A New, Dimension Hopping Ninja-Inspired ‘Shadow Scar’ RPG is Coming From the ‘Cyberpunk’ and ‘Witcher’ TTRPG Developer
One of the big teasers on display at PAX Unplugged was R. Talsorian Games’ Shadow Scar, a new ttrpg about multiversal ninjas.
R. Talsorian Games officially announced a new ttrpg earlier today, in an interview with Dicebreaker. The new game, Shadow Scar, was also on display at PAX Unplugged. Drawing inspiration from anime like Naruto, as well as the world-hopping antics of Stargate, and a heavy dose of Japanese mythology, Shadow Scar will be the first new original RPG from Cody Pondsmith.
Cody Pondsmith is not only lead designer on R. Talsorian’s The Witcher and co-designer of Cyberpunk RED, he’s also Mike Pondsmith’s son. And he hopes to shake things up with the RPG. Here’s what we saw at PAX Unplugged!
Shadow Scar – Ninjas, Dimensions, Demons
The pitch for the game is: you play members of a secret agency known as Shadow Scar (just like the name of the game). They’re tasked with fighting the rogue, monstrous Yokai who’ve been unleashed onto the many worlds of the “Mosaic”. Mosaic is both the name for the multiverse in the game, as well as the TTRPG system being developed for play.
It’s bound to be familiar to fans of R. Talsorian games. Start with a pool of D6s, try and get above a three, sixes count double. And your successes are trying to beat a target number, set by the Storyteller.
Promising to be “fast and cinematic”, the Mosaic system also allows characters to gain a bonus success, at the cost of giving the storyteller an advantage to use later on, changing a success to a failure. It’s an interesting give-and-take that seems to add some narrative tension.
So where do the ninjas come in? As members of the Shadow Scar agency, you fight a secret war against the monstrous yokai who often use innocents and their own agents as shields and hapless pawns.
To counter this, there are six different clans that will teach agents “secret techniques and sorcery” that give your character their signature techniques and magical powers. Because of course, you’ll have those.
There are six clans all in all:
- Arashi
- Futsumashi
- Hibana
- Kuromaku
- Tantei
- Wanami
Now, you might be reading all of this and wondering about the setting. In the Dicebreaker interview, Pondsmith talks about a love of Japanese mythology and how it’s influenced the setting:
“I have always found Japanese myth to be so different from a lot of other mythos – in that so many of the creatures in Japanese myth are less terrifying and more weird. It’s things like goblins that lick grime off of dirty toilets and spectral creatures that don’t really do anything other than walk behind you at night and freak you out.”
When asked about cultural consultants, Pondsmith said that R. Talsorian Games had been talking to some people:
“We’re attempting to reach out to folks. We have some people that we’re talking to about cultural consulting for the Japanese setting – especially because so much of the game is set in there – who have been wonderful so far. And we will continue to bother as we get closer to release on things.”
But the Japanese folklore-inspired setting is only one corner of the multiversal setting in Shadow Scar. There’s also a steampunk-inspired 19th-century Industrial Revolution setting known as Steel Court, where players will hunt airship pirates. In the world of 5th Street, players will find the rain-soaked streets and smokey alleys of a city full of “criminal masterminds and pulp superheroes.” And then there’s Refuge, which, according to Dicebreaker, focuses on a lunar colony where humanity has taken “refuge” on the Moon and must deal with a multidimensional invasion.
Shadow Scar is set to launch sometime in 2024!
