Sengoku Amahara

Yet another attempt at an RPG of some kind by Mal.

Setting

The land of Amahara is fictional medieval Japan. There are no muskets.

Eras

Ancient Era

Character Select

Put your character's name, stats, chosen arts, skills, background and all that jazz in the talk page. Background details not explicitly laid out here are generally up for negotiation. If the character pretty much fits the stipulations, it's probably fine.

• The Princess is the daughter of a local warlord of some importance. Her domain is a reasonably prosperous affair by the sea. It is small and wields limited influence, but is not considered the vassal of anybody else. She is probably educated as a Noble Lady but may also have been brought up as a warrior's daughter or various other options if she's scandalous enough.

• Retainer 1 is a samurai and a loyal retainer of the Princess. He or she must take Warrior Training as an Art slot.

• Retainer 2 may or may not be a samurai - he/she could be anything, I just haven't decided yet. Slot in flux.

• The Ninja is a ninja and will have Ninjutsu as a predetermined Art. The Ninja hails from a secret ninja clan that serves the Princess's clana and must nominally split loyalty between the two.

• Shrine Maiden is a member of a branch family of the princess's clan that manages the clan shrine. Shinto is a required Art.

Arts

An Art is a package of capabilities attached to a character. They may include (at least the starting ones) broad bonuses to rolls (exactly the same effect a Skill and stacks with them) as well as activated effects (provisionally called Techniques). This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list and suggestions can be provided with the character. The intention is that all starting characters will have two or three of these. They represent life experiences and upbringing. Unlike Skills, which only help on rolls, are cheap to buy, and basically just go up in a boring linear fashion, Arts are typically expensive, hard to come by and provide abilities you can't have simply by having a high skill number. In principle, having the relevant Stats and Skills at a decent level will allow the character to apply the Arts.

Arts progress much like a tech tree does - a given Art may branch as the sole requirement of more than one Art or may itself have multiple prerequisite Arts. In cases where they provide direct numeric bonuses to rolls, Arts never stack with each other. They do, however, stack with whatever Skill happens to be used in that roll. Other special abilities that do not directly add to roll results are unaffected. Arts are meant to be general and there will inevitably be cases that crop up where a skill is obviously directly related to an Art the player possesses but is not explicitly listed the bonus table. In those cases, the GM will just assign something appropriate to how high up the tree the Art in question is.

• Noble Lady

Noblewomen in Amahara are generally brought up to be well educated and well read as well as graceful and elegant in all ways. Diplomacy and the more ritualistic aspects of socialisation are the most critical arts, but it is also important to know how a domain works and the rudiments of self-defense.

+15 Diplomacy

+10 Administration

+5 Self-Defense (Unarmed, Tanto or Naginata)

• Warrior Training I

Warrior training represents all the fighty stuff proper samurai should learn from an early age. It provides a basic proficiency in normal Japanese weapons like katana, yari and what-have-you and a bunch of warrior related lore like the proper way to kill yourself.

+12 Combat

• Ninjutsu
• Shinto
• Art of War
• Thief

• • Bushido

System

In flux and will be changed in case a huge imbalance crops up.

Stats

You have 18 points. The maximum value is 6. Expect stat progression to be very slow: almost non-existent. Most progression will occur through Skills and Arts.

Strength - Strength is exactly what it says on the tin. It is an important stat for combat, brute force, and feats and contest of physical might. A one-shot feat of strength would be accumulating some number of successes so a high Strength lets you split that pool without risk of hurting yourself. In combat, proper fighters can use either strength or dexterity to attack.

Dexterity - Dexterity is also exactly what it says on the tin and measures speed, agility and fine tasks. It's important for combat as usual.

Presence - Charisma and part of Manipulation from WW.

Intelligence - Intelligence and part of Perception from WW.

Wits - Wits and part of Perception and part of Manipulation from WW.

Tenacity - Stamina and Willpower.

Dice System

Your stat is your Full Pool of dice which you roll as a set of d20's. You can split this Full Pool into partial pools (small p) any way you wish within a single round at no penalty. In other words if your Dexterity is 6, you can take up to 6 actions in one round of combat.

The dice system is apparently based on Cthulhutech - the result of your roll in a given pool can be:

• The highest single number if no meaningful combination is rolled.
• If more than one die turns up as the same result, they are added together, so a set of (9, 9, 9, 3) is 27.
• If at least three numbers are in a row, you add those together, so a set of (2, 2, 3, 4, 5) is 14.

The result of this roll is added to a skill. Skill is a solid number and will easily go into two figures for someone who knows what they're doing, so they're a more important determinent of peak performance - having the stat allows you to do it more consistently and more often.

If a pool (small p) turns up all 1's, that is a botch and this is bad. For the purpose of combat for example, a botch stops a flurry and instantly triggers an opening for a counterattack. This is why you don't typically want to split dice all the way, since this represents rushing things, overstretching yourself, or doing something you have no talent for. Botches happen 5% of the time obviously so it will happen eventually if you keep rolling multiple single d20's. If your Full Pool happens to be a single die, the botch may be more forgiving - there's a chance you'll do something amusingly dojikko instead.

Extra Actions beyond the first are resolved after everyone else in the round has gone.