HDT - He Dies, Tonight

Ok, trying to play it, problems so far:

When generating a character, I'm supposed to roll for a weapon.  There's no weapon table.  Currently using the sword style table instead, since nothing calls for that that I can see.

When rolling for a room there's no indication how to tell what kind of room is next.  Currently assuming that the list on page two with the pictures is the order for the rooms and it's the same every time, contrary to what is stated in the first paragraph of the text.

When doing combat there's no explanation of how that's supposed to work.  Currently assuming all combats are like the 'example' on page two, which uses a bunch of rules that come out of nowhere.  Specifically:

• Combat occurs in rounds. On each round the player rolls 2d6 (always) and each enemy rolls 1d6.
• The player then assigns enemy dice in any order to either of their own dice until they can't assign any more without the total assigned value to a player die exceeding its value.
• The player then loses 1 motivation per unblocked die and all blocked dice are discarded.  The round then ends and the next round starts.

Even so there are a lot of things that aren't specified:

• How often can sword style abilities be used?  Currently I'm ruling:
  • Mugai-Ryu : up to once per die (twice per turn in combat unless you wanna double an enemy die for some reason), and on tables that have only 6 results the result is mod 6 if over 6.
    
  • Niten Ichi-Ryu : Activates when the sum of your dice equals the sum of all dice for all living enemies, once per round calculated at the end of the round.
  • Iaijutsu : 1/combat
  •  Ninjutsu : 1/round
  • Jigen-Ryu : whenever you want.
  • Kenjutsu : 1/round in combat, 1/die outside combat.

• How does midboss combat work in general?
  • assuming the <3 column in the midboss table gives dice that work like enemy number does in normal fights currently.
  • assuming 'result is 6' means the midboss rolls a 6 on any die.
  • Currently not worrying about abilities like the Storm Naginata that seem like they do literally nothing (in that specific case) or close to nothing (in some other cases).
  • How does midboss+enemy combat work?
    • Currently assuming the midboss <3 dice and enemy number dice are pooled together and both the enemy special ability and midboss abilities apply on all dice for the duration of the combat.
• Are chests before or after midbosses?  I am currently assuming after.
• Does the pit trap deal an additional 1 damage on a failure to escape?  Does the amulet of Fujin get another roll each failure?
  • Currently guessing Yes and No, respectively.

• Are items consumable?
  • Currently assuming yes for all.

So it's pretty confusing and feels like its missing some explanation/rules.

I've done one run so far with the above interpretations.  I rolled Ninjutsu, grappling hook, blinding powder, amulet of Fujin (which seemed pretty funny because I rolled for sword style last since I couldn't figure out what weapons were supposed to be, and Ninjutsu makes too much sense for grappling hook+smoke bomb+trap evasion. Guess my guy is batman XD ).

First room I assumed was a trap (following the page two pictures), and rolled spikes.  The amulet failed to activate so I used my grapple hook.

Second room enemies were 6 Ashigaru.  I would have taken 2 damage, but I used Ninjutsu to take only 1, then dispatched the final enemy the next round.

Third room was a trap, which rolled spikes again.  This time the amulet activated and I safely proceeded to the next set of enemies.

Fourth room was 4 Sohei.  They dealt 9 damage to me before I could take them down-- not being able to use Ninjutsu was painful here; the first round I couldn't stop even a single attack!

5th room was a Temple Warrior with an imported musket.  He rolled two 6s which would have dealt 4 damage, but I used Ninjutsu to swap one of his 6s for a 1 I rolled, and managed to take him out in a single hit, suffering only 2 damage from his remaining 6, bringing me down to 38.  I acquired a Prayer from the chest.

6th room was a pit trap, and the amulet failed to activate.  Furthermore, I couldn't roll a 5 or a 6 for ages and took 5 total damage before escaping with 33 remaining motivation.

7th room was a Jujutsu master who would have had double nunchucks but thanks to my prayer had a Perfect Yumi Bow instead.  With him were 2 Ronin, bringing the total enemy life to 8 and insuring I have to roll twice for potential damage whenever I take out one of their dice (first -1 on 5,6 then -1 on 4,5,6).  The first round I only managed to take out a single die even though I rolled a 6 and a 5 because they rolled so many 4+s that my dice were reduced to 5, 0 before I could attack (it didn't help that I couldn't lower the number of 4+s, having to settle for trading my 5 for a 6). Luckily blinding powder prevented damage that round, and I rolled no damage from either source for the 1 damage I did deal.  The next round I rolled a 6 and a 3 and could swap my 3 for one of their 6s to reduce the bow's effectiveness somewhat.  I managed to take out 3 dice but still took 4 damage, lowering my motivation to 29.  The revenge dice dealt another 4 damage, lowering my morivation to 25.  The following round I got lucky and the bow, after Ninjutsu, had no hits so I was able to finish off the fight, taking another 3 revenge damage for a total remaining motivation of 22.  This being higher than 12, I won without needing to check the final item (it was another Prayer) or fight the boss.

All in all, it was reasonably fun, but could really use another page in the explanation document, and probably some effect tweaks.  Sword styles 2 and 5 seem pretty trash and style 6 seems very OP. The momentum amulets (Oni, Rebirth) are significantly worse than 1 copy of Healing Herbs. Arrow traps can heal you if the 1d6 is bigger than the 2d6, which isn't that unlikely if you are a Kenjutsu or Mugai-Ryu user, especially if you have a prayer.

Looking at the midboss table now, it looks like I was very lucky to roll a 1 and then a 2 for type.  The other midbosses have a lot more health.

Really cool looking game!

Never give up!

Here is link to my new game if you want to check It out:

https://thecatgamecompany.itch.io/thecat