JP tabletop RPG Hunter's Moon n Shinobigami

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OgreBattle
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JP tabletop RPG Hunter's Moon n Shinobigami

Post by OgreBattle »

Been reading about Japanese tabletop RPG's on various blogs, one of the things that gets mentioned is Japanese groups tend to meet less often, like once a month, and games are focused more on one-shot so there's an emphasis on quick character generation but not much on character growth over multiple sessions.

Here's a breakdown of how Hunter's Moon works.


Character Creation
You start with character motivation that gives a general motive of why your PC is hunting monsters. An 'avenger' lost something precious to a monster and is out for revenge, a thrill seeker just wants to test himself and get the adrenaline flowing, a magician belongs to an order with a duty to hunt monsters, and so on. You determine if your character 'hates' or 'fears' the monster, hate means when your hitpoints are low your attack power rises, while fear means when your hitpoints are low your defense rises.

You then pick from a list of skills that you're good at. Different attack powers are tied to skills, and you can have skills disabled from damage. This also applies to monsters.

The game has set phases called "Sundown", "Night", and "Sunrise", so it represents one night of hunting for one gameplay session. Sundown, Night and Sunrise are broken down into further phases of...


Pursuit ("Legwork"):
The phase starts off with the GM determining what the monster is up to, and then the PC's react to that.
-Monster roll: The GM rolls for what the monster is up to such as targeting specific people or going on a rampage, if the monster succeeds they get a benefit like a new ability to use, more morale (ablative hitpoints). and PC’s have to roll against that skill to stop it
-Location roll: Determines where the upcoming battle takes place, locations have unique effects like “Warehouse: players receive a free item”, “subway: anyone who rolls a fumble takes damage from being hit by a train”.

PC’s get 1 action to spend on things like researching the monster's weakness, stopping the monster from eating people, and so on:
-Weakness investigation: Finding out the monster’s weakness, making it easier to kill the monster or figuring out what body part you have to damage to disable its powers ("By piercing its chest it can't breath fire anymore!")
-Behavior Investigation: Finding out what the monster’s capabilities are, what triggers its super powers. ("The monster feeds off of anger and gets stronger when it senses it")
-Location Change: Change location of battle ("This monster flies, lets not fight it on the cliffside")
-Practice: Training, prepping weapons and so on, gives a bonus to the next battle.
-Support: Lower emotion, change status condition of allies (healing them), change emotion from fear/hate

After that's done you move on to...


Battle: PC’s run into the monster and fight

Battles are pretty short, with everyone getting maybe 1-3 turns before one side has to flee or dies. Hunter's Moon has a 'ablative hp and real hp' system with 'morale' (restores after battle) and 'hp' (when you lose hp you roll to see if you take injuries that disable skills and abilities).

This cycle of "Legwork-> Battle" is then repeated for "midnight" and "sunrise".




The same guys who made Hunter's Moon also made Shinobigami, which focuses on more player vs player interaction as PC's all have hidden agendas. It's kind of like "Mafia". It's still in phases but there's a PC who gets to decide the general theme of the phase like "I'm attacking player X" or "I'm spying on player Y", but other players can interact with it like "I use my scrying ability to jump into the scene and rescue player X from player Z"
Shinobigami overview

Shinobigami is designed to be played in a single sitting, with an entire scenario wrapping up in about four hours. This feature of many Japanese role-playing games is put to great effect in Shinobigami, allowing dynamic characterization between sessions and exciting long-term storyline possibilities.

Before the game begins, each player should have a completed character sheet. The Game Master will hand each player a handout containing their character’s Mission and Secret. Once everyone is ready, play begins.

A scenario is made up of four separate phases: Introduction, Main, Climax, and Ending.
Introduction Phase

The Game Master will introduce the NPCs and the scenario’s inciting incident during this phase, and give each player character a scene. During these Introductory Phase scenes, the character gets to show off their character, describe their appearance, and reveal their Mission to each other. The players will record the names of each character in the People section of the character sheet for future reference. The objective of the scenario, and the “prize”, is introduced.
Main Phase
In the Main Phase, the Prize is put into play: It may stay with one person or change hands several times over the course of the three cycles. During the Main Phase, the players takes turns as the Scene Player. While acting as a Scene Player, a player has narrative control over a scene in which their character comes closer to fulfilling their Mission.

A Scene Player may choose between a Drama Scene and a Combat Scene. During each Drama Scene, a player will roll on the Scene Chart for inspiration, then narrate a scene in which their character uses a skill to forge an Emotional Bond, uncover another character’s Secret or Location, or recover a lost Life Point. If a character has found another character’s Location, they may engage them in a Combat Scene. Combat Scenes are quick, lasting only a number of turns equal to the number of combatants, meaning that each combat is quick and bloody.

A Cycle is complete as soon as each player has taken their turn as Scene Player. A scenario typically has 3 Cycles. Once the final cycle is complete, the Climax Phase begins.


Climax Phase

The Climax Phase is where lines are drawn and the ending determined. Each player will need to rely on allies they think they can trust to survive and complete their goals. A final combat scene with special rules will last a number of rounds as decided by the GM or scenario. This is the only point in the game where a character can be knocked out of the game or even killed. The last person standing can claim the Prize, or perhaps they will reject it in favor of another reward more in line with their true character goals!

Once the people standing lay down their arms, the game moves to the Ending Phase.

Ending Phase
The events of the Ending Phase are largely determined by the outcome of the Climax Phase. Repercussions and the results of complete or failed missions are shown or acted out in a final scene for each character. Finally, experience points are handed based on completed goals, secret goals and player actions. And from there…

Commonly the next step is… to play the game again! Likely another day, and perhaps with a new Game Master. Perhaps all or some of the previous session’s characters will appear again (though it’s not a given). Maybe there will be a new antagonist, or maybe the characters will act as each other’s enemies. With a simple new scenario (and a new “prize” to capture) and new secrets, no two games of Shinobigami will ever feel the same!



Emotional bond mechanic

-Info Sharing: If anyone towards whom you have a bond (positive or negative) learns someone’s Secret, Location, or Ougi, you will automatically and instantly receive that information. So it’s good strategy to start the game off by forming bonds, then letting other people find information for you.

-Emotion Mods: Whenever someone makes a roll, anyone with a bond towards that character may give a +1 bonus or -1 penalty, depending on whether the bond is positive or negative. This can occur once per bond per cycle (of drama scenes) or rounds (battle). In a co-op style game, this can be quite powerful, if everyone was nice enough to be positive towards each other.

-Battle Burst: If a character towards whom you have an emotional bond becomes involved in combat, you may jump in at any time. Normally, only the character called out by the Scene Player, and/or whomever else they decide, joins combat. Of course, you may join in to help or hinder as you see fit.

-Ninpo: Ninpo that either affect the way that bonds or formed or their effects. Missions and Secrets may also involve emotions, too, like the Secret: “You are in love with Player 1. If you and Player 1 don’t have ‘Loyalty’ or ‘Affection’ bonds towards each other by the beginning of the Climax Phase, your Mission becomes: Kill Player 1.”


Enigmas: Environmental secrets that have mechanical effects, usually on the last boss of the scenario. They consist of the ruse, its true form and effect, and the way to cancel it. Enigmas start off unknown, with only the ruse uncovered, and the rest must be uncovered like a Secret, and only then can it be canceled. For example, in a scenario with a boss and 4 underlings, an Enigma might be that “4 generals protect the boss’s weak spot” with the effect being that during a battle, the boss will never suffer the effects of any fumbles he rolls. In order to cancel that effect, the players must defeat all 4 underlings during the Main Phase.
The dice mechanics for both games is a chart based d66 and a roll over/under (I forget) thing, but I'm not really interested in that as you could convert it to dice pools or d20 and work out better math, it's the structured storytelling that interested me.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

I really like the more board-game style design of what you do in these Saikoro Fiction system games: when I read up on Hunter's Moon while on a JRPG kick, I thought it would be great to reverse engineer the Pursuit rules for Frank's I Can't Believe It's Not Shadowrun game.

Wanted to back Shinobigami, but I found a Kantai Collection RPG translated that runs on the same system. It's actually 2d6 roll over DC5, with the difficulty increasing the further you go off from one of your highlighted stats.
Last edited by Mask_De_H on Sat Apr 23, 2016 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Mask_De_H wrote: I thought it would be great to reverse engineer the Pursuit rules for Frank's I Can't Believe It's Not Shadowrun game.
Is that the same thing as After Sundown's hide/pursue rules, or something else.
Mask_De_H
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Post by Mask_De_H »

OgreBattle wrote:
Mask_De_H wrote: I thought it would be great to reverse engineer the Pursuit rules for Frank's I Can't Believe It's Not Shadowrun game.
Is that the same thing as After Sundown's hide/pursue rules, or something else.
Frank was kicking around rules for legwork and political/news spin that were rather in-depth: Hunter's Moon's Pursuit rules seem useful for that.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Here's a look at how range and initiative works in Shinobigami, called the "Velocity System" because it's a game about super fast ninjas.

Image
Here it is in English: http://www.shinobigami.com/files/eng_battlefield.pdf

When combat happens you choose what velocity you want to fight at. Actions are done from highest to lowest. Attack range is also measured by velocity spaces, so if you're at velocity 5 and have a range 1 attack you can hit a velocity 4 or 6 guy.

The drawback to higher velocities is it increases your chance to fumble. Actions in Shinobigami are done with a 2d6, you fumble if you roll under the listed velocity number. Fumbling makes you easier to hit by other players.

Some actions can increase or decrease a character's velocity, so if you're at v7 somebody can knock you 'out of bounds' into v7 (thematically I think it means you've left the battlefield), if you're at v1 you can get knocked to v0. I'm not exactly sure what happens when you're out of bounds.

Combat ends when every player has taken one action so you don't worry about back and forth repositioning. Oh yeah you can do multiple actions in that one round, the slower you are the more you can do.

I figure this would also work well as a chase minigame in other games, the goal being to reach v7 (you escape, catch up) or knock antagonists to v0 (they're caught, unable to pursue) Or a 3D combat game like Gundam, space/aircraft battles.

More complexity could be added with another row, but too much and you defeat the purpose of the velocity track.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Feb 16, 2018 6:06 am, edited 5 times in total.
Guts
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Post by Guts »

Backed the Shinobigami KS, but didn't know those details. It looks very interesting! Thanks Ogrebattle.
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Post by Guts »

The Shinobigami final PDF was released for KS backers. :wink:
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