Rising Sun Eternal

From RPGnet
Jump to: navigation, search

Campaign Overview[edit]

This is the campaign Wiki for adventures in a Classical Japan setting, run on a fork of the Cthulhu Eternal SRD.

I've been a huge fan of the Cthulhu Eternal project since its inception. I've enjoyed Apocthulhu enormously, and I completely endorse the principle of a Cthulhu Mythos SRD based on the huge legacy of material developed since the first editions of Call of Cthulhu in the 1980s. In my opinion, it comprises one of the simplest and most elegant rulesets in the d100/BRP tradition, as well as one with a huge corpus of applicable material. I've worked on developing this for various other time periods and settings, including Dark Ages, and now, feudal Japan.

A Word on the Title

I'm not a devout Shintoist, but I do remember and love the original edition of Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun. This setting is not intended to be anything like as dense and crunchy as that volume, but I still find it a tremendous inspiration.

Essential Resources[edit]

These are the pages for creating characters, following the campaign, and generally working out specifics in the rules.

Characters[edit]

The player-characters

Player Character HP WP SAN BP Resources
Atlictoatl Matsunaga Nobuatsu 11 14 70 56 13: 6/6/1, [][][]
Delazur Hidetaka Aoyama 10 11 55/54 44 6: 6/0/0, []
Sam I Am Komatsu Koniko ?? ?? ?? ?? ?: ?/?/?, []
bikewrench Shinrin Hiroto 15 11 54 44 2: 1/0/0, []

Important Information and Materials[edit]

Pre-modern Japan:

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pre-modern_Japan#Q130436

Interactive map of 12th-century Heian-kyo:

http://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/archive01/theater/html/heian/

Historic large-scale map of Kyoto:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/1696_Genroku_9_%28early_Edo%29_Japanese_Map_of_Kyoto%2C_Japan_-_Geographicus_-_Kyoto-genroku9-1696.jpg

List of Japanese mythical and legendary beings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_from_Japan

The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale

Medieval forms of address and honorifics

Important People[edit]

Below are a few of the key figures, as well as others who'll be added as they appear in the course of the campaign.

  • Retired Emperor Go-Daigo: restorer of Imperial primacy in the Kenmu Restoration.
  • Emperor Go-Murakami: reigning emperor of restored Imperial line.
  • Kusunoki Masashige: loyalist general and Shogun, based in Eastern Capital.
  • Kitabatake Chikafusa: courtier and writer, key advisor of Imperial house.

Important Groups and Places[edit]

  • Kyoto (also Heian-kyo): The ancient capital, seat of the Emperor.
  • Edo: The new Eastern Capital, seat of the Shogunate.
  • Tōsandō: The Eastern Mountain Circuit, the traditional administrative and judicial circuit covering Japan's mountainous northeastern districts, stretching through the Japanese Alps far north into Tohoku.

House Rules and Quirks[edit]

Spending Willpower to Make Rolls Succeed

You can spend your Willpower Points on a 1-to-5 basis to improve most skill rolls (but not SAN rolls or damage rolls, or POW tests, or to change normally successful rolls into crits etc.): 1 WP = up to 5%. This represents making that extra effort of will to achieve a success. But in doing so, you're running down your Willpower Points, which can be dangerous. Also, you have to take the full 1-to-5 conversion - no fractions. If your roll has failed by 6%, you have to spend 2 WP for the full 10%.

Remember that you can also spend Willpower to project SAN loss onto Bonds, or to repress insanity. This is different to the above use - and a reminder how important it is to hang on to your WP. Fumbles can cost you WP; resisting interrogation definitely does. WP are needed to fuel rituals and objects, and are sometimes targeted by offensive rituals. They're also very important for survival in hostile environments.

Remember that you suffer an emotional breakdown when your WP hit 2 or below, and total collapse when you hit 0 WP. You regain 1d6 WP after a full, proper night's sleep. Exhaustion and sleeplessness cut into that.


Parrying with Melee Weapons

The rules are a little unclear on this point, so to clarify: You can parry a Melee Weapons attack against you if you have the skill (e.g., not surprised), are able to use it, and have a weapon of your own. If your parry roll succeeds and beats your attacker's roll, you successfully parry the attack and take no weapon damage. If your parry roll succeeds but is below your attacker's roll, your weapon takes 1 point of damage (Light weapons have 5 points, medium weapons 10 points, heavy weapons 20 points), plus your attacker's Damage Bonus.

If you're attacked by multiple assailants, you can opt to split your Melee Weapons skill between them and roll each parry separately, but your percentage chance per parry is divided by the total number of attackers. If you're splitting your skill, you have to declare this before the first attack, and you can't change the chances if one attacker fails and your parry succeeds.

You can't parry Huge attackers, only Dodge them.