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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PosterBoy" data-source="post: 2011915" data-attributes="member: 2259">Legend of the Samurai Bushido Handbook    I started gaming at a young age back in the early eighties.  D&D was the only game my friends and I knew and the classes and feel of the traditional game from the PHB, DMG, and the modules was the game we played.  We were young and I can say that it really never occurred to use to have any other style of game.  That is until we got our little hands on Oriental Adventures.  This book opened our eyes to new possibilities and new styles.  The honor system, the martial arts, the unique weapons; it was all an eye opening experience that revolutionized the way we played.  Since those days I have always been interested in role playing games that capture the feel of the Far East.  It is an area though that does not get as much coverage as it deserves.  So, when I heard about RPG Objects announcement of their new book, I eagerly awaited to get a hold of a copy.      RPG Objects is a one of those game companies that is just waiting to take off.  They have had some very good books and seem to have a good following but still are not quite as well known or appreciated as some of the big boys in the industry.  They have put out some well received books like Darwin’s World, Legend of Excalibur, and the Blood and X series they have.      Legend of the Samurai Bushido Handbook covers the fighting side of the orient.  It does other things, but most importantly it should be noted that there are no magical classes in this release.  It covers quite a bit of area.    The only race presented is human.  But to allow for differences in the characters they present a caste system in the form of different bloodlines.  They run along the lines of honor getting different ranged of honor.  They give different attribute bonuses and have different favored classes.  I think this is one of the best ways I have seen doing the cast system.    Honor has always been a tricky thing in role playing games.  It has been written up a few different ways that I have seen and one aspect that many have in common is the assumption that people know what is honorable and what is not.  This book though really takes a good look at the honor and identifying many of the common transgressions and virtues that affect a person honor.      The classes presented are both interesting and really seem to fit.  While the Samurai will probably be the most popular class in the book, the others all are interesting and have good possibilities presented for them.  The classes all have reason to be taken to the high levels.  That is something that not all martial oriented classes seem designed to be able to do.       Martial arts have always been an interesting challenge for game designers.  There are a huge variety of options that exist within the different martial arts styles.  In this book they have chosen to use the feat system for their martial arts.  I feel that there are too few feats given over a characters life time for martial arts to really work this way.  The amount of different maneuvers and options that are available to martial artists are just not possible to recreate with the limited amount of feats that characters get.      Overall, this is a very solid book that does a nice job of presenting the Samurai and other Japanese oriented ideas.  It covers the basics and provides easy use material for both players and DMs.  I look forward to seeing the next product in this line.</blockquote>

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