B.Y.O. Warrior’s Pilgrimage

If you’ve ever come across my work before, it’s obvious that I have a thing for settings and games that take heavy inspiration from Japan, especially the various eras of the samurai class. What can I say? I’m a sucker for class struggle, fast action and drama so heavy that you can’t breath until the scene is over.

One project that I’m working on is a Japan-inspired setting for B.Y.O. Dungeon. It doesn’t have a name yet; that’s probably the last thing I’ll write. Check out this two-page spread below:

The story is yours to tell

This supplement is going to be a solo gamebook in the vein of Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, or Choose Your Own Adventure. I’m showing you this page because I feel that it really highlights what I’m striving to do with B.Y.O. Dungeon.

In most gamebooks everything is programmed for you in advance. You’ve got brief sections of text that give you a binary choice of which numbered paragraph to read next, and in some cases a few dice to roll. Here you get to customize almost everything about the story.

On the left-hand page you can see a fill-in history of Clan 1. Yup, you can even name the clans and their leaders as you see fit. Below the story section are a few stats. Clan 1 is a playable faction, if your brave ronin can earn their trust. Instead of the familiar Stamina, Skill, and Luck, clans have Resources, Might, and Cunning, which are suitable descriptions of an organization’s attributes.

Deadly rivals

Over on the right is one of my favorite pages. It’s the rival that pops up to make life hard for you. As you can see from the left page, the lord of this clan puts up with your rival for some reason. Once you set foot out of the city your rival is ready to ambush you. They start out with pretty threatening stats for a PC, but they’re nothing that you can’t overcome.

The threat that your Rival poses is their tenacity. You have to beat them multiple times to truly overcome them. Each time that you run into your Rival, they’re more powerful than the last time.

Do you see the white space with the dice faces on the right-hand page? That’s where you write the special abilities that your rival can bring to bear against you. It’s up to you to decide their ability, but I’ll provide a sample here in case you’ve got a block:

Tsubame Gaeshi (Returning Swallow): If the Rival misses you in combat then instead of taking damage they make an immediate second attack against you. They take no damage if the second attack misses.

The first time I encounter this rival, he’s only going to be able to use his technique against me if he rolls a 1 on the special d6 described in the Info section of the right page. The second time that I encounter him I can give him a new ability, tied to a roll of 2 on the special d6, or I can stipulate that the Tsubame Gaeshi ability now activates on a roll of 1 or 2. This makes him twice as deadly as he was before.

Make it your own and share your results

One last thing that I love about this book is that you, reader, get to color it. Yup, fill up all the visual blank spaces if you like. What color is Clan 1’s castle? That’s up to you. What does your Rival really look like? Draw their features to find out; you might surprise yourself!

I really, really want to see what you can do with this page. Feel free to print out the picture above and fill it in. Draw and color the Rival, and give them a deadly ability or two. It doesn’t have to be for the B.Y.O. Dungeon series, either. You can use this setup with almost ANY RPG.

If you personalize these pages, please post them to Twitter, mention me (@JRossDiscoSoup), and label them with #BYODungeon. I’ll post as many as I can up here on the blog. And remember, you can always get the B.Y.O. Dungeon core rules for FREE at this DrivethruRPG page.