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Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (Plus Art Prints and Cloth Game Board)

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9781952885259
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  • Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (Plus Art Prints and Cloth Game Board)
  • Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (Plus Art Prints and Cloth Game Board)
MSRP: $99.99
$89.99
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Description

Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall is a tabletop roleplaying game which combines elements of RPGs with those of traditional board games. The game can be played as a "mini-series" or a one-shot.

Each game takes place over a number of days (usually five), alternating between day and night scenes where the roleplaying scenes take place.  Day and night have different threats - in the daytime, the restaurant may experience racism or gang violence, while in the night time, Jiangshi are seeking warm bodies. During the day characters complete assigned restaurant tasks in order to keep the family business running. 

Every morning, the Game Moderator deals out a tableau of Restaurant cards that the family will need to complete before diners start to arrive. Each Restaurant card needs from 1 hour to 3 hours to complete. Usually, the oldest member of the family takes charge and starts delegating the tasks to specific players. Each player uses their Resilience slots to complete tasks, indicated by the time and energy they have available to do it.

Once the tasks have been completed to the best of the family’s abilities, the GM takes any Restaurant cards that were left undone and places them on the central Restaurant board, rotating them such that the consequences face the players and cover the restaurant’s slots.

Restaurant Board

Prior to starting the morning scenes, the first thing each character must do is see how they’re feeling from the trials and tribulations of the previous day. Each player rolls 1D4 and receives that many Mung cards from the GM which represent the dreams and nightmares of the characters. 

Some of the Mung cards are in color which represent good dreams. Other Mung are in black and white, which represents bad dreams. When a player receives a bad Mung card, they place it in one of the card slots on their Character sheet, covering a trait (Item, Skill, Facet, etc.), in numerical order. While covered, a trait cannot be used. To rid themselves of a bad Mung, a character needs to talk about the bad Mung card with another player character during the afternoon or evening scenes. Once they’ve talked about it, they can discard the card.

Artwork by Sadia Bies

After receiving their Mung cards, players take turns explaining their dreams to each other and the GM. 

  • Describe the dream or nightmare based on the image on the cards
  • What are these visions like and what do they mean, if anything?

On subsequent mornings, any remaining Mung cards from previous rounds are kept as recurring nightmares that continue to plague the player character. They will roll the 1D4 as usual for more Mung cards, but instead of adding that number of cards to their character sheet, the result indicates the maximum number of Mung cards that the player character has to deal with this day.

Character Sheet

The Character Sheet has several details about the player character that a player can fill out. During the game, Resilience slots may get covered up by Mung cards or Jiangshi cards. A character takes a Jiangshi card when they take stress or physical damage. When a Resilience slot gets covered by a Jiangshi card or a Mung card, that detail about the PC gets removed from play until they are healed. If a PC gets a Jiangshi card on a slot that already has a Mung card, they will remove the Mung card and replace it with the new Jiangshi card.

Once they have all 8 slots filled with Jiangshi cards, the player will then become a Jiangshi and they would flip over all the Jiangshi cards to reveal their new Skills. Though this fate can be terrifying, these cards can be healed and removed through game play. 

Artwork by Steven Wu

Players can create Spirit Papers by taking a slip of paper and writing a short phrase or sentence on it that captures how the family of characters stays strong and together. Spirit Papers can only be used once during the night time phases.

The GM must count to ten in secret while the family is thinking of their word or sentence. If the time expires and the family has not yet agreed upon what to write on the Spirit Paper, the Spirit Paper will not work.

If the Spirit Paper works (i.e. a meaningful phrase or sentence was written with the 10-second time limit), the Jiangshi has been immobilized and players can move onto healing their family member or evading the Jiangshi they’re faced with.

The whole group of non-GM players starts with a Family pool of six eight-sided dice (6D8) on the first day. As they progress through the days, player characters start feeling the stress the hauntings levy on the family, reducing their pool of dice available. These dice are used to overcome challenges, or to help council and care for the emotional health of the family, removing Mung cards from their character sheets.

When a player is determining the outcome of a challenge they are engaged with, they roll all the dice in the Family pool at once and take the highest single value from one of the dice that they rolled as their outcome. Once per scene, a character can use one of their skills to reroll the dice pool to try to achieve a better result. 

To determine the highest single value from a roll, complete the following steps:

  1.  Clean house! Check for 4’s in the pool: For every die that is showing a 4 in the pool, cancel out a die from the pool that is showing the highest value in the pool along with the die showing the 4, placing them back on the Day/Night Tracker.
     
  2.  Check for highest valued D8 in pool: The higher the die roll, the better the outcome.

Ming is rolling the Family pool to cook a feast for visiting dignitaries on Day 1. Ming’s first roll results in the following: 1 2 2 3 4 4 - their highest result is a 2 as the two 4s cancel out the 3 and one of the 2s, respectively! Wanting to impress their guests, Ming uses their Cooking Skill and rerolls the Family pool, ending up with the following result: 1 3 3 4 7 8. Their highest result is 7 because the 8 is cancelled out by the 4. Wiping their brow, Ming's character breathes a sigh of relief and serves a gorgeous noodle dish to the members of the San Francisco city council.

Artwork by Steven Wu

 

This game rewards player characters for failing, because it makes for a more interesting story! When a failure happens, the player who rolled receives an Individual die. The GM will also give player characters a die towards their Individual Pool when something occurs that makes their character happy or hopeful towards their Hopes and Dreams (labeled on their character sheet).

While the main use of Individual dice is to assist other players, a player character may add any number of their Individual dice to their own Challenge rolls. If they do this, ALL of the dice they use in this way are returned to the GM once the Challenge roll is resolved.

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