Pyramid Pick: Sengoku

Pyramid Pick

Sengoku

Published by Gold Rush Games

Written by Anthony J. Bryant and Mark T. Arsenault

336 pages, $30.00

Everything you need to know about Gold Rush Games' new Sengoku roleplaying game is in the dedication -- to Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa, star and director respectively of many great films in the chanbara tradition, including Yojimbo, Ran, Rashomon, and the classic Seven Samurai.

Mark Arsenault of GRG has long loved feudal Japan of the Sengoku period (roughly defined as 1550 or so to 1600). Several years back, he thought he had completed a deal to bring back the classic Bushido roleplaying game in a new edition, but legal complications over the rights to previous editions killed the deal. Undeterred, he set about to design a new game of his own, enlisting the help of the talented Anthony Bryant. That new game is Sengoku, and it's a whopper.

Sengoku weighs in at 336 pages, and very little of it is wasted space. This is an exceedingly thorough book, covering the historical setting of Sengoku Japan, from social order and religion to daily life. These first 90 or so pages will fully immerse the reader in the culture of the period, and tell you everything you need to know to create a character true to the game's background.

Then come the rules. Character creation first, then combat and magic. Sengoku uses the Fuzion system, and it seems to work just fine. There is a "Lifepath" system for randomly rolling the pertinent background details of your character, . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: December 17, 1999

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