Intro

The world of Shotgun Musashi is a rural America where clans of farmers have warlike feuds after the harvest and where gun season is a time for rifle wielding shootists to meet in the woods and fields of the County to make names for themselves. The world that matters is small, and folks are mostly concerned about local conflicts, grudges, feuds, and reputations. The state government is distant, and national concerns barely exist at all. What matters most is what happens inside the County, among relatives, friends, rivals, and enemies.

Gun season is not the deer hunting season so familiar in our Midwest. Instead, it is a time when young hunters go into the woods to meet and face off in close combat with rifles, much as samurai duelists would with swords. Gunfighting in the County is highly stylized and ritualized combat. Duels must be held close; honorable shootists only fire when they are close enough that the barrels of their rifles can cross. The battles are full of all the blocking, parrying, and dodging of any chambara swordfight as barrels are knocked to the side just before the trigger is pulled and combatants wheel around in the woods searching for an advantage. The battles are fought for family and personal honor.

A young man has to make a name for himself, after all.

Gun season coincides with the time when the feuds sometimes break out into open wars. Although feuds brew throughout the year, and skirmishes and midnight attacks damage barns and crops, it is only after the harvest that the farmers can afford to bring together their kin and related clans to battle with their enemies. Some years, the feuds break out into open battle in the fall and continue into the bitter months of winter. Sometimes they erupt over insults to family or to the family name. Sometimes they are due to adulteries, trespassing, or damage to crops. Sometimes no one really remembers what they're about, but backing down would be shameful.

What do you want people to think about you? How do you want to be remembered? Shotgun Musashi is about making a name for yourself and your family. How will you behave with your own and your family's reputations at stake?

Additionally, because Reputations are externally defined, everyone knows everyone else's Reputations. There are no secret abilities in Shotgun Musashi. When your character meets another character, they'll both know all the reputations of the other. Word spreads fast in the close-knit rural communities of Shotgun Musashi. Everybody knows that old man Johnson is a bit of a drinker, but he's a kind-hearted man who'll help out anybody. Besides, he's a Johnson, and the Johnsons have always been respectable. When the PCs meet old man Johnson, they'll know about his Reputations. Likewise, he'll know all of theirs.

As you can see, Reputation is it in this game. Since all characters in Shotgun Musashi are primarily defined by their Reputations, these Reputations are marked in the text with an underline.

All Reputations can have both positive and negative connotations, depending on what the Player wants the character to accomplish with a Reputation and what social situation the character is in. No Reputation should be all good or all bad.

Reputations are also rated numerically. If a character simply has a Reputation, it is rated at 2. Stronger Reputations can be rated anywhere from 3 to 7, and can be indicated in parentheses behind the Reputation. Note that there are no Reputations of 1. This is because 1 is the default value for an action that is not related to any of a character's Reputations.

Character creation in Shotgun Musashi requires the participation of the whole group because the players are not only creating characters: they are creating a family. All player characters in Shotgun Musashi must be part of the same family. They can be close relatives, like fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Or, they can be part of the extended or even distant family: cousins, aunts and uncles, or even in-laws.

It's best to draw up a family tree, in order to keep the character relationships clear. The players will also be defining the Reputations of all important relatives as well. This is not as intimidating as it seems; individual characters in Shotgun Musashi are only defined by a few Reputations, so there isn't much work involved in creating the important members of the family.

The first step of character creation is to place your characters on the family tree. After this, the players must decide on a Family Reputation. All characters on the Tree with the same surname will have this Reputation. A player whose character has a different surname (male in-law, female family member who took the surname of her husbands) has the option of choosing a different Family Reputation, if desired. While each character will have this Family Reputation, each character may have a different score in the Reputation. This score reflects how closely the character is tied to the family and the family's Reputation. The Family Reputation score can be used for two purposes: first, it can be used for any action resolution that is appropriate to that Reputation; second, it is also the score used when a character does something appropriate to his or her place in the family. This is why the tree is so important: this role is relative to the other members of the family.

After the family tree is set, players can spend 10 points on their characters' Reputations. Note that the minimum value of a Reputation is 2, and everyone must have the Family Reputation at that value.

One last thing. The character must be a member of a social group outside the family that brings people from various walks of life and stations together. Furthermore, these ties are each connected to one of the character's starting Reputations, and the score in the related Reputation is used to resolve actions appropriate to the character's role within the chosen social group.

Here are some example Reputations to get you started:

In addition, there are a couple of very powerful Reputations that would most likely be family Reputations, and which require a little bit of additional explanation of their role and importance in Shotgun Musashi:

Good country people

Country trash

These Reputations are social classes in Shotgun Musashi, representing the two extremes of the social ladder.

The good country people are at the top. In the county, they are the symbolic equivalent of the nobility. They're usually big farmers with lots of land or well off local merchants who are on the county commission or the city boards. They're important, and a lot of people owe them. When they get into feuds, people join in, creating the Shotgun Musashi equivalent of wars.

The country trash are the rural poor. They're looked down upon and stereotyped as lazy, drunken, violent, filthy, and stupid. But conversely, they represent a freedom that is denied the good country people and the rest of the folk in the county. Because even in the stereotypes, the country trash are capable not only of surviving, but also thriving in poverty and filth. Country trash represent physical virility and a kind of untamed power.

If the characters' family is neither good country people nor country trash, they're somewhere in the middle. There are advantages to this, too, like having a Family Reputation of your own, but in Shotgun Musashi, these people also must have some ties, somehow, to the good country people. Basically, they owe some family of good country people. If that family calls up that debt, they might find themselves in all kinds of trouble. They might well be drawn into war. And in this case, regardless of the nature of the Family Reputation, it also acts as a score that can be used to oblige the characters to take actions supporting the good country people that they owe.

Social class conflicts can be directly addressed in Shotgun Musashi using these Reputations. What if most of the characters are good country people, but one of them is marrying in from a country trash family? What if they're country trash, and one of them is trying to escape that class and move up in society? One thing is for sure, it won't be easy. No matter how hard you try, when other characters in the county win conflicts, they can keep calling you country trash and raising your score.

Actions in Shotgun Musashi are resolved using cards from a standard 52 card deck, minus the Jokers. Players choose a reputation to apply to an action and draw a number of cards equal to the rating of the appropriate Reputation, but how they play them depends on how much the player puts at stake to accomplish the action.

When choosing a Reputation to use for action resolution, a player can choose any appropriate Reputation of any character involved in the conflict to resolve the action. This means that you can use your opponent's reputation against him or her, as long as your opponent has not already declared that he or she is using it for him or herself. This is why it is important to remember that everyone knows everyone else's Reputations, and it is also why no Reputation can be entirely positive or entirely negative.

Note: this is a combat example, but this system is equally viable for any kind of conflict, including social conflicts. Combat works exactly like everything else. There are no dedicated combat rules.

There are three levels of Resolution, of increasing risk and reward: Nothing is at stake; Something is at stake; and Everything is at stake.

When action resolution is necessary in the game, it always starts the same way, with nothing at stake. It can only change to resolution with something or everything at stake if the players up the ante.

When resolution is necessary, first:

Both players (including the Player and the GM) choose a Reputation to apply to the conflict and draw a number of cards equal to the score of the appropriate Reputation. They can choose a Reputation of their own character or of an opposing character.

If a Player can find no appropriate Reputations, the top card of the deck is flipped.

If there is no character in opposition to a Player's action, the GM draws a number of cards equal to the difficulty of the task for that character:

    Easy: less cards than the Reputation chosen by the Player

    Challenging: a number of cards equal to the chosen Reputation

    Very Difficult: more cards than the chosen Reputation

Depending on how much is at stake, the cards are played and interpreted differently.

Nothing is at stake: After cards are drawn, each player plays the highest card in his or her hand. The player who plays the highest ranked card succeeds and can narrate the resolution of the action. If the cards have the same numerical value, cards are ranked highest to lowest as follows:

Something is at stake: At any time after cards are drawn, but before they are played, a player can choose to put his or her Reputation at stake. This can only be done when a witness is present and when the character is in conflict with another character, be it PC or NPC. This shows the Player's commitment to the action. Now the opposing player (this might be the GM) must decide whether to put the opposing character's Reputation at stake. If the opposing character does not step up and also put one of his own Reputations at stake, the Player with something at stake wins and can narrate the results of the action. Putting your Reputation at stake is not dependent on using one of your own Reputations to resolve the conflict. It is an all or nothing choice. If you put your Reputation at stake, you are putting all of your character's Reputations at stake, should the other player respond in kind.

Everything is at stake: When one player puts one of his Reputations at stake, it is possible that the opponent will too. In this case, the players have put everything at stake. It is important to remember that this does not necessarily mean that either player will have a greater chance of success. In fact, if both players have equally rated Reputations, the chance of success will be even, but if one has a higher or lower ranked Reputation at stake, the player using the higher Ranked reputation will almost always win. However, when both players are committed, and everything is at stake,  resolution shifts and becomes more granular to reflect the importance of the conflict:

When everything is at stake, both players can play all of the cards in their hands. This can be done in any order, as long as each player only plays one card at a time, and the card in play is resolved before a new card is played.

When a card is played, it is played face down. This signifies that the player is taking the initiative. Once one player is established as the initiator, the other player is the defender. Once a player sets down a card from his hand, the opposing player can only defend with a card from her hand. If two players attempt to play cards at the same time, the card that hits the table first is resolved first. The opponent can defend in one of three ways, all of which cancel out the initiator's card, thus prolonging the conflict:

Play a card of the same suit: Any card of matching suit, regardless of rank, negates the initiator's card. Both cards are discarded. The initiator then narrates what he was trying to do, and the defender narrates how that attempt was blocked. In general, a defense by matching suit should be narrated as some kind of hindrance, obstacle, barrier, or block.

When everything is at stake, suits are also interpreted differently. Diamonds cancel diamonds, hearts cancel hearts, and clubs cancel clubs. Spades, however, are trump: they can negate a card of any suit but can only be canceled by other spades.

Play a card of higher Rank: Any card of higher rank, regardless of suit, negates the initiator's card. Both cards are discarded. The initiator then narrates what he was trying to do, and the defender narrates how that attempt was circumvented. In general, a defense by beating rank should be narrated as some kind of avoidance, circumvention, evasion, or dodge.

Play a card of higher rank and matching (or trump) suit: When this happens, the initiator's card is cancelled and discarded but the defender's card remains face up on the table as an initiation against the former initiator. This is defended against normally. A higher rank and matching card is narrated as a reversal or counter.

Sometimes both players will lay cards face down at approximately the same time. In this case, both want to be the initiator. However, only one initiator is possible at a time. At this point, one of the players can concede the initiative, picking up his or her card and placing it back in his or her hand. Then play continues. If both are committed to remaining the initiator, however, the cards are both flipped and compared, and the player of the higher ranked card wins the conflict just as when nothing is at stake. Everything remains at stake, however, and the results of the resolution will be much more important than they would have been if nothing had actually been at stake, as we will soon see.

If both players run out of cards, they can continue the conflict, drawing a new hand and deciding again whether to put anything at stake or not.

Play continues until one of the Players can play a card that the opponent cannot cancel with one of her cards. This can happen because the opponent has no appropriate cards, or when she has no cards left in her hand. Once this happens, the conflict is resolved: the player who has played the card succeeds and can narrate the outcome of the conflict.

And since everything was at stake, there is an additional result:

And there are a number of other ways this could have played out, some of which would have resulted in a tie. In the case of a tie, both players would have drawn a new hand and could have reconsidered whether they still wanted to put their characters' Reputations at stake.