# The Mountain Witch tags: #game/rpg/the-mountain-witch ![[The Mountain Witch (cover).jpg|600]] **The Mountain Witch** is a self-contained RPG adventure by Timothy Kleinert — a landmark of the indie RPG movement that began life as a Game Chef contest entry in 2004 and has since been lovingly revised by Central Michigan University Press. It's a game with a single scenario and no apologies: a band of masterless ronin, outcast and unemployed, accept the deal no one else would take, to climb Mt. Fuji and kill O-Yanma, the Mountain Witch himself. The twist is that the Witch is mostly a McGuffin; the real drama is the mounting tension between a group of strangers who are all hiding something and can't trust each other an inch. ## Setting Seven doomed ronin, all with their own reasons and their own pasts, make the death-climb up Mt. Fuji toward the Mountain Witch's stronghold — a samurai tragedy dressed up as a showdown with the supernatural. The Witch is a presence more than a person; what actually matters is the knife-edge of the party itself. Every one of them is hiding a **Dark Fate**, and the journey up the mountain is a slow fuse of secrets, mutual suspicion, and the mounting question of who's going to sell whom out before the climb is over. It's a game for a table willing to sit in that not-knowing. ## Mechanics ### Resolution The core is elegantly simple: every **Conflict** — and in this game all conflict *is* combat, mental or physical — is settled by each side rolling **1d6 per character**, with the highest roll winning and the margin of success deciding how much the winner gets to narrate. The winner narrates the outcome retroactively, which is the hobby's way of saying the dice decide who holds the pen, not what the pen writes. Characters are competent by default; a roll only happens when there's active opposition or real cost to failure. ### Trust The heart of the game is **Trust**. Between chapters, players secretly rate how much their ronin trusts each of the others, awarding Trust points accordingly. Those points are spent mid-Conflict to **Aid** a fellow ronin (adding your die to theirs), to **Betray** them (gaining a +1 bonus against them and locking them out of spending Trust), or to **Buy narration rights** and hijack the outcome of their roll. It's a bluff-and-bet mechanic that makes player-versus-player tension tangible, and it's the only way to improve your odds — so every success is a small vote of confidence, and every betrayal cuts deep. ### Dark Fates Each ronin is dealt a secret **Dark Fate** — revenge, an unholy pact with the Witch, a past allegiance, a worst fear — that they hint at through play and finally reveal in the closing acts. Guided by their Zodiac and abilities, the ronin journey up the mountain, battle the Witch's minions, and guard their secrets until the tension finally breaks. It's a tragedy, and it plays best with a table willing to lean into not knowing who's going to break first. ## Editions The **Mountain Witch** was written for the April 2004 Game Chef design contest at The Forge and first published as an indie title a short while later (the original layout is dated 2005). It was reissued in a **revised edition by Central Michigan University Press** in **2026** — a fuller, better-articulated treatment of the same engine, under the *Art and System: Games for Expanded Play* line. *The revised (2026) edition is the one in the library.* ## References - [The Mountain Witch - Central Michigan University Press](https://cmichpress.com/product/the-mountain-witch/) - [The Mountain Witch preorder (PDF & hardcover) - BackerKit](https://art-system.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/803569) - [Review: The Mountain Witch - Realms](https://realms.co.uk/blog/articles/review-the-mountain-witch/)