A game about trust, betrayal and limits of pagecount in indie games.

The game is described as a self-contained adventure. The basic premise is that the players are a bunch of ronin living in Edo period, who were hired by the local authorities to kill the mysterious O-Yanma, the Mountain Witch living on top of Mt Fuji and terrorizing the surrounding lands.

Those of you who have any experience playing TRPGs probably recognize this scenario from one of your own games. The details would be different, perhaps you were a bunch of ragtag adventurers instead of ronin, the Witch might have been a necromancer or a goblin king instead, but the basic story of a mercenary group hired to get rid of a bad guy in a castle is something nearly every gaming group went through at least once. What sets this game apart is mechanics, turning what is normally a pretty standard and sometimes dull gaming experience into something great.

The game uses a pretty simple conflict resolution system: the conflict is defined as a single active confrontation where the character must overcome resistance from enemies or inanimate objects presenting some active danger (a floor falling apart, an icy cliff, etc.), be it an argument, a battle, an attempt to sneak past guards or whatever.
At the beginning of the conflict the two participants proclaim the stakes: what they want to achieve in victory and how they go about it, in broad strokes (“I want to kill that monster,” “I want to break the lock and enter the storehouse,” “I want to make character X admit he’s wrong,” etc.). After the stakes are established, each participant rolls a six-sided dice. Whoever rolled highest wins. The difference between the results determines the degree of success: tie, partial success, mixed success, regular success, critical success and double success. Instead of a tie, players (but not the GM) can claim mutual strike, allowing them to get any degree of success they desire but also granting the same degree to the opponent.

Conflicts with more than two characters participating are resolved by dividing the participants into two groups. A dice is rolled for each character as usual, a dice with the highest result is picked out for each group, and the conflict is then resolved as usual, with the owner of the dice being considered the winner.

The winner of the conflict normally gets to narrate the events of the confrontation, defining exactly what happened. While they have to stick with the proclaimed stakes*, the exact events are completely under their control. For example, they may decide that even though their character wanted to defeat a monster and they’ve won, the character actually fell embarrassingly on the back while the monster was killed by a falling pillar or something. Degrees of success above regular also allow the winner to define some extra aspect of the game, like claiming that not only did they sneak past the guards, they also stumbled upon a secret passage.

The narrative rights for the winners give players a great power to directly influence the direction of the game and define the game world, but it’s not the only source. I’ll talk about it a bit later.

*That is, if they declared they want to sneak past the guards, they can’t suddenly decide to attack them instead, and if the GM said guards would notice them in case of failure and they’ve got a mixed success, they have to incorporate guards’ stake into it somehow, like the guards hearing something but being unsure of the source of the noise.

Sometimes it may be hard to come up with appropriate outcomes for certain degrees of success, mostly mutual strikes and mixed successes with directly opposed stakes (“I want to cross the bridge,” “I want to stop her.”). That’s where the damage comes in. Damage is basically a commutative -1 penalty on all conflict rolls (which can bring the results into negative numbers) expressed in-game as wounds, shaken psyche, tactical disadvantage for minor damage, etc. Anything that negatively affects the character can be described as damage.

Dealing and receiving damage is not automatic: during the narration, you need to actively state the damage was done. That is not always desirable since damage is mostly mechanical in nature, while normal success is purely narrative, and as such often has more effect on the game world. For example, breaking someone’s leg as regular success would result in them losing the ability to walk, any attempt to do so would be met with a veto by the GM until they find some kind of solution. Breaking a leg as damage would result in a penalty on all rolls, but would not technically restrict actions in any way (though the players would still be expected to role-play pain and difficulties with movement).

As such, damage can be rather abstract and steps should be made to describe it as something generally hindering character’s actions, but not preventing them outright. Likewise, normal narrative outcomes should be focused on specific effects that would affect the character in certain ways rather than being, well, damaging as a whole.

Still, it’s a useful tool to resolve conflicting stakes. The bridge example can be resolved as the character crossing the bridge but losing her footing avoiding the opponent, making her next conflict harder.

Damage goes away with time (depending on severity of damage, determined by the degree of success that was turned into damage) and there are no ways to heal it unless the damage was conditional. Conditional damage is a special type of damage that persist until the condition defined by whoever narrated it is met. Conditional damage can’t be dealt to PCs unless they have a reasonable access to required treatment. For example, a poison can be conditional damage. It would affect a PC until the PC takes an antidote. It can be used if another character is a healer carrying antidotes around, or if the antidote can be found in the Witch’s laboratory, which the PC now has to visit. As you can see, conditional damage is used to create plot hooks and promote character interaction.

The amount of damage a character can take is limited by Take Out effect. There are no hit points to reduce to zero, but if the enemy gets a double success against a PC, the PC is taken out (for enemies, the necessary degree of success is typically lower). Since damage can reduce the roll results to negative number, enough damage would guarantee that any conflict can result in the character being taken out. When a character is taken out, they are either incapacitated (from which they can recover with time) or dead (from which there is no remedy). While it does take the characters out of the game, their players still have means of participation.

Take Out is the only way to permanently remove a character from the game. While you can drop a character from a cliff with just a regular success, if you didn’t take them out, they either are going to survive definitely (if we are talking about PCs) or may survive if the GM wants to use them (for NPCs).

For the most part, the resolution system works fine. It may seem a bit complicated described here, but in play it’s pretty intuitive: a dice is rolled for each character, whoever rolls the
highest wins, whoever controls the winning character gets to narrate the conflict. There is no explicit way to resolve conflicts with more than two sides, but they are relatively rare and it’s not too hard to resolve them anyway.

However, what truly sets the system apart from other games with conflict resolution mechanics is Trust Points. As the name implies, they measure trust between the characters. Initial Trust Points depend on characters’ Japanese zodiac signs (most start with 2 points, aligned signs get 3, enemy signs get zero). Over the course of the game players can slowly increase the level of trust their characters feel for each other or quickly drop it. Trust doesn’t need to be mutual: character A can give character B 3 Trust Points, indicating close relationship, while character B can give character A zero, indicating trust flowing only one way.

Aside from measuring trust between characters and serving as guidelines for how players should role-play their relationships, Trust Points have mechanical effects. Specifically, spending Trust Points allows players to aid other players in conflict, buy narrative rights and betray.

Aiding changes the formula for group conflict: instead of picking the highest result out of available, the dice of aiding player is added to the aided one. As you may guess, that has a profound effect on the game. Two characters working together can get a result as high as 12, while the GM can never exceed 6, no matter what. Two players are very likely to win conflicts, and even if they lose it would be to a lesser degree. Three players working together are almost guaranteed to win, and four are just a killing machine capable of slaying any number of enemies in one strike and achieving pretty much any goal. Negative (due to damage) results of aiding rolls are also ignored, making it a good way to help players with damage to survive the adventure.

Of course, that comes at a price. While Trust Points can be used to help other players, it’s not their only use.

Buying narrative rights allows the buyer to narrate another player’s success or failure (since the rights can be bought from the GM as well, who typically narrates failures). It’s a powerful tool, since the buyer would have power over what exactly happened to the PC in question and how they behaved. Did they succeed by skill, luck or dirty trick? Did they find a secret passage or stumbled upon another guard? Were they confident or arrogant? All of that is defined by the buyer in the context of the conflict. And, of course, the buyer also can define whether any damage was done, or if the results were purely narrative.

Finally, betrayal. When a PC acts directly against another PC, they may spend Trust Points to add their number to their roll. With enough Trust Points, it all but guarantees the success of the betrayer. It should be noted, though, that betrayal isn’t always literal. An argument or a deceit for the greater good (like convincing a particularly stubborn character bent on going into a sure trap that you know a better way) can benefit from Trust Points just the same. Basically, such use of Trust Points simply represents influence PCs have over each other.

Players of the dead and incapacitated characters can still spend their Trust Points. In fact, they have more freedom to do so as their characters don’t need to actively participate in relevant conflicts to aid or betray the relevant character. In game it’s represented by memories of the taken out characters encouraging or haunting other PCs, or sometimes by karmic laws taking hold, or by any other appropriate means.

As you can see, trust is a double-edged sword. Players working together can overcome any obstacle, but that requires giving other players a measure of control over your character, which they can use against you. Still, the character have shared goal, aiding provides great benefits, so you may expect there to be a great risk of characters unconditionally trusting each other, working together against the Witch and breezing through the game.

While sometimes it can be problematic, especially among players who are used to PCs always sticking together, there is a mechanism to increase the tension within the group: Dark Fates.

Each character is bestowed by one out of six Dark Fates (Desperately in Love, Past Allegiance, Revenge, True Motives, Unholy Pact and Worst Fear) representing some kind of dramatic or tragic event in the past of the character that is going to haunt them through the game.

The fates are designed to create conflicts within the group and provoke characters to question their mission and general course of action. Unholy Pact, for example, means that the character has made a deal with the Witch which will be fulfilled as long as the character sticks to their end of bargain. Quite obviously, the character would be expected to, at some point, betray the group and fulfill obligations to the Witch, going against comrades.

Some fates are less direct than that. Desperately in Love means the character would do anything for a beloved person, which, most likely, would be used by the Witch in some fashion, be it through illusions, capturing the beloved person or something else.

Whatever the fate is, it’s its purpose to serve as a source of conflict and tension, giving the characters reasons to mistrust each other heavy enough to possibly outweigh the benefits of working together.

Fates are kept secret at first from both other players and the GM. It’s the duty of each player to develop and reveal them. To do so, they are granted narrative power to at any time introduce and define elements related to their fate (though once their purpose is evident, the GM takes hold of them).

For example, let’s say my Dark Fate is True Motives. That means I’m not here to kill the Witch. Rather, my goal (defined by myself) is to become the new Witch, and in order to do so I should steal his name from a scroll in the heart of his castle. I decide that this mission is a culmination of my plan, and I’ve made some preparations before, like studying the castle’s layout and conspiring with a few of witch’s servants.

So when our group comes to the entrance to the Witch’s castle, I make a sign to the guard, and he lets us through, giving me some information about guards’ patrol routes and such. The GM may then decide that I’ve made it too easy, so the Witch knows about my arrival and guard’s betrayal. The guard was tortured back into loyalty, and we are actually led into a trap. We lose and are thrown into dungeons, at which point the player whose Dark Fate is Desperately in Love proclaims that we are visited by a ghost of his beloved, who was slain and brought back in a mockery of life by the Witch, but retains enough of a former self to help us out.

Then another player with Worst Fear as the Dark Fate says that narrow corridors of prison dungeons led us into a dark empty labyrinth, in which we are instantly separated, which is indeed her worst fear.

And so on.

As you can see, Dark Fates provide the players with a very broad power over the game world, intruding upon the traditional domain of the GM. As such, it’s recommended that the GM should take a passive role. Framing the scenes instead of defining them in detail. For example, should PCs stumble upon a corpse in the snow, it’s preferable for the GM to not describe the corpse but ask one of the players (either specific one, should there be players who didn’t develop their fates much, or whoever is willing) to do that. Who was the corpse? What can be found on it? What hints does it hide? Players can answer that, hinting at their fates and revealing a bit about their characters.

Same goes for many other game elements, sometimes even including the Witch.

That power is both a blessing and a curse. It allows players to have a direct input to the content of the game, creating issues and conflicts they want to explore, defining the game world, etc. However, for that to work you need proactive players who know exactly what they want from the game. Freedom can be terrifying, and it is very possible some players wouldn’t have a first clue what to do with their power and what elements would be interesting for the whole group to explore. Some experience as GMs is advised for players who want to try this game.

Inexperienced players are also likely to use their fates to make things easier for their characters rather than to advance the story and may try to avoid rising the tension within the group. The GM should watch out for that.

And on that note, the game really requires players capable of handling intense inter-party conflict, which is really not for everyone. The game is built with the assumption that the characters have reasons to turn on each other, and for some group the conflict can easily bleed into real life.

What else to say about the system? Each character has three abilities. They don’t have any mechanical effect, they just allow characters to do stuff they normally wouldn’t be able to do, like cast a spell, heal wounds (only narrative or conditional, as mentioned previously), shoot enemies from a distance (abilities can be equipment, like bow, as long as they have some special effect rather than being just flavor which can be declared freely), climb polished walls and such. The game assumes your character was raised as a samurai, with all the skills it entails, so abilities must go beyond them.

There is also duel mechanic reserved for all-in final confrontations. Typically a classic samurai duel to the death, with two characters facing each other with swords drawn, but a particularly dramatic argument or a race can be modeled as a duel as well.

Duel is always between two participants only. Each of them rolls a dice in secret. Afterwards, either of them can charge, revealing the dice and forcing the opponent to do the same, at which point the conflict is resolved as normal. If neither charges, second dice are rolled, to be added to first ones. Again there is an opportunity to charge. If neither opponent is willing, third dice are rolled, and both charge. So, at its peak, a duel is like three characters aiding each other facing against three other characters doing the same. That often results in dramatic differences in results, leading to easy double successes.

During a duel no Trust Points can be spent. The only exception are the taken out characters.

It’s a neat way to heighten dramatic tension for climatic confrontations.

Now, to the setting. As you have probably guessed, the game takes place in mythical Japan, and, honestly, that’s probably the weakest part of the game. Not because the setting is bad, mythical Japan is a rich and colorful place worth exploring. It’s simply that the pagecount limits really show here. The author tries to convey the essence of the setting, and his enthusiasm for the subject shows. There is talk about the symbolism of ronin figure (a servant without a master, a drifter without any anchors in life), about the essence of Japanese folklore and how it all ties into the themes of the game, but there is simply not enough space.

A good example of it would be the section on Japanese castles. The game assumes that the majority of time would be spent inside the Witch’s castle, so it makes sense to tell the GM how Japanese castles are structured, and what creating one would entail. But the section doesn’t have many illustration and lacks any detailed blueprints, and it’s relatively brief, so after reading it I have only a vague idea of how Japanese castles look and what’s inside of them.

Same, to a lesser or greater extent, applies to other aspects of the setting as well.

The author’s enthusiasm is also not always good as it causes him to go on tangents a few times. For example, there is a section on female ronin. It starts by saying that while the game assumes male PCs (not a good start), female ronin fit pretty well into the theme of ostracized warriors who’ve lost their place in life. Start aside, it’s an intriguing statement, and I want to read more about it. But then it goes on describing the traditional role of samurai women, some semi-historical examples of famous Japanese women warriors*, then it goes on to describe the difference between male and female fighting styles and preferred weapons. There is also a blurb about the differences between male and female suicide rituals.

All of that is interesting, but, you know, I kinda wanted to read about incorporating female ronin into the game. How were they perceived by the society? Was it as common for them to be mercenaries as for male ronin? What unique conflicts would they face? How the themes of the game can be reinforced through them? The game is silent on these points.

*Mentioning that they probably didn’t exist and were just folklore, which is kinda irrelevant, given that the setting clearly has plenty of fantastic elements already.

So, I would say that for someone not familiar with the material from outside sources, going by the book alone would be difficult when it comes to handling the setting.

For someone not knowledgeable in Japanese history and folklore but still interested in the game, I would probably recommend to set it in some low-magic European or fantasy setting. The basic premise translates well enough, the only change that’s really needed on mechanical level is replacement for zodiac signs. Something would be lost by replacing ronin with ordinary mercenaries, but, eh, shady characters with tragic pasts and dark futures can be found in any society.

Finally, the game provides advice on how to run it: structure of the story, issues to look out for, tips for effective GMing, etc. The advice is good, though I’m not sure it would be very helpful for beginners. Pretty sure it doesn’t even touch upon a potential problems of players using their fates to help their characters with introductions of benevolent NPCs or sudden useful magic items and such. Still, it’s worth a read and can be applied to other games as well.

The game also likes to reference other sources of gaming wisdom, Ron Edwards, and sure, he’s a great developer, but I would prefer the game to be more self-contained. It’s not anything big, but a few advises are clearly summarized and given a reference point rather than explained in full. Then again, with the pagecount limits, it’s not really surprising.

The text also has quite a few grammatical errors, which I found irritating, though not to the point of real frustration. I don’t know, maybe it’s just my version.

Overall, I found the game to be rather demanding of its players, but worth checking out if you feel it’s for you. The system is certainly put well together and has plenty of cool mechanics making for a unique experience.