Gubat Banwa

Gubat-Banwa: The Warring States of Kitatak is a tactical combat and war drama roleplaying game set in a heroic fantasy setting inspired by Late Porcelain Period Philippines.

You play as Manggugubat, warrior-braves that make up the warrior caste, followers of Datu, who enjoy prestige and regard oftentimes higher than their noble counterparts. As Manggugubat, you must define why you fight in this land of perpetual battle.

As a tactical combat roleplaying game, you should expect deep and rewarding combat encounters that focus on neat tricks, battlefield effects, and grid combat in the same vein as Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, and Dungeons and Dragons 4E, with a system of roll under d20 that features trying to roll under your attack stat but higher than your target's Defense, to streamline and simulate Hit Chances in Tactics RPGs.

As a war-drama roleplaying game, expect an emphasis on relationships with other warriors, with your loved one, and intense interpolity politics with the other polities. Gubat Banwa expects you to play into these melodramas: sons having to kill their fathers for defecting to an enemy polity, daughters having to flee to the mountains to escape misogynistic responsibilities, loved ones killing each other slowly due to orders and/or emotions, best friends dueling at the top of a mountain in the midst of a storm as their ideologies bring them to a head. This features systems of game that focus on action and consequence, with a 4d4 rolling system meant to invoke the casting of lots with crocodile's teeth that Precolonial Filipinos would do.

This game is made for war stories, the likes one would see in Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It’s about being forced to kill your closest loved one in the middle of a blood-stained sea in the midst of a storm because they serve a Datu that blasphemed your Sultan. War Drama narrative mechanics make sure that violence happens inevitably, in one way or another, all threads intertwining and coming to a head with tactical combat.