Openly Gamer Theatre has created something truly incredible that’s a great way to learn what it’s like to play High Plains Samurai. The Golden Box is a combination radio drama/actual play recording for a previous version of HPS (something like Version 0.8 where players would roll against their own Difficulty, which has now been changed to rolling against the target’s Defence). If you’re on the fence about this game or want to hear their version of this Tarantino-esque gathering of bounty hunters all trying to acquire the same artefact in Hunan, click here and let the story begin.
High Plains Samurai: The Rehearsal Edition begins its playtest campaign until May 14, 2017.
It begins. Not with a whisper, but with a bang. And as the war draws closer to drawing first blood, Chaos has risen from the ashes in a plot to stop you from saving the One Land from total destruction. Will you step forth to save your homeland or will you join the forces of anarchy and watch it burn?
That’s right, High Plains Samurai: The Rehearsal Edition is now available on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow for a 10-week public playtest. Download 84 pages of wire-fu action in a fantasy land of endless possibilities, wild powers, bullets vs. swords, and so much more… for FREE. If you were involved in the ScreenPlay public playtest in 2015, we’re using that winning formula again to help make this game even better with your aid. Complete the various surveys as the game evolves to earn playtest points and achieve rewards when the playtest comes to a close on May 14, 2017. It’s all right here on the HPS Rehearsal Edition page.
Plus, there’s a special incentive to help us fight Chaos. A couple of weeks ago, someone hacked our Twitter account and is masquerading as Chaos. (Pay attention to the rumours that it’s Chaos using their limited powers to creep through to our world… those are currently unconfirmed.) Despite our best effort, this hack continues today so we’ve added a new reward: challenge Chaos to a fight using our @BrokenRuler handle on Twitter and you’ll earn 1 playtest point. That’s enough right there to give you credit in the finished product (scheduled for release in 2018). Show this powerless fiend that we don’t sit back and let someone try to destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to create, show Chaos you are the heroes ready to thwart his plans to destroy the One Land.
Over the coming weeks, the Rehearsal Edition will continue to evolve and we’ll provide additional content, behind-the-scenes videos with the game’s creator, and answer your question on how HPS works. We’d also love to read your own experiences playing HPS – comment below or share them on social media with #SaveTheOneLand or #HighPlainsSamurai. Show off your characters and let’s make this game something truly epic. Together.
With High Plains Samurai: The Rehearsal Edition only days away from cracking open your hard drive, Broken Ruler Games will be running HPS as well as Ironbound and Killshot at two of Canada’s biggest conventions of the year. There are some spaces remaining (but not many) for Breakout in Toronto and registration launches on Saturday for Cangames so if you’re planning to attend either and want to play any of these games with their creator (that’s me!), do the thing that needs doing to make it happen.
Friday, March 10th
High Plains Samurai (10:00pm to 1:00am)
Saturday, March 11th
High Plains Samurai (10:00am to 1:00pm) – only one space remains!
ScreenPlay Presents: Ironbound (3:00pm to 6:00pm)
Killshot (7:00pm to 10:00pm)
A second peak? That’s right, if you’re not part of our ScreenPlayers Guild G+ community, you missed out on seeing this two days ago. And if you’re one of High Plains Samurai‘s growing fanbase, you could have already heard back from your players confirming they’re ready to enter the One Land.
As layout continues and the public playtest release of HPS gets ready to launch next month, we wanted to give people a heads up of what they can expect by releasing the first of three chapters within the first Volume of the complete game we’re looking to produce with the help of Kickstarter and backers like you, we hope.
You can download this 14-page PDF right here. Enjoy!
Notice the date change and read below to find out more…
If there’s one guarantee when preparing a Kickstarter launch, it’s that nothing will work out as you planned. Surviving the ups and downs requires a willingness to adapt and adjust as needed.
In light of some recent events, the release dates for both High Plains Samurai: The Rehearsal Edition and the HPS Kickstarter have been modified. See below to learn more about how Chaos has already begun to thwart our well-laid plans by attacking the home of its creator.
Just as the other Elemental Spirits did not give in to their father’s wrath, neither shall we. Therefore, we are announcing revised launch dates.The Rehearsal Editionwill now launch in February 2017 and the Kickstarter has been pushed back until May 2017 to allow additional time and effort to ensure all of you receive the best possible version of the game and its possibilities. But that does not mean you are going to wait. As mentioned in the Facebook post, you can now download a text-only PDF copy of High Plains Samurai’s playtest copy… TODAY!
Everything you need to discover the One Land, its plights and people, and start playing (including a playtest scene titled “To Catch A Train”) is here and ready for you. In the coming week, a complete PDF version with full layout and artwork will be launched to start the public playtest, so stay tuned for that.
If the name Epidiah Ravachol means anything to you, then that headline is starting to make a lot more sense. For the last couple years, Epi, as his friends calls him… and we’re not sure if we’re one of them so let’s try this again. For the last couple years, Epidiah has put together a special non-denominational tabletop bundle around the holidays and called it Epimas. This year is no exceptional and we’re proud to state ScreenPlay is included in one of those bundles.
This year, we’re going to have an earnest, no-bullshit Epimas.
For those not in the know, Epimas was created by +Nathan Paoletta and myself way back when PDFs were still just kind of a new thing–before the iPad and other reading devices, so folks were still a bit leary of them. Following in the grand tradition of . . . well, just about all of capitalism, we were trying to create a new normal. We wanted to make it okay to give the gift of a PDF for the holidays. Particularly because small-time game publishers with shoestring budgets like ourselves had none of the resources to stock and delivery a holiday load of physical games.
So we created Epimas, a holiday set on my birthday (Dec. 24th) during which you give the gift of games (in PDF format) and enjoy them with your friends, family and assorted loved ones.
If you’re interested in indie RPGs such as ScreenPlay but also Apocalypse World by Vincent and Meguey Baker, the Romance Trilogy by Emily Care Boss, Our Last Best Hope by Mark Diaz Truman, and many more (57 titles, to be exact), visit the Epimas page. In addition to grabbing games for yourself, you can also enter the email of a friend and provide them with free PDFs at no additional charge.
What a good question. What exactly is High Plains Samurai (or HPS, as we call it around here)? With a little over a month before the public playtest/preview and four months until the Kickstarter launch, now seems like just as good a time as ever to divulge what makes this game tick. And there are many more questions to answer in the coming weeks.
What genre is High Plains Samurai?
What is the One Land, the Five Cities, and the Wastes?
Who are the people calling them home?
How do you play these characters?
What is qi and how does it give some of these people incredible powers?
What are the Elemental Spirits and how do they interact with the One Land?
Who is this Black Scorpion threatening to destroy the One Land and finish what Chaos started?
Plus so many more. That’s where posts like this will begin to answer those question, tease you of the infinite possibilities, and prepare you to band together to save this world and its people from ultimate destruction.
For those of you new to this site (and Broken Ruler in general), my name is Todd Crapper (yes, that’s right) and I’m the creator of HPS and the figurehead of Broken Ruler Games. With this long gestating project approaching these two major milestones, I want to share with you the process of creating this game, its setting, and what is so magical about this game.
Let’s begin with perhaps the first lesson: What genre is HPS?
The Ultimate Mash-Up
Cutting straight to the chase, HPS isn’t about one or two genres. When it first started four years ago in my kitchen, it was a spin-off based on The Good, The Bad, and The Weird involving a train robbery merging westerns with wild and crazy wire-fu sword fighting. As time went on and as this game grew in potential, it also became apparent publishing this project faced an obvious hurdle: there were already a few western/samurai mash-ups in the RPG community. This one needed something unique to truly stand out in the crowd.
Building up the setting, I started experimenting with additional genres adapted to suit each of the major locations in the place called the One Land. Each of the Five Cities – the major communities fortified within unique geographical locations and home to vast majority of survivors from Chaos’ Wrath, a near apocalyptic event that has scarred the landscape and its people for generations – became its own stand alone setting. Merged into one cohesive whole, there are near endless possibilities for the make-up of any group of heroes (though anti-heroes may be a better word).
What began as a wester/samurai/wire-fu concept has now become a western/samurai/gangster/barbarian/steampunk/post-apocalyptic/superpowered quest of gods fighting over the fate of their homeland. Phew!
Imagine the possibilities. Your group can consist of a young, insulate gangster who rose from poverty to a position of power within one of the gangs from Yung Zhi, enforcing his boss’ orders with a Tommy gun; a bounty hunter and her double-barrelled shotgun who calls the rugged, sandstorm streets of Hunan home; a banished warrior from the snow capped mountains of Khar’tep with nothing but the desire for revenge, his axes, and the ability to turn flesh to stone; a noble warrior from the poisonous jungle surrounding the fortress of Monsoon tasked with discovering a lost tome by her General, blade and armour at the ready to battle anyone who gets in her way; and a genius inventor from the underground city of Rust, who happens to make his way across the One Land riding atop a warmech and its twin machine guns.
This also means going up against some equally versatile and dangerous enemies. Your lead characters will face others who have tapped into their qi powers, wield legendary weapons capable of slicing through stone or summoning a swarm of locusts, and so much more. Like I said, the possibilities are endless.
How The Hell Are You Making All These Genres Work?
A demonstration of “anything goes in the One Land” portrayed in this early concept piece by Kieron O’Gorman.
If you’ve ever heard of (or better yet, played) ScreenPlay, you have a very good idea of how HPS works. If not, well, it uses story game mechanics allowing a wide range of genres, styles of play, and more. More importantly, the players are the ones driving the story forward with the Director (aka the GM) keeping the plot moving forward and challenging the lead characters in a true improv style game where anything can happen.
By stripping away the mechanics associated with genres, tropes, and other standards of any specific emulation, the rules allow everyone to simply describe their characters as they see fit. Without guidelines or mechanics forcing your hand in how you act and guiding your behaviour using pre-determined reward systems, you can play HPS however you want to play it. Even in whatever storytelling style floats your boat: scripts, novels, anime, the sky’s the limit.
But HPS is not exactly a ScreenPlay product. It applies a few new mechanics specifically designed to maximize your potentials as your story unfolds, such as building your potentials rather than default to its dice value, legendary weapons, teachings… don’t worry, we’ll get there soon. What continues from its predecessor is a free flowing storytelling experience driven by its players to create their own version of a world filled with characters like Grandfather Tom, the Council of Iron, the Desert Sun Gang, Xang the Mother of All Gangsters, and the unstoppable cataclysmic force known as the Black Scorpion.
The Doors Have Begun To Open…
Over the next few months, you’re going to have the opportunity to learn a lot more about HPS and how you can help shape the game that will hit Kickstarter in March 2017. For our next lesson in tapping into your inner qi, we’ll get into that dreaded day when Chaos – the very creator of the universe – took revenge on the One Land to punish his children.
A second peak? That’s right, if you’re not part of our 
Wait… what?
What a good question. What exactly is 
Cutting straight to the chase, HPS isn’t about one or two genres. When it first started four years ago in my kitchen, it was a spin-off based on The Good, The Bad, and The Weird involving a train robbery merging westerns with wild and crazy wire-fu sword fighting. As time went on and as this game grew in potential, it also became apparent publishing this project faced an obvious hurdle: there were already a few western/samurai mash-ups in the RPG community. This one needed something unique to truly stand out in the crowd.
