Andy Kitkowski and Ben Lehman join me for this long-overdue overview of Maid: The Role-Playing Game, and our experiences discovering, translating, publishing and playing what wound up being the first Japanese tabletop RPG ever released in English.
Yaruki Zero Podcast #14 (72 minutes, 7 seconds)
Show Notes
- Introductions
- What is Maid RPG?
- What’s neat about it?
- Yellow Submarine, one of the major tabletop gaming stores in Japan.
- Ryan Macklin in Tangibility in Mechanics
- A prior YKZ podcast where Jake Richmond mentioned getting punched in the head over Panty Explosion.
- Urusei Yatsura, a classic anime series you need to see.
- Producing and Selling Maid RPG
- Ewen’s Gen Con Indy 2008 photos, including the booth and crazy guys from Kentucky.
- Emma, a fairly serious and historically accurate manga about a maid.
- We shared a booth with Jerry Grayson of Khepera Publishing and Mike Fiegel of Aetherial Forge
- Controversy!
- JGC (Japan Game Convention), Japan’s major tabletop gaming con.
- When all is said and done, haters gonna hate.
- The Future!
- After we recorded the podcast I decided to start posting my original Maid RPG material online: Maid RPG 120%.
This podcast uses selections from the song “Time Machine” by To-den from the Grünemusik album of the same name, available for free from Jamendo.com. If you like the song, consider buying some CDs from Nankado’s website or via Jamendo.
Very awesome caricature of Ewen courtesy of the talented C. Ellis.
Yaruki Zero Games 
I find it odd that the lolita aspect is jumped on in Maid when in any Vampire game I’ve come across ever in the past two decades has had the early teen / pre teen, Methuselah or Prince type character. This may just be here in the UK but I’d be suprised.
The comments about female gamers are very true, they just get on and play whilst male gamers often have a whole complex about things that arn’t “proper.”
I still think it’s funny my mate and I picked up the translated maid book in yellow submarine. Also grabbed the pdf off of ipr at the weekend.
Well, I suspect that using the word “Lolita” brings the unsavory connotations uncomfortably close to the surface for some people, albeit mainly people who aren’t very familiar with Japanese pop culture. But on the whole I figure the people who find reasons to see Maid RPG as objectionable are for the most part far enough removed from its real target audience that there’s only so much value in trying to mollify them. As long as people understand that it’s a game that people can (and do) legitimately play (even rather well-adjusted people), I can’t really complain.
Seeing photos of our translated version sitting on shelves in Japanese game stores was kind of trippy. I don’t know how many copies have really sold, but it’s strangely awesome to see my name on a book that people can buy in Japan.