Kiai!
Last week, Kiai! joined The Ways Of… in my DriveThruRPG store. Kiai! details a 20-level samurai class for 5E D&D, complete with samurai weapons, samurai armor, three samurai archetypes, and a dozen new spells.
In other similarly themed news, I’ve outlined the Bushi, Wu Jen, Shugenja, Sohei, and Yakuza as archetypes for core classes, but I’ve not made much progress on that document…so far. In a fit of boredom, I updated the dragonborn to fit an Oriental Adventures milieu, and I have vague plans for updating or creating other races, perhaps to include a plethora of humanoid animals inspired by the Japanese zodiac.
Our videoconference foray into The Lost City with four 3rd-level monks, each one using a different archetype from The Ways Of…, went well last week, but last night’s session got canceled due to me not feeling well. We’ll try again this coming Monday, and that session will likely see the inclusion of a fifth player running a samurai. It’ll be easy enough to work the new PC in by saying he was part of the original caravan that got caught in the sandstorm, with the samurai arriving at the lost city ahead of the others and eventually being taken in by the Warrior Maidens.
In other news, I’ve long enjoyed the OpenD6 Gaming System, and I adore the Mini Six version put about by AntiPaladin Games. You can get the Mini Six PDF for free, and, for at least the next week or so, you can get the print-on-demand softcover and PDF for less than $3 US.
Mini Six is less a complete RPG than it is an RPG toolkit. The system is easy to grok, and its major elements are modular, which means they can be used as-is, modified, or even ignored, depending on what sort of gaming experience you’re looking for. By way of example, Mini Six characters have four attributes: Might, Agility, Wit, and Charm. Do you want to run a high-magic game where every character is a wizard? Well, you can add Wizardry as an attribute. Going science fiction? You might want to include Tech as an attribute. Want to go minimalist? Reduce the attributes to two: Physical and Mental. Off a bizarre tangent and inspired by Freudian fever dreams? Id, Ego, and Superego might work as attributes.
In my spare time (which I have too much of this summer), I’ve started putting together a Mini Six player’s guide inspired by unequal parts of Mini Six, basic D&D, and RuneQuest. For this untitled project, I’ve expanded the attributes to the classic six from D&D and included themed perks related to class, race, and background. With class and race abilities turned into perks, it is possible to simulate a multi-classed character or a character with a multi-racial family tree.
(Nota Bene: Those last several links are affiliate links. If you click and buy, I get a few copper pieces.)
