Category Archives: musings

Yaruki Zero Podcast #1: Opening Remarks

musings, Podcast

ykz_001

This is my first attempt at a podcast, basically a dry run at talking into a microphone. In this installment, I give a quick summary of my “career” as an RPG gamer, from playing Robotech back in the 7th grade up to the present, and a bit about what I’ve been working on.

Yaruki Zero Podcast #1 (26 minutes, 34 seconds)

Show Notes

Maid RPG Update: Maids’ Sunset

musings

sample-dccb64e881e0d677075f1a347773a841

Sunset Games has officially announced that the original Japanese version of Maid RPG is going out of print. It’s a little sad, but then the original game did come out in December of 2004, so it’s had quite a run. However, this has no effect on the English version, and we can and will continue to offer it for quite a while to come.

Here’s a quick translation of Kokado’s fateful blog post:

Maid RPG, a very unusual RPG, is now out of print. It is a game that came out just before the maid boom really hit, and had the nerve to ride the wave.

This is a tabletop role-playing game where the players become maids, and compete to serve their Master (the GM) to earn his Favor before the others.

There was a game at JGC where six girls played in costume, there was the time at the all-Maid RPG convention the leader of Atarinbou[1] came in a maid uniform, there was a big stack of the book being sold at the Nipponbashi Tora no Ana[2]… This game created all kinds of legends (or rather, memories).

There’s even an English version.

Some stores still have it in stock, should you wish to go buy it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have created.

[1]Atarinbou is the circle that created Aitsu wa Classmate!, a high school comedy game also published by Sunset Games.
[2]Tora no Ana (Tiger’s Den) is one of the premiere chains for buying otaku goods, along with Animate and Gamers.

Aside from quirky RPGs, Sunset Games offers a massive variety of historical wargames and polyhedral dice to Japanese gamers, as well as Japanese versions of the Harn RPG books. We wish Sunset Games the best of luck with their future endeavors!

Maid RPG Update: Revisions

musings

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At long last, some more news on the Maid RPG front!

Andy has finished compiling and implementing the numerous revisions. There are a few rules fixes (here’s the errata file), a handful of edits for content people found objectionable, and a ton of little grammar and formatting errors. Many thanks to Grant Chen for all of his help. If you’ve purchased the PDF, you should’ve already been notified, and will be able to download the new version.

From here we’ll be doing a new printing and getting the book back in distribution. We’re hoping to have it back in stock at Indie Press Revolution in 2 to 4 weeks.

I also need to get around to putting together the extra scenarios that we’re supposed to be putting out as free PDFs…

Things I Think About Games

musings

Inspired by Things We Think About Games.

1. RPGs can be pretty much anything. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

2. Genres of games are not discrete categories. Think in terms of a continuum. Whether you’re making an RPG with board game elements or a board game with RPG elements isn’t nearly as important as whether you’re making a game that’s fun to play. Besides, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the things RPGs could do with board and card game materials.

3. The Real Rule Zero: Don’t be a douche. This rule can solve a lot more problems than the “Rule Zero” of other RPGs ever could.

4. In RPGs as elsewhere it really pays to appreciate the old and the new in equal measure.

5. RPGs have a strange relationship with anime. With most other media people intuitively understand that they’re free to use as much or as little of whatever they come in contact with for inspiration, but American fans have a tendency to see “anime” as a separate, exotic category with ridiculously high standards of authenticity. Japanese TRPG players don’t see “anime” style as a separate category, since most everything geeky in Japan has that style to some degree.

There’s a lot of potential in addressing this American view of anime on purpose, but pretending anime is a discrete and pure category is counterproductive.

6. Three to six heads are better than one.

7. Geek culture is referential, intertextual, post-modern. In English, that means that to a large extent things are made of up of references to other things. Don’t let Monty Python and Simpsons quotes become a distraction, but do take advantage of your common subculture to engage and communicate with fellow gamers.

8. Some people complain about how White Wolf brought a bunch of goths into the hobby. When I take a brutally honest look at the people who make up the hobby, I come to the conclusion that adding a bunch of goths to the scene was neither a step forwards nor backwards, just a shuffling to one side.

9. 4e did not kill Gary Gygax. Cardiovascular problems killed Gary Gygax, and we will all miss him. Get over yourself and have fun playing games.

10. The thing about character death is that it eliminates a player’s ability to have input into the game. That doesn’t mean PCs should never die, but it does mean that putting other things at stake besides life and death can be far, far more interesting.

11. Play a game with rules that meaningfully address the things you want to do.

12. When a resource is limited, players hoard it unless you give them a compelling reason to do otherwise.

13. “Balance” doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) mean “everyone is the same.” A game can give radically different characters really neat things to do.

14. Munchkinism isn’t necessarily a problem with the rules, but it’s definitely something that good rules can address.

Once More, Into the Random Thoughs

musings

I haven’t been very productive. I’m still stressing over various things and some nothings too. On the plus side, the changes in my work situation are making it easier for me to get more gaming in, and will hopefully let my gaming group do more and more productive gaming. Schedule clashes have been making our game sessions way too short to get to much of anything meaty, and in D&D in particular we’ve been having trouble getting through more than one encounter per session.

Liberty
The other day I ran the “Liberty: The Final Maid Maiden” scenario from Maid RPG. It was… mixed. There were two essential problems.

First, the players were in some cases drastically at odds with each other as to the tone the game should take. Two were pushing to make it exceedingly dark, one wanted love and justice to prevail over all, one was shooting for Maid RPG insanity more suitable for a random event driven game, and one was somewhere in the middle. The pre-created character backgrounds were partly at fault, as they range from a naive girl who misses her maid friends to a death row inmate who wonders why she was being punished for murdering some maids. It’s basically meant to be heroic anime cheese with an absurd premise, somewhere around Love Hina or Project A-ko, and having a GRIMDARK Alternative Black didn’t quite work with the adventure as written.

Second, it’s basically a mini-campaign worth of material. We tried to cram everything into three hours, and it felt much too rushed, railroaded, and deus ex machina-y. I could have easily expanded it into three or more sessions worth, and having the Alternative Maids journeying from the falling Osaka Geofront to Tokyo Central for the final confrontation has room for all kinds of interesting subplots which would help give the whole thing the epic feel it’s intended for.

Endgame
I’m going to Endgame Oakland‘s minicon this Saturday. I’m looking forward to playing Mouse Guard and In A Wicked Age, especially since I’ve been getting all kinds of ideas from both for Slime Story.

Carnage
I’ll be playing 3:16 with my regular gaming group on Sunday. A friend of mine is doing up space marine miniatures for us to use, and most everyone seems pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing. I already have the first session planned out, insofar as the GM needs to plan stuff out for the game.

We may finally try out The Mountain Witch some time after that.

Slime Story
I’m starting to really love this game, even thought it’s not even playable yet. It’s got my favorite bits of my favorite games, plus some nifty new stuff, plus a setting I find fascinating in its possibilities.

This thread has me wanting to add rules for “achievements“; it would certainly fit the MMO parody angle. I have to think about this more. It could be really awesome as something integral to the game, if I can make it work right.

D&D: Nine Towers

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Without really meaning to, I started coming up with a campaign setting for D&D4e. It makes me wish that I could buy something close to it in book for, because I’m not sure I’m qualified to write up everything it calls for. Still, I was thinking about running a D&D mini-campaign, and this is looking to be an interesting enough setting to make me want to do it.

The setting is a mixture of D&D, Final Fantasy, assorted anime, Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, etc. I want a world that’s over the top, baroque, and sometimes surreal. So, there’s this massive Empire of Man that, through ambition and soulfire technology (tentative name), which uses captured spirits as batteries/fuel, spanned the whole of its homeworld and is now spreading through the ether to colonize other worlds. This takes place in Nine Towers (also a tentative name), a colony that has very rich soulfire resources, but also faces threats from powerful natives and dangerous monsters. The Empire is spread thin right now, so it can’t actually provide Nine Towers with the military support it really needs, even as it demands more and more soulfire shipments.

The capital of Nine Towers is a city that was formed by a Dreamshaper, one of an exceedingly rare breed that can transpose elements of reality and the Dreamtime. Thus the city is a great surreal sprawl stretching into the sky, beautiful and twisted, but with very real nightmares lurking in its far corners.

This setting is meant to have some of the issues that D&D normally glosses over, including racism (non-humans are not given imperial citizenship unless they earn it through exceptional service), sexism (though more like 1950s than medieval), and modernity (soulfire technology has propelled the Empire beyond its agricultural economy abnormally fast).

Imperials refer to the main race of the natives as “Wild Folk.” This is a new race I’m working on, based on the Varna from Arianrhod, the weird tribes you meet in Gradia, and so forth. Basically, they look human but they’re a little smaller and quicker, and they have some kind of animal features (tails, ears, horns, etc.) depending on which tribe they come from. The twist is that they’re at least as vital and ambitions as the humans, but the Empire founded Nine Towers before their civilization really took shape. The Wild Folk have an animistic religion, and a considerable command over spirits, though how they express it varies greatly. Hence, Wild Folk can include druids, witch doctors, shamans, barbarians, summoners, etc. (And to do the setting properly I think I need a new Summoner class…)

Some other things that I think are neat:

  • The two main religions of the Empire are the newer monotheistic faith of the One God, and the polytheistic faith of the old gods. The clergy of the One God dislike letting the old ways persist, but soulfire technology depends on the summoning rites of the old ways.
  • Magic is a scientific practice; the Empire employs many sorcerer-scientists. Divine powers are actually magical rites encoded within scripture.
  • I want to do something with different varieties of humans (races in the proper sense of the word) rather than leaving it totally generic, but I’m not sure what.
  • Most D&D races are not present. Eladrin, Tieflings, and Genasi are “re-skilled” as “Spirit-Touched” humans, people warped by soulfire exposure or other factors. I may throw in some of the other optional races from the Monster Manual (Shadar-Kai, Dopplegangers, and possibly Drow) as other varieties of Spirit-Touched.
  • I want to put together another, less common native race, to give the setting some kind of big bruisers.
  • Nine Towers has great need for adventurers, whether in the bowels of the city or out on the frontier.

So, the list of things I would need to do it properly includes:

  • Information on the Empire and Nine Towers.
  • A Summoner class, and appropriate rituals.
  • A Wild Folk race writeup, with some racial feats. If I were to go for the full effect, probably one or more paragon paths too.
  • Rules where appropriate for soulfire stuff, including magic items, rituals, etc.
  • Guidelines for monsters in Nine Towers, probably including some write-ups of new ones.
  • Other stuff that I’m no doubt forgetting.

TRPG Book Report: Doko ni Demo Aru Fushigi

Japanese, musings, TRPG Book Report,

Doko ni Demo Aru Fushigi

With so many TRPG books to go through, I’ve decided to start posting about the various books I’ve got as I go along. First up is Doko ni Demo Aru Fushigi. This is a 50-page doujinshi produced as a collaboration between Tsugihagi Honbo and Majo no Kai. Tsugihagi is Ryo Kamiya’s circle, and responsible for Yuuyake Koyake. Majo no Kai, headed up by “South,” published a print edition of Witch Quest, a free TRPG available as text files. Witch Quest and Yuuyake Koyake are both heart-warming “everyday magic” games, so it was natural for the two circles to collaborate on something. However, the notion of doing so came right when Kamiya was hard at work on Mononoke Koyake, so if they were going to do such a project, it needed to be one that wouldn’t place undue burden on either party. This book is the result. They met online, played a session of each of their games, and had a lengthy dialogue about everyday magic in general, and the book has a transcript of the discussion, sandwiched between two replays. It’s not the most impressive RPG book out there, but for me it was definitely worth the 500 yen.
Continue reading TRPG Book Report: Doko ni Demo Aru Fushigi →

Maid RPG Update: First Interview

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Things have been pretty quiet on the maid front lately. However, over at the Living Dice site, they’ve posted up an interview with yours truly about Maid RPG. Aside from the opportunity to get some insight on the release of Maid RPG, the site has a series of interviews with other game creators, and plenty of other articles on gaming.

In other maid-related news/linkage: Joe Wreschnig has posted up A Serious Analysis/Review of Maid RPG, and Persona did a comic called My Lovely Maid Meiko.

Novel Writing

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I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year (and I need to write another 1500 or so words tonight to keep on track…). I mention it here mainly because I’m trying to write a novel that takes place in the Slime Story setting. I hadn’t originally been planning to participate, but unlike every previous year since I first heard about it, I found I have both an idea for a story and enough free time to actually write stuff. (Seriously; while I’ve been a college student NaNoWriMo, Game Chef, and so on have always come at the worst possible time for me). Anyway, my NaNoWriMo username is “neko ewen”.

Anyone remember the Monty Python novel writing sketch? It was from the Matching Tie and Handkerchief album. I am such a nerd. Also, someone put it on YouTube.

Ook.
At the Alternative Press Expo (or “APE”) I came across a comic called North World (which is also a webcomic). Its premise very superficially resembles Slime Story. It’s very different, but also very good so far. I may have to investigate webcomics more.

Okaeri
Also, Andy is back from Japan, and I’m very much looking forward to the Japanese RPG goodness he was kind enough to pick up for me, including Tsugihagi‘s doujins, Savage Science, Sukupani, Satasupe Remix+, Sword World 2.0, the new Yuuyake Koyake supplement, and a few other random things. Rest assured, I will post extensively about this stuff later.

Progress

musings, projects,

Okay, so here’s what’s going on:

Slime Story is finally starting to properly come together. I had to throw out a lot of my previous ideas for how the game might work, but the gears are actually fitting together. Right now the game in my head is like a mashup of Aitsu wa Classmate, Bliss Stage, and Tunnels & Trolls, with some Arianrhod, Yuuyake Koyake, 3:16, The Shadow of Yesterday, and D&D thrown in for good measure. It still needs a whole hell of a lot of work, but it’s getting there.

I’m increasingly thinking that fringe-y games that distribute creative input are more what I want to do. Running traditional games is proving too psychologically taxing. Not bad, not unpleasant, but they have a way of leaving me mentally exhausted at the end of the night. Besides, the friends I play with are all very creative people anyway. Also, I realized that, perhaps as a result of being the GM so often, immersion is not a priority for me.

I started on three different Kyawaii RPGs, and have been neglecting all of them, even the one that’s nearly finished.

For no particular reason, I’ve started working on a thing called “Anime+2d6.” I’ve basically taken the Anime d20 SRD and started re-working it into something kind of like Tri-Stat and kind of not. I will probably never actually play it, but it’s a mildly amusing way to kill time, and White Wolf isn’t showing any inclination to do anything with BESM3e ever again. It’s going slowly, partly just because I feel the need to edit out the SRD’s relentless abuse of the passive voice, though I also have to basically reconstruct the mecha rules and a few other things. When you think about it, the rules bloat BESM has undergone is pretty amazing. Needless to say, I’ll post it here when I feel I have something worth posting.

I still hate identity politics in RPGs. It’s like, with the whole Proposition 8 thing there are people speaking against gays even more than usual, and in a lot of cases, I want to walk up to them and say, “Have you ever actually met someone who’s gay in person? I’m guessing no, because if you had, you’d have realized they’re human beings like everyone else.” The way some people talk about indie RPGs reminds me of that. We’re all gamers, who want to have fun playing games.