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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6948612" data-attributes="member: 82106">Shugenja are SORT OF 'wizards', but they are also somewhat 'priest-like' in their own right in some respects. Then gakusho, IIRC come in a Buddhist and a Shinto flavor, which are somewhat different. I think Budoka covers both what OA would call 'monks' and 'sohei', all of which are simply religiously affiliated martial characters (really the monk in the 'Shaolin' sort of martial-artist style never existed in Japan). The secondary dimension of social rank is what removed the need for other classes, a basic peasant bushi has the same class mechanics as a samurai, but they will have a completely different game experience, much different skills (the game has a rather elaborate system of skills).Anyway, you're right in your assessment of the system. There are at least a dozen derived attributes, all of which work in arbitrarily complex ways and each requiring mastery of several pages of subsystem. There are THREE kinds of 'honor', personal, public, and then your social rank is essentially another form, plus you also have 'karma'. Then bushi have a complex system where they calculate their 'awesomeness' (I forget the name of the attribute), which determines how many times they can attack per round. The flavor was awesome, but the rules sucked. I doubt anyone in their right mind ever used more than 1/3 of the actual rules as written. ANY interaction you made by RAW would require adjustments and consultation of at least 3-5 attributes! I have always thought though that a more faithful reworking in a modern system would be a pretty good game. The author clearly was attempting to produce a game that spoke to actual 15th-16th Century Japanese cultural and folk-lore themes. I'm not expert enough to know how well that succeeded, but it SEEMED pretty cool at the time. The guy who ran our games lived in Japan for quite a stretch and at least had some clues about the culture, so it was an interesting play. I'd never attempt to actually run it today though.</blockquote>

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