A Fistful of Ryo

As I said before, the games we play are weird mixtures. Imagine the core system of Gold Rush's Usagi Yojimbo, the adventures written for LotFP, the characters that I pull out from every story, comic book or cartoon I've ever laid my eye on, and the names changing as we play because it's easier that way - the Sleeping Crane castle became Sleeping Buffalo castle (untranslatable wordplay between the king's English, the tyrant's Belarusian, and our own Ukrainian), which later became Sleeping Boobalo castle because I like boobs. 

And also the homerules that I also pull out of different places. Lucky numbers kung-fu from Zak, "spend XP - add dice" from Xena Roleplaying Game, weapons - I honestly can't tell anymore, I'm pulling weapons stats literally from everywhere. 

Anyhow, we played a Cube World adventure named "A Fistful of Silver". Which is a reference to a spaghetti western movie which was a plagiarism of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" which was inspired by Dashiel Hemmett. I love it how eastern and western culture influence each other. "Fistful of Silver" takes place in the Land of Southern Daimyos, which is the closest thing to LotFP Japan that we have (since James E. Raggi the Fourth, life, prosperity, health, said there are currently no plans to publish adventures set in Japan). 

The lords are gathering in what became the Boobalo castle in our game to discuss the threat of invasion from the Emperor (who rules what is the closest thing we have to LotFP China). Coincidentally, several of the lords and ladies secretly want to hire the adventurers, each for their own reasons. One of them needs a bodyguard for his sweetheart. Another wants to start a civil war. And someone wants to side with the invaders. 

Miyamoto Usagi doesn't advise you to side with the invaders. 

Art by Stan Sakai

 

Zak's Cube World adventures are good material, in the way that "I don't necessary understand if and why this part is necessary, but when I use it, people at the table react in fun and interesting ways and the game goes well". I took the basics offered by Fistful of Silver and ran with them, and I must say that when the wounded princess mutters "I know who the traitor is...", it's very pleasant when the players gasp "Who?!" 

And it was even better when they realized that the clue to the traitor's identity that they found fits not one, but two people. 

Note: in the end, I'd say we only used about half the of the adventure's potential. You could play it like "Yojimbo", offering your services to one side and then the other and then confuse both and then hide underneath the floors while bleeding all over; you could be good little samurai and pick a lord to serve, and face the horrible consequences; or you could just steal everything and run. 

There's always a fun way to play it out when the material is good.