Folded Steel Session 2 - Duels en Route to Katsutoyo Castle
Our Cast
Returning from last week’s session, we have:
Akamatsu Shiori - Our resident Shrine Maiden. Shiori’s second virtue is spirituality. She is bound to help the spirits of Gekkōshima, care for their shrines, and respect practices regarding local spirits.
Akamatsu Furi- A bushi seeking mastery of the blade and glory for the Akamatsu clan. Her second virtue is bravery. She is bound not to back down from challenges or allow others to face danger for her.
Akamatsu Sumire - A yumihiki (like a bow woman) who has mastered the bow. Sumire’s second virtue is abstinence. She is bound not to take part in superfluous indulgences that could distract her from mastering her spirit.
We also had a new addition to the party this week:
Yuuho - A commoner wandering through Gekkōshima. She writes poems about her experiences, and her virtue is Enlightenment. She is bound to seek and protect new information and knowledge, even when it would be more convenient not to (something which would come up in a big way this session).
You start in a tavern…
We kick off with the Akamatsu clan finishing up their dinner at the Fickle Fish Inn. As they discuss their plans to explore the haunted castle outside of town, they are approached by Yuuho, a commoner who asks to tag along on the journey. The Akamatsu girls are hesitant to accept a commoner among their ranks, particularly since Yuuho approached them with dirty robes. Ultimately, they decide that more help can’t hurt and allow Yuuho to join them, as long as she lets them buy her nicer clothes for the journey.
Before sleeping for the night, the party makes a trip to the bathhouse to wash up. The business is owned by a sweaty man in a loose-fitting kimono named Jubei, who is constantly scribbling figures in his logbook. Shiori purchases time for the group in the private baths, and they are led to their bath by an extremely jacked, but rather polite, bouncer. After a relaxing time, Hajime leads them out and hands them a letter from Jubei.
Opening the letter in their room, they learned that Jubei offers a number of services… discreetly. Private meetings, information, and companionship, all available with the secrecy of Jubei’s bathhouse.
But for now, the Akamatsu clan has all the information they need, so after a good night’s sleep and a quick stop to buy nicer clothes for Yuuho, they begin their march to Katsutoyo Castle.
The Hanging Turtle
It was about 9 miles (2 hexes) to the castle, and on the way, the party came across a beat-up old sign for an inn up ahead. They didn’t need to sleep, but stopped in to ask for information about the castle that was now looming over the horizon.
The inn was small and looked like the furniture hadn’t been updated since the mist cleared from the island, or maybe even earlier. A jade turtle statue hung from a string in the doorway, forcing customers to turn sideways to avoid it.
Despite the inn’s old appearance, it was doing a decent bit of business. An old man smoked a pipe in the corner, and 4 swordswomen chatted over sake.
The innkeeper was an older woman who, when asked about the castle, explained that she occasionally has guests who talk about robbing the castle or claiming it as their own, but so far, she’s never seen anyone again afterwards.
She didn’t know much else, but at this point, the party noticed the four swordswomen were staring at them. The largest of the four approached, introduced herself, and her 3 identical twins. Umiko, Umika, Fumiko, and Fumika, all bright-eyed women dying to become samurai.
Excited to meet a real samurai and wanting to test her skill, Umiko challenged Furi to a duel. Wanting to get in on the duelling fun herself, Sumire challenged one of the other sisters, Umika, to a duel.
The four all stepped outside and agreed to duel to first contact, where the first to land a strike would win. Furi and Umiko dueled first, and though Umiko was the first to attack, Furi parried her blows with ease before striking her with a counter and winning the duel.
Sumire’s duel was a little dicier. After multiple rounds of dodging and parrying, Umika landed the first hit and won the duel. Unfortunately, she rolled high on her damage, so Sumire would be stuck adventuring with lower HP for the next several days.
Regardless, the quadruplets felt enriched and grateful to the party. Though they were traveling to Gerozato to join the Akamatsu clan as Ashigaru, Furi asked that they consider working with the Akamatsu clan instead, once they establish their stronghold on the island. Umiko agreed that she and her sisters would think about it.
Katsutoyo Castle
A few more hours of marching, and the party finally arrived at Castle Katsutoyo. Before entering the castle, they stopped to pay their respects at the shrine in the center of the abandoned castle town. Shiori wanted to make an offering, but had run out of Ryo after buying clothes for Yuuho, paying for the private baths, and making an offering in town previously. Furi leant Yuuho a stingy 20 Mon for the offering, but hey, an offering is an offering.
After paying their respects, the players boldly rushed through the castle's front door, arriving in a sitting room divided in half by folding paper walls. The muffled sounds of feet shuffling and bone crunching crept through the folding wall. Pulling the wall back, the party laid eyes on 3 emaciated humanoids with loose grey skin gnawing on dirt and human bones, Gakis.
Not waiting to become food herself, Furi charged right at the Gakis and drew their attention. Though she faced all 3 at once, none of them managed to break through her armor, though she couldn’t land a blow on them either. Fortunately, while the Gaki’s futilely gnawed on Furi’s armor, the others were able to pick them off with their yumis (Japanese bows).
This was the party’s first interaction with Gekkōshima’s Yokai. Most of them were taken aback, but Sumire was all business, making sure to carve a tooth out of one of the Gakis to use as a trophy for one of her Yumihiki abilities. The smell of the trophy alone was much to the chagrin of her grossed-out companions.
Shogi for Yuuho’s Soul
After noting an armor and weapon stand against the south wall that was missing its weapon and helmet, the party proceeded into the smashed-up guard room to their east. When they were silent, they could hear a wolflike breathing from below them. Paying it no mind for now, they headed North into a room occupied by a pair of shogi boards and a logbook recording the moves of hundreds of games. Yuuho skimmed the book but decided not to spend a dungeon turn reading it for now.
The log would become relevant soon, though! Entering the door to their left, the party discovered a pair of kittens lounging on straw beds on the floor. As Sumire asked the party if she could keep them, they shifted into their true form, revealing themselves as Kasha, soul-stealing demon cats. Fortunately for the party, the Kashas don’t want to fight them; they just want to play a game of shogi. Of course, a Shogi game without stakes is boring, so they offered a jewel-encrusted katana if they lose, in exchange for the soul of their opponent if they win. Those stakes weren’t enough for Yuuho, though, who wanted them to answer any questions she had if she won. Sumire also asked for one of their claws (in search of another trophy). The Kasha agreed, but only if the party put two souls on the line. Yuuho agreed immediately, disregarding any objections from the party, but requested a little time to prepare a strategy. Longing for a worthy opponent, the cats agree.
Now Yuuho spent a turn studying the shogi log carefully, helping her deal a crushing defeat to the Kasha. The party earned their fancy katana (which they recognized as belonging to the weapon stand from the first room they were in), a claw, and all the information Yuuho wanted.
Yuuho mainly asked about what they were doing in the castle, and about who lived there. She learned the following:
- The Kashas have been here for hundreds of years
- They were assigned to find and collect the remains of a woman who died here, but they haven’t been able to find her
- The “master” of the castle is a skeletal lord who spends most of his time upstairs. He used to come down regularly to visit the shrine in the castle garden
- That shrine is manned by a priest that the Kasha don’t like. He isn’t very friendly and smells of salt
Before leaving the Kasha, the party offered them a deal. If the party finds the body they are after, the Kasha will owe them a favor, to be cashed in at any time for any task.
We left off here for the session, but I suspect we will finish the dungeon next week!
Reflections
This was the first session involving traveling, dungeon crawling, combat, and OSE’s skill system, so there was a lot to think about.
I thought traveling worked well. Giving the party travel points based on their move speed, and a travel cost for each tile type, is simple to understand and explain, and I suspect it will encourage the players to think a little more critically about their routing for longer travels. I’ll probably steal travel points for other hexcrawls.
Dungeon crawling worked well enough, too, but I knew it would, since it's not a radical departure from other OSR dungeon-crawling systems I’ve used. I am interested to see how I end up feeling about the random encounters. I usually use a clock for encounters vs a d6 roll because I like the players having a little more information about when encounters might be coming, but just rolling a d6 is simpler, so if I end up feeling better about it, great!
I have some mixed feelings about combat. I’ve spent the last several months playing Electric Bastionland, and Revolver, both of which have automatic hits. The only other OSR/adjacent system I’ve run lately is Ronin, which is Mork Borg derivative, so there are rolls to hit, but the vast majority of the time, you’re just trying to hit a 12, and you have resources you can burn to make hitting more likely. So, rolling to hit and the presence of ACs in the mid-teens were a change of pace. I have two main thoughts.
First, I really miss the streamlining of nixing the attack roll and how it prevents empty turns. The first 4 turns of combat in the campaign being “miss, pass”, was unfortunate, but the kind of unfortunate that can’t happen if attacks can’t miss.
On the other hand, I think having higher AC fulfils the heavy armor fantasy better than defense just subtracting from damage does. The Gaki’s all missing their attacks is a little mechanically boring, but it makes the Bushi feel more like a walking tank that parries and shrugs off attacks, rather than if they had each nibbled her for 1-2 damage.
Adding attack bonuses and AC also provides another lever one can use for character options. One issue I had when designing GLOG-style classes for an Into the Odd based system in Revolver was that character sheets had so few levers to manipulate that it could sometimes be hard to come up with features. This is somewhat moot in OSE since it's not a feature-heavy game, but it's something I’ll be considering next time I work on an Into the Odd or GLOG hack.
Lastly, we have the skill system ripped from Dolmenwood, which I’m not in love with. There’s a small list of universal skills, and then some classes have specific skills available to them. But the performance on those skills is pretty dicey; most classes start with skill chances ranging from 1 in 6 to 3 in 6. Those odds improve over time, but many of them are pretty bad. In a sense, I like this because I want players to treat skills more as a last resort and try to solve things without consulting their character sheet. But then I wonder why I want to have skills at all?
All of this is to say that I think my preference is either no skill system or a system that works pretty reliably. I don’t necessarily want my class features to be super powerful, but I want my players to feel excited about using them rather than feeling like using them is a fail state because they aren’t that likely to work.
This isn’t system-breaking or anything, but I imagine I’ll go back to skill-less in my next game or try something like Dragonbane that goes all-in on skills, and see how that plays.
For a less system-specific reflection, I really enjoyed our new character this week! The player is wonderful (they were dropping in-character haikus in chat throughout the session), and adding a commoner to the party creates a fun dynamic. Furi has someone to teach to be “dignified”, Shiori has someone to dote on, and the party has someone to question their formality and stuffy values.
Poems
This week, I have some poems from my players! I asked each player to reflect on the session and write a Tanka from their character's perspective. Included below is mine, plus 2 from players who were comfortable having theirs posted.
Furi's Poem
Gifted the common
Laid eyes on gorgeous katana
Still, I uphold grace
Ensure our clan does not stray
With strict glare, I lead the way
Yuuho's Poem
Cast out to the dregs
Chance meeting at common bar
Members of a clan
Seeking adventure’s knowledge
Convenient bodyguards
My Poem
Clacking shogi tiles
She finds the winning move
Paws on the table
Declawed in a single cut
Her soul secured for today