Shadowlands sourcebook and Mask of the Oni adventure announced

[Kaiju 116]

9 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

There, fixed it for you.

I think i must have read that sentiment of yours in about every thread on these forums. 

Personally I find the game mechanically much superior to the shoddy 4th edition, but I ll grant that the Star Wars RPG handles a lot of things just a bit better (though lets not talk about balance).

Looking at the content of the Shadowlands book, with the patterns and old/new schools, I am pretty confident we are nowhere near "feature complete" on the mechanics and ideas that FFG has with this setting. I would really enjoy a well-made crafting system (liked SW-RPG for that, as well as the old Deadlands) to give the Artisan idea more meat to its bones. I also think we are sorely lacking in rules concerning mounted combat/cavalry. Its an area newer RPGs are notoriously bad with, yet (as a horse rider myself) would have some design space for great detail (different breeds or attributes for horses, ways of using speed, height and momentum, yet problems with handling a horse in combat, horse racing, jumping).

Does anyone know if there is any additional crunch/rules in the Mask of the Oni?

[Avatar111 435]

even if we are not "feature complete" the problem is within the core system (all conflicts aside skirmishes are just trash design that can be won with spamming the same thing over and over, a lot of techniques are trash design, especially shuji, the advantage/disadvantage system and all its related techniques and void point leverage ways is trash, the movement/range system is trash, the strife system is imbalanced, the "resist" mechanic is tedious once you reach a certain rank when you resist stuff every turn and add opportunities to that, the opportunity usage as a whole is extremely bloated and unbalanced, the wound system and critical strike effects are just a joke, chopping arms left and right and killing nobody, oh, and lets not forget if you lose one duel, ONE, with a finishing blow, you are guaranteed infirm)

so even if they add "pattern" rules ? how does it fix the bad core ?

[Mirac 34]

15 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

There, fixed it for you.

Nah, you just used my message for your general moaning. There are more fitting threads for that, no need to derail one about Shadowlands and related books.

[Hansisaf 5]

Does anyone know if there's rules for new adversaries in the book? Like Hanemuri, Fudoshi, Oni etc. Also, how's the adventure? (Without spoilers)

[Nheko 173]

New adventure tied to Mask of the Oni:

The Knotted Tails

[Ultimatecalibur 596]

19 hours ago, Kaiju said:

Does anyone know if there is any additional crunch/rules in the Mask of the Oni?

No addition crunch that I could find.

4 hours ago, Hansisaf said:

Does anyone know if there's rules for new adversaries in the book? Like Hanemuri, Fudoshi, Oni etc. Also, how's the adventure? (Without spoilers)

Shadowlands has rules for a number of new adversaries including undead, yokai (Fudoshi among them), Ogres, the Dark Moto, a build an Oni rules set, a entity that may be the Demon Bride, and more. The Mask of the Oni adventure only contains the stats for the two antagonists of the adventure.

 

[Tonbo Karasu 1,960]

To add to that, Knotted Tails, the DLC released today, has stats for 4 adversary and 3 minion level nezumi.

[ZebioLizard2 7]

I am surprised by the change to the Nezumi's age now that only certain ones can reach beyond a decade. In Old5R they could live to 30, 45 being really old for them. It feels weird to have their lifespan even shorter then before.

[MamoruK 23]

are there more player option added in Mask of the Oni? FFG liked spattering stuff in the adventure books for star wars so i'm curious if they started doing it here too.

[Victarion13 51]

4 hours ago, ZebioLizard2 said:

I am surprised by the change to the Nezumi's age now that only certain ones can reach beyond a decade. In Old5R they could live to 30, 45 being really old for them. It feels weird to have their lifespan even shorter then before.

Well, I think because now the 35 or 45 years old is very OLD for human (you know, married at 14, have children, die in your bed when you are around 40)

[ZebioLizard2 7]

7 hours ago, Victarion13 said:

Well, I think because now the 35 or 45 years old is very OLD for human (you know, married at 14, have children, die in your bed when you are around 40)

Is it? That's kind of odd as well since once you are past childbirth the life expectancy is much longer. Especially given all the Samurai who retire to become Monks later on in life, there's even a large number of elder characters in the game proper as well.

 

The Peasants might live to 35-45, but that's because they constantly work till they die with their only medical treatment being from monks. While Samurai live content, training filled lives that have access to Shugenja and other proper care with better food access.

Edited March 22 by ZebioLizard2

[nameless ronin 706]

2 hours ago, ZebioLizard2 said:

While Samurai live content, training filled lives that have access to Shugenja and other proper care with better food access.

And depending on the time, lots and lots of war.  

[ZebioLizard2 7]

Also true, but Samurai still die less then the hordes of Ashigaru they've brought.

Edited March 22 by ZebioLizard2

[nameless ronin 706]

28 minutes ago, ZebioLizard2 said:

Also true, but Samurai still die less then the hordes of Ashigaru they've brought.

True enough. Just wanted to point out that dying in bed of old age is probably not the most common samurai death overall (and certainly not the death most dream of).

[sndwurks 1,171]

Not gonna lie...

I kind of want to play the Yasuki - Kaiu Engineer with the Large Stature Advantage and the Doom Crossbow weapon of choice.

[Tonbo Karasu 1,960]

We appear not to be getting it in the UK until April...

@sndwurks , you can keep your crossbow out of the way on the top shelf

[sndwurks 1,171]

Just now, Tonbo Karasu said:

@sndwurks , you can keep your crossbow out of the way on the top shelf

It's a bipod mountable heavy crossbow capable of killing an ogre in a single shot.

AND IT'S CALLED THE DOOM CROSSBOW.

This is almost better than the fact that the book gave us (and the Crab totally use) shields, picks, and truncheons.

[UnitOmega 2,409]

A Void point to the first man to tell an oni he "must have huge guts". 

[Hida Jitenno 503]

Was certainly hoping for a wealth of Shadowlands powers. I had a homebrew school in a previous edition from a darker timeline, where the Kuni actively manifested Shadowlands powers in their version of the Damned.

With Scorpion "Yojimbo" around them in case things got... out of hand.

[UnitOmega 2,409]

It is my understanding there actually are a boat-load of Shadowlands powers, that's mostly for GMs designing their own Adversaries. If you wanted to steal them for schools you could, though they've been described as affecting the pol and mil score of the Oni who uses them. 

[gnappeur 0]

Hello

When can we find the pdf to drivethrug?