The Monk picked up Mountain Witch on an expedition recently. A game by Timothy Kleinert, Mountain Witch is a dark samurai fantasy about trust, betrayal, and confronting one’s fate. From timfire publishing’s website:
A group of ronin samurai are hired for a simple yet terrifying task—to assault and kill O-Yanma, the dreaded Mountain Witch of Mount Fuji. But regretful pasts and dark fate conspire against the mission, testing both the courage and loyalty of the samurai.
When every heart holds betrayal, who can you trust?
Mountain Witch is an interesting roleplaying game, and one that’s of interest to L5R players.
It’s a very small package – 162 page 5.5’x8.5′ softcover with color illustrations and a set of fate card tucked inside (in an envelope). Black, red and white is the predominant tone of the book. It features a unqiuue rules system to handle the described topic. Much of the details of the story are left to be filled in, and the game is a single story – one that should take 2 to 3 or so sessions. My copy was $24US. The production is very high end, surprisingly so for an indie production. Despite being a single story game, I think players who enjoy deep roleplay and the L5r / samurai roleplay theme with find Mountain Witch to be an worthy purchase and play.
House of the Jade Lantern 
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