[Open] Honor or Death (FGU Bushido)

[jemmus]

Honor or Death - Fantasy Games Unlimited's Bushido
We're starting a Bushido game that I intend to run as a long-term campaign. We have three players and are inviting 2-3 more. I can post every day, hoping for players who can post 2-3 times per week or more. We'll start at 1st level.

Bushido is a fairly crunchy OSR game from the 80s. Players determine characters Attributes (Strength, etc.) by spending from a number of points. Decisions are hard, because you need a character that is strong, quick, tough and smart. Naturally you can't have it all, so every point is precious as you build your fighting or spell-casting hero. Decisions are hard, and that makes character generation much fun.

Combat is detailed and quite tactical. Again, this is a crunchy OSR game, but we have a good crew of players who can guide new players with what we've learned along the way.

Character Classes
Bushi (warrior)
Budoka (martial artist)
Gakusho (priest)
Shugenja (mage)
Yakuza
Ninja

Random Birth Ranks
Samurai
Ronin
Farmer
Merchant
Untouchable

Setting: The game world is quasi-authentic to Japan's real history. It is the year 1180. Two great samurai clans vie for influence over the divine Emperor. Smaller clans watch for opportunities, or peril, arising from the struggle. But this is Nippon, not historical Japan. The world is also filled with spirits, oni, ghosts, tengu, kappa and other dread creatures. Quite a dangerous place in many ways, especially for a novice adventurer setting out to earn honor and glory.

[ffilz]

I'm one of the three already in on this.

[Enoch]

I'm not familiar with the system, but it sounds awesome, and there's a dearth of good samurai games out there. Sign me up!

[Marullus]

Count me in. Love to try it. where do we get the book?

[ffilz]

https://www.fantasygamesunlimited.net/p ... y/bushido/

or

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub ... 98/Bushido

[jemmus]

When our game forum is set up, I'll link an Excel sheet that does the character generation calculations for you. Very handy.

[spanningtree]

If you still have room I would be interested in playing as well.

[jemmus]

Great, we do have room.

[spanningtree]

Great, we do have room.

Cool! Any background info?

[jemmus]

The setting will be Heian Japan, shortly before the Genpei War. There's no shogun yet, the Emperor still rules, if in name only. But the samurai are gaining power relative to the aristocracy in Kyoto. Two powerful samurai clans (the Taira and Minamoto) control most of the provinces. The hatred between them increases by the month, week, and day. Their allied daimyo in the provinces watch the situation closely, assessing it for potential for personal peril or gain.

The great Buddhist temples around Kyoto have become very wealthy, and increasingly worldly and corrupt. "More beautiful than one of the monk's concubines" is a common saying. The temples maintain large troops of fierce sohei warrior-monks.

But those are just the games the foolish humans play among themselves. The spirits, ghosts, demons and monstrosities still fester and pollute the purity of Nippon. They delight in preying on and tormenting its human inhabitants. As they alway have, and always will.

I'm thinking about adding two variations to the Bushido rules:
-Adding sohei warrior-monks as playable PCs
-Correcting the yamabushi NPC and making it a playable PC. The rules incorrectly treat them as temple warrior-monks. (It's a common mistake, because a mistranslation of yamabushi as "mountain warrior." The actual translation is "one who prostrates oneself on the mountain." They're ascetic Shinto hermits, kind of analogous to Celtic druids. With a little modification, Bushido's Gakusho (priest) profession could be used for a yamabushi PC.

[Enoch]

Either of those seems fine to me, though my knowledge of feudal Japan is limited (though not as limited as my experience with Bushido). How would the sohei differ from budoka?

[jemmus]

A sohei is a type of armed and armored bushi. They favored using naginata. They're always portrayed as looking like the guy below, with monk's robes, a head-wrap thing and a naginata.

No need at all to be an expert on samurai Japan, of course. I'm a samurai history otaku, but I'll try not to get too carried away with that. I'm not an expert at Bushido either, but I learned some from playing in another game here on the US forums. We'll all be learning as we go along. Luckily we have one player who knows the system well, and another who's good at crunchy RPGs.

[Marullus]

Interesting, so the story you're telling includes intentional tension between the first and second estates (Samurai and Clergy) with each having their own armed forces, Bushi and Sohei respectively?

[jemmus]

Yes, right. That's historical, and around 300 years later it ended up with the samurai obliterating a famous ancient temple complex that overlooked Kyoto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mount_Hiei But in a way the samurai and clergy are allied in exploiting the commoners (the third estate). But in feudal Japan there's another estate, which is the Emperor and the hereditary aristocracy.

[Enoch]

Netflix actually has a series on samurai. I've only gotten a few episodes in, but I remember that.

[Marullus]

Cool. I will draft a sohei (i.e. Bushi with a naginata) and see how it turns out.

[jemmus]

Nice. If you want to be OOC about it, your sohei should have a Buddhist name. Sohei were ordained monks, so their birth names were replaced with Buddhist names. Here's one list of names. http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/ZenPages/ZenNames.html Completely optional, of course.

[jemmus]

By the way, most of the sohei were just hired thugs without much interest in religion. But no doubt their had to have been some who were sincere Buddhists. Might be so RP material there, either way.

[Enoch]

Sounds like you could build a Sohei fairly easily simply by taking Bushi, Naginatajutsu, and then spending a Fine Arts pick on Buddhist Theology if you wanted to be a sincere believer!

[jemmus]

Sounds like you could build a Sohei fairly easily simply by taking Bushi, Naginatajutsu, and then spending a Fine Arts pick on Buddhist Theology if you wanted to be a sincere believer!

Nice! The old images also show them with a wakizashi. So maybe Kenjutsu as well.