Martial Arts are a fascinating field of study, and they make for great options in most games. Acting almost like a small “character class”, a good martial art includes more than just punching and kicking; it is a way of life with a philosophical doctrine as well as a physical one.

 

During the 12th and 13th century, the closest historical equivalent to the world of Mysteries of the Yokai, Martial Arts were not yet common in Japan. The Samurai had not yet come into full power, and the common folk weren’t forbidden to carry weapons, one of the biggest causes that lead to people learning to fight with just their bodies. China’s influence was not yet as great either; neither the experienced instructors nor the epic sagas of martial valor had taken root on Japan’s soil.
Our game deviates from history in many big ways however, the biggest being the appearance of the Yokai themselves, and the increased overall supernatural presence. The danger from these changes leads to an increased need to protect one’s self, and the positive influence of Yokai has also inspired humans to adapt the powers of the supernatural to ways they can use. With the increased ability to tap into Ki, martial arts are becoming more common, and much more powerful than previous generations.

 

 

Martial Arts in MotY

Today I wanted to get Game Masters thinking about how they might build Martial Arts into their own campaigns. With all the changes happening in Japan, there’s plenty of new fields of study that potential masters and students would take up. Some may push their bodies to the limit simply for the challenge; mastery of Ki allows a martial seeker to achieve feats previously thought impossible. Some schools may develop around the Yokai themselves; ninjas may learn techniques from shapeshifters, a Yamabushi may befriend a Tengu, Oni or other Yokai living on its mountain and create a style that mimics or honors that Yokai, or a Geomancer may found a school to teach students a better way to respect natural energy.

 

Entire campaigns can be founded around martial arts. Rival schools may compete for the right to found a dojo in the capital. Players could be rival students, forced to work together to defend the city from threats, learning from and about their new friends while still trying to help their own school win the most prestige. If all the players want to play students of the same art, they may be traveling the world as the final stage of their training in order to learn the things they could not within the walls of their master’s home. Even if only a few of the players want to play actual martial artists, the tropes of the martial arts genre always tend to lead to clashes with evil, philosophical debates, and investigations into the unknown places of the world, things any player will have moments to shine during.

 

 

Building a Martial Art

With all the options available to a GM in the world, almost any martial art could be created and make sense. Historically accurate arts could be created much sooner than they were in our world, and fantastic or bizarre arts become possible though Ki and the supernatural. A GM may want to create specific arts to fit the story, and a player may want to develop their own personal style.

 

We encourage GMs to use the Kata mechanic in the game to create a new Kata that represents a martial art. A Kata is a package of related Abilities at a 10% discount; 100 Potential of Abilities only costs the player 90 Potential when they buy it. However, these Martial Arts Katas shouldn’t be abused to simply get discounted Abilities; a Martial Art that is just 200 points of Strength is not only against the intention and feel of this use of Katas, it’s pretty cheesy (and actually not very effective). GMs should approve all arts created in this way. Some suggestions are listed below

• A Martial Art Kata should be a one-time purchase, especially because they are likely to include very specific Abilities such as Waterfall Training or 1000 Strikes. If these Katas were taken multiple times, those points would be wasted. Because of this, they are likely to be fairly expensive, at least 100 Potential before the discount.
• A Martial Art should include a mix of combat and non-combat abilities. Real Martial Arts are never entirely about combat (though some derived forms are, ‘quick and dirty’ styles are certainly valid, but would be modeled through buying abilities normally). An art should always include at least a +2 modifier to an appropriate Lore skill.
• Martial Arts in this way should focus on themes and styles, rather than a universal ‘all situations’ art, which already exists in the game by just taking normal combat abilities. The discount in cost is meant to reward creating interesting playstyles; defensive protectors of the weak, masterful strikers, the seeker of enlightenment through bodily mastery, even the tribute to a Yokai through imitation.

 

 

Example Martial Art: Aikido

Aikido is a very modern art, relative to what you might consider for MotY. But the fundamentals core to its philosophy work really well in the era of spirits and uncertainty. It would make a lot of sense for a similar school to develop in a time of chaos in order to bring “unity with Ki”. It’s a good example of how you could take an art you find interesting from our world and adapt it to the game.

 

 

Aikido is based on principles of combining the actions of an attacker with one’s own body to create a wanted outcome (basically, protection). Training in Aikido includes both a philosophical understanding of unity with the world around oneself, and a physical regime that builds health, fitness and endurance. When thinking about building the Kata, this means it should include a very Ki and health oriented outlook, and spiritual studies. For our example, we’ll build around Endurance and Athletics; this gives the character a good Defend action in combat as well as the health and ability to physically exert themselves for long periods of time. On top of that we’ll add Ki Well to model the spiritual health developed in Aikido; practitioners are able to tap into their Ki abilities without quickly burning out because they are mastering the use of Ki in harmony with the universe, not disruptive to it. We’ll wrap this package up with some Strength, Resolve and Discipline to further model that mental and physical path a student walks while learning Aikido.

 

Coming back to the defensive nature of Aikido, we’ll include the obvious Turn Aside Attack (which is a general abstraction of most of the throws and deflection strikes. We’ll also include Protective Circle to represent the Aikido student’s presence on the battlefield. A character practicing Aikido would be able to protect their friends and allies, and the game benefits of Protective Circle do a good job of representing their effect on the battle.

 

Example Martial Art: Kyusho Mastery
Kyusho represents pressure points, the points on a body where effects can be created by applying external stimulus. Commonly, this is usually thought of as either pain (nerve strikes) or healing (acupuncture). The mastery of Kyusho lets a character manipulate the body of others, a sort of physical biomancy, if you will.

 

 

This art is an offensively themed one, there is no study of blocks or dodges, only manipulating the body of the target. This is not always deadly, so we’ll include Blessing to model acupuncture and the positive effects a master could give to friendly characters. In fact, in order to really understand how best to strike at the human body, a student would need to know how it operates, which also leads to understanding how to heal it, so we’ll include both Lore: Human Body and Medicine in the art. While this is a damage based Kata, including these gives the character something to do besides just attack the whole game, making for a more interesting gameplay experience.

 

In terms of offense, this Kata models someone who can disable or even kill with a touch. We’ll start with Weapons – Body to allow the character to fight without weapons, and give them enough Agility to have a good chance to hit (+6 between Agility and Weapons Skill). This is good because, without a weapon, a character normally only does 1 point of Tide Damage. The higher chance to hit increases the damage through Margin of Success. In fact, let’s take 1000 Strikes, so that the character does +1 damage for each 2 points of success, instead of 3. It makes sense that a master of pressure points wouldn’t care about the armor of a target, so the Kata should include Vital Strike. Finally, we’ll give the Kata some points in Hustle. This allows the character to act quickly; we could even assume this is the benefits of the character’s manipulation of their own body and the flow of energy through it.

Hey everyone. Today’s blog post is about Martial Arts. We’re going to delay it until tomorrow in order to finish the Kata write ups we’re doing for it. We thought it would be fun to add some new resources for you to build your own Martial Arts with, and we’ve decided to spend a little more time on it. Tonight we’ll be stopping by RPGnet chat for a Q&A session (feel free to come in and ask us questions or throw out ideas for more content! http://tinyurl.com/rpgnetchat ), and we don’t want either the Q&A or the example Martial Arts to suffer because they were stepping on each other.

You might have heard here or there about the “Bureau Files.” While it’s something that we’ve been working on for a while, I’m here to give a formal introduction today. Bureau Files are a series of small episodic scenarios designed to provide a snapshot of the complications that arise as the cultures of spirits and mortals collide. We designed them to be small enough for one or two sessions. This gives players a chance to try things out and see the kinds of stories that can arise in our setting.

Bureau File stories focus on jobs handed out by the reformed ‘Bureau of Spiritual Affairs’. Charged with maintaining the peace between spirits and people, The Bureau’s responsibilities are overwhelming. We write Bureau Files as if they were segments of an episodic show. Each one has its own conflicts, places and characters. Each Bureau File is completely self contained, even if there might be events and links in common between stories.

Their smaller size gives them a great deal of flexibility, which allows role-players to plug them into almost any story. Because of this, they are also quite friendly to guest writers and it’s easy for our fans take part in their creation.

While we’ve already got a couple written, it’s always nice to know which ones people want to see first. That’s why we have this nifty survey here for you guys to tell us what you want to see. True to the episodes that inspired them, we’re presenting The Bureau Files here as pitches with short summaries. Vote on your favorites now!

Vote on our Bureau Files survey here to tell us which short scenarios you want to see most: http://goo.gl/forms/uDYOFkyHLL

We have an updated Skill list for you to check out today. This update brings a lot of changes with it. The first is some simple format upgrades to make things a little easier on the eyes. Nothing super impressive, but it gives the whole list a nice pine-fresh spring clean feel.

In terms of mechanics, you’ll find a lot of skills have been upgraded to include uses and examples for both combat and non-combat. Many of the ‘talky’ skills now have specific Actions you can perform in conflict situations. We wanted to show more on how you can resolve conflicts of the not-stab-you-with-sharp-things nature. Our full rulebook will have plenty of information for players and game masters on using the Tide and Morale system to resolve things like investigations and political negotiations, but we felt it was important to bake some of that into the mechanics of skills so the overall system doesn’t feel hand-wavey.

You’ll find some new skills in the list, like “Weapons – Body” which models martial arts, or lets you fight with natural weapons like claws and fangs. Some skills have changed to make them more useful, such as the Profession skill, which now lets you count as having rolled a certain minimum number when you perform checks, based on how much Potential you invest in it. And, sadly, some skills have been rolled into others; fan favorites like Boating and Sake were deemed too specific and didn’t make the team this year. You can find their use in other skills. For example, parts of Boating are now rolled into Navigation, which also allows you to use the same skill with land-based travel.

This update also marks the first version of point-costing. You’ll notice it now takes different levels of Potential to reach bonuses in different skills. These values are still very much for playtesting purposes; we’re working more on finding the levels of Potential we want to give players to use, rather than locking in final numbers for balance purposes. Please let us know how you feel about the relative usefulness of Skills. Does one skill seem far more or less useful than another with the same Potential costs? Do any of the skills feel too weak, or like they’re missing the ability to do something you think should be included? We’d love to hear what you think.

You can grab the updated Skill document on our downloads page:
https://www.mysteriesoftheyokai.com/downloads/

Or download it directly here

The big game is tomorrow, and being here in the Seattle area, we’re extra excited. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we get the weekend off, so I thought ‘Why not write a post about playing football in Yokai?’

Our conflict rules are designed to work similarly for not only physical combat, but things like social debates and investigations. In the coming weeks we’ll have examples how you can use the same rules for playing out all kinds of conflicts without needing differently functioning systems. But tonight, I’ll show you how you can make up your own content for the rules in the book to play out any kind of contested event between groups.

Football In Yokai

Let’s start with the basics of both games. In Football, you’re trying to move the ball towards the endzone, and the opponent is trying to stop you. In Yokai, you make contested Checks (3D6 + relevant modifiers) to see how well you do against someone else. You also get a +1 modifier of ‘success’ for every 3 points your total is greater than the character you rolled against. Those are over-simplifications, of course, but when you’re designing mechanics, it helps to start with figuring out what exactly players are trying to do, and how they go about doing it.

So, at the very basic level, if a GM didn’t want to do too much, you could simply have the running back make a contested roll against the Offensive Line, say Agility or Strength versus Strength or Endurance. And for every MoS (Margin of Success, or 3 points, as described above), the RB gains 1 yard. Pretty simple, if a bit boring. For a pass play, you could have the Quarterback and Receiver make an Assisted Skill Roll (both characters roll, take the highest roll, and +1 if the other character succeeded), and again, give 1 yard gain for each MoS.

If you were just doing a quick pickup match in the middle of another story, this would be fine. Our combat rules are intended to help the story flow, and if no one at the table is too interested in bogging down play with more depth of ‘combat’ for a simulation of Football, these rules would at least let you move the ball around the field. Add a quick Morale value for each team, set the Tide bars to 10 each (each 10 yards on the field), and you’re all set to go.

But what if you wanted more complex rules? For example, what if you were playing an entire campaign based around Football? Sure, you probably aren’t likely to play American Football in Ancient Japan, but it’s a good example of how a Game Master can set up skills and associated abilities to focus their games on whatever they want.

Teams

First, let’s talk about teams, since one of the most important mechanics in Mysteries of the Yokai is how the player characters work together. We use the Morale and Tide bars to simulate how a group wins or loses together, even when a specific individual may not be ‘hurt’ by the opponents. If this isn’t a metaphor for Football as well, I’m a Dallas fan (that means it is an apt metaphor, for the non-NFL fans among you, dear readers). In Football, a star player may make the memorable plays, but no one player wins or loses a game; it’s a team effort.

Basics of Football Conflicts

Action starts in both games at the line; the line of scrimmage, and the line between both Close zones in combat. In a Yokai Football game, the offensive line is trying to protect the opponents from getting in to their friendly Medium and Far zones, where the quarterback, running backs, and receivers are going to be making skill checks from. Unless your playgroup really wants to have 22 characters to track in combat, you’ll probably want to have a single ‘character’ for each line.

In Football, the Offense has 4 Downs to move the ball 10 yards. In this case, we’ll simulate this by allowing the Offense 4 Downs to break the Tide bar, which will be set to a size of 10 on each side for these conflicts. If you’re looking for even more realism, you can implement rules for penalties and alter the Tide bar even more, but we’ll keep it more simple for example purposes.

Plays in Football are generally broken down into either Runs or Passes. So, the side playing Offense will need to decide before the round starts, what kind of play they will do. The Offense should write down or otherwise tell the GM in some way which kind of play they will be performing before the down starts. If you are doing a standard “players on one side, NPCs on the other”, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you’re doing something where there are players on both sides, you’ll want to keep it secret. Similarly, the Defense needs to tell the GM whether they intend to protect against run or pass. Again, if you’re looking for more realism and options in play, you could have all kinds of passes and runs, zone or man defenses, etc.

Taking Actions

For Football, you’ll need to have some slightly different Initiative rules. While Yokai does simulate an abstract combat round where people are constantly moving and attacking, it focuses more on one character acting, followed by another. In a Football simulation, everyones actions would be happening more simultaneously, at least at the start of each play. So, for these rules, the first two characters to act each new Round would be the Offensive Line and Defensive Line. Have the characters make an opposed check. This could be as simple as Strength vs Strength, but if you’re using expanded homemade skills, this would be something like a Line Skill test and better players would have skills to use. Keep note of whoever wins this Line test and by how much, since it will affect the rest of the Round.

Next, each character on the defense side will declare their actions. Here are two basic actions that should always be available, but a football focused campaign would likely want to have more than these.

• Blitz: This is an opposed Check between the Defense character and the Offensive Line character. This action does Tide damage if it succeeds (this simulates hurrying the quarterback or tacking the running back).
• Cover: Choose a receiver or running back. If that character makes a Run or Receive Check (see below), you get to make an Opposed Check to stop them.

Next, the Offense should declare. Again, the order only really matters when players are going against each other, otherwise the GM should just ask players what their side is doing. Offense players take their actions based on the position they play at.

• Quarterback: A QB will either pass the ball to a receiver, or hand it to a running back
• Receiver: A Receiver will first attempt to get open, then can attempt to catch the ball if the QB throws to them
• Running Back: An RB will make a Run action if they QB hands the ball to them.

Everything starts with the Quarterback, since they get the ball at the snap. From the start, the QB is going to modify their rolls by the MoS of the Line. If the Defense won the check, the QB takes a penalty to any checks they make equal to the MoS, but if the Offense won, the QB adds the MoS as a bonus.

Example: During the Line Check, the Defense rolls a total of 15, while the Offense rolls a total of 19. Since the Offense won by four points, the QB gets a +1 to any check for the rest of the Round.

The Blitz

Next, any Defense characters who are taking a Blitz action get to go. Have each of them make their Check vs the Offensive Line character. Successful checks inflict Tide damage, as noted above. If the total of this damage breaks the Tide Bar, they have sacked the quarterback or tackled the running back for a loss. Inflict the point of Morale damage, and then end the Round and advance the Down by 1.

Offense Actions

If the Defense doesn’t break the Morale bar as noted above, the Offense now takes their actions.

• Receiver: Each Receiver character will make a Check to get open. Any defender taking the Cover Action can choose to make an opposed check against one receiver of their choice. Otherwise the receiver is only opposed by a straight 3D6 rolled by the opponent’s side, just as if they were making an attack against a target that took no defensive action. If the receiver loses the opposed check, they are not open for a QB this Round, but can try again next round.
• Quarterback
  • Pass: This action is declared before the Receivers make their rolls, but resolved after they finish. The QB waits until each Receiver has resolved their Check to get open, then chooses one open receiver. If there are no open receivers, the QB can either wait until next Round, or attempt to make a Run action as if they were a running back (see below).
  • Hand Off: Choose one running back in the same zone as you. Make an Agility Check versus difficulty 8 (modified by the Line MoS, as described previously). If the check fails, the round ends (players and GMs looking for more realism may want to use more in depth rules for fumbles). If the check succeeds, the chosen RB can make a Run action.
• Running Back: Once a RB receives a hand off as described above, they can make a Run action. This is an opposed check using either the RB’s Strength or Agility, versus the Defensive Line’s Strength or Agility. The Defensive Line receives a -1 penalty to this roll for every defensive player that Blitzed.

Offensive Tide Damage

In the case where either the RB succeeded at their Run Action or a Receiver caught the ball from a QB performing a Pass Action, the offense inflicts Tide Damage equal to 2D6 + the MoS of the action. End the Round and advance the Down by 1. If the Offense breaks the Tide Bar, reset the Down to 1. If the Down goes over 4, the side playing defense gets the ball, and goes on Offense.

(Example: A QB throws to an open receiver. The receiver rolls a total of 18, and the defense rolls a total of 9. This is succeeds by 9, so the offense will add +3 to their tide damage. The Offense rolls 2D6 and gets ‘1’ and ‘3’, so the tide damage is 1+3+3 = 7 damage.)

Incomplete Passes

The above rules abstract incomplete passes out of the game to speed up gameplay. However, players looking for a more realistic ruleset can use the following rules.

A QB can throw to a receiver that failed their roll to get open. In this case, the receiver receives a penalty to catch the ball equal to the defensive characters’s Agility Modifier. If the receiver wins the check, they catch the ball and inflict Tide Damage as described above. If the defender wins the roll with a MoS equal to or greater than twice the receivers Agility Modifier, they have intercepted the ball, the round immediately ends, and the sides switch offense and defense. If the defender wins the check, but by less than enough to intercept, the pass is incomplete. Immediately end the round and advance the Down by 1. Astute readers may notice the play ends, and big defense fans may want to houserule in ‘pick 6’ rules.

Playing An Actual Football Game

So far, we’ve only talked about modeling actions of Football, not actually playing a full game. Afterall, what does it mean to score a touchdown when you’re already inflicting Morale damage? How do punting and kickoffs work? Unfortunately these rules are even longer than the above, and the point of this article isn’t actually to write a Football supplement, but to get you thinking about how you can adapt your own conflicts to rules you can use in Yokai. If people actually want to see more about Football in Yokai, feel free to leave comments and we’ll see about putting together a quick little supplement book. Otherwise, we hope this has got you thinking. Even if you’re not familiar with the rules of Football, a look at these rules can get you going in the right direction for other activities. The basics of performing actions in Yokai is always about Checks, and most conflicts are going to be about opposed checks between sides. Players wanting to model something unique should think about what the characters are trying to achieve, and build actions that perform checks to do those actions. Any action that helps your side overall should inflict Tide Damage to the enemy. Want to stat out a heist? You’re probably going to want rules not only for safe cracking and security hacking, but for the distraction high-stakes Poker game going on above the vault.

 

Today we’ll take a look at building a character with Paths. I’m going to focus on a character idea from early playtesting, Katashi the ‘Diplomat’. Katashi is not at all what most people think of when they think Diplomat. I decided that he is a special-problem-solver for the Emperor, tasked with resolving peace between Lords who are likely to go to battle. Instead of being directly dispatched to courts to soothe offended pride, Katashi takes a more direct, hands on approach to ensuring peace. This can be anything from bribing a Lord’s counsel to advise that war is too costly, to manipulating bandit raids on the borders that will keep a province from feeling comfortable declaring war on their neighbors. I liked this concept because it gave my character reasons to go almost anywhere in the game world. He would have something to pursue for his own goals, as well as useful abilities to contribute to the party. It also lets me play a non-combat focused character without having to be all talky and social (which I suck at).

Although we have a Diplomat Path internally, I’m going to make Katashi with just the Paths currently in the Introductory Rules. I was immediately drawn to Merchant, who has a lot of skills for making deals. Even if the Merchant is generally seen as dealing with money and goods, I picture Katashi as using the same principles, but with promises and information.

Discipline, Intelligence, Perception and Resolve all fit perfectly with my concept of Katashi, and Wisdom is useful, though Katashi would find himself hesitant to rely on hunches and ‘gut instincts’. Appraise will let him size up political situations, while Bargaining and Deception fulfill his more standard Diplomatic skillset requirements. He doesn’t have Etiquette yet, which means he would struggle in more traditional court settings.

At this point, I decide to find ways to make him not have to get into those court politics. I’m going to take a page from Garak from Deep Space Nine, a character I’ve always really enjoyed. Garak basically manipulated Star Fleet command by getting it’s junior officers to make his arguments for him. In this case, Katashi is going to need a cover, a way to make contacts and move around without raising suspicion. Since I have already taken some Merchant skills, I decide to go along that route. Katashi will be a traveling peddler, so he’ll need something worth selling. I put 40 Potential into Craft: Figurines (and note to myself that we need to include a good discount option for people who want crafting in our playtest options). Figurines are a really good trade skill. He could pick up a piece of wood and whittle cheap trinkets for children when there’s nothing else available, or he could craft the finest jade animals for nobility. 40 Potential is a lot, especially for a skill that’s essentially a cover, but I think I will make the figurines part of his character. Perhaps it’s his way of feeling better after his jobs are done. In a world where he may have to do ugly things in the name of peace, he finds some redemption in creating beauty as well. I now have +3 to Craft Roll, and choose to base it on Perception (he builds subtractively, by observing animals in real life and recreating them). Since I already have 15 Potential in Perception from my Merchant Path, I decide it’s probably best to take the Path a second time. Almost everything in the Path is directly useful to my concept, and the discount covers the things I don’t want. I note down double the benefits on my character sheet, and that I’ve spent a total of 240 Potential between the Paths and my Craft skill.

Taking the Path twice has given me 30 Potential in Perception, Bargaining, and Profession: Merchant. Since 40 Potential gives me a +3 to checks instead of a +2, I decide that Perception and Bargaining are very important, and spend 10 Potential on each, increasing them to 40. I now have +3 to Perception Checks, and a total of +6 to my Craft Skill. Katashi should be able to make figures he can sell almost anywhere. And with Bargaining and his Profession: Merchant Skill, he’s likely to make a good profit. I have spent a total of 260 Potential.

Now that Katashi’s cover is well established, it’s time to get back to his true goal of ‘black ops for peace’. Diplomacy will be important, even if Katashi doesn’t spend time in court, so I put 20 Potential there for a +2 modifier, leaving me 20 points remaining. I think it’s important to invest in Katashi’s Intelligence, so I spend my last 20 to raise it to 40, giving it a +3 Modifier.

In total, my spent Potential has resulted in the following Attributes  and Skills

All in all, I’m pretty happy with Katashi’s Abilities. He’s definitely an able spy and manipulator, though not in the traditional sense, made from the Merchant Path (which provides him a great cover, as well a decent source of income!). As he gains Potential during play, I’ll probably want to put some points in Etiquette (there may be times he has to bite the bullet and make direct appearances) and Investigation (he can’t always pay others for information). I may also want to invest a little in Animal Handling so that he can study animals closer for his figurine references without scaring them away.

We hope that when you design your characters, you feel free to use the Paths and Katas as a guide, and as tools to help you, not something restrictive based on their names. For example, any noble, intelligent warrior can take the Samurai Path, even if the character isn’t actually a Samurai. You could also build a very good Samurai without taking the Samurai Path at all. If you wanted to play a peasant that rose to be a Samurai, you could base your character on on the Peasant Path and add some combat skills. Perhaps this character still lacks the court charms and struggles with their reading and writing lessons, but they are an undoubted leader on the battlefield, and a trusted agent of their Lord, who overlooks their struggles with social graces.