Legends of the Samurai: The Bushido Handbook

Legends of the Samurai is the second in the "Legends" product line from RPGObjects, which is meant to be historical and/or mythological roleplaying. That is, not just regular history, but history based on legends and mythology, too, so there's magic and such. It's regular d20, but not D&D, it has all new character classes and a new magic system. Somewhere between D&D and d20 Modern in terms of "realism".

As you might guess from the name, Legends of the Samurai is about Japan, specifically the medieval period. This is the first pdf of 3, The Bushido Handbook, covering characters (mostly martial ones, but not limited to them), the 2nd is apparently on magic, and the third is the campaign book. Much like Legends of Excalibur, all 3 will apparently be combined into a hardcover book later on (around Gen Con?).

My knowledge of Japan is pretty much limited to video games, movies, and So Taguchi. While probably half the DVDs I own are Japanese in origin, they are pretty much Kaiju movies (ie, Godzilla, Gamera, or my favorite, Mothra). So this is going to be a relatively short review, since I don't know much about the subject material.


The first chapter is on "Bloodline" which is more or less the characters status in society or caste. This pretty much works like a race in d20, that is, gives starting bonuses or penalties, including to ability scores. There's Outcast, Merchant, Noble, Warrior, Farmer, Monastic, and Artisan.


Instead of alignment, characters have "Honor", which is pretty much like the system from Legends of Excalibur, that is, a rating from 100 to 0, the higher the more honorable. A character does honorable things it goes up, dishonorable ones it goes down.


There are 8 core classes in this PDF, most of whose names I cannot even begin to pronounce. (I once tried to learn Japanese, but it went very badly...).

There's a Ninja, of course. But unlike many ninjas, this is a fairly mundane and thus probably very realistic one - no flipping out and it doesn't have to be a mammal, either*.. A Samurai and a Ronin. A class for a thief (which I can't begin to spell), as well as classes for artisans and ascetics. Seems to cover most bases (magical classes are covered in the 2nd product in the line).



There's a lot of new feats. Including many new martial arts feats, presumably similar to the ones from the RPGObjects martial arts products. Too many to count easily, probably 50-60 of them. There are so many because many of the classes require the character to pick a combat style. This style (which can either be armed or unarmed) then determines what sort of bonus feats the character can take. Pretty neat, though I wonder if the classes actually get enough bonus feats to take full advantage of this. They seem to only get about 6-7 total by 20th level.

Again, much like the classes, the feats are fairly mundane. No Wire-Fu sort of combat. There is Sumo, though, which is quite possibly the complete opposite of that.

Lots of new weapons and armor is introduced. Pretty much a whole new listing, since the regular D&D ones aren't appropriate.



The art is fantastic. Remember the art in the old first edition Oriental Adventures book for AD&D? Well, it's like that, style wise. Eerie just how close it is. Since RPGObjects is firstly a PDF company, the PDF takes advantage of most the frills the format offers, bookmarks and such. There's two PDFs, one for printing and one for viewing.


To me, it seems like an excellent product. While I cannot personally vouch that it's completely true to the source material (since I'm not very familiar with it), based on the author's track record, I'm sure it is. So, if you are interested in a game set in this general era, then give this a look.

(This review probably does not convey the enthusiasm the product deserves. Whilst trying to write this review, I watched "House of Flying Daggers" and while that was Chinese, not Japanese, it pretty much sucked out any interest I might have had in medieval asian roleplaying. Though the colors were very pretty.)

* Well, I guess it does, since there aren't any non-human races in this.

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