Slime Quest

projects

A while ago I had this idea to do a sort of spinoff of Slime Story called “Slime Quest” that would be a fantasy game using more or less the same rules, with an anime fantasy and console RPG sensibility. In some ways I probably shouldn’t be distracting myself with it right now, but I’ve started working a bit on the setting and other aspects of it. Part of the inspiration for Slime Quest is from the fact that while I like D&D4e a lot, I would really like something that’s significantly simpler while still retaining some semblance of 4e’s tactical combat. That’s the area where I’m most happy with Slime Story after all.

One of the things I’ve started working on is the selection of races. I don’t generally find races in fantasy RPGs all that exciting–the vast majority of my D&D characters have been human, and the exceptions have all been kind of gimmicky–but I’m liking what I’ve come up with, especially once I realized that there was no reason to bother with elves or dwarves. I’ve heard many times that elves and dwarves are a vastly overdone cliche and a symptom of bad Tolkien pastiche (whereas I’m going for bad J-RPG pastiche), but I don’t think I’ve ever felt them quite so extraneous to a game as in the case of Slime Quest. Anyway, here’s my current list of races:

  • Arcadians are living artificial constructs and relics of an ancient civilization.
  • Asuras are people with some demonic heritage. So they’re basically anime-fied AD&D2e tieflings. Or they’re the race to pick if you want to create a character who’s something like Aetna from Disgaea.
  • Eidolons are people imbued with otherworldly essence, whether through some experience or their heritage. This can include demonic (what I called “Asuras” until just recently), fae (Sprites), elemental (Djinn), and so forth. I may be trying to pack too many concepts into one “race” though. In any case, it can cover stuff like Genasi and Tieflings from D&D, and characters like Aetna from Disgaea and the sprite from Secret of Mana.
  • Flaum are basically little furry mascot characters, along the lines of Tabbits (from Sword World) and Tarutaru (Final Fantasy XI), physically weak but inherently magical.
  • Humans you’re pretty familiar with I’m sure. The only twist here is that I’m planning to include actual “racial variations” so that the humans come in different varieties that can actually matter.
  • Ogrekin are the big bruiser race, stocky humanoids with horns (which are something of a status symbol for them). Still need to develop them more, and maybe come up with a better name.
  • Wild Folk I already did a full D&D4e writeup of, but they’re a race of inquisitive tribal people with animal traits (so you can make catgirls and whatnot), with a vitality and ambition that has not yet been realized. (Can you tell I was reading Terry Pratchett’s Nation around the same time I was doing the 4e writeup for them?)

I think between those six I have enough variety without getting into inaccessibly weird stuff. Each race specifically has room for interesting variations, including humans of different ethnicities, different models of Arcadians, Wild Folk with different kinds of animal traits, etc., and the opportunity for players to invent new ones if it suits them. On the other hand since Slime Quest will have sentient “monsters,” I need to put some thought into those. It would be very silly to emphatically leave out elves and then include orcs.

The classes are going to be a tad more generic, albeit with alchemists (who can variously be gunsmiths, engineers, potion makers, etc.) and knights (not unlike a D&D4e warlord, a.k.a. my favorite D&D class to play, bar none) thrown into the mix. I want to do something with backgrounds and something to encourage more plot hooks, but I need to get a better idea of where the overall game is going.

I don’t have a good name for what is going to be the setting of Slime Quest as of yet. People think of their world as “the world” or sometimes Gaia, and are only dimly aware of other worlds through the lost lore of the Forerunners. I’m not going to develop the setting in too much detail, both because I’m not sure I can do all that good of a job, and because I remember how the D&D3e Forgotten Realms book put me to sleep. I want to create a setting that’s very over-the-top and not especially realistic without falling back on “a wizard did it, I don’t have to explain shit.” There’s lost technology of an ancient civilization scattered around the world (including a floating automated city), trouble with demons, and so on. There’s also an actual monotheistic religion (a somewhat generic “Church of the One God) that stands in contrast to many different varieties of shamanism, which is why Acolytes (basically D&D clerics) and Shamans (nature-y clerics) are among the classes.

The structure of the game is necessarily going to be a little different from Slime Story, as it’s meant to cover actual fantasy adventures. The major thing I’m planning to add are “Challenges,” which are analogous to skill-based obstacles in Mouse Guard. The twist is that characters can potentially have specialized and awesome skills like Elementalism that let them tackle challenges in fantastic ways. A mage with Elementalism could make skill checks that use any of the elements he has a spell talent for to solve problems, so the guy with the ice spell could make checks to put out fires, make a bridge across water, that kind of thing.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw that stuff out there. I may well be jumping right into fantasy heartbreaker territory, but I also have the makings of a game I really want to be able to play with my friends.

Update (4/29/2010): Note the switch from Asuras to Eidolons above. I’ve started working on the actual rules some, which I’ve decided to keep fairly close to the Slime Story rules (though I renamed Awesome and Suck points to Hope and Despair points). The most notable difference (which may or may not make it into the final version) is that I swapped out Connections to other characters for Beliefs, which gain in rank and provide certain bonuses in a manner somewhat similar to connections. On the other hand it’s looking like I’m going to start working on the two games in parallel, especially since I now have a good idea for how to approach the quest rules for Slime Story.

Slime Story: Awesome Progress

Design Journal, projects

Nothing particularly Easter-y going on with me, yet I have time to put up two blog posts in one day. Go figure.

I’ve been pretty badly stuck on what to do with Slime Story for a while, but I think I’ve finally figured out where to go next. The game has involved ripping big chunks out and putting new stuff in every step of the way, and this is no exception. The major issue is how to set up interludes to do what I want them to, and the solution has wound up involving stuff that resembles bits of Bliss Stage, Meikyuu Kingdom, and Nechronica. (And it will no doubt require plenty of playtesting to get right.)

So, the game has two currencies, called Awesome Points and Suck Points. They represent general positive and negative trends in a character’s life, which can be psychological or karma or whatever. You gain AP when you roll doubles (other than snake eyes), raise a connection by a rank, and certain other things, and you take SP when you roll snake eyes (a Fumble), get taken out in an encounter, or voluntarily take them to use things you’d otherwise have to spend AP on. Characters can end up taking SP to get through an encounter and to heal themselves afterward. All of that makes AP kind of like the Hope points in Meikyuu Kingdom, but with some weird twists. That includes making many Talents have a Cost rather than ripping off the Encounter/Daily thing from D&D4e. Another point economy to (heavily) playtest. Le sigh.


Anyway. Each character has two “Limit Breaks,” which are disadvantages that activate if they take too many SP. If you have 3 SP you have to pick one Limit Break to activates, and if you get 6+ the other one kicks in too. That’s your major incentive for getting rid of SP. I’m still working on specific Limit Breaks, but these are kind of like the fetters in Nechronica. I’m thinking there’ll be one called Clingy (for example), which requires you to stay uncomfortably close to whatever characters you have a high connection rank with, another called Unsocial that limits your ability to use teamwork or be close to others.

During interludes, each PC has the opportunity to do a quick vignette, which have wound up being a lot like Interlude Actions in Bliss Stage, which is to say you role-play, and an unrelated participant decides what mechanical effect you get. That will include a lot of the stuff I already had in the interlude rules (though significantly simplified in some cases), but removing a Suck Point will also be one of the major things you do (which also resembles the Conversation Checks in Nechronica).

I have high hopes for this whole thing working out (eventually), though it’ll take a lot of work to fully implement, especially since it’ll drastically affect the selection of Talents I need to write up. Aside from that and all the stuff I blathered about in my last blog post on Slime Story, I decided to add higher-level items crafted from monster parts, basically to give characters more crap to play with. I still need to work out more details and figure out what the heck to call them though. (And whenever I get around to working on the novel again I’m going to have a ton of setting elements to integrate.)

Fiasco: The Big Anime Con

actual play, game material, games

Last week I picked up Fiasco, Jason Morningstar’s latest game, at the local game store. The other day I got to play it for the first time, and it was awesome. Our game involved vehicular manslaughter, a Klingon sword, a poodle being duct-taped, and more. I’ve put together a playset of my own, called “The Big Anime Con,” which is about typical Fiasco insanity taking place at a large anime convention in California. (Because if there was ever a group of people with “powerful ambition & poor impulse control” it’s anime fans.) It’s currently an untested draft, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

The Big Anime Con for Fiasco (PDF)

Adventures of the Space Patrol Playtesting

playtesting, projects

I’ve now run two playtest games of Adventures of the Space Patrol, and I’m now getting a much better idea of what I need to do to improve it. It’s the kind of game that somewhat depends on how the people playing handle things, and it’s the kind that isn’t likely to fly apart and become a big, interesting mess, so it took a while to really figure out where to go.

Stuff With Aspects
It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s played FATE before that making aspects and compels work properly is absolutely vital, and it’s a big part of why the first playtest was flatter than the second (though the fact that for me and one of the players our Skype session was very early in the morning was a factor too). I had been using compels mainly to represent characters doing something disadvantageous, but that’s actually severely limiting their scope. Compelling an aspect can also include stuff that will change the situation in a way that’s disadvantageous to the PCs, and for me at least it’s much easier and more interesting to come up with those kinds of compels.

I’m planning to go through and revise the characters’ aspects, with two things in mind. First, each character should have an aspect that’s clearly good for compelling. Second, each character should have an aspect that’s clearly about getting closer to others. Jono’s portrayal of Katrina, the Venusian Cat Princess was terrible and awesome, but I found she was a little more selfish than I really want characters to be for the same. However, changing her “Time to play!” aspect into “Play with me!” could make a huge difference.

Fusion Points
Jono and his friends are also into Primetime Adventures, and were actually in the habit of shouting “Fan Mail!” whenever someone did something they thought was neat (sometimes even when not gaming!). I’ve always found these kinds of reward mechanics to be a really powerful tool (Yuuyake Koyake has Dreams, and Peerless Food Fighters has Applause Tokens, and both work really well), so I’ve decided to try implementing something similar in Space Patrol in the form of “Fusion Points” that players can award to one another during the game. I love the atmosphere of creativity and improvisation they brought, and I’ve found that these kinds of mechanics help foster that. I’m also contemplating letting players use Fusion Points to do compels on other players.

Conflicts
More or less by accident, I stumbled on some stuff to improve the conflict rules. In the game I’ve simplified conflicts to basically being an effort to succeed at opposed rolls to give the opposition three temporary aspects before they do the same to you, and in the second playtest I did a conflict that was the PCs in a rocketship vs. a crazy volcanic moon. Reducing the sides to two active characters (with others lending a hand) and allowing characters to impose aspects on the other overall side worked really well. I need to sit down and refine this, but it goes a long way towards fixing the issues I saw with the conflict rules, while making non-violent conflicts that much easier. Also, turning a volcanic planet into a “character” was really neat all around.

In Conclusion
On the whole I’m really happy with how the game it turning out. I think I’ve managed to keep the bits of FATE that I really want and do some fairly novel things with the rules elsewhere. I’m grateful to Dan (whose Final Hour of a Storied Age needs work but is really neat), Peter, Jono, Sushu (whose Jiang Hu game has a ton of potential), and Aaron (who was awesome to do playtesting with) for lending a hand with my insanity.

My 2009 In Review

musings

A little belated, but I wanted to put together an overview of what went on in 2009, mainly gaming-wise. 2009 was a strange year for me overall, and I think in the future I’ll remember it as a period between when I finished grad school and got some semblance of a career going. I did a fair amount of freelance translation work, but not nearly enough of it. That left me with a lot of free time, which I don’t feel I used anywhere near as effectively as I could have.

My gaming group was all about D&D4e at this time, and particularly in terms of really engaging the rules, it was one of our best campaigns ever. The end of the prior campaign left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, and I’m still trying to really deal with the issues it presented, particular with regard to player agency and basic communication. From D&D4e’s initial release, I played three different characters, finally settling on a human warlord, and the whole group’s understanding of the rules became progressively more sophisticated. It’s been more hack and slash than anything, but we’ve enjoyed it a lot all the same. The composition of the group has changed quite a bit, with one friend leaving, a new (and altogether less serious) one joining, and a friend’s roommate becoming more of a friend through gaming with us. I did get to run other games on rare occasions (notably 3:16 and Mouse Guard), and I ran a non-gamer friend’s very first game session. I also ran Maid RPG and played D&D4e at FanimeCon, the local anime convention. I got in a tiny bit of playtesting (most notably my first session of Slime Story), but as I was lamenting the other day, I’ve gotten very little done at all.

In terms of game design, in 2009 I mostly worked on Slime Story, with a little bit of time put towards Raspberry Heaven. Slime Story morphed from a big mess into something encouraging yet in need of lots of work, and I refined Raspberry Heaven a bit. I only did one new Kyawaii RPG the entire year, and that was a role-playing poem, so the amount of work involved was not great. I think I have like 5 or 6 other Kyawaii RPGs started but nowhere near finished, some of them potentially a lot of fun if I ever get them done. Not a few other games I had started on way back when (Tokyo Heroes and Moonsick spring to mind) completely languished during this time.

I posted my first podcast in April of 2009, and did a a total of 12 over the rest of the year, half recorded with guests and half by myself. It never had a huge audience, but I have gotten some encouraging feedback (and The Walking Eye has been kind enough to link to it). While I don’t have the skills, the money, or even the motivation to put together a “professional” podcast per se, its quality wasn’t always what I was aiming for. But on the whole, I like to think I came up with something reasonably engaging, and certainly something quite different from what other RPG podcasters are doing. I’m targeting a small niche, or maybe a niche of a niche, but there definitely are some people who are interesting in the intersection between RPGs and anime (and other elements of Japanese culture) and other stuff I like to blather about. Of course, I’m doing so very irregularly, with podcasts coming once a week when I’m really motivated, and months apart when I’m not. The positive spin I can put on that is that when I do post a podcast you can be sure I have some real enthusiasm behind it, rather than just posting stuff up because I feel I should have something going up. (And it takes a lot of motivation to talk to myself for 40 minutes with a recorder going and my voice getting more messed up the whole time.)

In 2008 I became better acquainted with Andy K and Ben Lehman through working on Maid RPG together. In 2009 that indirectly led me to strike up an acquaintance with Clay Gardner (designer of OVA: Open Versatile Anime) via AIM, and I also had conversations with Jake Richmond and some other interesting people. I’m immature enough to enjoy having a little bit of internet fame, but mature enough to not think too much of it. Still, I feel like I’m starting to reap the benefits of having my name out there. There’s a small group of people who really like what I’m doing and want more of it, so at the very least I’m not in fact talking to myself here.

Near the end of 2009 I was able to start up Neko Machi, a webcomic about catgirls, with the help of my artist friend C. Ellis. Although the overlap between that and my RPG stuff isn’t nonexistent, there are definite contrasts between the two areas. A webcomic is perhaps an easier sell than RPG stuff, but I can assure you it doesn’t happen overnight. The new Neko Machi has only been around since November, and this blog has slightly more traffic lately, but then we haven’t really started trying to market the comic.

I don’t know how much legitimate success will visit me in 2010 (so far, not at all…), but this year will definitely be interesting at the very least. I’m going to be a guest of honor at A-Kon, and I should have some new translated games available for purchase before too long. That to me is by far the most exciting thing in the pipeline, though the pipeline is proving to be twisty and annoying in some places, mostly because of human factors, my own included.

Yaruki Zero Podcast #14: Maid RPG

Japanese, Podcast, ,

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

  1. Introductions
  2. What is Maid RPG?
  3. What’s neat about it?
  4. Producing and Selling Maid RPG
  5. Controversy!
  6. 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 Podcast #13: Genres

Podcast

Per multiple requests (notably from Clyde Roher and Jake Richmond), this episode starts off with some commentary on the different genres of anime and manga. From there I get into how genres work in general, and then how we view genres in role-playing games. This also kinda sorta marks a new “season” of the YKZ podcast, hence the new font in the title image and new theme song.

Yaruki Zero Podcast #13 (42 minutes, 44 seconds)

Show Notes

  1. Anime and Manga Genres
  2. Genre Cycles
  3. RPG Genres

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.

Game Designer Needs Playtesting Badly

musings, playtesting

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to look beyond my regular gaming group to get playtesting done. Don’t get me wrong, the friends I play with are awesome, but with difficulties with scheduling and sometimes a lack of enthusiasm in general, I’ve had a hell of a time getting more than two or three playtest sessions done in a year, and that’s nowhere near enough for whipping a game into shape. Although I’m still going to keep gaming and where possible playtesting with the usual suspects, I’m also going to start trying to run online playtests via Skype and IRC, and solicit external playtests as well. (Also, any advice for online play in general?)

The upshot of all this is that if you, one of my dear readers, is interested in playtesting one my games, with me online (I’m in the Pacific time zone BTW) or on your own, do let me know. I need to do playtests of both the games I’ve been designing–Adventures of the Space Patrol, Slime Story, and Raspberry Heaven (though the latter too will take some ingenuity to play online)–and some as yet undisclosed games I’ve translated and am working towards publishing. I’m also definitely willing to reciprocate with playtesting, though my ability to organize my own in-person playtest sessions is severely limited as I said.

Update: Thank you for the advice and volunteers! I’m going to work on getting the various games fully ready to playtest, pulling together the means to actually play online (Raspberry Heaven and Slime Story will require doing something clever with VASSAL or similar, and most of the games I need to test will require some kind of dice bot), and advertising in some other places to pull together at least one or two more people to form an online playtest group.

Witch Quest Book II Release

Japanese, projects

witch_tarot

Some time back (last August) I posted about how I was planning to translate the free version of Witch Quest, a venerable (from 1991) Japanese TRPG about witches and their cats, in the vein of Kiki’s Delivery Service. I’ve been exceedingly inspired to translate stuff lately, so I’ve finished off Book II of the game. As I noted before, I’m doing Book II first because it contains the actual rules of the game. In some ways it’s very old-school (lots of randomness, no unified mechanics), and in other ways it’s just very quirky (a “Witch Tarot” deck features prominently in the game).

I’ve put together a PDF from the best layout I could manage in MS Word, and I don’t really have the skills to do anything better, or to make a character sheet. If anyone wants to tackle either, I’ll be happy to provide the files and such.

Witch Quest Book II PDF
Text-Based Tarot Cards (PDF)
Japanese Share Text (LZH Archive)

Update: Wilper has been really passionate about this game, and amongst other things he’s made a Crowdsource Witch Tarot Deck.

Yaruki Zero Podcast #12: More Random Thoughts

Podcast, , , ,

Much like Episode 7, this time around I briefly talk about a number of different topics, notably Nechronica (Ryo Kamiya’s forthcoming game), A-Kon (an anime con I’ll be attending as a guest of honor), Neko Machi (the webcomic I write for), and Adventures of the Space Patrol (a game I’m working on).

Yaruki Zero Podcast #12 (40 minutes, 1 second)

Show Notes

  1. Nechronica: The Long, Long Epilogue is a forthcoming game by Maid RPG designer Ryo Kamiya.
  2. I’m going to be a guest at A-Kon 2010!
  3. Neko Machi, my webcomic
  4. Adventures of the Space Patrol is a game I’m working on currently, and nearly ready to playtest.

This podcast uses selections from the song “Click Click” by Grünemusik, available for free from Jamendo.com. If you like the song, consider buying some CDs from Nankado’s website.

Very awesome caricature of Ewen courtesy of the talented C. Ellis.

somerights20en