#GM Guide (運用指南)

Contents

Authority. The skeleton of this document is Scene Tool — not a rule but the GM's handle. However, sections that have the character of a variant rule — the collective stores of group drifting, the cost of return, the resistance of the world — are Variant, and, as with every variant of this volume, are premised on GM permission. fc cannot override the co canon (Canon). And the safety pins of this volume's hazards — combat-type sets, vehicles, era contamination — all gather in this document. The shape of the safety pin is the same in every case. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong. It is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed.

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#Scent — The Four Ledgers

#Opening Fragment — The Ledger Beneath the Pillow

About the time the lamp of the study chamber changed its second wick, the scribe opened the first ledger.

"The first ledger. The Kamikakushi of Higashi village — a woman, one. Last month, they say, she saved out three laborers buried in a landslide. The village says it can no longer run without that woman."

"One person, and one whole village changes." The house elder (家老), cooling his tea, said. "Continue."

"The second. No person, only goods — a chest washed up at the ferry landing. The Sakai Guild is appraising the contents, but already three are calling out a price."

"Goods always came before people. The chronicle records it so. The third."

The scribe drew a single breath before turning the page. "...Fifty. Fifty people, all at once. With one iron cart, a whole pass entire. Among themselves they formed bands, set sentries, raised a storehouse. Just like — a small domain (藩)."

The teacup stopped. "Their arms."

"A few staves of thunder, they say. But the headman is a man sharp with figures, so he does not sound them lightly. He calls them goods that dwindle each time they are sounded."

"A man who can count what dwindles is a man one can talk with." The house elder set down the teacup. "The fourth."

"...This is less a ledger than a bundle of rumor." The scribe opened the thinnest book. "They are ones who seek the road home. They go about asking after fissures, buy up relics of unknown provenance, and each digs again at the spot where they first fell, they say."

The house elder was silent for a long while. The lamp's wick crackled, and sang once.

"Set the fourth ledger apart. I will keep it beneath my pillow."

"Why so. They seem the most harmless of the four."

"Harmless — until they find the road." The old man looked at the dark outside the window. "If they at last find the road, the gate opens. And a gate, you see, my friend — there is no law by which it opens to only one side."

#Scent — The Four Tables

The house elder's four ledgers are, in fact, the four forms of campaign of this volume. A table onto which one Kamikakushi has fallen as seasoning, a table into which goods flow with no person, a table over which a group has crossed entire, and a table that seeks the road home. This document treats the manner of laying out those four tables and — more importantly — the safety pin to insert into each table.

The order of reading is free, but one section alone, do not skip. The Depletion dial of Law 2. The balance of this volume stands not on numbers but on speed, and the one who grips the handle of that speed is the GM — you.

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#Law 1 — The Four Campaign Forms

Forms 1 and 2 of this section are Scene Tool; the collective stores of form 3 are Variant (premised on GM permission).

#Form 1 — Seasoning Type: One Spoonful into the Soup (the default)

The cheapest, the safest, and therefore the default. One Kamikakushi PC enters a canon campaign already rolling — that is the only thing that changes.

The GM's preparations end in four.

1. Canonical modern person — the occupation proper. It is a complete skeleton even without this volume, and this volume adds not a single letter to it.
2. 1 set permission — one origin package from the Set Overview. Each set is a separate unit of permission — a table that blocks only the Self-Defense Officer is legitimate too.
3. A few backpack cards — only that PC's starting drifted-goods cards from the 03 series. No need to read the catalog through.
4. A remaining-count sheet — one page from the Quick Reference. The record is the PL's part, and the GM does not count it for them.

The point of operation is one. One drifter is not a force but a viewpoint (視點). An eye is born at the table that sees as strange what is natural to the PCs of this era — status, pitched battle, yoma, the reckoning of death. At the barrier, on the battlefield, at the execution ground, the "why?" that eye asks is the main text of the seasoning type. You may set down your worry about balance — the canon-protection principle of the Set Overview has done all the work, and even the Self-Defense Officer, the only combat type, has a combat power that is time-limited, bound to Depletion. Begin from the arrival scene — the two tables of Drift Principles lay out that first scene for you.

#Form 2 — Drifted Goods Only: Drifting Without a Person (the minimum-use line)

A table with not one modern-person PC — even a table that has no appetite for the very material of Kamikakushi — the price paid for this volume is recovered here in full. This section is the minimum-use line this volume guarantees to every buyer.

The grounds are not in this volume but in the canon. According to the canonical chronicle, goods that have slipped time — Spirit-Realm Wandering Treasures — have been flowing into this world from ten years ago, and they wander the Sengoku even now. A campaign that uses goods with no person is therefore not even a variant — it is the direct-line operation of the canon's own sentences. The five pieces of this volume's 03 series become, entire, that casebook.

• Firearms — a silenced rifle put up at the Sakai Guild's auction as "provenance unknown, power guaranteed." Not as a thing that shoots, but as a thing that is seized, appraised, and enshrined.
• Gear and Supplies, Electronics — a tube of unreadable letters out of a peddler's load, a black tablet that shines alone on every full-moon night. As the seed of a ghost tale.
• Vehicles — an iron shrine stopped at the village mouth. The finding is a dungeon, and the faith becomes a strife.
• Drifted Relics — the scenario book of this form itself. All six pieces are incidents that begin from "the owner is already dead."

The way of reading is one alone. The A Handful of Story field of each card is the dead owner's tale — that is, the scenario's letter of commission, and the Value After Silence field is the desire of this era — that is, the roster of powers that covet the object. One card is one incident. Set the Kamikakushi off the stage — the goods are the NPC.

#Form 3 — Group Drifting: The Sengoku Jieitai (戰國自衛隊) Frame

One encampment, one night bus, one school-trip class is hidden away entire — the largest incident of this volume, the most coveted campaign, and the form whose rules seem most likely to grow heavy.

That is why the first declaration is the most important. There are no new rules. The drifting group is run by the canon's squad grammar. Unit Operation has already made all of squad, Cohesion, squad command, and no-command — this volume merely swaps the name tag onto that grammar. The drifting group = several NPC squads + the PCs. That is all.

The way of binding. Carry the canon's definition of a squad — a bundle of 3 to 6 of the same rank and the same weapon — into the words of this volume, and it is "the same lot, the same tools." The platoon members shouldering rifles are one Minion squad, the bus passengers a Mob or Minion unarmed squad, the medic and the school nurse exactly by the grammar of the canon support squad (the Medical Team). Pull out as individual NPCs only those who need a name and a face — the rest, the vessel called the squad receives. The moment you write fifty sheets, this campaign dies. Five squad lines, and fifty people live.

Command and Cohesion. The cost of a squad command is exactly the canon's — base 2 Energy, 1 Energy if Wisdom (智) +2 or above. This volume shaves not a coin from this reckoning. The canonical modern person's ability-score special (Wisdom +1) and the tier 3 technique "Squad Command" shine here — the modern person is originally the occupation of a staff officer, and group drifting is the home camp of that occupation. Cohesion is the instrument panel of this campaign. Use the combat decrease rule exactly as the canon, but apply the same grain by GM declaration at the camp as well — when food shows its bottom, the night yoma are first seen, the day the leader wavered. And when the commanding PC falls, open the canon's no-command gradient table — for a Self-Defense Force unit the regular-army table, and for passengers and students the conscript table is the fitting garment.

The radio. The portable radio of Electronics is the famed item of this form — the instant relay of information between different zones and scenes, and the extension of the audible range a squad command reaches. But the line is plain. What the radio changes is the distance a voice reaches, not the weight of a command. The system of Energy cost is inviolable.

The Depletion of a group — collective stores (Variant). To count fifty people's individual remaining counts separately is not record-keeping but punishment. Materiel at the group scale is abstracted, bundled by item.

Collective Stores (共同在庫) — a special rule for group drifting only (premised on GM permission)
Living materiel: one collective [Depletion N·Clock] per item — food, water, firewood, and the like.
 The notch is not the scene but the day — reduced by 1 each time the group weathers a day.
 (The frame of the standard single Clock stays. As the vehicle's double Clock did,
  only the stride of the notch is changed by card special.)
 Set the starting value by looking not at the storehouse but at the drama — a value at which
 the first food crisis comes within half a month is good.
Ammunition: collective rounds by cartridge type, exactly by the law of [Firearms]. Per
 1 volley of a rifle squad, a decrease of 5 to the collective rounds remaining is recommended.
Resupply: hunting, purchase, reclamation, plunder — all treated as scenes. Resupply is
 not a roll but a scenario.
Record: the part of one PL. The role of quartermaster is itself drama —
 the hand that holds the storehouse key is, on the day the storehouse empties, the first to be suspected.

The drama of leadership. The main text of this form is not pitched battle but the camp. Rank insignia are a scrap of paper from four hundred years away, and the legitimacy of the right of command is voted on anew every night. Before the dwindling collective Clock the votes split — to fight, to serve, or to scatter — and on the day Cohesion drops below 2, give a scene at the campfire's side. What is rolled in that scene is not the dice but the Three Ways and Six Hearts — that operation, Law 5 receives.

Balance warning. A squad is firepower. Even a squad gripping modern firearms, apply the canon's squad-equipment rule — related check +1, card specials and techniques not applied. A squad is not a being that draws out the utmost of a tool — exactly the canon's own sentence. And the very existence of one rifle squad is, in itself, a GM-only firearm-grade incident of Firearms. When used as the enemy, spare it as a card that decides the end of a single pitched battle; when used as an ally, bind it firmly with the collective ammunition Clock. The moment you step outside the reckoning of the balance baseline — the enemy's total firepower of an ordinary battle — that battle becomes not a battle but an execution. Lastly, if the group's lifeline rides on one truck, open the transport-escort operation theory of Vehicles — a vehicle that ends if it stops runs, carrying the reason it cannot stop.

#Form 4 — Return Campaign

The fourth ledger — those who seek the road home. The longest tale in this volume, which elevates the final item of the canonical modern person's conflicts to a campaign arc. The whole of Law 3 is devoted to this form.

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#Law 2 — Operating the Depletion Dial

Scene Tool. It is the dial that the Depletion System left as definition only and delegated to this document. The speed of Depletion is at once the difficulty and the genre of the campaign — and that handle hangs not on numbers but in the GM's hand.

#Operation Table — Recommended Speed by Campaign Length

The point of Fast is not the remaining count but the gaze — make them look at the record sheet at the end of every scene. Standard has nothing to touch. And Slow — Slow has something to write down separately.

#Slow = Heroic Tale — Not a Halt but a Long Breath

Slow is not the dial that switches off Depletion. It is the dial that draws out the breath. Even if the Clock turns only at milestones, strike the triggers of degradation — overuse, drop and submersion, disassembly by a non-specialist, GM declaration — more diligently than usual. In a campaign where the remaining count does not drop, what guarantees an end is degradation alone. Though rounds remain, the gun dies — that one line is the lifeline of the Slow dial.

The gate that is maintained — one optional line. A gate maintained open, supply that comes and goes, the orders of the homeland — that structure which About This Book excluded from the basic, if you will open it nonetheless, open it only atop the Slow dial. And handle the gate as the GM's NPC — capricious, calling out a price, closing whenever it likes. Supply only as a scenario reward; do not let ammunition exceed 30 rounds at a time (Firearms). The warning stays the same — a Kamikakushi with a supply line is not a Kamikakushi but an expeditionary army, and the drama of that table changes from Depletion to diplomacy. A table chosen knowing that may become a good campaign. A table chosen without knowing — returns to this section three months later.

#Warning Section — What Happens If You Switch Off Depletion

At the end of the dial, beyond Slow, there are no notches. For that is not a dial but a cliff. What happens at a table that has switched Depletion off entirely, I record in order.

1. One unwearing Type 89 rifle becomes the superior version of the whole weapon catalog. The bottom two lines of the teppo comparison table — supply and repair, the two lines where the teppo overwhelmed — are erased, and only the top two lines remain.
2. "In a long war, the teppo wins" becomes a falsehood. The single sentence that every number of this volume was designed to protect.
3. The gaijin becomes an ornament, occupation and all. The school, the squad, and the supply line — the hundred years of Kunitomo, entire.
4. In that instant this volume becomes not a variant rule but a replacement of the canonical weapon system. And fc cannot override co — this is not taste but an absolute rule of this series.

Therefore I record it resolutely. There is no switch in this volume that turns off Depletion. If you want to turn it off all the same, there is only one way — to close this book. This is no rebuke. A tale of sweeping the Sengoku with an unwearing gun is a genre in its own right — but that is the work of another book, and the spine of this book was not made to bear that weight.

#Co-Existence Checklist with a Gaijin or Teppo PC

If there is a PC in the party who handles a gaijin or a teppo, once before the campaign begins — and once more when the Self-Defense Officer's rounds remaining drop below half — confirm the below. If even one catches, it is for review.

• [ ] Did you raise the Self-Defense Officer's starting rounds? → If there is a gaijin, do not raise them. Sixty rounds is a number chosen to mesh with the gaijin's growth curve — one is a thunder that wears down, the other a thunder that is raised (Firearms "the gaijin's seat").
• [ ] Did you release ammunition as a scenario reward? → A cap of 30 rounds at a time. 30 rounds is one act of a campaign.
• [ ] Did you receive a request to layer a teppo school or technique onto a modern firearm? → Not allowed. A school is a technique forged by the breath of the matchcord — leave it to the teppo's.
• [ ] Did you cut down the gaijin's supply-line scenes (Sakai, Kunitomo)? → Do not cut them. The more the Self-Defense Officer's thunder dies, the more it is the gaijin's scenes that receive that empty seat.
• [ ] Does the gaijin look awkward at the dial "Slow"? → The slower it is, the heavier the four lines above. The teppo beside an unwearing gun becomes an ornament the fastest.

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#Law 3 — The Return Campaign: To Return or Not

The operation of the return conditions and the ending is Scene Tool; the cost of return is Variant (premised on GM permission).

The canonical modern person's list of Three Ways and Six Hearts conflicts ends thus — "To return or to stay" — if the road home opens, can you abandon the comrades of this era. The final choice. That sentence, which the canon recorded as one line of conflict, this section elevates to a campaign arc. It is the road that Drift Principles recorded only as "the road home is not a rule but the reward of the story" and delegated to this document.

The principles are three.

1. The road is the reward of the story. There is no return check. A gate that opens by a roll is not a gate but a trap to Disable.
2. There is no free return. A gate without a price drowns the drama — the "cost of return" below is the list of that price.
3. The day the gate opens is the final session. The climax of a return campaign is not beyond the gate but before it — whether to cross, who crosses, what is left behind in crossing.

#6 Return-Condition Hooks

Six roads. A table not to roll but to choose — make one the backbone of the campaign and lay the rest as empty rumor and dead ends. Only when one true road is mixed with five false ones does the asking-around itself become a campaign.

#The Cost of Return — No Free Return (Variant)

The gate takes a price. Choose at least one from the below and set it on the campaign's scale in advance — and before the gate opens, be sure to show that price to the PLs. A bargain that hides the price is not a bargain but a trap. A choice becomes drama only when it is chosen knowing the price.

#3 Ending Forms

For the 3rd road, bury one piece of bait. Even when the Sengoku ends the gates will not all close, and on a night a hundred years hence a Kamikakushi will fall too. If there are those who greet, hide, and lead them away in the back alleys of that era — in the era of those who handle covered-up incidents in the shade of a world at peace (Strange Tales of Edo) — the one recorded on the first line of that lineage is the PC of your table.

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#Law 4 — Era Contamination: Managing the Leak of Future Knowledge

The basic premise is a canon citation, the two auxiliary dials are Scene Tool, and the active operation of the resistance of the world and the goods of civilization's enlightenment are Variant (premised on GM permission).

Let us first record the problem straight. If the engineer stands beside the furnace of the Kunitomo Guild — does smokeless powder come four hundred years early? If the medical worker becomes a daimyo's personal physician — does history split off? Knowledge come from the future, unlike ammunition, does not wear down. So it is the only drifted good the safety pin of Depletion does not reach, and the place where the GM's unease gathers.

#Basic Premise — There Is No History to Change (canon)

The antidote to that unease is not an invention of this volume but a declaration of the canon. The canonical chronicle has driven the nail in — "Konsei Reiyotan is a world diverged from actual history." Spirit-Realm tremors, the mountain of oni, the warning of the tengu — a hundred years found nowhere in our history is the backbone of this world, and the canon does not even fix the year of the "present," leaving it to the GM's choice.

Therefore this world has no true history (正史) to protect. Nor will history "break" because a Kamikakushi whispers of Okehazama — because there is no original to change to begin with. What happens at the table is, in fact, the true history of this world. Drift Principles has elevated this declaration to a principle of the whole volume — the history the Kamikakushi knows is not a prophecy of this world but the memory of another world, and so when it hits, it hits eerily, and when it misses, it misses at the most important moment. This is not number 1 on the list of control devices, but the floor the entire list sits upon. The two dials below are, atop this floor — for a table that wishes to adjust the speed of contamination even in a diverged world — merely auxiliary handles to turn.

#Auxiliary Dial 1 — The Wall of Materials and Precision

To know and to be able to make are different. Take smokeless powder for example — it is not black powder ground finer, but an altogether different substance. It is made by eating away cotton with a harsh acid (酸), washed and stabilized, the grains kneaded even, dried and stored so as not to catch fire. Each of those processes demands an industry that makes acid, an instrument that measures purity, and a safety such that a workshop is not blown away entire even on failure. It is a thing that does not come to pass even if a hundred master artisans of the Kunitomo Guild gather — because what is lacking is not skill but a century (世紀). Medicine is the same. Between knowing the name of an antibiotic and culturing and filtering it out, there lies not one factory but one civilization.

The operation needs but three questions. The moment a PL says "I can make that, you know," ask, with a smile.

1. Is the material in this era?
2. Can you measure that precision?
3. Who pays the price of failure?

If even one is "no," that making is not the work of a maintenance check but a scenario-grade task — the same line the Depletion System drew at the revival from silence. And do not miss the good point of this wall. The wall is not "it cannot be done" but "to be done, it needs one campaign." The journey to find the material, the artisan's hand to stand in for the instrument, the fire that failure called — the very tale of climbing the wall is a good campaign. Let them climb. But do not let them climb in one session.

#Auxiliary Dial 2 — The Resistance of the World

If even the wall is not enough — move the world itself. A world where the Spirit Realm has opened fills in the misalignment on its own. It is to read the feng shui master's warning one notch wider. Just as a fissure arises when relics gather, when knowledge from beyond the era rings too loudly, the world's causation takes the side of superstition.

Three expressions are sufficient.

• A rumor dies oddly fast. The wisdom of the boiled water that saved a village, once a season has passed, has turned into "the miracle of some wandering god-spirit."
• A record is lost. Only that one leaf of the manuscript recording the method is eaten by worms, and only that artisan is suddenly summoned and departs for a far domain.
• Those that catch the scent come. To a spot where something from beyond the era has rung loud, those that catch the scent of time gather — you may declare that in the gunshot table of Firearms the eyes of yoma have begun to come up often.

The intensity is in the GM's hand — and zero (0) is fine too. A table for which the diverged-world declaration alone suffices is, in fact, the majority. To turn this dial actively — in the direction of erasing a PC's achievement — is the domain of a variant rule, so get the table's agreement first. The resistance of the world is a staging, not a confiscation.

#A Campaign That Permits Contamination — Goods of Civilization's Enlightenment (a Variant within a Variant)

Lastly, open the gate on the opposite side too, just one paragraph. Breaking the wall, prevailing over the resistance — a campaign that plants the future in this era. A tale where vaccination spreads, movable type turns, and the agriculture of some domain runs a hundred years ahead. If you wish to do it, do it — but do it knowing three things. First, this is a Variant within a Variant — it needs not GM permission but the agreement of the whole table. Second, declare that world to be a "twice-diverged world," diverged once more from the world of the canonical chronicle — neither the other documents of this volume nor any pillar of the canon takes responsibility for that world. Third, this volume does not draw the map of that road — from here on it is your book. What this volume can do for you goes only as far as pointing at the gate.

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#Law 5 — The Drifter and the Three Ways and Six Hearts

Scene Tool. There are no numbers — for the last safety pin of this volume is not the operation of a rule but of the heart.

#Summary Table of Per-Set Conflict Hooks

The conflict hooks that the six sets of the 02 series scattered each in its own place are gathered into one table. All are the concretization of the canonical modern person's list of Three Ways and Six Hearts conflicts — loyalty (忠) or freedom, the class system and equality, the meaning of war, coexistence with yoma, whether to return — and there is not a single new axis of conflict. There are only six sets of lenses.

Read the last column of the table from top to bottom. The lenses of the six sets each light a different place, and at the end gather into the same question — whether to return. The reason the return campaign of Law 3 is the last chapter of this volume is in this table.

#The 2 Switching Triggers — Operation Advice

I record the canon's data again. The Three Ways and Six Hearts switching triggers of an ordinary occupation are 3 — the modern person's is 2. That they are easily swayed by the values of this era is carved not in narrative but in number. The hand that handles these 2 is the last skill of this volume's GM.

• Spare them by the act. If you strike a conflict scene every session, the 2 do not last two months. The scene that touches a trigger is one per act (幕) of the campaign — that one, deep.
• As a light, not a punishment. A conflict hook is not a trap that whittles a PC but a light that illuminates a PC. A scene that has a correct answer is not conflict — only the either-or where, whichever side you choose, you lose something, has the right to touch a trigger.
• Bind it with [Depletion]. The night the heart sways most is right after the goods fall silent. The night the last antibiotic was used, the morning the rounds remaining became zero — overlay the zero (0) of the remaining-count sheet with the conflict scene. The two axes of this volume become, thus, one drama.
• A switch is not a failure. That the heart breaks when the 2 triggers are spent is not the end of the character but the start of part 2 — especially in a return campaign, the heart that broke once is itself the deepest seed of the "stay" ending.

#Closing — The True Battlefield

Lastly, step back one pace and look. What this volume put into the GM's grip — the sixty-round rifle, the truck with a fixed day to stop, the black tablet that wakes only on a full-moon night — is all props. Those props all point in one direction. The dwindling remaining count is not a reckoning but an anxiety, the silenced gun is not scrap iron but a loss, and the gate of return is not an exit but a question.

The heart of the drifter is the true battlefield of this volume. The four campaign forms, the three notches of the dial, all the safety pins — are merely the stage machinery to protect that battlefield. The night when, beyond the sound of the dwindling remaining count, the PL's voice comes asking, "This person — should they return?" — when that night comes, this document has done its part.

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Whichever of the four ledgers you open, what is rolled in the last chapter is not the dice — it is the single line of a question: to return or not.