I wrote Samurai Badges with Step On Up! play in mind. It is a GMless game where players take turns to propose challenges for each other’s samurai characters. The competition is at the Step On Up level with players trying to manipulate challenges and resolutions in order to convert character attribute tokens into Glory and Honour. Glory and Honour can be spent to buy achievement badges and progress the game through a time line. There’s heavy meta-game, lots of resource management crunch, and very strict narration rights. I think Samurai Badges most resembles games in the “Gimme some story” category in Ron Edward's “Gamism: Step On Up” essay.

Samurai Badges is unashamedly gamist, here's a quote from the introduction: “As you narrate the imaginary adventures of a samurai hero, the other players will suggest dangerous opponents and situations for your samurai to encounter. They’ll encourage you to risk more and more of what your samurai holds dear in pursuit of glory and honour. Your progress in the game will be determined by your own expertise. Your mastery of the rules, your ability to work with other players, and the brilliance of your own imagination will all be tested and rewarded."

Samurai Badges has many influences including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (James Wallis, out of print), Universalis, Paladin, The Questing Beast, and Legend of the Five Rings. Samurai Badges is available free for download from my site, here.

Recently my dad was good enough to run through a game with me and we had a great time. Rather than do a blow by blow account of each scene in the game, I’m going to just go through the character and clan creation and then discuss which bits came into the game. Here’s how it went.

First off we created characters.
My dad’s:
Tenko
Soul attributes: Poet, believes in individual freedom, a writing set given to him by his now dead sister.
Kith & Kin attributes: His father, his orphaned neice, the Imperial Chancellor.
Empire attributes: The Imperial rising sun flag, the Tiger Clan, the river Shanjo.

My character:
Hanko Hattori
Soul attributes: The samurai code, a sword lined with silver, he’s a painter, his favourite purple kimono.
Kith & Kin attributes: His yari (spear) sensei named Miko, his horse, a tea master named Hoshi.
Empire attributes: Mount Fuji, the Imperial Throne, the Falcon Clan, the Red Lotus Organisation.

Characters in play.
Its really only in Distract actions that the specific attributes come into play but we depended on them a lot in Attack actions as well. I think the game requires so much immediate imagination that its useful to have a list of ideas in the form of attributes right in front of you. That goes for your opponent too, as challenging player I had great fun putting Tenko’s niece in constant danger in a sequence of scenes, starting uprisings in the Tiger Clan, and leading Tenko to a show down at the river Shanjo. I think the attributes provide pre-made colour for the game, a resource that both players can draw upon. We know its safe to involve these things because we’ve already established their existence, and the manner in which we want them used, before the game begins. Also there were some nice cross overs, my character Hanko was also drawn to the river Shanjo and I had Tenko become a target of the Red Lotus Organisation.

In Distract actions the “innocent” attributes worked great. Tenko’s little niece and Henko’s horse were constant in trouble. Having our own clans as Empire attributes was great, we each enjoyed making the other’s character choose between loyalty to Japan and loyalty to the clan. We had all kinds of fun with the Distract dillemas – pose them right and they were really vexing problems which demanded some real ingenuity to turn around and take advantage of. Does this mean that Attack actions are too “lite”? Actually I think the simplicity of Attack actions is probably needed, you need to get some easy back and forth play going until an opportunity for a great Distract action opens up in front of you.

Next we created our clans.
My dad made the Tiger Clan, with Ju Jitsu as its most glorious deed, compassion as its most honourable virtue, torture as its most inglorious deed, and fear as its most dishonourable virtue.

I made the Falcon Clan, with tea ceremony as its most glorious deed, and polite courtesy its most honourable virtue. Sabotage is its most inglorious deed and desire its most dishonourable virtue.

Clans in play
We both had fun winning our own clans’ badges and trying for each others’ as well. Unfortunately lots of wooliness in my rules about what exactly the inglorious deeds and dishonourable virtues are for meant they didn’t come into play. The identity and rivalry of the two clans evolved naturally through play.

Time lines
For our time lines we decided to have 8 events and both left 6 of them blank. My dad had “A plague sweeps through Japan, 10 percent of the population die; 25 percent are contaminated and have to be isolated by setting up plague towns” in box 4, and in box 7 he had “A change in government sees a redistribution of wealth. Most wealthy people lose forty percent of their assets. Riots and looting follow.”

I had “The prophecies of Hoki are discovered in a forgotten chamber in the Imperial Library. They predict that the Empire will be destroyed in flames” in box 3 and in box 6 I had “Mount Kuma, a dormant volcano, erupts! Thousands are slain and the tremors are felt right across Japan.

Time lines in play
I was ahead for most of the game so while both of my dad’s time line events came up, only one of mine appeared. These were really exciting, they injected so much life into the game. It was tense listening to the other player describe the latest event to hit the Empire, and then fun as you considered how this would affect all the characters and setting that had developed through play. Like the attributes, they provided imaginative material that we could grab hold of and use to build more Attack and Distract actions that seemed “grounded” in the reality of the characters and setting. Also it provided great atmosphere – you really felt like the empire was disintegrating and it wouldn’t be long before the end came.

Finally we made the ancient oaths for our clans.
My dad’s was “I shall never be found performing torture on another and I shall never display fear. If I break this oath then the skills of Ju Jitsu shall disappear from the land, and the hearts of all samurai will be hardened.”

Mine was “I shall never be found performing sabotage and I shall never display desire. If I break this oath then the secrets of the tea ceremony will be forgotten and no samurai will bow to another.”

Oaths in play
The oaths were an easy way “into” our clans and characters at the start, but because I couldn’t remember (or understand from my own rules) what to do with inglorious deeds and dishonourable virtues, neither of our oaths were activated.

Summary
All in all we had a wonderful time, there’s real fun in hounding the other player, and genuine delight when the other player twists the situation around with an unexpected comeback. There was much more to our game than what I’ve described here, for instance we had a couple of duels and tests, the end-game where our characters recount the histories in their time-lines was hilarious, and the Samurai Verdicts part was great too. There's still more to do though, play highlighed many aspects of the game that need to be reworked and passages in the rule book that need clarified.

Sounds cool Tony, but could you please share a bit more of the actual play events? It seems your write-up mainly entails the prep and character creation, apart from a few comments. How about detailing a little bit more of how you challenged your dad with his character's niece stirring up trouble?

TTFN,

Yokiboy

Hey Tony,

Sounds like a fun time. Like Yokiboy I'd like a little more play detail, and I'm especially curious to know where you had trouble. You mention that play highlited some areas that need some cleaning up, what were they?

Thanks,

-Tim

Tim Alexander wrote: Hey Tony,

Sounds like a fun time. Like Yokiboy I'd like a little more play detail, and I'm especially curious to know where you had trouble. You mention that play highlited some areas that need some cleaning up, what were they?

Thanks,

-Tim

Yokiboy wrote: Sounds cool Tony, but could you please share a bit more of the actual play events? It seems your write-up mainly entails the prep and character creation, apart from a few comments. How about detailing a little bit more of how you challenged your dad with his character's niece stirring up trouble?

TTFN,

Yokiboy

Tony Irwin wrote: Of course every time the other's samurai made appalling decisions for the sake of Glory and Honour, we would write up the event in our History of the Empire time-lines. During end game you have to read out your History in a presentation to the chancellor and that's when I got to hear all over again about how callously my despicable samurai let his horse die and shamefully betrayed his own clan for the Red Lotus organisation and then even betrayed the Red Lotus organisation for the sake of his own fame. It was a hoot.

Yokiboy wrote: Have you updated the PDF on your web site, with the findings from your own play test?

TTFN,

Yokiboy