Review:
Shadow Scar Starter Set

To continue my Year of Living With My Library project, a literal 365 days where I shun the Cult of the New and only play what’s currently on my shelves, I need to talk about a very special review. I can hear the protests already. “Adam, if the point is to play what you have, why did you take a review copy of a game? Isn’t that cheating?” A fair point, dear reader, and one to which I must admit I am ashamed. This particular box has been on my shelves for just over a year, unreviewed, which technically qualifies it for my YoLWML challenge. I’m also going to need to come up with a better acronym for this.

But how could I not give this wonderful game the Sprites and Dice treatment? Shadow Scar is a new offering from one of my favorite tabletop RPG publishers, R. Talsorian Games. I’ve written about Cyberpunk RED before, as well as The Witcher TTRPG, and frankly RED is one of my favorite TTRPGs to date, both from the standpoint of a GM as well as a player. When I learned that they were putting out a new game with interdimensional, men-in-black ninjas, how could I pretend I wasn’t interested? Yes, you read that last sentence right. Grab your world-appropriate disguise and weapon of choice. We’re going rift diving!

Your Mission

If you’re not already familiar with this title, then I’m assuming my prior description probably made your head spin a little. Let’s get you sorted out! Shadow Scar is set in a mythical, magical Japanese inspired setting in which you, a modern agent and force for good, help maintain order and balance with the help of your agency against evil monstrous spirits called yokai. The catch here is that there’s a whole web of other worlds out there, and the yokai have spilled into at least a good chunk of it, using their power and cunning to establish secret positions of influence and power. Together with your team, you will be tasked with travelling the rifts between realms, hunting down these rogue spirits and either capturing or assassinating them. Along the way, you might also need to track down special artifacts or locations, investigate mysterious happenings, or find new leads to carry you through your adventures. Throughout all these things, your paramount concern is that the public of these worlds should never know about your mission or that there are extra-dimensional demons in their midst.

I want to make something very clear here. While the core book is out, and there are plans for expansions that add even more worlds, this box set is in no way just a small teaser. It includes a wide variety of goodies to get you started. Just to give you an idea of the diversity in this base box, you get:

• Your own magical Japanese-inspired setting
• An American pulp noir city of action
• A steampunk metropolis full of fantastic automatons and devices
• A far future space station that serves as humanity’s last bastion

I love everything about this. The idea of fantasy ninja operatives hunting powerful monsters is a tried and true formula in tabletop RPGs, but when you carry that into anachronistic settings, and the yokai are magically disguised as residents, and you’re working around the public, local law enforcement, and the forces of the enemy you’re trying to stop, all these elements come together to form something special. Something unique! I’m honestly surprised we’ve never really seen this format before. I’ve seen bits done on their own, but never together quite like this.

What you really get a peek of in this starter kit is a taste of how these elements combine. Sure, you’re an interdimensional ninja, but maybe you weren’t always. One of the most common backstories you can give your character is that you saw a little too much back in your home realm and took the option of joining the agency. You could fight with a sword, or throw shuriken if you want, but you could also know how to use guns. Or laser weaponry for that matter. Nevermind what’s possible for the bad guys once they get their hands on cars or industrial factories or energy shields. Things are gonna get wild.

The Art Of Chucking Dice

So how do you play Shadow Scar? It’s really pretty simple. Your character, barring any special powers and effects they can use, makes their basic rolls by tossing a handful of six-sided dice (d6s). They get one d6 for each point in their relevant stat, representing their innate talent, and more d6s for each point in the specific skill, representing their specific training. There are only 3 stats, mind, body, and spirit, and six skills for each stat. So at any given point there isn’t too much to keep track of. Collect your dice, add or subtract any extras for bonuses/penalties (which can never exceed +/-2) and roll! Any die showing a number greater than 3 counts as one success. 6s count as two successes! The difficulty of a check is set by the GM, the person running the adventure, with an average difficulty for an agent being 2 and a challenging action being 3. Though as with any good roleplaying game, difficulties can rise much higher for those truly desperate and epic moments.

We’ve seen this formula from R. Talsorian before. Stat + skill + any relevant bonuses, combined with largely one kind of dice. In Cyberpunk RED, d6s governed the damage for all weapons, producing beautiful curves that could be fine tuned around in the game design. What might appear as a single “useless” extra point of armor penetration on a weapon might, in fact, be the key tipping moment for that gun against an entire class of armor. How do I know this? I interviewed RED’s lead designer, James Hutt, a while back. His point is completely valid and clearly one of the defining features that allow R. Talsorian systems to be both easily accessible by newbies while not losing that depth veterans crave. By using a dice system that produces similar curves, skill checks in Shadow Scar remain both immediately accessible and a point of depth for those inclined to look deeper. I checked the rule books, and sure enough James Hutt’s name appears right next to Cody Pondsmith in the credits. Surprise, surprise. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing more RPGs with systems like this. There’s a lot going for this kind of dice accessibility.

What I love about this system is that, frankly, R. Talsorian has done it again. They’ve given us a brilliant system in which players can hop in with only the most basic of prep, grab premade characters, and get into a good adventure right away. Everything is streamlined and makes sense, keeping action tight, decisions meaningful, and dice easy to read at a glance. Seriously, few things are worse in TTPRGs than looking at a roll and having to ask “did I do good?” And yet, for those that want depth, custom control is at your fingertips. Players can totally combine the limited powers and abilities in this base box to do some truly wacky and borderline broken stuff. I say broken. Nothing is ever truly unbalancing in a way that breaks game. If your players want to make custom characters, there’s absolutely no harm in letting them.

I’ve tried a couple of test builds, just to see what’s possible, and I’m shocked at the variety on offer here. In one example, I took as many movement boosters as possible, achieving speeds about twice as fast as any other character and ignoring most obstacles when fully set up with powers. Sure, I could practically leap across city blocks, but it only takes one good moment from the GM to remind you that this isn’t something people on the street are likely to take well in witnessing. We’re supposed to be stealth operatives, remember? If somebody wants to breathe fire to flambé an enemy while out in the open, that’s on them. In a way, Shadow Scar bakes in one of my favorite features in tabletop gaming: consequences. So let your players go wild if they want to crunch the system. The story can handle it, and everyone will still have a great time.

A Job Complete

I have a lot of good things to say about this new game, along with a few nitpicks. And let me be clear. The nitpicks are few, though notable. Let’s start off with the setting. What we have here is inclusive, thematic, and dripping with lore. All great things to see in a modern TTRPG. The adventure included in the box introduces several diverse characters to accompany the group and move the plot along, ranging from “businesslike but likeable” to “enthusiastic and loveable” to “I hate that guy.” The worlds that these characters inhabit are rich, and there’s a real sense that they’re alive and in motion outside of the goings-on of our player characters. That kind of vibrance is always great to see.

Where I get a little R. Talsorian fatigue, if you can it such a thing, is the framing of “a team to do the job.” It’s the tried and true formula of the adventuring party or would-be heroes. As classic as AD&D (Dungeons & Dragons’ second edition, yes I’m old). It worked for The Witcher TTRPG. It really worked for Cyberpunk RED, the edgerunner crew being the literal center of that setting. And yes, it works for Shadow Scar just fine. I just lament that, in a setting novel in so many ways, this bit remains on the less innovative side. That might be odd coming from someone who just a bit earlier was praising the continued elegance of the dice system for exactly the reason I’m nitpicking now, but consider the following.

I consider R. Talsorian’s use of dice an innovative take in a genre where rolling a single d20 is still considered “the standard.” Imagine most people’s understanding of a die roll being “will I succeed or will I fail this thing that I am highly trained at?” You toss your hands in the air and shout “we’ll see!” I’ve had friends complain that despite supposedly being good at something, their characters just act like bumbling idiots when the dice hit the table. And goodness forbid you’re a high level character heavily invested in max ranks, stats, and bonuses for a skill, and you roll a 1, an automatic failure. No matter how good you get at something, no matter how many years pass in game, there is always a 5% chance you will simply fail. This system works fine, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better.

If we look at Shadow Scar, not only do we see that a pool of dice produces more consistent results, reflecting character training in skills. We also see no traditional, automatic success/fail rolls. A “critical success” is just two successes instead of one, and there is no automatic failure at all. A regular, failed roll is still a great opportunity for a GM to twist the narrative in an interesting way or ratchet up the stakes. Everything is done with a purpose. Compare this to specialist agents on a team sent out to do jobs. This is slowly becoming the modern version of “you all meet in a tavern.” Functional though it is, what I’d really love to see one day is a supplement that allows us to frame new stories inside this setting, maybe revolving around independent factions hitherto unknown, perhaps as an offshoot of those agents who choose to leave the agency on their own terms (something that marks them as rogue and massive threats). What if they weren’t all joining up with the bad guys? What if instead of being just another enemy stat block to fight they were instead your character and their story was your story?

This line of nitpicking led me to a heartwarming revelation. Why do I care so much about “a team to do the job” as a framing for this game that I’ve spent nearly 500 words nitpicking it as the modern take on meeting in a tavern, perhaps one of the most cliche memes of tabletop gamers? You might already see where I’m going with this. Even though this starter kit is only a taste of what’s to come, pared down as everything is, I can see the greatness. And I already want more. Without giving away spoilers, the scenario included in the box isn’t just a free adventure. It’s a free mini-campaign that takes you through all the different settings! By the time you’re done, you too will see all the possibilities for your continuing missions.

But more than that, you, like me, may also want to just get out and play. To take the training wheels off the setting and get lost in the lore. Maybe the players could all be rogue agents fighting for their lives back. Maybe they’re just a team of well-equipped investigators all from the same world, but their work leads them across the rifts. Or maybe they get lost in the rifts when they poke into things they don’t quite understand. There’s a lot of potential here, and yes maybe I’ve gotten a bit off track discussing possibilities and daydreams in the span of a review, but I would argue that these are all things you could be thinking about too! As soon as you conclude the mini-campaign. More worlds are coming (they are alluded to in what’s included in the box, and some are even named). We’re in prime territory, though, for you to invent all kinds of other ones. Anything you need. Anything you desire. I have to believe that part of the reason the 4 included settings with this box are so wildly different isn’t just for variety’s sake; R. Talsorian is showing you just how deep this rabbit hole goes, and even then we can’t see the bottom from where we’re standing. This is part of what makes Shadow Scar, Shadow Scar. If you were already on board with interdimensional, men in black ninjas, tell me this isn’t tantalizing.

If you’d like a peek at what Shadow Scar has to offer, this starter box gets two big thumbs up from me. It’s everything you could want in an introduction to a new setting. It will get a lot of life, as well, even after the core book drops for how easy it can onboard new players who need a little extra nudge hopping through those rifts.