Earl of Fife Games Announces Licensing Deal for Tetsubō - Former Warhammer Fantasy Setting Expansion

[tetnak]

Tetsubō is coming to Heroes & Hardships in 2023.

Earl of Fife Games is proud to announce the licensing of the unpublished Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay setting expansion Tetsubō by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson (famed authors of Dragon Warriors and Fabled Lands).

Tetsubō is set to be released as a setting for the Heroes & Hardships Core Rulebook, with expanded rules dedicated for play in the fantastical land of Yamato.

Tetsubō is a game inspired by both Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Sengoku era Japan. Earl of Fife Games will bring the setting to life with gritty fantasy in a feudal land of samurai, oni, and glory.

The Heroes & Hardships Core Rulebook is coming soon on Kickstarter. Follow today to get notified when we go live and help bring Tetsubō and other great supplements to life.

The Heroes & Hardships Kickstarter

You can find out more about the licensing deal at Geek Native.

You can find out more about Tetsubō's origins HERE.

 

[CapnZapp]

I stumbled upon this. However, for me the choice to pair up the setting with "a universal RPG System using d10 dice pools that supports any genre" breaks my enthusiasm.

1) the world doesn't need more sets of rules. No really. I would have liked this better if an existing ruleset was chosen for this campaign world. There are many many existing lo-fantasy and/or eastern-setting rule-sets out there. Plus: the new rule set will highly likely remain a small niche set of untested rules with little play testing.
2) I am personally never looking for a generic or universal rule-set. Rules that are intricately interwoven with one specific setting always end up being better at supporting the specific needs and wants of that setting. Take Warhammer for instance. I love the WFRP rules precisely because everything is so connected to the Old World. Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson arguably chose WFRP precisely because its sensibilities would map well to a feudal Japanese setting. (I thus disagree with the sentiment posted at the Awesomeliesblog linked post: "It feels like a Japanese-inspired RPG that just happened to use the WFRP ruleset.") I'm not saying WFRP is perfect for feudal Japanese culture and folklore. I am saying I never find the fact I can run a space mutant or spy intrigue game with my favorite fantasy ruleset sufficiently useful or valuable to warrant losing the benefits that come from a hard inseparable connection between game world and game rules.
3) I haven't seen a dice pool game that can give off the same vibe and feel as a traditional system. And the WFRP rule-set used for the original Tetsubō is very much a traditional system. (Just about the only relatively successful transition I can think of is Kult: Divinity Lost, which arguably was a poor fit for a traditional hack'n'slash derived game system (BRP) anyway. But I see no arguments why the system was changed, and no discussion why Tetsubō would benefit from this new universal genre-spanning dice pool game.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I haven't seen a dice pool game that can give off the same vibe and feel as a traditional system. And the WFRP rule-set used for the original Tetsubō is very much a traditional system. (Just about the only relatively successful transition I can think of is Kult: Divinity Lost, which arguably was a poor fit for a traditional hack'n'slash derived game system (BRP) anyway. But I see no arguments why the system was changed, and no discussion why Tetsubō would benefit from this new universal genre-spanning dice pool game.)

I mean, dice pool systems are like, what, well over 30 years old? I'm pretty sure they're "traditional" at this point.

Transitioning between different systems is always a huge risk. I don't think the new system being a dice-pool based one makes it any more or less likely to succeed. It's "universal genre-spanning systems", regardless of mechanics, that tend to translate things poorly, usually unless as you say, they're coming from a poor base (c.f. RIFTS terrible Palladium system going to the better Savage Worlds).

It does sound like they should have stuck with a more WHFRPG-like system though.

 

[CapnZapp]

I mean, dice pool systems are like, what, well over 30 years old? I'm pretty sure they're "traditional" at this point.

I was using the term to distinguish traditional, straight-forward dice resolution methods, such as percentile, or perhaps adding.