I’ve been making good progress on the aforementioned Retail Magic RPG (though the Yaruki Zero book is still eating up a lot of my free time). Kamiya was amenable to the idea and and even impressed with the draft of the character creation rules I showed him, so it looks like I don’t have to worry about whether the project is feasible on that front.

The PC (employee) creation rules are done, though I need to take some time to refine the selection of Special Qualities. There are a few things I copied over from my draft of Mascot-tan that I should probably revise or remove, and possibly a few things I need to add. I also finished the boss and store creation rules, though that went faster because I decided not to write up a separate Special Qualities table for bosses. I had fun making the store creation tables a bit more expansive than the mansion creation tables in Maid RPG, so you roll for the store’s appearance, location, specialty, and special features. Let’s give those a try:

Alyssa Foxtail
Attributes: Athletics 2, Cunning 0, Guts 3, Luck 2, Presence 0, Skill 3
Boss Type: Obsessed Artisan
Boss Assets: Magical Power, Property
Favorite Employee Type: Weirdo
Boss Special Qualities: Fox Ears, Overactive Imagination
Stress Explosion: Making Corny Jokes/Punning
Colors: Hair: Gold, Eyes: Silver, Outfit: Red and Yellow
Stress Limit: 30

Alyssa is one of the fox people of the eastern forests. She started Fox Hunt Specialties because the only thing she could do to earn a living was to harness her innate magical talent. Although she looks fairly attractive, in a disheveled kind of way, she’s actually kind of annoying and unsocial, and tends to neglect her employees.

Fox Hunt Specialties
Store Appearance: Eccentric Construction
Store Colors: Teal and Violet
Store Location: Magical Mobility
Store Specialty: Material Components
Store Special Features: Arcade Game, Dimensional Interior

Alyssa’s store is the result of building a hut out of discarded glass bottles and then attaching a pocket dimension to the entrance. The store’s exterior is about the size of a small phone booth, but the interior is a full-sized store, with countless racks of merchandise, including an impressive collection of spell components in mason jars behind the counter. The dimensional enchantments on it are a little bit unstable though, and the store has a way of jumping around the city at random. A brief trip to Earth resulted in a Simpsons arcade game machine being delivered to the store by accident, and Alyssa was able to bind an electricity elemental to power it.

I’m also working on a d666 item table, though writing up 216 items is going to take quite a while. There are only so many zany D&D items to borrow from. I’m planning to take after the original Japanese Maid RPG rulebook and include two scenarios and a replay, though I need to get a bit further along before I can make those. I’m also contemplating hiring Sue-chan to do the artwork, since I think her style would mesh pretty well with the overall feel of the game.

Since so many of the people interested in the game have expressed interest, I’m also putting together a chapter for putting Retail Magic into a modern/urban fantasy setting, which is turning out to be roughly the same setting as Magic School Diaries. I’m still working out what actual new material it’ll require, but right now the “Memos from Corporate” table is shaping up to be my favorite part of it.

The big thing that has me stumped is how to approach doing commerce rules. It makes perfect sense to have optional rules for handling running the store’s business, but I don’t even know where to begin. Also, owing to the choice of rules systems, this will be one of my rare non-open designs, but I will be looking for people to do outside playtesting rather than posting it online.