Jump to content

Bushido Hero


itsalwayssunny

Recommended Posts

Re: Bushido Hero

 

A couple of awesome systemless sourcebooks for any historical or quasi-historical RPG are Tadashi Ehara's (yes, he of Different Worlds fame) Japan game guides:

 

http://www.diffworlds.com/samurai.htm

 

Also, there's some maps of Hida province (a heavily fictionalised version of which was used as the setting for Bushido's Valley of the Mists adventure, IIRC) and central Honshu on my blog. This post links to all my resources.

 

I never did get the Chrysanthemum War game off the ground - Ramadan proved far too busy for anything that wasn't work - but I'll get round to it some day.

 

I'd second the recommendation for Markdoc's Hero/Sengoku resources. He sent me a link while I was soliciting ideas for the Chrysanthemum War, and they are superb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Re: Bushido Hero

 

I ran a couple of feudal Japanese campaigns back in the day. Some of the things that made the games successful were to incorporate genre staples. Watch some jidai-geki films, even the modern ones, and just steal the hell out of the stuff you want to see in your game. Types of people, locations and set-pieces, situations you want your characters to be put into in order to make decisions and create the drama and long-standing feuds/relationships. Yeah, I realize that this is kind of GM-ing 101, but it was key to evoking the genre in players who were only peripherally aware of the elements.

 

Sengoku was a big resource for me. And if the Asian bestiaries were available I woudl have incorporated more of that. As it stood, it was strictly no-magic chanbara type action-adventure. But you can do it a number of ways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Bushido Hero

 

Seppuku was rarely self-administered. It was typically the result of an order.

 

It was also not a solitary deed. Seppukus were official events, occasionally even public. The person would have an associate called a Kaishaku standing behind him with a drawn katana. The purpose of the Kaishaku was to swiftly behead the person performing seppuku if in his judgment (or that of the person who ordered the suicide) the subject had displayed sufficient tolerance for suffering. Traditional stomach-cutting was a self-inflicted torture, and the Kaishaku's job was to spare the recipient a lingering, hideously painful demise.

 

Seppuku was a form of capital punishment most times. It was reserved for samurai who had committed hideous crimes such as treason. Sometimes a samurai would get upset enough about his daimyo's policies that he would threaten seppuku to make his point. This would frequently cause the daimyo to relent, depending on how valuable a servant or cousnelor the man making the threat was.

 

Seppuku was reserved for samurai. Lower-caste criminals were subjected to worse demises. The Japanese had developed crucifixion independently of the Romans (the two cultures had no idea the other existed) and used it regularly to punish and shame criminals. Like Roman crucifixion is was a death by torture. Samurai had the power of summary judgment over the lower castes, although incidents like beheading a peasant for not showing proper deference were probably not as common as literature depicts them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Bushido Hero

 

.... The Japanese had developed crucifixion independently of the Romans (the two cultures had no idea the other existed) and used it regularly to punish and shame criminals. Like Roman crucifixion is was a death by torture. Samurai had the power of summary judgment over the lower castes' date=' although incidents like beheading a peasant for not showing proper deference were probably not as common as literature depicts them.....[/quote']

 

 

The Romans didn't invent crucifixion. They just really, really enjoyed it. I expect the same thing can be said about the old Japanese. Our ancestors were, in general, a pretty bloodthirsty lot. But I'm really popping up here to point out that the idea that the "Japanese and Romans had no idea each other existed" is a little problematic. Depending on which Romans you mean, we're implicitly pushing the idea that 'Japanese culture' existed a very long time before we have anything non-archaeological to say about the culture of the people who lived on the islands of Japan. Conversely, our literary insight into Japan begins with the arrival of Buddhism, and Buddhist literature has a very clear, if sometimes idiosyncratic, idea about who the Romans were.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Re: Bushido Hero

 

The Japanese had developed crucifixion independently of the Romans (the two cultures had no idea the other existed) and used it regularly to punish and shame criminals. Like Roman crucifixion is was a death by torture. Samurai had the power of summary judgment over the lower castes' date=' although incidents like beheading a peasant for not showing proper deference were probably not as common as literature depicts them.[/quote']

 

Just a followup comment on this: as Lawnmower Boy noted, Japanese culture in the Roman period was totally different from the essentially renaissance era culture we think of as Japanese today. But we can't be sure that the Romans and their contemporary Japanese opposite numbers were unaware of each other's existence. There's pretty good evidence the Romans had contact with China. The chinese name for the Roman empire was Tach'in and the Annals of the later Han Dynasty (in a copy dating from the 400's) record a visit via Vietnam of an embassy from Antun, the King of the Tach'in in 166 AD. Antun is generally though to be Antoninus, the emperor at the time. Given that the embassy came via Vietnam, not via the silk road route suggests that the embassy came by sea. The same annals state that the Tach'in merchants were active in what's now Cambodia and Vietnam. That's supported by Roman writings - Ptolemy refers to the lands beyond India, describing Golden Chersonese (usually identified as the Malay peninsula) and archeological evidence: isolated Roman finds have popped up in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam - the latter including medals minted in the Antonine period. By themselves they don't prove anything (they could be trade goods) but together with the evidence of Roman settlements in southern and eastern India (including at Muziris, where according to a Roman map - the original of the tabula peuteringeriana - there was a settlement with a temple to Augustus, and from where trading records still exist suggesting there was a roman trade settlement and bank) it makes a pretty good case for Roman merchants and their agents sailing in the South China sea.

 

Did they ever reach Japan? Probably not. It's a long way from Vietnam to Japan. But we can't be sure of that, nor do we know what information may have been exchanged through middlemen: both Japanese and Romans were intensely interested in the silk trade.

 

And if nothing else, the image of Roman merchants and soldiers sailing along the Mekong is worth thinking about :)

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...