Category Archives: projects

Maid RPG: Update 9 (Goodies!)

Japanese, projects

The layout for Maid RPG is all done, so at this point we’re pretty much just getting our crap together for GenCon. In the meantime, I have some nifty stuff to share:

Update!
Andy’s done an update to the placeholder for the Maid RPG website, with some links, some info, and the English character sheets. We also now have a Maid RPG mailing list set up.

Maid For Yotsuba
For those of you who can stomach such things, a friend of mine (Usually Random) has been running demo games via IRC coordinated through 4chan’s /tg/ board. There are inevitably people who feel the need to denounce the game, often with profanity, but there’s actually a lot more enthusiasm than anything else. There are logs, characters, and even the beginnings of a Sangoku Musou (Dynasty Warriors) mod on this wiki.

Minis!
My artist friend finished up some printable Maid RPG miniatures he did for me as a birthday present. One set is for the pregens I made for running Maidenrangers of Love and Justice at the con, and the other is a smattering of generic masters and maids, and one butler.

Print them out (preferably on cardstock), cut them out, and glue them together (a glue stick or simple white glue works best), and you’re ready to go.

Comics
The original Japanese books had some little comics that for various reasons didn’t make it into the English version. I’ve whipped up some quick translations of these for your amusement. I didn’t flip them, so all of these read right to left.
Continue reading Maid RPG: Update 9 (Goodies!) →

Maid RPG: Update 8

projects
Sent to me by Ben, whose girlfriend sent it to him.
Sent to me by Ben, whose girlfriend sent it to him.

Production
We’re now down to the wire for getting the layout done. The good news is that we’re just about there. The bad news is we can’t put all of the adventure scenarios into the book and still get it done on time. BUT, we’re going to make the remaining ones available as free downloads. (Just keep in mind that we put what we felt were all the choicest ones in the book). Everything’s getting to be last-minute, but it is looking to come together on time.

The other thing I’m happy about is that it looks like the book will be very reasonably priced. The three books from the original Japanese version cost 6720 yen (at the current exchange rate that’s about $65), but the US version is looking to be $23 or $24 at GenCon, and slightly higher (not more than $25 if at all possible) afterwards. (The estimate I posted earlier was off by about a dollar, owing to the complexities of calculating printing costs). The book will be about 200 pages (8.5×11 format), including all of the optional rules (butlers, masters, mansions, seduction, costume changes, items, etc.), three replays, and eleven scenarios. It is seriously going to be an incredible value for the amount of stuff you’re getting.

Anyway, as I’ve said before we’ll have a limited print run for GenCon. It’s hard to say how well it will sell, but it could go pretty quickly. After that we’ll probably start up selling from a proper print run around mid to late September.

Title Goes Here
The full English title will be “Maid: The Roleplaying Game” (Maid RPG is thus an abbreviation). It looks very nice on the cover, though being the creature of habit that I am I will still call it Maid RPG.

Well, Duh
The other day Ben Lehman pointed out something so blindingly obvious that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. One of the great things about Maid RPG is that it makes the GM’s role especially fun. I mean, you get to be the Master of the House, with a bunch of maids who have to fawn over you if they want to get ahead. You can play the Master however you like, but you’ve got to remember that the point of the core Maid RPG gameplay is that you’re the Master of the Game, and the game is rewarding you for it.

Maid RPG: Update 7

events, Japanese, projects


(Updated the update on 7/10)

A short update this time. Things are basically moving smoothly. Kamiya-sensei and his friends were kind enough to offer some feedback on the English translation, which will hopefully help compensate for my inadequacies. Kamiya-sensei has also written an afterword/designer’s notes thing in the form of a conversation between him and E.B. II (the android maid with purple hair from the cover).

Maid RPG at Anime Expo
Although I wound up showing up about half an hour late, I ran a lively session of Maid RPG at Anime Expo on Saturday. I was too tired from life in general to plan out a scenario, so I just did a random event driven thing, though it was the first such game where the players didn’t spam the 1D6 Favor = Random Event button. At one point some Japanese people passed through the tabletop gaming room, saw the little sign that said メイドRPG and commented in Japanese that it looked like something perverted, but rushed off before I could comment back in Japanese. (Andy contends I should’ve told her it was perverted). It was satisfying in a way that the players would occasionally answer cell phone calls with “Dude! I’m playing Maid RPG! It’s awesome! My character is a cyborg fox spirit!”

See the comments for a sketch of the PCs that one of the players commissioned from Persona!

Website
We have a placeholder up for the Maid RPG website, but we’re hoping to have the full thing up and running in the next couple of weeks.

Maidenrangers of Love and Justice
I ran “Maidenrangers of Love and Justice” the other day, which I’m also going to be running in a scheduled game at GenCon (already full in case you’re wondering). It has this neat board game element where you set up a grid of 16 playing cards, which also represent random events. I was lucky that the generic pawns I ordered from Great Hall Games arrived about 2 hours before we started playing. My only complaint about the scenario is that because the PCs are searching rooms for items, and in some cases they’re rolling up to 5 times on the item table, it got exceedingly cumbersome at times, and I was getting a sore throat just from reading off item descriptions. I decided to make a set of item cards for myself. First I tried gluing printouts of the items to index cards, and the result is just plain massive and labor intensive. I then got micro-perforated printable business cards and just printed them out. The result was much better and altogether more managable, but it’s still a deck of 214 cards, with no coating whatsoever, so they’re awfully hard to shuffle. I’d like to be able to provide something like that to people, but (1) printing cards is expensive, especially for an accessory for a game we’re selling on a relatively small scale, and (2) making a PDF of the cards complicates matters a bit, since that’s about 20 pages of copyrighted material. (Of course, owners of the book, or the PDF, would still be able to make their own if they’re so inclined).

If I can swing it, I’m going to have paper miniatures and pregens and such for when I run it at GenCon (since playing with random characters resulted in having some PCs be at odds with the scenario’s goals), and some kind of tokens to mark when someone has searched a room (since only one search is allowed per room).

For this scenario the order in which PCs act becomes important, especially when you have 4+ characters. I think I’m going to implement some kind of initiative rule.

Original Stuff
I keep poking at what I’m tentatively calling “Maid RPG 120%”, which would be a collection of original material for Maid RPG. The “120%” indicates excessive completeness, since in its Japanese incarnation it was a 32-page game with 200 pages of supplementary material, and here I am trying to add more stuff.

  • I’m turning two of my original characters (Kurumi and Kitty) into maids so that I can write Kamiya-esque dialogues to demonstrate the new rules and such.
  • Rules for playing “stewards,” basically butlers, but with a power level more in line with maids. I have a draft of the rules finished, though apart from the Steward Types I sidestepped making any new random tables in favor of using ones from the rules for making butlers or maids.
  • Another costume table, and another item table. I have the costume table all planned out, and I have a little over half the number of item ideas needed to make a new D666 item table.
  • New worlds — Gothic (good for castles, vampires, zombies, etc.), Superheroes, and Bizarro (looks Contemporary, but stuff is truly weird and random under the surface). Combined with the ones from the core rules, this would let you roll a d12 for the World. Also, two new moods: Melodrama (for overblown soap opera stuff) and Intrigue (for conspiracies, assassination attempts, etc.).
  • I have way too many ideas for scenarios. So much so that I’m putting together a table of 36 scenario seeds so I can include some of the ideas that are very by-the-numbers to set up and run (like the one where the Master buys android replacements for each maid, and they have to prove they’re better). There are still some scenarios I want to do full-length writeups for, including multiple prequels to Liberty: The Final Maid Maiden. I also want to put together some scenarios that make good use of the optional rules both from the Japanese version and that I’m working on.
  • I’m planning to try my hand at putting together at least one replay.

If this ever does come to fruition I want to be able to take submissions from fans (who may well produce better material than me), though if it turns into an actual book it will then take actual money to produce, and we’ll have to limit the quantity of material to a reasonable amount.

Catgirl: The Storytelling Game – Progress

projects


So, I got all inspired to work on Catgirl: The Storytelling Game again. I’m not really sure why, though reading D.Gray-Man probably has something to do with it.

For the setting, I played around some more with the different types of Awakened (supernaturals). In addition to the kemonomimi (catgirls and others like them), shinigami (Death Gods), and mascot girls, there are the Empowered (humans with special powers, such as sorcery, miracles, or psionics) and the Blooded (quasi-vampires, not unlike in Tsukihime). To the major types of enemies I added Dominators (humans with the power to enslave Awakened), the Syndicate (the real Men In Black, who want to create a mundane and static reality), and the Lost (corrupted and damned souls, not unlike the Hollows from Bleach).

For the rules I started off with a Storyteller system inspired variant of Fudge, but I’ve come up with some things that I think are kind of neat:

  • Partially reversed death spiral. When a character is hurt, she gets -1 to intellectual/rational type actions, but +1 to instinctive, bestial actions.
  • Rather than giving you a flat bonus for flashy narration, a stunt lets you use one skill or attribute in a creative way to possibly get a bonus on another.
  • You can spend multiple Charm selections on the same Charm to upgrade it. You can do two upgrades, and these usually make a it more expensive to use.
  • Characters have to start with a “Crisis,” some incident that puts them on the spot. (Basically a Kicker but with a more Japanese name).

The further along I go, the more I like what I’m coming up with. Although strictly speaking I could still use Opening the Dark, this is turning more and more into a game I really want to play. This really is turning into more and more of a runaway project.

Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!

games, projects, ,


I now own a copy of Monsters! Monsters!. This is a game put out in 1976, designed by Ken St. Andre. It is essentially a variant of Tunnels & Trolls where you play as the monsters. (Here’s a rather detailed review). I had read about it in Heroic Worlds, and I got to play it at Origins ’94 (though I didn’t do well since I wasn’t getting into the monster mindset), but the new edition the GM spoke of never materialized (I can’t remember where exactly, but I read somewhere that the publisher couldn’t offer the designer selected enough money for him to justify doing the work). However, it turns out that a company called Outlaw Games offers reprints of old T&T and related game material, and even new stuff. The copy of M!M! I got (through Noble Knight Games) is a reprint in perfect condition, though it’s a pretty much unaltered reproduction of the 1976 version, which was apparently done on a typewriter.

The game itself is even simpler than old-school D&D. There are some other bits involved, but combat basically comes down to rolling your weapon dice and adding your Combat Adds (based on how much certain attributes exceed 12). It includes brief descriptions of 52 different monsters (set up so you can generate one randomly using playing cards). I definitely want to play this, but I think I’ll need to carefully limit the selection of monsters. For example, dragons have a strength multiplier of 25. That means that you roll 3d6x25 for a dragon’s Strength attribute, and a dragon with merely average Strength would be making combat rolls on 25d6+213 from Strength alone.

Anyway, it’s an exceedingly fast and loose game, though it does have some little touches of brilliance. My favorite thing is how XP is awarded. Since they PCs are monsters, they get XP for doing monstrous things. Defeating enemies who are more powerful is worth more XP, but abducting particularly beautiful victims (Charisma 17+) is worth a full 500 (which would get you halfway to Level 2).

If playing it works well, I’m going to look into getting some more T&T books to draw on (since M!M! kind of glosses over certain things, including treasure), and in particular some books, T&T or otherwise, with fantasy towns and cities for the monsters to rampage through.

Monsters & Mayhem
I have a certain knack for starting new projects even though I have more than enough unfinished ones staring me in the face. That’s how I wound up starting (if not very seriously so) on two new games. One of these is (tentatively) called “Monsters & Mayhem.” I like the idea of using the old alliteration with an amperand in the middle style name though. Somehow, as awesome of a premise as M!M! brings to the table, no one else has ever actually tried it as far as I know. This will thus be my take. A lot of my new design ideas are turning out to be this weird mix of traditional, Japanese, and indie design influences, and this one is no exception. To create a monster you combine two Keywords (e.g., Seductive+Demon=Succubus, but Seductive+Slime=Slime Maiden), which in turn affect your monster’s attributes, powers, and aspects. (Aspects tend to get you into trouble, say by compelling you to eat a town guard even though his friends will come after you). They “Keyword” approach comes from Beast Bind: New Testament, where you pick “Bloods” to make your supernatural creature.

Although I’m thinking I’ll include support for some other things, the core/default gameplay consists of the players’ band of monsters going into a (demi)human town seeking fame and fortune. In essence, for them towns replace dungeons as the dangerous places to venture into. I’m stealing the awesome idea from the “Maidenrangers” Maid RPG scenario of using playing cards to create a board/map for the PCs to move around. Different cards represent different random encounters, though of course the GM can pick out cards and generally set things up however he or she likes.

Slime Story
I had the idea for this setting ages ago, and I wrote a short story for it a while back. Now I’ve finally gotten a good start on the RPG version I wanted to make. It takes place in a world where portals suddenly started dropping cute monsters (like something out of a Korean MMO) into an ordinary contemporary world. In the game you play teenagers who hunt monsters as a hobby–and for spending money. To create a character you pick a Class (which decides how your character hunts monsters) and a Clique (which determines how he or she fits into society). Fighting monsters is a fairly simple hack-and-slash affair, but each session players create “Quests” for their characters. These can range from simple monster-hunting goals (earn $300, kill a salamander, etc.) to tricky social goals (ask Rita out on a date, convince Alex to let me go hunting with him), but they have to be things that you can do around an outing to hunt monsters (try to find the right moment to ask Rita out while you’re looking for more monsters). It’s very strange trying to come up with a bunch of monsters while making sure that none of them are even remotely sentient.

For both games I’m leaning towards using d20s, partly for what they’re referencing, and partly because isocahedrons don’t get much love outside of D&D.

Maid RPG: Update 6

Japanese, projects

Editing: Done!
Andy has finished the editing for Maid RPG, after which he has to get back into Tenra (AFAIK still on track for February 2009). He’s been going insane about editing, much like how I’d been going nuts with translating day in and day out, but that part is pretty much done. We did decide to change some things that seriously just went too far outside the realm of good taste (and it took a lot for a given thing to earn that judgment, honestly), and a few (especially in the item table) that were just too ridiculously obscure to Americans (like the references to Akumetsu and Patalliro). Regardless, Andy tried to be subtle about it, or at least find something keeping with the wacky and referential spirit of the original.

Anyway, that means that except for some possible last-minute fine tuning, we are well and truly into the layout stage. Exciting, huh? :3

Actual Play
I ran a scenario from the book, “Black Cat Mansion.” It went rather smoothly and surprisingly quickly. I don’t think I’ve ever once gotten through a game session in 2 hours before. In that scenario, the Master hasn’t shown up yet, so the maids need to use the seduction rules just to have Favor points to accomplish stuff. I got two interesting things from running the scenario. First, the two players who I expected to be the most skeeved out by having their characters seduce each other were the ones who went all-out doing so. The other thing is that the relatively simple, structured setup of the scenario helped the game laser-focus on certain things. That’s almost certainly why the session went by so quickly. It probably wasn’t as immersive, but then (1) being a wacky one-shot with totally random characters will do that anyway, and (2) it likely helped the players get their characters into seduction and shows of affection without feeling embarrassed. And they got the mega-happy ending, although one of the PCs had to get a good roll and then go crazy spending Favor to pull it off.

Mini-Maids
There are still some details to work out, but we’re planning to put together a free PDF (or some such) for paper miniatures of several maids, plus a handful of masters and butlers. The game in no way requires them, but (1) they’re fun, and (2) they would in fact be handy for the Maidenrangers scenario. Very silly chibi art, and I’m thinking of putting together full stats for each of the characters pictured.

Maid RPG: Update 5

projects

I don’t have any news that’s directly related to Maid RPG, but at FanimeCon I attended an interesting panel called “Butler Cafes Exposed,” hosted by some ladies from Yaoi-Con‘s Cafe Verfuhren (which means “to lead astray” in German). I took some notes, and hopefully I didn’t get anything wrong. It’s interesting as a cultural thing in general, and it provides some insight into why people are so into maids and butlers.

Maid cafes are taking off in Japan (and popping up here and there in the U.S.), and with more and more women otaku out there, it was only natural that someone would try to make an equivalent that appeals to them. Butler and maid cafes have somewhat different aesthetics–black and wood grain versus white and pink–but they are both essentially a place where customers go to spend time in a safe environment and enjoy viewing a fantasy. Although interaction between the customers and staff is an important part of the experience, there is a very prominent divide. Despite the gimmick, these establishments have a proper client-customer relationship in place. Maid/butler cafes are not host clubs. In a host club, a customer is essentially paying someone to be their date, but in a maid or butler cafe the customer is just a customer at a cafe with some added flavor. Maid cafes still outnumber the butler cafes probably by a ratio of 4:1 or so, and in both cases these businesses come and go.

Each cafe creates something of a distinct brand, and the staff creates their own personas for the cafe. They use assumed character names, and build up a personality to play while they’re at work. In a sense, they are drawing on anime, manga, etc. to create a fantasy experience grounded in the media that the customers enjoy so much. The customers are coming home to an English country home, where handsome servants welcome them and wait on them hand and foot. This is a factor in all of these cafes, but in fact butlers are more often than not women playing the part of men. This calls to mind the Takarazuka Revue all-female theater group, and indeed it does create a greater feeling of safety. They tend to push the BL angle and build up a story more than the cafes with actual male staff. Amusingly, there’s also at least one butler cafe with English-speaking Western men for the butlers, and being able to practice your English is one of the selling points.

Maid cafes may be a little different, but the customers of butler cafes are mainly women in their 20s and 30s. I get the impression that the female fans (“otome”) tend to live relatively normal lives and work ordinary jobs, and go get their fix of BL manga and spend time at a butler cafe once a week or once a month. Many of them do serve alcohol, and all of them are fairly expensive. They also don’t allow photography, but will be happy to sell you signed pictures, along with other merchandise. Surprisingly, the women on the panel saw a lot of men at butler cafes. This is partly because a lot of maid and butler cafes are run by the same people (as with Pinafore and Checkmate), and in some cases there would be (for example) a special opening of a butler cafe where you have to buy something at a given maid cafe to get tickets. For that matter, maid and butler cafes alike often have theme nights, and some maid cafes will actually have “butler nights” where the girls who are normally maids dress up as butlers.

The panel also touched on the experiences setting up a butler cafe at an American con. There were the inevitable difficulties with unions and convention center policies getting in the way of doing things that should by all rights be relatively simple. It was also an explosive success the first year, to the point where they were running out of food to serve people, to say nothing of what happened when they lost the hot water. The second year they worked things out to be in a better space, to serve better food and even alcohol, and so on. Also, at some point the owner of Eighty Plus One (a Japanese number pun on the syllables of yaoi, in case you’re wondering) visited the cafe. Some people even said that Verfuhren provided the only decent food they’d eaten all weekend. (Which makes me appreciate the variety and quality of food available in downtown San Jose during Fanime, if nothing else).

So, as I’ve mentioned before, Maid RPG’s butler rules require you to have one single butler among the maids, who is a badass and an island of calm in a sea of chaos. I want to put together rules for “stewards” (the Japanese word, 執事/shitsuji, can mean either), junior butlers who are more on par with maids, though I think I’m going to need some input from fans of such things if I’m going to get it right. Even among the 4chan crowd, there are people who want to do a game purely about butlers, whether because they’d be more comfortable with it, because they’ve been watching Hayate no Gotoku, or just because they really like butlers. In terms of They Are My Noble Masters, the existing butler rules would be perfect for creating the Colonel, and I want to make rules for creating the likes of Ren.

Maid RPG: Update 4

Japanese, musings, projects

I’ve finished the last of the scenarios, which means the base translation (which will need plenty of editing) is done at long last. The last one I did was “Tales of Suspense,” though I can’t really explain what it’s about without spoilers. Regardless, the scenario file–about 48,000 words, 117 pages in a basic MS Word format–is off to Andy for editing.

Translating
One of the things that can be really aggravating about translating from Japanese to English is the use of the passive voice. In English you’re not supposed to use the passive voice because it sounds weak and weaselly. In Japanese, sentences often leave the subject implied, so effectively using the passive voice actually makes you clearer. In Japanese RPGs, this lets designers talk about the PCs or whatever without having to start every other sentence with “a character who” or “if the PCs.” But it also means that the translator (that’s me) gets to play detective trying to figure out what the subject of a sentence actually is, and then do a sort of written Rubik’s cube exercise to turn it into a decent English sentence. As much as I love Japanese, one of these days I want to learn and start translating, say, Spanish, so I don’t have to deal with this kind of thing.

Scenarios
I know I’ve posted about the scenarios already, but they both show what’s different about the game itself and in many cases show a novel approach to scenarios/adventures in general.

There are several scenarios that have a very tight structure. Very often these involve the PCs working towards some kind of goal (ranging from throwing a birthday party to conquering the world, depending on the particular scenario), and it very carefully delineates what they can do to work towards it, and how much. These scenarios allow for more freedom than you might think–especially for PCs who are willing to use the seduction rules to get what they want–but certainly not as much as you’d ordinarily expect. The furthest extreme is “Maidenrangers of Love and Justice!” which actually bills itself as a “Maid Board Game,” where you build up a 4×4 grid of playing cards (representing both rooms and random events that occur in them) for the PCs to move around in.

Owing no doubt to the game’s basic nature, there are a lot of scenarios that deal with social situations of one kind or another. The game still has plenty of room for the action-adventure stuff that’s more typical of RPGs (albeit with a spin that only Maid RPG can give), but there are also scenarios about competing to marry the Master, becoming friends with a ghost girl, helping little kids have a place to play, and so on.

There are also very few scenarios that you could use in an ongoing campaign without major retooling, though there are some that give advice for launching into sequels (“Miko RPG!” even advocates developing a new game), and in one case, there is a sequel provided (“Be Our Demon King!” is followed by “Rise of the Demon King”). Although there are some major Western RPGs available in translation in Japan (notably D&D, WoD, and GURPS), my experience with Japanese-made games is that they tend to focus on short-term play rather than long campaigns. In F.E.A.R.’s Alshard ff, “Campaign Play” is actually listed in a sidebar rather than being part of the actual section on styles of play. In Maid RPG you can store up Favor to raise your maid’s attributes (it’s one of the more expensive things to do with Favor), but the game’s text doesn’t really address the idea of running a campaign at all.

Maid RPG scenarios often assume a particular master, or at least a general type of Master (e.g., a young Master who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes), and won’t really work without him. On the other hand, there are also a lot of scenarios that leave at least some of the prep work up to the GM. This could be flexibility or laziness depending on how you choose to look at it, but there are scenarios where the fine details of the Master and/or mansion are left up to the GM to create.

There are still some scenarios that are fairly traditional (like “Liberty: The Final Maid Maiden”), and the game certainly holds up just fine with a traditional play style, or with no scenario at all.

Promotional Stuff
Wayne from Anime Expo’s tabletop gaming department has confirmed that Maid RPG is on the schedule for AX, Saturday at 10 a.m. Hope to see… someone there!

Random Thought
I’m sorely tempted to write a Maid RPG scenario to enter into Fight On! magazine’s contest. The rules say that entries have to make use of Otherworld Miniatures‘ products in some way, but otherwise they can be for pretty much any game. And Maid RPG has already gone to weirder places than involving Pig-Faced Orcs. The due date for entries in July 20th though, so whether or not I can even write something up depends heavily on what’s going on with work and whatnot.

Maid RPG Update 3

Japanese, projects

There are a lot of people who’ve helped make this project possible. Andy Kitkowski is the most obvious and important, since he’s doing pretty much all of the business side of things (me being so helpless and useless with that stuff). Ryo Kamiya not only designed the game, but has been really awesome about answering my questions. My good friend Mike S. has been evangelizing the game, and offering help in the form of editing and suggestions.

One thing that deserves special mention at this point is my Eee PC. I bought a green 2G Surf a few months ago at Micro Center (the only place in town that actually had them in stock, and just the color I wanted too). It has let me work on Maid RPG on trains and buses, at friends’ houses and at school, and (while the battery lasted) during yesterday’s power outage, sitting on the front porch as the sun set. It runs on a variation of Xandros Linux, and I’ve been typing stuff up in OpenOffice Writer and using Gjiten (which I’m finding to be a brilliant little program) to look things up. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything that was quite that much of a conversation starter. While I was using it at a local Starbucks (to work on Maid RPG, naturally), not less than six people asked me about it in the space of an hour. (And one guy jokingly asked if it was made by Hasbro) .

Right now I have about 30 pages of scenarios to translate, which comes out to six scenarios total. Just this morning I finally finished translating the very last scenario in the very last book, “Liberty: The Final Maid Maiden.” It’s epic, both in terms of its story and its size (12 pages, which is about 3 times the length of a typical Maid RPG scenario), and it takes the tropes established in the game and renders them on a worldwide scale.

In the year 20XX the “Maid Hazard,” a mental waveform sent through the internet blanketed the world, and caused a forced an evolutionary leap in a significant portion of the population. Countless people, men and women, young and old, became young, beautiful Maids. The Maids possessed superhuman abilities, but needed Favor from normal humans (Masters) to function. That’s just the start of the 50 years of the A.M. (After Maid) calendar covered in the back story. By the time the scenario actually begins, it’s the year 50 A.M., and the few surviving Masters are desperately seeking a way to stop the machinations of the tyrannical Maid Empire, lead by the Final Maid, Eve. The PCs are “Alternative Maids,” Masters who don special “Alternative Maid Suits” to gain the powers of Maids without falling under the Final Maid’s influence.

Anyone who knows the kind of fiction I write can tell you, this is the kind of awesomely screwed up thing I would think of. I seriously want to put together a prequel scenario about people enduring the Maid Hazard and its aftermath.

Lastly, in response to some questions asked, Andy has posted a bit about how and where we’ll be selling Maid RPG in the comments of Update 1.

Maid RPG: Update 2

events, Japanese, projects

Progress Report
At this point I have eight scenarios left to translate, and after that the project is pretty much in other people’s hands until GenCon. Ideally I need to get this done within two weeks or so, which means there’s something of a silver lining to the fact that my hours are becoming spotty to nonexistent for me crappy day job. After going through enough text to fill a largish novel, I’ll be entirely too glad to be done with this project.

That’s partly because it means I’ll have time to work on my own RPG projects, and partly because I’m looking forward to actually being able to play Maid RPG again, and enjoy all this material I’ve translated. I’m already picking out some scenarios and such to run with my friends. For that matter, every time I’m stuck away from my computer, I keep thinking up more and more original material for the game. I’m not sure I want to go to the point of actually putting together a book though. It’s possible, but it’s a long way off too.

Butler RPG
Anyway. There was a thread about Maid RPG on 4chan’s /tg/ board (if you don’t know what that is, you should probably stay away). There seem to be a fair number of people who are into butlers (and hey, they do have a few butler cafes in Japan), so I might as well tell you about the butler rules. Butlers are an optional character type, and as group of PCs can only have one butler. The butler has much higher attributes, but (1) automatically loses opposed rolls against the Master or maids, (2) must spend Favor to remove Stress, and (3) cannot spend Favor on Random Events. The “Maids at the End of the World” replay features a butler character, and demonstrates how although the rules theoretically limit how much they can cause chaos and such, they can still be part of the total wackiness of the game.

Seduction (Or, How To Cause Trouble)
The first supplement of the Japanese version is called “Koi Suru Maid RPG” (Maid RPG In Love). The Seduction rules are one of the main reasons it’s called that. These let characters make rolls to emotionally dominate others. If you seduce someone you can give them orders, but they can gain Favor and remove Stress through romantic activities with you. And that doesn’t prevent them from seducing you back. Calling “Seduction” was kind of a compromise. The Japanese word used is closer to “enticement,” but where it’s heavily used in some scenarios it can be bent into forming an emotional attachment in general. Based on the replays, it’s the kind of thing that would make some people uncomfortable, but it can also make life a heck of a lot more interesting.

Demo Games
I’m running two registered Maid RPG events at GenCon Indy 2008, one on Thursday (which still has 3 slots open!) and one on Saturday (all full). I and a couple of my friends who will be coming plan on running some more sessions at Games On Demand (something you should check out anyway if you’re attending). I’m also in the process of signing up to run a session at Anime Expo 2008, and if there’s interest I’ll be running a session or two at FanimeCon‘s open gaming area. If you’re attending any of those, let me know if you want to play. :3

(Also, my friend Mike is planning to run it at KublaCon).