Product- Shadow Scar – Eyes in the Darkness

System- Shadow Scar

Producer- R. Talsorian Games Inc.

Price- FREE  here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/487683/shadow-scar-eyes-in-the-darkness?affiliate_id=658618 

TL; DR- BPRD by Modern Day Legend of the Five rings fused with Rifts by Shadowrun. 100%

Basics- Let’s keep things under wraps!  Shadow Scar is a modern RPG with a decisively fantasy air as you play agents tasked with fighting strange monsters that should have been banished long ago when the corrupted wife of the main god died and returned evil.  This as multiple different dimensions all pour into yours as you fight to keep those out.  This product introduces the world, the mechanics, and provides characters and an adventure.  It doesn’t go too much deeper than the basics, but it does get you running in under 20 minutes!  Let’s break it down.

Base mechanics- This game uses very similar mechanics to more modern Shadowrun editions.  Basically, you add an attribute to a skill level and then you roll that many six sided dice.  4s and 5s are successes, and 6s are two successes. You hit a threshold and you succeed.   Short and sweet.  Everything you want to do is basically that with contested rolls being who gets more successes.

Combat- Combat in this system has team based initiative coupled with the base mechanic.  Highest awareness on a team roll their dice and we compare across all groups involved.  Whatever side gets more successes decides if they go first or after other groups.  Then all members of that side take their turn in whatever order they choose.  On your turn, you get a move action and two actions.  Actions vary between grabs, aiming, magic, or even attacking.  Attacking is contested rolls with the winner deciding if the hit happens.  Damage is subtracted first by the armor of the target and then the remaining amount is subtracted from the target’s vitality.  Vitality hits zero and you’re dead!  Dead isn’t complete though as you can be resurrected and you linger in the spirit world for a bit. So, it’s not dead dead, just mostly dead!

veil- A major part of the game and the group you work for is the veil.  Your job is to maintain the veil, the fake sense that no one is coming across time and dimensions to end everything.  Basically, you do crazy stuff in front of others, you break the veil and that leads to you possibly getting in trouble, getting disciplined, or even getting whole crews of other teams to deal with your mess!

Ok, let’s dig into this game.

Mechanics or Crunch- I like the crunch of Shadowrun, so I like this one.  Shadowrun never really felt complex to me, and this system using the d6 based idea of roll and count numbers 4 and up is an easy one to do.  You don’t need complex dice, so intro games are easy.  Also, the basics are spelled out well on the character sheets.  Character sheets have awesome descriptions of all the toys and tools the agents have.  It’s quick, easy, and fast to play fantasy asian combat.  5/5

Theme or Fluff- Well, I’m a sucker for anime, the BPRD, and the hunters in World of Darkness, so this is an easy game for me to get into.  I love the idea of different worlds all acting completely out of sync and it’s your job to keep them all at peace and keep the horrors of a corrupted mother goddess at bay.  It’s got enough of traditional Japanese myth in there to hook me, and its got enough of its own DNA to keep me from leaving.  5/5

Execution- Solid stuff here!  The book reads easily, is laid out well, and has all the modern pieces I expect in 2025.  And, the book has pregenerated characters and a full adventure!  I can give my players the pregens, read the book, and be playing in about 20 total minutes.  That’s all I need to love this book.  5/5

Summary- This is a blend of a bunch of things you may have seen before.  But then again, I love fusion cuisine, so I’m down for this as well.  This game has solid mechanics.  It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it doesn’t have to.  The theme is again nothing completely new, but it’s got enough of its own materials to hold its own.  And lastly, the game is made exactly as I expect any intro product to be, with an honest to goodness game out there for me to play with my friends within half an hour of purchase.  That’s everything I expect out of this product, so I recommend this if you want the modern Asian fantasy take on keeping horrors out of the news.  100%