Playing Usagi Yojimbo in Ukraine: to Hell and Back

Still shocked by the news of Kevin Conroy's death. 

And the war is still going on - there are successes, I finally uncorked the grape soda that I was keeping for the day of Kherson's liberation, but still, it's been eight years. 

And there's more stuff that doesn't really help. 

So it was nice to once again get together and play some tabletop RPG. 

Currently, our options are either fantasy China, or fantasy Japan. Fantasy Japan means Usagi Yojimbo + whatever I manage to drag from other games. Fantasy China means that I'm playing characters who have no idea what's happening and why they're here. 

This time, I dragged in two Cube World modules - "Hell on Earth, and also in Hell", and "The Defense the Ruined City".

"Hell on Earth" is a two-parter. I hope to use the first part later on. The second part is "A Small Hell" - the party goes down, and meets the demons. 

There's the sloth demon, who's my favourite NPC now, because he lazy, talks slowly so you can think of stuff to say, and actually is not so bad for a demon. 

 

 There is no reasonable doubt about whether the Sloth Demon smokes weed.

 

There's the hellhog, who's a pig - the characters didn't actually get to meet him, but they heard him chomp and slurp and comment on the nutricious value of souls through the wall. 

There are just some neat moments that help create the athmosphere, like what's the floor made of and what the huge statue looks like and whether the bottomless pits are truly bottomless (they are). 

Two things to say about our players: 

1) when they crawled out of hell, the first thing they did was re-seal the doors to keep the demons inside; 

2) when they found out that they've crawled out in a city that's under siege, and will be attacked at dawn, they immediately considered the option of just returning to hell and waiting there until the attackers leave.

Because they found themselves locked in the Battle of Ruined City. 

 

Undead samurai is not quite happy to meet you.

The cool thing about bringing Cube World stuff to Usagi Yojimbo games is that Zak actually made up some modules for fantasy Japan, and Ruined City is one of those. There's an old lord who found something interesting in the city, there's an ogre witch who wants the lord dead, and there's a curse that had fortunately provided the ogre with an army of undead. The lord has an army, too. 

If you like a little wargaming in  your tabletop roleplaying now and then, look no further. There are some tips about how to work with the troops and how to do the battle. And I used none of those, because, as I said, I'm still not in my best shape. So the party just did the thing when they go out to find and kill the enemy commander (mind you, they had a plan and preparations and all).

Note: Zak's modules can provide the most entertainment if you play them when you're not depressed. When you're depressed, though, they're a good distraction, so win-win anyways. 

The witch is tough enough to make a fight interesting, yet winnable even for a very low-magic group like ours (I mean, Usagi Yojimbo doesn't have a magic system). 

Considering my love to returning to the scene of the crime, maybe we'll have the Second Battle of the Ruined City somewhere in the future. And we'll do it the proper way.