[Katanapunk] Playtesting the Punk - Edo Calling (long)

[Malechi]

Well last week we made characters and constructed the Martial School that the characters belonged to using the system we've devised.  Comments from the playtesters were encouraging regarding both elements, especially the School Construction rules.  

An overview of School Construction:
As a central element of the Katanapunk game I thought having some kind of system behind constructing the school would be a good idea.  Taking a leaf or two from InSpectres (cheers Jared) we came up with a nice abstract system that helps determine the school's general makeup, its success to date, its honour, how many techniques etc.  Firstly though the school must have a philosophy.  I left this pretty much up to the players to come up with, giving them some rough verbal pointers taken from the names of some actual traditional Japanese martial arts schools from the era.  They struggled with this section a little and it took the longest amount of time to get going of all the steps including character generation.  In the end they took a Japanese proverb as their cue, "If you fall down seven times, get up eight" or something like that along with an animal motif, the Red Fox.  The school's name eventually came out of this, The Autumnal Fox School or Shu no Kitsune Ryu.  

Next they had to come up with the school's attributes.  As I said I wanted this section to be quite abstract but to have an impact on the game in a way that worked within the TROS framework.  So we came up with the Ryu Attributes (RA's).  Modelled after the Seven Lucky Gods, each God represents a certain aspect of the school.  The players must assign 10 points amongst all seven of these attributes(higher "powered" games could assign more and the GM certainly can use more to construct NPC schools):
- Daikokuten (Fortune): this aspect determines the monetary fortune of the school during the game and at the beginning of play the size and scope of their training facilities.  0 = no hall and destitute school, 5 = Two storey dojo, gardens, ample training equipment and bugger all money.
- Fukurokuju (Destiny): this aspect determines the mystic entanglements of the school, which transfers over to any noteable ancestors the school might have and more directly, the amount of Okuden or "Secret Teachings" the school has.  
- Bishamonten (Dignity): this determines the overal honour of the school has had to date and fits in with the switched SA of Conscience -> Face/Honour that we've instigated.  This switch seems to fit well and the players have taken to it quite well.. more later
- Ebisu (Success): this counts towards the raw victories the school may have had traditionally and in the recent past and in turn the fame/infamy of the school and how far across Edo it goes.  At the highest level Kabuki plays and manga are written in your school's honour.  
- Benzaiten (Art): This RA determines the amount of techniques the school teaches. We wanted a way to determine the range of techniques the school could offer up and it seems to work.  The actual numerical values for each Proficiency and Skill that the school offers needs a bit of work but the basics seem to work nicely.  Techniques come under three headings: Major (Swords, knives, unarmed, polearms etc), Specialist (Chains, other funky stuff), and Classical (Calligraphy, Poetry, Painting etc).  THe system allows you to construct a wide variety of schools with different techniques and focuses.  One may be strictly about Swords, while another may be more artful and teach painting and poetry or even Neo-Confucianism as well.  
- Hotei (Happiness): this RA determines the amount of Bureaucratic, Underworld or Floating world(Geisha, Kabuki etc) connections the School has on a whole.  Benefits come under the titles, "Contacts, Kickbacks and Influence".
- Jurojin (Wisdom): this ties in with the new derived Attribute, Zanshin.  Zanshin was constructed to address the distinct lack of armour which was making playtests quick, and deadly, perhaps too deadly for a longer term game.  The attribute (Zanshin) describes a kind of spiritual and situational awareness and can be used as a pool of dice to power defensive techniques or Iai-battles.  The Wisdom of the school determines the amount of Zanshin that refreshes per day via their special Techniques which may run the gamut of Zen Meditation, Koan writing/pondering, special martial Techniques etc.. The players are encouraged to make up their techniques which must match to the school philosophy.

So They constructed their "Autumnal Fox" school.  It turns out they wanted a school that was new to Edo and that taught some of the shadier martial aspects.  

Fortune:0 - New to Edo the school has no resources, in fact only two eminent students and an initiate are sent to set up the school, a kind of beach-head into Edo's Martial Arts world.  
Destiny:2 - The school has two secret teachings (not currently known by the students in the game) and may have some ancestors of note who could pop up later in the game
Dignity:1 - Their school relies less on the traditional aspects of Honour and Face to get their job done.  The idea I got from their discussions were that they wanted a kind of sneaky, assassin school.  We spoke about the world of Ninja's and whatnot and all agreed that the Katanapunk world was one of the low and gritty, the struggling 900,000 or so inhabitants who didn't belong in the upper echelons of society.  The general view of this world from below was one of fear and anger.  Ninja's were seen as bogeymen or myths at best. Their school then had a ring of a lower end assassin group or as one player would say "Try hard ninjas"... we spoke on this matter a fair bit
Success:1 - They're well known in their province, but only a few people in all of Edo would have heard of them...
Art: 4 - The school taught a variety of techniques Major: Kenjutsu(Sword); Specialist: Kusarigamajutsu (chain with a sickle on the end); Classical: Painting, Meditation.
Happiness:0 - The school has no connnections within the world of Katanapunk Edo.
Wisdom: 3 - They have some potent techniques for refreshing Zanshin getting back 3 points a day.  

Overall School construction was a lot of fun and ran really smoothly.  Obviously they could have just come up with the stuff off the top of the head, but it gave them some headlines to think of things and really helped flesh out the school and its philosophy.  The point allocation system needs some work I think with the actual amount of points and what they transfer across to at the beginning of play and how they work in play (more on that later) needing fine tuning.

Next: Characters...

[WiredNavi]

Interesting that the PCs deliberately set their school as low-contacts, low-prestige, low-wealth, but high mystical/destiny - a good way of subtly seeing what your players want out of the game.

When you say 'school' you seem to mean the body of techniques and masters as taught through the region and beyond, correct?  Then I would say you might want to set each school's modifiers differently but built on the same points depending on the locale.  For instance, this school is new to Edo and thus has low prestige and high zanshin there - it's from far away, they don't know anyone, but they have a lot to prove and they're determined.  Back in Osawa, where the school originated, you could drop a few points from Art, Wisdom, Destiny, etc. and put them into Fortune, Dignity, and Happiness to reflect the fact that the school is well-established there, and with their prestige and contacts in the community the masters have grown complacent.

This makes for an interesting flowing dynamic if you apply it to the NPC schools as well:  As the PC's school gains reputation and influence, it decreases theirs, but that shifts the points from the reputation and influence categories into zanshin and techniques, reflecting the NPC schools being shaken out of their complacency and redoubling their efforts.

[Malechi]

Hi there Jinx, thanks for the reply :)

The system as we tested it that night mirrored that kind of geographical difference quite well and was part of the reasoning behind the setup of their school with the low contacts etc.  Much like SAs in TROS help you tailor the game to the player's individual expectations, the School Attributes let you mould the game to the group as well.  So far playtests have been quite good and the cameraderie is quite high etc.  

The kind of flowing mechanics that you describe has already started to come into play.  The school took a nasty blow with a defeat in the opening chapter "Showdown at the Asayama Dojo"...(their already low fame/Success taking a beating at the hands of the naginata wielding grand-daughter of the Asayama Ichiden Ryu's Soke) but later managed to scrape together some grit and succeeded during the "Siege of the Honjo Teahouse" (an increase in their Success by one ...later compounded by some loss in School Honour due to some shady dealings with the Yakuza from Asakusa district) ... another mission that same night wrapped up with "Death in Yoshiwara" with some Honour gained and success also rising.  Last nights episode "The Sleeping Challenger" ended with our school defeating the Tetsumi Ryu from Yoshiwara and perhaps more success when the school gets around to posting the results of the "challenge" around town...

Or were you in fact meaning to keep the totals static and have the points move from one to another depending on their success/failure etc?

so far the titling of each "chapter" has proven quite cool and the players really react to the names as if they were chapters in a Jidai Geki novelor indeed Kurosawa/Jidai Geki/Chambara movie.

Another playtest last night and we've managed to fiddle with the numbers a little.  Now Art gives you Major Martial Arts, Specialist Martial Arts and Classical Arts.  Some of the Arts aren't actually proficiencies and actually map to sets of skills.  This worked out quite nicely with character generation.  Given that the school is constructed first, the players have a chance to construct a skill package specific to their school.  By selecting certain subsets of skills that come under headings like "Shinobijutsu" (ninja stuff) they get access to things like Sneak, Climb, B&E, Disguise etc...  Poetry might get them access to skills such as Lore, Theology, Poetry, Rhetoric etc ... these are added together to create the skill package specific to that school.  It adds a nice customisability to the game I think...

I really should post the characters... i'll get around to that later on today :)

cheers

Jase :)

[Judd]

I'm really digging the school construction and the overall setting.  Sounds like a blast.

I'm watching this thread anxiously, good luck.

Gambatte!

[Malechi]

Characters

Here's a short description of the characters that are part of the Shu no Kitsune Ryu.

Nakahisa Konishi

Karma: 1
Face: 3
Passion: 1 -  Kazumi (Geisha Nakahisa met during "Death in Yoshiwara")
Faith: 0 - Confucianism
Fate: 0 - to be murdered by a rival school

Nakahisa is a masterless samurai and master of kenjutsu and the iai. Once belonging to a lowly clan from the Kii province, his past is shrouded in mystery but this ronin acts with honour and dignity.  The most senior of the Autumnal Foxes School, Nakahisa sometimes finds his own moral compass at odds with the school's idea of honour.   His recent interludes with the geisha Kazumi has distracted him somewhat, almost causing the school's failure during "Death in Yoshiwara".  When presented with the details of another mission given to them by the Hanzaemon gang of Asakusa (their benefactors from "Death in Yoshiwara"), Nakahisa is torn between the seemingly honourless task of kidnapping a samurai's only child and his desire to free Kazumi from her life in the Yoshiwara bordellos.

Kenjio

Drive:3 -  Mastery of Arrowflight
Karma: 2
Drive: 1 - rise above station, wealth is the key!
Face: 2
Passion: 0 - loyalty to the Autumnal Fox School

Kenjio's family were artisans from the Kii province, dedicating their lives to treating the ill of his township and his father was a talented Accupuncturist, often treating the local Samurai lords.  Kenjio at first tried to enter the same profession as his father and mother but soon discovered a distaste for the banality of that life.  Kenjio found his footing however and joined the Autumnal Fox School.  His talent was discerned by the Shihanke and Kenjio was tasked with mastering the barbarian Chokuno or repeating crossbow.  His initial distaste for this weapon lead him to taking up the sword in protest but the Soke's words in his ear turned him around.  Now a diligent student of the chinese crossbow, Kenjio strives to perfect it at all costs.

Kumota

Faith: 0 - Tendai Buddhism
Karma: 1
Face: 5
Drive: 1 - Attain a dojo in Edo for the Autumn Fox School
Drive: 2 - Noone harms the young while I still live

A Journeyman of sorts, Kumota has moved through life as the bee in flight, changing directions, yet savouring its experience when it stops.  Originally sent to the local Tendai Buddhist monastery in Kii province, Kumota was found to be unsuitable as a monk, the spark of rage too close to the surface.  Leaving the monastery he found a talent in the local Sumo matches but during one celebratory night his inn caught fire and while members of the Autumn Fox School miraculously dragged his hefty frame from the fires, he was to be scarred terribly as a result.  Now a devout student of the school, Kumota is a more contained and obediant initiate student.  Secretly a softhearted friendly giant, he is resigned now for an unworthy life.  He tackles the Kusarigama training laid out before him by the Shihanke with gusto as he would an opponent in the Sumo ring.

[Judd]

Could you post a little about Karma and Face as new SA's? Can one lose face and then lose Face?

[Malechi]

Sure thing...

Conscience just didn't seem to fit in our vision of Edo of the period, or at least the Katanapunk version of it.  We substituted it for Face/Honour which while not really 100% interchangeable allow a kind of flexibility for the character to determine if his honour is dictated by the stricter samurai society concepts of honour and duty, or the grittier versions of face that exist in the lower end of the spectrum (which is of course the mainstay of KPunk).  The twin determinants of Duty and Obligation are the key points to recognise when determining if somone loses or gains face and therefore Face SA points.  As a group these interact with the School Attribute of Dignity, which in turn can effect people's perception of your own honour as a member of said group.  

To date a lot of the conflict in our game has revolved around individuals and the school's honour and therefore face coming into question.   The initial defeat in "Showdown at the Asayama Dojo" came about after a mixup where the character Nakahisa rang the challenge bell at the front of the esteemed school's dojo.  The embattled Asayama Ichiden school stood up to the challenge to maintain face, but when Nakahisa initially declined citing his mistake, they questioned his honour and the fact that protocol states that a challenge, once issued can only be resolved when a victor is determined, which of course means a loser needs to exist.  Losing, or conceding victory to the other side does not impose a loss of face but turning your back on a challenge once you issue it is not only physically, but socially dangerous.  Needless to say he stood up to this challenge to his honour and fought the battle, eventually losing.  

JK

[Malechi]

Karma is slightly different.  Originally we just wanted to rename Luck to Karma and leave it at that, however I figure if you're going to make a change... make the change!

I'm in the process of researching some solid guidelines for Karma that can equate to something besides "(un)Luckiest roll of the evening" etc...

The best one I've found so far (tell me if you've got a better version)..

for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.' A skillful event is one that is not accompanied by craving, resistance or delusions; an unskillful event is one that is accompanied by any one of those things. (Events are not skillful in themselves, but are so called only in virtue of the mental events that occur with them.)

So in a way it ties in with the buddhist teachings but not so much as to bog the game down in theological discussions on craving, resistance or delusions.  As you might see the points on "skillful vs nonskillful" could be misinterpretted so I'm trying to nail down a better definition.  In game this kind of works like Conscience, but probably less guided by any kind of Judeo-Xian ideas of right/wrong.  

JK

[WiredNavi]

Hey!  Glad to hear the game is going well.

What I meant about schools was, in short, that you might want to set the system up such that some actions can add points to a school directly (somewhat like gaining XP) while others can change the values of the school's ratings without adding (changing the XP around).  I'm not certain exactly how that should work, really.

I recently finished PCing a game under a crazy homebrew system, in which one of the interesting aspects of the system was that almost anything could be statted as a character, including ideas.  Ideas could gain CP just like anything else, and when proponents of those ideas accomplished goals that were in line with the idea's precepts, or discovered/researched things that supported the idea, the Idea gained in strength, or alternately was changed to reflect what they had discovered.

The same kind of thing might apply to schools.  I think it would be rather elegant for schools to be able to, through narrative effects, shift their points from one place to another to reflect a different focus for the school at that point in time.

[Malechi]

You're absolutely right though and thats what we were shooting for with the School Construction rules.  A Nar-ish way of "quantifying" the priorities of the school in a philosophical/spiritual/material way.  

I'll work on some ideas for how you gain or lose or indeed shift them around in play (this final point is something we hadn't considered up till you brought it up...its a good idea).

Jason K...

[greedo1379]

This looks awesome.  Is there anything else you've done related to Katanapunk?

[Malechi]

Hey there Greedo (don't worry dude.. I know you didn't shoot first..damn that Han Solo!)

anyway *ahem*

Katanapunk is coming along nicely, we've still got a lot to do but here's a list of the things we've managed to get sorted thus far:

- School Construction and Campaigning Rules (as seen above)
- Setting Specific Spiritual Attributes (Karma, Fate, Face)
- Retooled proficiency system and weapon stats for over 50 weapons
- Character generation rules that fit the setting including new skills, example concepts etc
- New rules for Iai Combat and the new Zanshin ability.
- Setting information detailing the city of Edo in the year 1792 where Katanpunk is set.  errr the draft document has about 20 suburbs detailed as well as information on the seedy underbelly of Edo, the Floating World (Superstars of the era..geisha and kabuki-actors), rival sword schools, prominent Kabukimono gangs, corrupt or famous (who can tell these days eh?)cops and the common man.  Customs and slang of the era...
- Alternative campaign possibilities for Cop Precincts, Yakuza Clans and Kabukimono Gangs (Chapter Name: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly)


Anyways, I think thats about it for now.  We're hoping to get things presentable by August, but we'll see ;) Xmas at the latest :)

Jason King
Madt3ch Games

[ascendance]

This thread drew me in because I've just started watching Samurai Champloo.  You guys have to watch it.  It is, in its purest form, what you'd expect from katanapunk.  Its about some punk individuals, who beat up other punks with their katanas.  Great stuff, set to a hip hop soundtrack.

Its set a little earlier than 1792, but still in the post-sengoku period.

[greedo1379]

Where would one find this Samurai Champloo?

[6inTruder]

This thread drew me in because I've just started watching Samurai Champloo.  You guys have to watch it.  It is, in its purest form, what you'd expect from katanapunk.  Its about some punk individuals, who beat up other punks with their katanas.  Great stuff, set to a hip hop soundtrack.

OMG!!! Thank you!!! That was SO awsome! Mugen was pullin the breakin-sword-fu!

just check the trailer... http://www.samuraichamploo.com/