The studio behind Cyberpunk Red and The Witcher tabletop RPG will release an exciting new project set in its own universe. The world will be heavily anime-inspired, set in 17th-century Japan, and will feature creatures and heroes from traditional Japanese folklore. Shadowscar will also feature popular fantasy tropes and themes from fan-favorite sci-fi series such as Stargate, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and more.
While R Talsorian Games are mostly known for turning popular video games into board games, this latest project breaks that mold to smithereens. In terms of worldbuilding, they have chosen an incredibly rich inspiration pool that gives them a ton of flexibility to write a masterpiece. They will likely have a huge audience (anime lovers – unite) that is bound to get excited for a world inspired by anime and Japanese mythology. The sky’s the limit, so the new project is worth keeping an eye on.
A New World Deserves With New System
R Talsorian Games designer Cody Pondsmith revealed to Dicebreaker that Shadowscar will feature a unique play system that uses exclusively six-sided dice. Any result that is 3 or more is considered a success, with six rolls counting as two successes. If you pass the specified number of required success roles – you win the encounter. The number of dice you get to throw will depend on their skills and stats. With this, Pondsmith aims to make Shadowscar a game that is easy to get into but still remains challenging as players progress in the world.
The new system will be named after the game’s world-building engine, which will intertwine multiple universes (essentially, it will be a multiverse), called the Mosaic – an elegant approach to intertwine the unique blend of themes featured in Shadowscar. Pondsmith told Dicebreaker that the world of the game is so diverse, that the rule book would have been 800 pages long.
While this sounds good on paper, such a diverse world is very hard to balance without being too overwhelming, so it will be curious how Pondsmith and the development team have handled this situation. That being said, one can’t help but be excited for what the future holds for Shadowscar. Its release is scheduled to be in 2024, the new year’s just around the corner, so we won’t have to wait long to see.