The Bamboo General

"The Bamboo General" didn't make an appearance in Kausao City until The Miners Rebellion of SF 65. In the clashes that followed the brutal repression of the miners' march, a small group of workers broke off from the multitude and invaded one of the exclusive gardens belonging to one of the Council of Nine. They chopped down a number of bamboos and used them to fashion deadly weapons based on an ancient Tuyang model.

A hand cannon, the Bamboo General is stuffed with stones, broken pottery shards, broken glass or shards of obsidian. The weapon is charged with an explosive powder derived from red jade. The weapons used in The Miners Rebellion were one-shot affairs, as the bamboo is rarely sturdy enough to withstand more than one explosive discharge. However, bamboo grown in proximity to green jade deposits is of particular value. When used to build hand cannons, green jade infused bamboo retains its utility indefinitely.

***

The Bamboo General (Device)
Function Aspect: Red Jade Hand Cannon

Features:

• Exceptional - Attack prevents target from checking a stress box to reduce a hit
• Harmful 1

Flaws:

• Limited - One shot weapon; then you need a scene to make a new one
• Situational - Only effective on a target in the same or an adjacent zone

Brand Jade Anubian

The Anubian Ambassador now has her copy of Jadepunk, which she ordered from the Reroll Store six days ago and received directly from the POD fabrication site today. The Anubian has learned to be wary of big heavy books ever since the "Starblazer Incident"; she thinks this one poses substantially less of an existential threat than her other current project by Piketty.

The Little Lady was surprised to see that the font is sepia-toned; she likes cuttlefish, so this pleased her. The Ambassador also reflected that this game could be used in other ways. She suggested that I could to run a setting like "Far West" using Jadepunk. Indeed, the Assets rules could be readily adopted to emulate many different kinds steampunk era inventions, whether or not they are fueled by jade. She suggested that the game could be used for all sorts of Westerns, as well as for martial arts dramas influenced by the Westerns.

Her most extraordinary idea was to go forward in time a bit and set an alt-Jadepunk game in the mid-20th Century. "I have such vivid memories of the Shanghai People's Commune during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Back then there were so many factions in China; all of them were armed. You never knew what would happen next. The intrigue! The folly! Imagine a campaign set during that turbulent era! Of course, most of the Aristocrats in that era were Party members. Or Scoundrels, pretending to be Aristocrats. Oh, the possibilities!"

Jadepunk Playmat Reviews

You got Jadepunk in my Tekumel!

Over the last few days, we published a series of reviews, or, perhaps, practical elaborations, designed to show what you can do with the Jadepunk RPG's playmat:

• Creating a scenario with the City Map
• Story mapping with the Zone Map
• Diagramming an encounter with the Zone Map 

Ryan M. Danks, one of co-authors of Jadepunk, released his first Jadepunk tutorial video this weekend, which explains how to use the playmat. It's very instructive and helpful.

Ryan told me recently that once I tried the playmat, I'd never go back to running Fate without it; he may be right!

The playmat costs $10 plus $6 shipping and can be purchased from the Reroll Store.

Jadepunk Playmat, Pt. II - Zoneside

Today, we are looking at the Zoneside of the Jadepunk playmat. Earlier this week, we took a look at the Cityside of the Jadepunk playmat. The playmat is available from the Reroll Store for $10 plus $6 shipping.

The Zoneside of the laminated playmat gives you a dry erase space in which to create zone maps for action scenes. The Zoneside of the playmat is setting-neutral: you can use it with any Fate game. The playmat offers an open space for zone creation, rather than superimposing a grid of hexes or squares as do most playmats designed for conventional RPGs. This is in line with the Fate system preference for abstraction with respect to space and movement.

We gave the playmat a test drive on Thursday night, as Bob ran the second half of our Pilgrims of the Flying Temple playtest. The adventure took place in a forest, in the caves below a giant tree, and inside the giant tree itself. Our use of the map was a bit whimsical, and traced our itinerary through the forest adventure, with situational/environmental aspects being recorded along the way.

Later this weekend, I'll post a more tactical use of the playmat over on my Fate of Tekumel blog.

In the upper right hand side of the playmat, there is a box labelled "Situational Aspects". Since this was the second half of an adventure that happened 3-4 weeks ago, I used that box to record the names of the NPCs.

The action started with the PCs chasing a dog named Ulf. We had been sent to a village outside the forest because of a letter from a village girl called Molly. She had requested our help, because all of the village's animals had disappeared. Once we discovered Molly's dog Ulf deep in the forest, we followed the dog into a branching tunnel complex under the giant tree in the center of the forest.

Next to the sketch of branching caves, I wrote down one of the important environmental aspects that Bob put out there for players: Luminescent Moss. As we went in deeper, we encountered an underground river. All of us went in the drink, chasing the dog.

As you can see from the detail shot below, the river has one of Bob's signature aspects:

The river was swift, and some of us were NOT good swimmers. That led to a number of Approach rolls, as one PC attempted to avoid drowning, while a few of us struggled to catch-up with the others.

Over several rounds of Approaches rolls, Bob used the lower left hand box on the playmat (designed for recording Boosts) to make hash marks for each player's relative progress moving down the underground river. The fewer X's you had, the farther ahead you had gone; the more X's you had, the further you had fallen behind in swimming, stalactite swinging, or walking on water.

Yes, that's right. Walking on water. My character decided that since he knew how to walk on treetops, it should be easy to walk on water. The trick is to keep moving, so you don't sink! He grabbed a stalactite, kicked off his wet shoes, and began walking on water. Stunt creation on the fly!

Eventually we made it out of the cave, and found ourselves back right outside the giant tree at the center of the forest.

We climbed the tree, eventually found an opening, and went inside. There were ant-folk. We communicated with them by making "antenna gestures" with our hands. Eventually we encountered the blobular sapling creature living in a pool of sap.

We negotiated - get ready for it - a Tree-Tee, and brought it back to the villagers outside the forest so that they could sign it.

The villagers promised to treat the animals better, and eventually some of the animals returned!

***

Our first experience with the Jadepunk playmat was very fun. Sure, we didn't use it for tactical play in a single zone, as much as to represent the succession of scenes where the action took place. So we used the playmat as a set of linked scene maps. I think that is a legitimate use of the artifact.

The two boxes on the right side of the playmat were not used exactly as intended. Instead, the GM found a new use for each box which supported play in that specific adventure. I think it adds value to the playmat design that a GM can make versatile use of these small compartments.

Finally, a couple of words about the physical quality of the playmat are in order. In my original review of the Cityside of the map, I commented that I would have preferred a rolled mat, as opposed to a folded one. I have since heard back from the playmat's designer that they experimented with a rolled format. It didn't work too well, as the rolled mat kept trying roll up on the game table. I can tell you that in a 2.5 hour session, the fact that the mat had been folded made no difference for play. 

No less importantly, I want to underscore how erasable the playmat is. One dry napkin was totally sufficient to remove all traces of dry erase marker from the playmat. Reuse is everything with a playmat, and this one is a very good value. 

Jadepunk Playmat, Pt. I - Cityside

Last week, we ordered the Jadepunk RPG playmat from the Reroll Store. It cost $10 plus $6 for shipping. It arrived in three days, remarkably fast when you consider how long some gaming vendors make you wait before they even take your parcel to the post office!

The playmat has two sides. One side is a map of Kausao City, the default setting of the Jadepunk RPG. That's what I am looking at today.

The playmat is laminated so that you can use dry erase markers with it. The city map has a few key locations that are labelled, but most of the map is designed for on-the-fly specification of locations used in the scenario. So we have a city resource that is closer to Vornheim than to Ptolus. This works well with Fate's collaborative and on-the-fly approach to setting creation, although there is nothing to prevent a GM from specifying setting details by fiat, as I have done in the photo above.

On the top left side of the map we filled-in two Scenario Aspects:

• Find the Meteor Hammer
• Pursued by the Red Jade Swallowers

Boom! We have a scenario!

Now we link the scenario to the map! You can click on the photo above to enlarge the map. For the scenario, I have marked three locations on the Kausao City map:

• The primary location is the Nighthammer District (circled in blue), a borrowing from the city of Nexus in Exalted. This district is where the city's iron and steel are made. On the left side of the playmat, Nighthammer's aspects are listed:
• Many forges
• Smoke
• The sound of hammers
• A discoverable clue location, "Ling last seen here" is circled in rust colored ink on the lower end of the map. The location is known as The Red Garden. It's aspects are:
• Smugglers trade here
• Rough trade (it's close to the docks and people so inclined come here to pick up stevedores)
• Pickpockets
• A discoverable clue location, RJS haven? noted at the top of the map in red. The Red Jade Swallowers are a secret society which is trying to steal a Red Jade artifact, the Red Blood Cloud Meteor Hammer.

Now we link back to some important Faces (NPCs) of Kausao City that will be featured in the scenario.

Apprentice Ling

• Portrayal: Apprentice Smith
• Need: Sell the Hammer
• Secret: On the Run

Master Chen

• Portrayal: Master Smith
• Need: Recover the Hammer
• Secret: Promised the Hammer to two different customers

Mao Yang

• Portrayal: Ling's Lover
• Need: Find Ling
• Secret: I have the money to start a new life with Ling

Debt Collector Yao

• Portrayal: Collect what is owed
• Need: Wants Yang for Himself
• Secret: The Red Jade Society have my daughter

So, a macguffin, a love triangle, and a man who made too many promises.

Then we have our mysterious villain:

Mystery Vang

• Portrayal: Boss of the Red Jade Swallowers
• Need: The Meteor Hammer
• Secret: ?

***

Conclusions: If you are playing Jadepunk, the city-side alone is worth $10. It is easy to use it to create adventures on the fly. The map is color-coded to show the major nations' turf in Kausao city, but there is plenty of neutral territory that the GM can use as they see fit. In fact most of the map works that way.  

My only critical feedback is that I would have been willing to pay even more to get the map without folds, rolled-up in a tube. I just prefer maps that lay perfectly flat. I might not have bought the product if I had known it was folded, but in practice that turned out not to bother me too much when I used it.

We are doing the second half of our Pilgrims of the Flying Temple playtest tonight, so we'll see if the GM wants to use the other side of the map, which offers a Zone Map.