#tristat — Public Fediverse posts

Ghost Dog: A fillable character sheet for a one-player arthouse gangster RPG

There a lot of RPGs based on media properties. There are a few based on obscure media properties. I’m not sure there’s a RPG based on something odder or more obscure than Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai, which is based on the 1999 Jim Jarmusch movie of the same name.

In the movie, Forest Whittaker plays Ghost Dog, a hit man for a local mobster. He lives his life according to the Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, a guide for ancient Japanese samurai. It’s basically an arthouse gangster movie inspired by Japanese and French cinema. It’s worth seeing.

The game is sadly out-of-print, and Guardians of Order, the publisher, went out business in 2006.

One of the interesting things about the game is that it’s designed for one player and one GM. The player can play Ghost Dog, any other character in the movie, or a custom character of their own design.

It uses the Tri-Stat system. 2d6 rolls resolve most things.

A character sheet is included in the book, but I couldn’t find a copy online. I’ve taken the sheet from the book, made a separate PDF, and made it fillable.

I’ve added this post to my collection of character sheet posts, and my collection of character sheets for dead RPGs.

Some others I've looked at:

- #TriStat Core
- #SentinelComicsRPG
- #D6 Powers
- #AmpYearOne
- #ICONS Assembled

The last three seem like they would handle basic supers fine. Tri-Stat seems like the best fit but I'm struggling to grok it. Sentinels seems geared toward topical 4-color supers but I'm wondering if it might be versatile enough to handle what I want.