

Mukade was a gigantic centipede monster living under the bridge Tschitta, in Totomi.  It was said to have glowing eyes that could boil a man's blood, and venomous breath.  Mukade was dangerous enough to hunt dragons, and was eventually killed by the hero Hidesato with an arrow through an eye.

Children of Mukade are monstrous centipedes descended from the legendary demon.  They don’t fear man and frequently attack on sight.  Provincial lords pay a bounty to any hunters that return with dead Mukade, as nests of the beasts disrupt travel and can make remote bridges unusable.  This is a monster I'll eventually use in the Spirit Island campaign - and probably create a gigantic demon centipede for use in the Night Lands.

Children of Mukade
AC as chain, HD 4, Attacks 1 bite, Damage 1-8 plus poison, MV 18, ML 9, AL N

The children are 12' long monstrous centipedes, with red legs, a green body, and red head and mandibles.  They are extremely swift, quickly attacking from beneath a bridge or ruined habitation.  Their virulent poison is strong enough to kill a man.

The image is from an interpretation of Mukade by Arta01 over on deviant art.

Monstrous Monday: The Faceless

I had to decided to pitch in for Tim's Monstrous Monday event for the month of October.  October really is one of the best months, isn't it?  I need to start getting out some monsters that will work well in the Spirit Island campaign.  Plus, I need to carry through on my threat to make some monsters that would use Dreamblade figures!

First up is a creature based on a monster from folklore, the Mujina (or more properly, Noppera-bō).  I'm not a fan of the previous incarnations of the Mujina, so I'll refer to them as The Faceless, an alternate type of doppleganger.  Commoners often refer to them as 'Faceless Ghosts', but this is a misunderstanding of their true nature.

The Faceless delight in terrifying a victim unto death; they are skilled shape changers and often work as a pack, replacing people close to the intended target for building up to a final, horrible reveal.  A common scenario involves a victim encountering a stranger on the road, frequently a woman combing her hair, discovering in horror that she has no face, fleeing to a well-known person (like a wife), and then experiencing the ultimate horror as the wife too, wipes away her visage to reveal that she is also one of The Faceless.

The Faceless
AC as chain, HD 5, Attacks 1 weapon or monstrous claw, Damage by weapon or 1d12, Mv 9, Morale 8, AL Chaotic.

The Faceless can assume the identity of any human, drawing forth memories and thoughts in order to perfect the duplication.  They are unaffected by Sleep or Charm.  They save as 8th level fighters.  When The Faceless reveals its blank visage, anyone viewing it must Save vs Death or flee in fear.  If one of The Faceless has taken the role of a key loved one, or other person well known to the victim, the victim must Save vs Death or die.

Ramblings About Spirit Island

I'm traveling this upcoming week, but have some reading material with me and hope to get a few reviews posted.  A reader dropped a note asking about my process for gathering ideas for Spirit Island, and since I went a bit overboard in answering, the correspondence would work fine as a blog post, too.  I've been heartened by how many OSR folks are interested in seeing more D&D style of play in an Eastern setting, so here's where I'm at with the development and what you should see posted in the near future.

For starters, I've had a bunch of 'Arthurian Mythos' themed explorations going on at the house; I had just been reading 'The Once and Future King' with my oldest kid and we watched Excalibur (redacted) so he could see different interpretations on the cycle of stories.  The younger ones were just discovering Miyazaki ('Spirited Away', and 'Princess Mononoke') and the idea struck me - why not make my next project, after The Black City, a Japan-themed setting that combines the broad themes of Arthurian myth with a heavy dose of samurai and the spirit world?

I'm really early in the process and I have a ton of reading lined up.  Royall Tyler's 'Japanese Tales' has been very entertaining, and full of short, flavorful folk tales, many featuring monsters.  I've also been reading this guy's blog, it's translations of tons of short Japanese ghost stories:  Hyakumonogatari.

I finished Osprey Press's "Warriors of Medieval Japan" to get insight on equipment, organization, and tactics used by fighting men of the period (it covered samurai, ninja, ashigara, and warrior monks - sohei).

Other RPG writers have already done a good job of compiling cultural notes and daily life - thanks all for the many excellent recommendations - so I plan on getting ideas from games like Sengoku and Bushido on cultural ideas instead of focusing on primary sources, at least for now.   I recently became aware of a game called Blood & Honor, discussed over on the Age of Ravens blog, that looks like it provides lots of tools for building samurai clans and the political structures.

My goal for the main island is to briefly describe the high level political structure of the empire, clans, leaders, armies, etc.  The northern provinces, closer to the adventuring area, would be more detailed.  The remote island of Honshu will be created as a giant hex crawl, with scattered mini dungeons across it.  Most of the D&D style adventure will be on that island, renamed Spirit Island in the campaign world, but players can engage with politics and war on the mainland as they gain levels (assuming that's even interesting to them).

As of right now, I'm planning on doing it with ACKS - ACKS is an OSR type D&D (based on the Mentzer edition of basic D&D) that adds 3E style proficiencies and good custom class building options, two things that will help players achieve a bit of mechanical differentiation between types of fighting men.  ACKS also has a domain system I'll use to define the different provinces and daimyos.  I tend to view an economic system in an RPG as useful primarily insomuch as it provides guidelines on how large should be the different armies of the various lords, as well as what the players can afford if they get their own domains.  It's only a worthwhile exercise if the DM also thinks it's fun to do a bit of bean counting!

My reading syllabus includes those other RPGs, lots of folktales and Japanese horror stories, and a more detailed exploration of the construction, layout, and defense of Japanese castles and forts.  Readers have suggested lots of good anime, so my netflix queue is full for the foreseeable future.

Next up for the blog is more character class mapping and designs, and then I'll start developing hex maps based on Japan and outlining those high level provinces for the empire.  I won't actually tackle Spirit Island and the dungeons for a while - right now, ideas are just getting dropped into a brainstorming notebook as I find them.  I tend to keep a couple of long term notebooks handy, one for each campaign concept, just for jotting ill-formed ideas.  I highly recommend keeping good old fashioned notebooks on hand.  I'm currently keeping one for The Black City, the Colonial Hex Crawl idea, and the last for the Spirit Island campaign.

The Black City is on the front burner, so my priority is spending a few hours each week preparing for the next session - I try to do some writing in the early mornings. Evenings allow a bit of reading and jotting ideas in the notebook after the kids are in bed.  The Black City percolated and simmered here on the blog for nearly a year before it became the main game, so I expect to take a similarly slow development period for Spirit Island.

Magic and the Spirit World

Spirit Island is an Asian themed setting for old school D&D I'm working on, based on folklore and traditions of feudal Japan.

Shamans describe the spirit world as consisting of a number of interconnected realms - the Summerlands and Nightlands,  Natsunokuni and Yorutochi; the Celestial Court, where the greatest of the kami dwell; the Pure Land, a place of great beauty and enlightenment; Yomi, realm of the dead; the Hells, the place where devils and Oni originate.  These distinct places are considered smaller realms within the larger spirit world, because it's understood by the wise that spirits, and the rare mortal visitor to the spirit world, can cross from one realm to another while on a spirit walk.

The Nature of Spirits
There are a near infinite variety of spirits, ranging from simple spirits personifying a particularly distinct tree or landmark, to the majestic spirits that rule the Celestial Court, like the Sun and her brother, the Moon.  Spirits range in appearance from horrible aberrations, such as giant clawed centipedes with human faces or the terrible 8' tall Oni, with their green skin and glaring red eye, to the glorious divine presences of the gods, who sometimes appear as men or women of great beauty.

Spirits do share some basic characteristics.  In the spirit world, they are physical and tangible, but in the mortal world, they are invisible and immaterial.  Many spirits have the ability to become visible, and some are powerful enough to manifest physically  in the mortal world.  Most spirits that can assume a physical form can only do so near an anchor in the physical world, such as a landmark or gate to the spirit world.  Immaterial spirits can only be affected by magic or their spirit bans.

The life force of lesser spirits is usually tied to a physical anchor.  A mountain spirit would be tied to its mountain; a tree spirit is anchored to a special tree or grove.  Destroying the physical anchor destroys the lesser spirit.  Greater spirits are not tied to a location in this way.

Spirits are usually affected by one or more bans that limit and control their interactions with the world.  Many spirits can only manifest at night; some can't cross running water; most can't travel far from their physical anchor.  There's no limit to how strange or weird are the possible bans; a spirit might be forced to appear when its true name is said a certain number of times in a row; some can't cross the threshold of house; a river spirit may never be able to walk backwards; a spirit may be forbidden from speaking certain words; another spirit is obliged to eat anyone appearing before it and not carrying a juniper sprig, while the next can't attack anyone holding a turnip.

Learning a spirit's ban is a difficult but important step to safely interacting with the greater spirits.  It's common for spirits to become fascinated with mortals, and folklore is full of spirits that have physically manifested and become the lovers and spouses of humans.  In most cases, the human is placed under a ban that will dissolve the union and send the spirit back to the spirit world if the ban is broken; common bans for these marriages include things such as never revealing the true nature of the spirit spouse, or remaining faithful.  The offspring of these marriages are the spirit folk.

Magic and Spirits
Detect Invisible is invaluable for dealing with spirits, as it reveals the presence of lurking spirits, and also reveals spirit gates - doorways to the spirit world.  (True Seeing also works).  In the mortal world, spirits are otherworldly creatures and can't affect someone with Protection from Evil.  They can't cross an Anti Magic Shell.  Dispel Evil can destroy a spirit or sever its connection to an anchor.  Gate can be used to open a direct path to one of the spirit realms.

Immaterial spirits can only be damaged by magic or magic weapons, assuming the spirit can be detected while it is invisible.  Physical spirits can be damaged by normal weapons, although the more powerful spirits are still immune to normal weapons, even in physical form.

Alignment
Spirits are creatures of order.  Their actions and goals are governed by rules that are nonsensical or inscrutable to humans, but are binding to the spirits.  The greatest of the kami shaped the spirit realms and brought order to the primordial chaos.  Spirits are Lawful, and spell casters that draw on divine power are similarly Lawful.

Law is a cosmic alignment and an indicator of divine power; it does not reference good versus evil.  The majority of humans are plain old Neutral.  A human gains the Lawful alignment by drawing on spirit power, such as the various clerical spell casting classes, or otherwise gains a supernatural allegiance to a powerful kami.

Chaos is the echoes of the primordial void, the roiling elements before the creation of the mortal world and the spirit realms.  Monsters seek to subvert the natural order, destroy civilization, and return the world to the primordial chaos; they have the Chaotic alignment.  Magic Users and elementalists gain the Chaotic alignment by drawing on these powers of the void for their spells.

Note:  Although spirits have the Lawful alignment, many of their actions are evil when viewed through the lens of human morality.  Furthermore, most spirits have dual natures and aspects, one benign and helpful to humans, the other destructive and terrible from a human perspective.  Priests and shamans are often invoked to appease wrathful spirits and help them transition back to their benign nature, calming the angry spirit.

What's Next
I need to go back to working through character classes and class options; I did a bit on samurai as fighters a few weeks ago, and will continue with korobokuru, hengeyokai, spirit folk, and the other options for humans.  I'm using ACKS and the ACKS players guide, so it opens up some neat class options like the shaman, witch, and warlock.

I'll be starting to post spirit creatures here and there as I build out a bestiary.  I've tried to keep the cosmology loose and ambiguous, so interactions with spirits remain a bit vague, mysterious, and unsettling.  One thing I need to work into the mix is the nature of the undead, Japanese ghosts, and spirits of vengeance, and how they differ from ancestor spirits or the enlightened souls that reside in the Pure Lands.


*The image is Nayug, the spirit realm from Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit.

The Aristotelian Traps of Game Creation

I've been mulling the nature of the Spirit World as part of the development for the future "Spirit Island" campaign.  It's a setting I hope to use next year by repurposing some OSR rules to cover ground similar to AD&D's Oriental Adventures.

Ideas are whirling around my brain - inspirations culled from anime like Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Spirited Away; concepts drawn from J-horror properties like Silent Hill, Ringu, Ju-On, or Dark Water; it's even territory that has been trod by roleplaying games, like Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

It's hard to break out of the western, Aristotelian, impulse to explain how everything fits together.  As a game master and world-builder, you're expected to have answers, statistics, and mechanics, to reduce the great mysteries to a mere set of numbers for game purposes.  A glance at the appendix in the Player's Handbook, the original Deities and Demigods, or Manual of the Planes, with those baroque drawings of the relationships of the planes, reveals an orderly pantry where everything is set neatly on its own shelf.  A careful model with turf set aside for every conceivable alignment or relationship to elemental matter is depicted in the classic view of the multiverse.  Were I a learned occultist, I could probably trace the inspirations for that model of the planes, perhaps to the Theosophists or the Medieval hermeticists.  That Gygax fellow was well read and had a mind for harmonization and syncretism.

Much of what makes movies like Spirited Away or the various incarnations of Japanese horror so compelling is the ambiguity, the not knowing precisely how things hang together.  It represents a loss of control - a realization that our narrow slice of being exists in a much larger universe where we don't understand the rules.  In The Ring, for instance, we almost start to get a sense on what motivates Sadako (or Samara, in the Americanized version), but just as we get close to comprehension, the rules apparently change.  It's quite different than most American horror movies, where there's usually some kind of silver bullet, some rational explanation that provides a solution, if the protagonists can only persist long enough to see it through.

So the challenge in developing an alternate cosmology for use in the Asian setting is this problem of creating a set of rules that govern how things work, but placing the comprehension of the rules beyond the purview of any of the characters (and maybe even the mundane inhabitants of the setting).

But certainly, some things are known about the functioning of the spirit world?

As the name implies, it is the source of spirits, both light and dark.  Powerful spirits of light might have been worshipped as gods in the past, and humans have sought to please them, whereas the powerful dark spirits can only be appeased.  It is said the spirit world is a reflection of the waking world, and prominent landmarks have their own analog on the other side, altered to exaggerate characteristics that resonate the emotion of the place.  Depending on how and where one crosses over, the spirit world can be bright and sunny, and is referred to as the Summerlands, or it is dark and forsaken, when one crosses into the Nightlands (the realms of Samārando and Yorutochi, respectively, although they could be one and the same).

There are rare places where the veil between the worlds is thinner, and mortal magic can create a bridge to walk physically into the spirit world - others can only project their consciousness, leaving their mortal form behind.  It's also easier to enter the spirit world during the times of the solstice, when the walls are thinner, or when using certain drugs, or eating special plants.  These are all closely guarded secrets.  Of course, at these hallowed locations or celestial phases, the spirits can more easily enter the mortal plane, too.

Water and mirrors act as conduits, and there are rumored to be deep pools lost in the wild through which a swimmer can surface on the other side.  Ponds, lakes and certain springs are all associated with spirit creatures, the most  dangerous of which are the dragons.  Other spirits range from small scuttling things, to powerful incarnates representing early gods.  Stories also persist of people encountering spirits of their own family ancestors.  But many spirits are abstract concepts, personifying such varied elements as mountains, trees, and landmarks, to emotional properties like spirits of madness, fear, and rage.  Have we created them through our dreams, or is it the other way around?


*The picture is a still from the movie Avatar, depicting the wilds of Pandora.

Secrets of Spirit Island

Here's my preliminary concept for the campaign; in this bloody time of civil war, a dying warlord has a battlefield vision of the Sun warning him that blood will continue to soak the soil of the provinces until the sword of the last shogun, lost for a hundred years, is rediscovered; she promises that her brother, the Moon, will reveal the secret to a worthy champion who solves the riddle of the lost sword; the answer lies on Spirit Island.

As rumors of this unearthly vision spread around the countryside, many of the lords and daimyos scoff at the fanciful tale and continue to build their power and maneuver their forces for war.  But there are sentimentalists that send agents to the coast to secure passage to mist-shrouded Spirit Island seeking answers.  Spirit Island is rugged and has little arable land; the indigent people are gaijin or barbarians who live by fishing and hunting.  Tradition holds that in the distant past, powerful shrines to the kami and the elements once existed there, but the locations of these secret places are now lost to memory.

In this way, adventurers that explore Spirit Island might discover 5 hidden dungeons (and/or shrines and temples) each themed after an element - wood, fire, water, earth, and metal; the island is inhabited by a mix of hostile native folks and peaceful nature spirits, priests, holy sites, angry kami, duplicitous demons, vengeful ghosts, rival adventurers, spies, and bandits.  In terms of campaign play, characters that manage to explore the 5 sites would be in the mid-levels (levels 5-6), just in time for the domain play and mass combat on the mainland to become super interesting and relevant to them.

DM Notes - a defense and explanation of some of these ideas.

Putting most of the early adventuring on an island helps limit the initial creation scope; there's the coastal town or city to create as a home base, some indigenous settlements on the island, and then the wilds and dungeons themselves.

Another reason for starting with the D&D style play up front - exploration, puzzle solving, crawling ruins, fighting monsters, and so on - allows me to ease in the 'feudal Japan' cultural stuff, which helps limit info dumps and gives players time to adjust to the culture - including the DM!  Feudal Japan is like an alien planet to a western gamer, and this type of campaign risks becoming a "sword & planet" game because the setting is so removed from our regular experience… too much, 'No no no, your character wouldn't do that in this culture...', so introducing the cultural details over an extended period makes a lot of sense to me.  Heck, that reminds me - I sat in on a history seminar at Gencon that discussed these issues quite a bit, and I took a lot of notes - it warrants a post.

The politics and clans of the main islands of the country will be loosely adapted from historical sources.  By the time characters are in the mid-levels, they have reputations and are able to do the things that distinguish the Japan-inspired setting - courtly intrigue, battlefield command, duels of honor, service to a powerful lord.  Plus all the things you expect in a samurai-themed game that you see in the movies… iaijutsu showdowns, one-against-many, flashing katanas, the struggle between duty and obligation and choosing sides.

Readers here have been super supportive and helpful with these brainstorming sessions - it's much appreciated!  If I could be so bold to ask, where is a good location for "Spirit Island" and what might make a good departure port for characters wishing to sail there?  I had considered making it the main section of Hokkaido island, or something further north in the chain.  I'm sure ideas will lend themselves to me as I get more period reading under my belt.  While Hokkaido or one of the northern islands seems to fit the bill as remote, mountainous, forested, misty, and populated with potentially hostile indigenous people, there's an appeal to placing the island a bit closer to the political action, too.

It may be a few weeks before I have anything next; I'm reading Sengoku and Bushido, as well as the Turnbull book, and starting to watch Moribito (really great so far!)  I can see that I should track down a book of folklore or fairy tales that has ghost stories and tales of spirits so I can develop a sizeable alternative bestiary for the island.  I'll keep making notes and let these ideas simmer and percolate in the back of my head; many of my best ideas come after I set things down and return to them.  This is a great project for whenever I get writer's block or burnout on the Black City.

What do you think of 'Secrets of Spirit Island' as the name of the campaign?




*The picture is an example of a misty Shinto shrine on a mountain top, the kinds I envision hidden away all over Spirit Island.  The owner retains all copyrights in the picture.

Arthur and the Samurai

I've been starting to jot notes about the future Oriental Adventures setting.  I mentioned previously I wanted to mash up elements of Arthurian myth with samurai cinema.  I'm thinking the setting will be during the 'Warring States' period, when powerful families and clans vie to unite the country.  That seems to be a time that would allow mid-level adventurers to follow the 'adventurer, conqueror, king' path to gain and expand their own holdings, and it should be straightforward to get ideas from history and other RPGs.  Meanwhile, a commenter on one of the other posts (eldersprig) suggested an island as the ideal place for adventures, and I'm warming to the idea.  The main islands are rife with "mundane" politics, warfare, and strife, and the mist-shrouded island(s) off the shore is where the walls between the real world and the spirit world are thin, and monsters and ghosts roam the night.

So why would I incorporate Arthurian myth with the samurai?  Some of the central themes in Arthur, such as the ownership of Excalibur and the image of the questing knight, port very well into a samurai age constantly on the verge of civil war.  "Shogun as military dictator" sounds pejorative, but let's say the previous position was ordained, and the grant of the sword of legend symbolized the acquiescence of the heavenly world.  The death of the last shogun and the long years of civil war that have followed place the land in chaotic, violent conditions similar to pre-Arthurian England. Sentimentalists continue the quest for the legendary sword that was lost, believing that whatever shugo or daimyo proves their worth by finding the sword, will be able to unite the country.  Pragmatists continue to field their armies and maneuver politically to gain power directly.

Doomed love triangles, ala Lancelot and Guinevere or Tristan and Isolde, port equally well.  It's not a major change to flip the axes of virtue and sin from the chivalric tales to reflect reputation and shame and oaths of loyalty challenged by love.  A character like the Fisher King also ports well, the story highlighting the problem of proper behavior versus wisdom in a hidebound society.  Figures like the Cornwall sisters (Morgan Le Fay and Morgause), powerful faeries and enchantresses, have their roles replaced by powerful but fickle spirit beings in this setting, tricksters that lead questing warriors astray.  Avalon and Faerie are replaced by the spirit world and the resident Kami.

I'm starting to like the sound of an island for other reasons; it lends itself to a 'West Marches' style campaign, where the deeper one travels on the island (or the higher one climbs the island's slopes) the more dangerous the encounters.  The strong demarcation between the mundane world and the Otherworld of the island, is aesthetically pleasing.  There appear to be many games and history books that have covered feudal Japan, making the job of adapting it for campaign use (hopefully) straightforward.  I've started reading Turnbull's Warriors of Medieval Japan, and FGU's game Bushido, to start building a knowledge base.

Here's another question for readers familiar with genres of Japanese fantasy and horror:  What are good inspirations for depictions of the mist-shrouded island and the Spirit World?  I plead near total ignorance; my exposure to Japanese Kami comes from Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke or Howell's Moving Castle, and their blends of trippy spirits and general weirdness; from The Last Airbender (the cool animated show, not the awful M Night movie), with its frequent interludes where the avatar encounters the spirit world, and deals with horrible beasties like Koh the Face-Stealer.  Any suggestions on film, shows, anime, games, comics, etc, that would help populate the island with spirit creatures or provide inspiration for the Otherworld would be appreciated - thanks!  I'm hoping to track down a good book on folklore, weird tales like Kaidan, and learning more about J-horror themes.

Although I don't see how I can go wrong if I cover it with mist-shrouded shrines, ruined Japanese castles, gigantic trees, rival samurai questing for the last shogun's sword, and the occasional creepy humongous talking centipede.

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.