Today I launched my foray into table top role-playing game design: the RONIN play set!

When I first read AGON by John Harper and Sean Nittner, I immediately thought: this would make a great samurai game. More specifically, it would be great for stories about ronin. Ronin are said to be, like Odysseus, ‘people tossed around like wave’. That is, the kanji that you use to write the word ‘ronin’ are ‘person’ and ‘wave’. So it’s right there in the name!

I’m very glad to have come to a point where I think the play set is publishable, after a lot of time writing and rewriting, and losing myself in lay-out. Shout out to the Rijksmuseum for having such a beautiful collection of – free to use – Japanese prints.

This will probably not be the end state of the RONIN play set, as I’m still working on some of the mechanics and I also think the pdf could look better. I'm learning about lay-out as I go. But I can tell you it is already a fun game, that I'm proud of, which is also thanks to the great fundament of AGON.

I hope you have fun wandering from town to town, striving to act honourably, erase the shame cast upon your name, hoping to find peace!