[TSOY] Don't Make Me Fuck You Up With My Crane Style

[Bret Gillan]

Hey guys.

I wanted a game that I could play while I listened to rap, so I tinkered with The Shadow of Yesterday (for its brilliance, tinkerability, and consistently awesome sessions it's produced at my table). I thought it would be really cool to blend Chinese and Japanese action cinema with hip-hop and street culture. The Wu-Tang Clan is looking over my shoulder, here.

It's pretty much still TSOY, but I changed the pools: Honor, Chi, and Streets (which I'm thinking of changing to Cred).

I'm also still fiddling with Secrets. I wanted to do a Do-It-Yourself splats sort of thing, where you create Secrets (I called them Legends because they're not very secret) that then apply to everyone who is in one of your splats. Each character has a Clan (based on the Daimyo they swear fealty to), a Gang (based on the crew they run with), and a Dojo (based on which martial art they practice). So if I buy the Legend of the Flying Wasp for the Gun-Fu Dojo that lets me leap great distances by firing my guns downward as I jump, everyone in that Dojo (PC or NPC) gets it too. I thought it was cool because it lets us do setting-building and get cool powers at the same time.

I'm still figuring out how I want Legends to work and interact. One of the players suggested Personal Legends too that maybe you could get for free if you get a Legendary success. Still thinking about it!

Our first game was really hot. Lil' Sho-Gun challenged the Scorpion Hobo to a duel and lost. Pop$icle and T-Rout fought Katanalicious and the E-Z Boyz in a back-street rumble that left a lot of the E-Z Boyz armless, but Pop$icle was badly wounded T-Rout ceded the turf in order to save his life.

The music for the game was provided by DJ Shadow.

I am pumped to play this again!

[xjermx]

That sounds awesome.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Sounds good to me! One minor point is that if I had communal Secrets like that, I'd make the communities themselves Secrets as well. Like this:

Secret of the martial school (name of the Dojo)
The character has been fully schooled at the named dojo. In addition to the social benefits, he may access any Secret of the school he has the prerequisites for with a successful Martial Form (Chi) check and an expenditure of one point of Chi, exactly like he had the Secret himself. The benefit lasts for a whole scene at a time, and the character may activate this Secret several times per scene.

Then I'd have any given Secret connected to the dojo require the dojo Secret as a prerequisite. The benefit here is simply that this makes characters with and without dojo ties equivalent with each other. Then if a player wanted to play a character without a comprehensive martial schooling, he'd save an Advance by not having to have that Secret. Likewise, if somebody wanted to master two schools, he could do that by paying for it. Additionally, this would give you a bit of a differentiation for characters who just know a technique and those who specialize in it; the specialist who actually learns the Secret itself no more needs the ability check and Chi expenditure to use it.

--
As for the Pools, having both Honor and Cred seems overlapping to me - Honor is very much about outside perception as well, after all. Streets already covers the street cred, when it's needed as separate from honor.

[Bret Gillan]

xjermx, thanks!

... Eero, you are a mad genius. That is exactly what I was looking for. This is going into the game immediately.

With the pools, though, really what I'm trying to represent are the three influences of the game:

Feudal Japan (Honor) - Abilities: Etiquette, Flower Arranging, Kenjutsu, Command
Chinese Wuxia and Martial Arts films (Chi) - Abilities: Kung Fu styles, Athletics, Feng Shui
Hip-hop and street culture (Cred) - Abilities: Gun fu, Graffiti, DJing, B&E