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(+2)

Yokai Hunters Society is a gorgeous 36 page adventure rpg that feels like it's influenced a bit by Gotouge's Kimetsu no Yaiba (although Hunters takes place in Meiji, not Taishou.)

Yokai Hunters is moderately crunchy, being based mechanically on Tunnel Goons. It's PBtA with a single Move, which complicates on a 9 and fails on an 8- most of the time, but there's plenty of equipment and other factors that players can hedge this with. There's also a neat mechanic where you can expose yourself to a curse for a boost on a roll---only shedding that curse later when you are able to purify yourself.

On either an extremely minor or an extremely major note, there are a lot of Japanese words preserved in Japanese in the book, so you'll get stuff like "Omamori (amulet)" in the text---which I personally like, but I know preferences on this can sometimes be intense, so your mileage may vary.

Historical context is provided, so if you're more familiar with Edo jidai, the game will catch you up to speed. There's a lot of really good bits in here (currency conversions, a note about the legal firearm and sword restrictions of the time, the change from state Buddhism to state Shinto,) and they all fold back into the game design, with your own bad choices incentivizing you to see a sword-seller or a priest. Beyond these baseline details, groups are encouraged to come up with the own worldbuilding---so one campaign might have the hunters as a state-authorized agency, while another campaign positions them as dangerous rogues.

Overall, I think if you dig the setting and like slightly crunchy adventure games, you'll really enjoy this. At absolute minimum, it's worth it for the art alone, and it may also make a strong intro game for folks who are interested in the material but haven't tried a tabletop rpg yet.

Minor Issues:

-Page 13, Cursed Die, does its result replace one of your d6s, or does it replace both of them? The text isn't clear, and I can't tell if a roll of 6,6,8 is meant to be 12 total, or 14.

(+1)

WOW! Thanks for the review.

The cursed die mechanic works similarly to the advantage, but adding 1d8 instead of 1d6: You roll 2d6 and 1d8 and keep the two best results out of the three. Therefore, the best possible result is 14. If the result in the d8 is greater than your actual curse resistance points, you lose one resistance point.

Okay, cool. It sounded like that might be it, but I couldn't find anywhere the text said that directly. I really like the mechanic, though, and I'd love to read more Yokai Hunters content if there's any planned in the future.