Usagi Yojimbo Roleplaying Game

Usagi Yojimbo represents yet another attempt to crossover the comic books/TV/movie market with RPGs. But don't let that deter you from buying this gem of a game: Usagi Yojimbo is a very tight, efficient package. I have never seen a product do so much with a mere 96 pages.

The Setting

Usagi Yojimbo (UY) is set in a world of samurai, ninjas, and walking, talking animals. Think of Disney's "Robin Hood" and you have the idea. Sprinkle in some colorful, three dimensional characters and realistic, sympathetic antagonists and you have more than an idea: you have UY in a nutshell. After a period of turbulent conflict, the Shogun's Peace has been declared. Any daimyo (noble) who attacks another is considered to be attacking the nation as a whole, bringing the wrath of all upon him. As an uneasy peace settles into place, the aftermath of the previous conflict is still evident. Many samurai are now masterless ronin, condemned to wander the land, their masters slain in the previous conflicts. Bandits are common, and scheming daimyo must now rely on treachery and deceit as they jockey for power. There is plenty of opportunity for characters to makes names for themselves in the world of Usagi Yojimbo.

All of this background is drawn from the UY comic book, which follows the adventures of the title character, a masterless rabbit samurai. I have to admit that while I have never read an Usagi Yojimbo comic book, I found the setting, as presented in the RPG, very accessible and well explained. Outside of Akira Kurosawa films, I also have little to no knowledge of feudal Japan. Yet Greg Stolze manages to hit all of the key points of the setting in a manner that is thorough and readable. A complete timeline of the UY story, plus descriptions of the major characters from the comic book, give the prospective GM plenty of inspiration for stories and adventures. Stolze also does a very good job of getting to the heart of what makes an effective story. Culling examples from the UY comic, he shows GMs what makes a good story and how to translate that into a good RPG adventure.

The Rules

Character creation is straightforward in UY. Players choose one of 11 races (rabbit, rhino, bull, amongst others) and one of 9 jobs. Race gives the character special abilities. Pigs have a heightened sense of smell, get +1 to their physical stat, and can take more damage than other races. Jobs work much the same way. They give the character a stat or skill bonus plus a funky free ability. Monks, for example, can give advice to players, even if their characters are not together. Finally, there are options for players who do not want to use one of the pregenerated jobs, but no rules for creating new races. Overall, I found the system easy to use. The choices given run a wide range of possibilities. Given the length of the book and its target audience (beginners), a truly freeform system would have been out of place. Though I am a strong proponent of rules light, free form character generation, I did not feel hemmed in by UY's options. Rather, they gave me a lot of ideas for characters, the mark of a successful rules set. The sample character I made was a pig monk trying to follow a life of self denial with less than stellar success, a concept I probably would not have thought of without the rules as written. Overall, character generation guides you along without suffocating your creativity.

Characters have four stats, Physical, Mental, Combat, and Move. I like the idea of making a character's combat ability a stat and then adding weapon skills on top of that. Skills cover the usual gamut of RPG topics, from combat to the arts. Skills and stats are added to die rolls.

UY uses the Instant Fuzion system, a slimmed down version of R. Talsorian's house system. The system is simple to use. To make a skill check, roll 3d6, add any appropriate attribute and skill, and compare the result to a GM chosen target number. Combat (as usual) requires a few more rules. Each combatant choose one of three options, total attack, cautious attack, and total defense. Depending on the two combatant's choices, there may be modifiers to damage, or it may even be impossible for one side to do damage. I'm not a complete fan of this system. It adds some extra complications to combat, though it does give players more options. It does, however, makes things much more complex for the GM. I'd prefer making this rule optional or using it only for major NPCs. UY uses hits to keep track of a character's health. Damage is determined by rolling a number of d6 equal to the character's Physical score or the weapon's damage rating. This system is a little too random for my tastes, allowing for a wide range of values without accounting for the skill of the attacker.

My one complaint about the rules lies with the jujutsu (that's jujitsu to you foreign devils). Stolze takes the time to warn us that the rules for jujutsu are quite complex, and then suddenly, poof, no rules for jujutsu. I eventually found them on the combat summary page, but it was quite disconcerting to get a big old "Complex Rules Ahead!" warning only to find no rules in the main text.

The Adventures

UY comes with two adventures, The Haunted Temple, the tale of a young monk who attracts attention from beyond the grave, and The Butterfly, a rescue mission that gets messy, fast. Stolze has less than 10 pages for these two scenarios, and does a very good job of establishing characters and plots with limited space. Both adventures serve as good examples for newbie GMs, showing them how to make interesting characters and how to draw out repercussions from an adventure rather than letting them exist in a vacuum.

The Verdict

For $16, you cannot find a better bargain in the industry. The writing is superb, the UY setting ripe with adventure. Fan of the comic or not, UY is an unqualified success. Buy it to play it, or to simply cull this very fertile ground for ideas. The setting is compelling enough that I have set out on a personal crusade to find and buy as many UY comics as possible. What better recommendation can I give you?