Yay! My first new post on WordPress! I’m still working on getting acquainted with the interface and whatnot. Anyway.
In case you’re wondering “yaruki zero” is Japanese (やる気ゼロ) for “no motivation.” It’s an “extreme in-joke” (meaning I’m the only one who really gets it and finds it funny); when I and some other students were forced to do a skit for a Japanese class, after the ordeal was over I was thinking, “Well, that’s what happens when you have a group made of up people who didn’t want to do this in the first place. We’re ‘Team Yaruki Zero!'” Like my Go Play keychain, it’s also a reminder to myself to actually do stuff.
My package from Amazon Japan came in the main on Thursday, so I now have shiny new copies of Ru/Li/Lu/Ra, Alshard ff, and the bunko version of Arianrhod. I will post about these more when I’ve had a chance to really read them. At the moment I’ve been distracted by the manga I ordered along with them (new volumes of Genshiken, Yotsubato! and Rozen Maiden), plus I want to finish reading Gary Alan Fine’s book Shared Fantasy, which is a sociological study of RPGs from 1983, before I have to return it to the library.
Although the setting of Alshard looks fantastic, the underlying system is very, very similar to Beast Bind and Arianrhod (and part of why I picked up Ru/Li/Lu/Ra was just to make sure I picked up something not from FEAR). Interestingly, FEAR has taken the basic rules from Alshard (specifically the version from Alshard GAIA) and created what appears to be an open system, called (heh) the “Standard RPG System” (SRS for short). I’ll have to sit down and read/translate it, and see just how much they allow people to do with it. I’m wondering if they’d be amenable to an English translation to it, especially since it would be perfect for some of my more mainstream RPG project ideas (notably Ether Star and Catgirl: The Storytelling Game).
I also got the newest issue of Role&Roll, Japan’s main RPG magazine, and was inspired to post about it on Story Games herehere. Admittedly in posting it I was sort of crossing my fingers and hoping, but I was still (pleasantly) surprised when Tad Kelson posted saying he was going to try to put together an indie gaming mag.
I’m also hard at work on my anime RPG project (I still don’t know what to call it; I’m using “Anime Dreams” as a placeholder). I have a small notebook I use to write down stuff when I’m away from my computer, and I’ve literally filled up about 40 pages just with ideas for this game. Right now I’m mainly working on the conflict resolution rules — which will be at the heart of the whole thing — and it’s taking a heck of a lot of work. I keep catching myself staring off into space on the train and thinking really hard about it. I’m exceedingly happy with how this is turning out so far, but how well the conflict resolution rules work is going to be the main test of how good a game it turns out to be. I’ll be posting more about the gritty details soon, when I’ve got my tentative version a bit more straight in my head. At the moment it’s looking like the game will be diceless and resource-based, which in turn means I ought to go look at Yuuyake Koyake again.
Yaruki Zero Games 
It’s great you moved to wordpress, now the lazy me doesn’t have to register on blogger to start commenting your posts ;)
So, give us more of your enlightening Anime roleplaying thoughts. It’s quite an interesting read, given that I’m designing in the same area ;)
And say something more about that Anime Dreams game. Accidentaly, my Anime Heartreaker Activate!* game I’ve been working on lately is diceless and resource-based too, hmm…
I wasn’t even originally planning to have it be diceless, but I had decided that randomness would only be in the game to make things more interesting, and that a character should only win purely by “luck” if they have “Lucky” as a trait. Still, it’s made the conflict rules even more of a crazy juggling act, hence the need for all the pontification.
I think I’ve pretty much written up everything I’m going to be able to for anime roleplaying theory type stuff, at least for a while. The previous two posts were a result of years of thought about the subject, plenty of Forgey theory, Daniel Mackay’s book, and reading up on Superflat and Takashi Murakami.
Someone on RPG.net was saying that a lot of indie games have weird mechanics based on stuff that someone devised informally with their group. Anime Dreams has quite a bit of stuff that comes out of my experiences playing with my friends, partly because I play with them almost exclusively, and partly because I mainly design games with having fun with them as my main goal.
The “fan guide” idea came in part from when I realized that all of our long-term campaigns could’ve really benefited from it. Partly just so I could keep names straight. :P
Another important thing is the round robin setting creation rules, which will hopefully provide a good formalized way for the group to work together to create a setting, whether an original one or an adaptation. Games like BESM and OVA are set up in such a way that they absolutely demand creating a setting, but offer nothing more than advice for the task.
Stuff like that.
(I haven’t worked on them much, but I’m also enjoying working on three canned campaign settings: Tiny Aliens, Angel Soul, and Fullmetal President).
More soon. :3
>Still, it’s made the conflict rules even more of a crazy juggling act, hence the need for all the pontification.
Ah yes. My playtester commented that I wouldn’t really need even half of the rules I have if I settled on Fortune based mechanics.
Some of my thoughts on the matter I’ve put on my blog, anyway.
Yes, good thing you finally moved!
For some odd reason you don’t show on my Friend Surfer page… odd.
Ok, added you manually, now you show up, which ensures me being up to date with your blog :)