"After his defeat at the hand of Oda Nobunaga, the great Daimyo Azai Nagamasa commits seppuku. The only hope for what is left of his retinue is a secret alliance with the Takeda clan, the only one strong enough to oppose Nobunaga. However, Takeda Shingen demands a hostage to guarantee the loyalty of Nagamasa’s former retainers. The hostage must reach the Shinano province without Nobunaga being aware of his presence, but the road passes through Oda territory. A group of brave adventurers must accompany the hostage in his dangerous journey."

So begins the Rise of the Yōkai Koku campaign, a Revolution d100 roleplaying adventure set in the Sengoku period of the Japanese middle ages. Many adventures await our noble heroes on their path to restoring their clan fortunes, and not all threats will be human in nature.

Rise of the Yōkai Koku was originally intended as a low-cost PDF using vintage artwork from 17th to 19th Century Japan and a stock picture as cover. However, if this crowdfunding campaign succeeds we will publish the 10-episode campaign booklet in print, too, with a shiny new cover that our talented artist Daniel Comerci will draw specifically for it. We will add other artwork and goodies as stretch goals if the funding exceeds our minimum target of 1400 €.

The first part of the booklet contains two different methods to generate Japanese characters suitable to the Sengoku Jidai era – including some unusual ones – and specific rules for roleplaying in the period, and in Japanese culture in general: Buddhist schools, the influence of Shinto practices, Japanese martial disciplines and so on. The second part is the adventure itself, in which the player characters take the role of protectors of the hostage at the court of the great Takeda Shingen. The campaign is divided into ten chapters between which the players will have plenty of opportunities to evolve their characters along their preferred path.

We have already released a synthetic version of part one as a Revolution D100 package. You can download it for free to have an idea of what you can expect in the full product. Sorry, but we cannot post parts of the campaign as it would qualify as a spoiler.

Other information about the product:

Expected size 64 to 80 pages, letter format.
Standard character generation option based on Background and Occupation.
Questionnaire-based character generation option which defines your character abilities and history according to the answers you choose.
Stunts for Japanese swordsmanship and other martial techniques.
Statistics for Japanese weapons and armour.
Simple magic powers based on Buddhist meditation techniques.
Different flavours of Buddhist schools, from highly orthodox Zen to the weird practices of Shugendo, with all shades of esoteric Buddhism in between. Each school provides slightly different magic.

We would really like to show you some of the dangerous foes you will encounter in the campaign, but this would constitute a spoiler. We can instead display some of the protagonists of the playtest sessions of Rise of the Yōkai Koku, to show you the kind of characters you can roleplay in this adventure. Click on the character description to load a larger image if you are on a portable device.

At this point you might be eager to play in the Sengoku era, but undecided because you know nothing about the rules. Or perhaps you might have played other D100 games where the heroes always get eaten by Lovecraftian monsters. Let us tell you something about the game rules, then.

You can download a free quickstart scenario which explains the rules in brief, showcasing the exciting characteristics of combat. Or you can download the full rules in SRD format, as the game is released under the OGL. If you are new to Revolution D100, you can choose a pledge reward which includes the core rules, too, in addition to the Rise of the Yōkai Koku booklet.

If your support goes beyond our minimum requirements, Rise of the Yokai Koku will become even more beautiful. Here are the planned Stretch Goals.

If we reach this target, we will commission an improved version of the two maps of Japan included in the campaign. The likely candidate for this job is Colin Driver, the award-winning official cartographer of all things d100.

Daniel Comerci and other artist from the Alephtar Games list of talented freelancers will draw black&white illustrations to replace the planned vintage pictures. We reserve the right to include vintage pictures by Hokusai or other classic Japanese illustrators in any case, just to keep the flavour.

The booklet becomes a full colour product – and you are still pledging for the price of a B&W book. The Seven Gods of Fortune must have blessed the supporters of this campaign.