Usagi Yojimbo: The Role-Playing Game (Second Edition)

**Usagi Yojimbo: The Role-Playing Game (Second Edition)** is a tabletop role-playing game published by Sanguine Productions. The game focuses on samurai, ninja, priests, and other adventurers who confront injustice and villainy in the fantastic 17th-century Japan revealed in Stan Sakai's *Usagi Yojimbo* comics. It is currently available as a digital bundle and print edition from DriveThruRPG.

## Roles

One player takes the role of the Master of Ceremonies (MC), who has the tasks of describing scenes, playing the roles of non-player characters and adversaries, and demonstrating conflicts for the other players to address. The other players take the roles of talking animals, each defined by seven attributes, a playbook which describes their social class and career, a species, and an optional quirk.

Players interact with the fiction by asking questions and describing their actions. When the situation is deemed chancy, their actions will be resolved through procedures called moves. All players have access to several common moves, and each player also has two distinctive moves determined by their career.

Four primary attributes influence the character's showing in conflicts relating to speed and observation (Initiative), social interactions (Negotiation), endurance and willpower (Righteousness), and demonstrating knowledge (Schooling). Each may be rated from -2 to +2 at the start of play, as long as the sum of all attribute ratings is equal to zero.

Three variable attributes go up and down over the course of play: Story points function as the character's bonus for attack moves, and may be spent in order to provide an immediate bonus to one's own last roll. Support points may influence the outcomes of certain career-based moves, and they may be spent in order to give an ally an immediate bonus to their last roll. Setback points are also used as a bonus for certain career-based moves, and they also provide a measure of the adversity and harm the character has endured in their adventure so far.

All characters start each adventure with zero Story and Setback points, and just 1 Support point.

Each player chooses a playbook for their character at the outset of play. The game includes fourteen playbooks, representing fourteen distinctive careers or backgrounds. Each playbook provides a social class, which determines their fighting style and offers a selection of starting weapons, and a distinctive career move.

Players are also encouraged to select their species, based on those portrayed in the Usagi Yojimbo comics, define their motivations, and optionally select a quirk. Quirks provide a benefit and detriment in the game.

## Gameplay

The MC is responsible for choosing or creating a conflict-rich scenario for the players to explore and resolve. The scenario will include at least three story beats, often structured along the lines of three dramatic acts, each of which will provide the players with one story point as they resolve it.

The MC imagines and describes scenes in which the players can make choices and describe their actions. Some actions will be casual, meaning that no one expects any risk involved, and they take effect simply by declaring them. Some actions will be dicey, meaning that they require the player to roll dice and resolve it according to the rules of a specific move. And some actions will constitute combat, in which everyone takes a turn before the MC describes response by the adversary characters. Responses will often be resolved according to conflict moves described in the MC section of the rulebook.

Progress through the scenario may be defined by first encounter with a threat, followed by investigation and overcoming obstacles, and then a final confrontation with the threat. The game encourages creative teamwork, exploiting information gathering, and revealing story beats in order to earn story points, all in order to gain make characters more effective in conflicts against their strongest adversaries and most difficult challenges.

## See Also

Usagi Yojimbo RPG, 2nd Edition on RPGGeek

1. ↑ https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/283127/USAGI-YOJIMBO-ROLEPLAYING-GAME-2nd-Edition
2. ↑ https://rpggeek.com/rpg/60813/usagi-yojimbo-role-playing-game-sanguine-2nd-editi