A narrativist ensemble game about secret ninja drama on a long-forgotten island, written by Joe Jeskiewicz, Jonathan Walton & Tod Foley, with a resolution system based on “Rock-Paper-Scissors.” New re-release for 2022!
Shinobi Village was an entry in Paul Czege’s Threeforged RPG Design Challenge in 2015. The rules of the challenge involve random sets of three designers who work as anonymous baton-racing teams, handing off incomplete designs to unknown teammates, and all rushing to complete three playable games before deadline.
Stage 1 went to Joe Jeskiewicz, who came up with the initial concept for a “Ninja Clan Fishing Village.”
In Stage 2 Jonathan Walton developed the game, adding a brilliantly simple resolution system based on “Rock-Paper-Scissors” and turning it into a comedy-action-romance-anime series.
In Stage 3 I received the design. I worked out the details of the resolution system, added a set of Scene-Framing mechanics, and we were done.
Now cleaned up and laid out for a new 2022 edition!
For those who don’t know, “UnNatural” is a CORE World of modern-day monster hunting that might remind you of (the best seasons of) a certain TV show. It has been updated to CORE v3.0 and is available in print from Drivethru.
Today my Playtester patrons are getting version 3.0 of UnNatural – bringing the rules up to CORE 3.0. It’s based on that TV show I’m often talking about. The one with the two brothers? I’m sure you know it. Now you can play it! https://patreon.com/posts/71475614
Mechanically — how to play it — finished and in active playtesting.
Pedagogically — how to run it — still designing an optimal approach.
This is because CORE is built to facilitate a specific type of play: one I can’t assume your group is experienced with. Narrativism in general can be a tough pill for some people to swallow, and CORE presents a deliberately “hybrid” system that might – at first glance – be easily mistaken for a “Trad” game. But the Narrativism shows itself quickly, and the GM must have confidence in their ability to run in a loose and collaborative style. This may or may not be something you can just “teach” someone; but like any soft science, you can approach it a well-structured way, in order to provide the student with the right learning tools — in the right order — to understand the subject to the depth of which they’re capable. In other words, this is about pedagogy.
It’s pretty rare for a game design to bother teaching how to GM the experience pedagogically. It’s even more rare for a game to describe the designer’s intended experience of play phenomenologically. The assumption seems to be “an RPG is an RPG” and “you bring your own style to the table.”
While it’s true that all games are subject to playstyle, some games actually aim for an experience that’s qualitatively different than the things we usually think of when we think about RPG play (especially “trad” play).
The designers of such games must put in additional work to describe what it is about this game that makes the experience different, or requires a specific approach, rather than simply dumping some mechanics in front of you and letting you figure it out.
This can be hard to do, given the “omniscient” perspective of the designer.
Taking its cue from the upcoming CORE COMPLETE book, this version includes new rules for Wealth, Debt, LifeShapers, Advancement, Gradiated Actions, Pushing Yourself, Running CORE, Playing CORE, and Hacking CORE.
