Sword of Vengeance: Shadowdark in the Late Samurai Era
- Paul Wolfe
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
Everything you know about the samurai is probably wrong. Maybe not. You’re probably as obsessed as I am with chanbara movies, late-medieval Japanese history, religion, and life. But, surprise, samurai were not all honor-bound warriors with no fear of death. After the Sengoku period, they were enforcers for the bakufuku (the Shogunate) or they were victims of it, just like everyone else. So, how to make a Shadowdark Samurai?
We draw our clues from the chanbara movies in the 60’s and 70’s – most set in the late Meiji period as the hold of the Shogunate begins to falter under hundreds of years of corruption. Any samurai heroes were outcasts. Increasingly in that period, the heroes emerged from the peasant classes. Zatoichi is a great example, a blind masseuse that was also an avenging swordsman for the oppressed. Lady Snowblood (on which this game is inspired) is another – born to a mother in prison and raised to be an avenging assassin. Even Yojimbo and Sanjuro deal with the corruption of the system and how the outcasts maintain the “honor” of the previous eras.
Princess Death Face is a game of rebellion against convention, exposure of tyranny for what it is, and most of all, bloody vengeance against it.
I’m calling this Rev 1 – it contains the Princess Blade and the Yojimbo classes for Shadowdark. I’ll add the content below over the next couple of weeks:
Kiai Powers
Shinobi class
The Tortured Spirit class, Awakenings, and Possessions
The Fist of Fury class, Disciplines, and Doubts.
Equipment, weapons, and the rest of character creation stuff.
A short Princess Death Face scenario.
Hope you enjoy it. If there’s enough interest, I may make it into a continuing thing.
