Touhou and Savage Worlds fans, I need help! How should I run a simple Touhou One Shot in the game Savage Worlds?

Question

I am looking to run a simple Savage Worlds TTRPG One Shot in the universe of Touhou Project. I've seen some posts about this but it's been 8 years I think and am still left with questions.

Firstly, how would you handle the many races of Touhou Project in the rules of Savage Worlds? I know the system has rules of creating races but Touhou has too many to reasonably make for a simple one shot. I guess I could simply reskin humans and make everyone get a free edge (like the Feats of DnD 5E) and am sure that would work fine.

Am also wondering how combat should be handled? in Touhou combat is always non-lethal (as far as I could tell at least) and it's assumed everyone is using magic projectiles. The simple solution would be to make everyone a caster with Arcane Backgrounds but I also want to let people use less magic if they want. I mean if the Fighting Game spin offs can let characters use fist fights I see no reason to force magic on people but even there characters always use some level of magic bullets to fight.

I also have questions about the non-combat side of things, Savage Worlds as good tactical combat but Touhou isn't always about fighting, I admit I've never read the mangas so I don't really know what a slice of life Gensokyo even looks like outside of fanfics and fangames. Is Savage Worlds good enough for the non-combative aspects of the game am planning. I basically used a random incident generator to get a simple one-shot idea. which basically led to story being "Someone TP'd the Yokai Mountain and no one knows why."

I guess am already leaning towards a more funny light hearted tone. I plan to crosspost this to both the Touhou and Savage Worlds subreddits to try and hopefully get some collaboration between the two communities.

Posted May 5, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

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