Basic Kanabo

I love Kanabo, a nice neat little system that supports the flavour of the theme. Nice clean layout of the rules, handily sorted into three books (I have the printed version, very nice). Will run this at our OSR Convention next week (2021 20th November) using a home-made setting, Land of Ronin, based on the anime Samurai 7 and Ninja Scroll.
Looking forward to a Bestiary.

Kanabo is an OSR tabletop roleplaying game loosely inspired by classic jidaigeki and chambara movies. Think 47 Ronin, Seven Samurai, Zatoichi, Harakiri, and Sanjuro.

The core game is split into three PDFs (Characters, GM, Adventures) for a total of 49 pages. The layout of each PDF is consistent, easy to read, and has a home-printed OSR-zine-y sort of aesthetic.

Setting-wise, Kanabo uses a loosely historical period (the Edo era) but doesn't position itself as a historical game. There are overt fantasy elements in it, and it prioritizes engaging the group with the story over worrying deeply about technical accuracy. It also recommends making any adjustments you need to the setting in order to include the people at your table.

Mechanically, Kanabo is loose but still has some crunch. A typical roll is d100, roll under, using one of four very loosely descriptive stats. Those stats start somewhere between 22--45, but you add bonuses from skills, items, and other factors to give you decent odds of an uncomplicated success. If you fail the roll, you still get what you were after, but with a complication (such as taking damage, offending someone, escalating a situation to violence, etc.) Rolling doubles gives you Fate, which you can spend later for a variety of one-shot benefits.

Combat uses the same basic system, but you deal damage equal to your tens die (meaning the higher your skill, the more potential damage you can deal.) Enemies don't roll, they have static damage values you take if you fail an attack. And you can boost your odds of success throughout the combat by dealing damage, creating openings, or defending innocents. This keeps the tempo of fights escalating, and makes them more dangerous up front until they turn in the party's favor.

Character advancement is frequent and significant (a stat point or a skill each session,) but death is also easy to come by. Equipment and supplies are tracked loosely, and don't have stats of their own, but travel consists of hexcrawling and has some resource management to it. By default, player parties are from all walks of life (not just disillusioned sword-hauling nobility,) and having sailors, hunters, farmers, etc gives everyone something to do around the campfire.

Resource-wise, a variety of tools are provided to both players and GMs. Included is a section on safety (using X-Card and Lines & Veils,) a full handbook for GMs, and a starter adventure. There's also a village-with-a-problem generator that outputs a detailed hexmap and a solid adventure, although you'll want to use it before a session and sand off the rough edges for best results.

The sample adventure PDF, Peach Trees Village, comes with a small map and a lot of randomized encounters. It doesn't have a single, uniform adventure structure (the group will sort of have to decide what they want to do there,) but there's a lot of hooks with details for you to fill in, allowing you to link the story together in whichever ways feel most appropriate.

Overall, Kanabo is a loose, easy-to-use game system with a jidaigeki flavor. If you want to tell a story about wanderers from all walks of life getting involved in post-sengoku village problems, I'd recommend checking it out.

Minor Issues:

-GM, page 17, "Cards of dead" Carts

I have an idea for a houserule hack. When you're rolling for settlement size, the size result tells you what die to roll on the Governance table. 1-4 is a d4. 5-6 is a d6, 7-8 is a d-8 and 9-10 is a d10.