Maid RPG Update: GenCon Indy 2008

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I am so out of it right now, and very relieved that I’m done with conventions for the summer. ^_^;

This year’s GenCon was the launch of Maid RPG. We shared a booth with Khepera Publishing and Aetherial Forge, so the booth’s main offerings were Hellas, Ninja Burger, and Maid RPG. Three very different games, but all of them are awesome. Also, Jerry Grayson is a really awesome guy, and hanging out with him, Andy, Renee, Mike, and everyone else at the booth helped make the con for me.

Selling Maid RPG was one of the more amusing things I’ve done in a while. People would walk by the booth, eye it, and as soon as they started to comprehend what they were looking at, they would either be drawn closer like a magnet, or be repulsed like one. The word of mouth and internet buzz apparently paid off, because as this small press/indie stuff goes, it sold like hotcakes. We had a grand total of 70 copies to sell, and they were gone by the end of Saturday. I wish we could’ve had more, but we’ll hopefully have the online orders up and running soon enough, and Andy didn’t have to carry any home.

I ran two scheduled Maid RPG events. One was a purely random game where the Master turned out to be the son of Satan (Special Qualities: Demon, Evil Emperor, Family Hate, in a Post-Apocalyptic world). It was a very random game that sort of hilariously shambled along. Then on Saturday I went to run the Maidenrangers scenario I had so diligently prepared for, and found that I was running it for a familiar bunch of guys from Kentucky who proved that perverting the situation in Maid RPG does not require any random events if you’re determined enough. It was seriously amazing. And one of the tape-recorded everything. Be afraid.

Another cool thing about this project is just that I got to meet a bunch of RPG designers and other people big in the hobby. Several indie game designers stopped by the booth, as well as a good number of podcasters and whatnot. I lost count of how many people came by with Adept Press exhibitor badges (i.e., people who were part of the IPR booth), and I was routinely bumping into people whose names I know from online and from indie games. I also got to chat a little bit with Christopher Clark of Inner City Games, and when I went by the Arc Dream Publishing booth for a copy of Wild Talents they congratulated me on the game and were going on about how jazzed they were about it.

All in all, I’m extremely happy about how things turned out for us at the con. Admittedly I now need to stay home and curl up into a ball for a day or two, but it was easily the best convention experience I’ve had this summer, and for that matter in quite a while. Our friends from Kentucky want me to come again next year, but I really have no goddamn clue where my life will be at next year. If Maid RPG 120% or an English version of Yuuyake Koyake, or something else of mine comes to fruition I could well wind up feeling obligated to do that, but who knows. Andy will definitely be there with Tenra Bansho Zero and Maid RPG for sale, and if my finances permit that’d be enough of an excuse to come to help out.

Up Next For Maid RPG
As happy as I am to have Maid RPG out into the world, I’ve already spotted a few errors. We’ll have to put together an errata file in the very near future, and try to fix as much as possible in time for the next printing. We did as much as we could, but we also wound up giving ourselves tight deadlines for GenCon. If you have a copy and you catch something, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re kind of new to this whole “being an RPG publisher” thing, so I have to ask for you patience. The next one will be better.

There’s also the matter of doing the layouts and PDFs for the remaining scenarios that didn’t get into the book, and getting the full website up and running. I don’t know when that’s all going to happen, but it’s definitely on the to-do list.

I’ll be poking at my own original material too, and I intend to give all of it a decent amount of playtesting. However for the time being life is hectic, and I have no idea when I’ll really be able to commit the time needed to it.

One thing I am definitely going to do in the near future is put together a packet of all the stuff for my expanded version of the Maidenrangers scenario, complete with pregens, character sheets, etc. If the scenario sounds neat to you, I’d suggest waiting until I get this stuff ready, since I have a few important additions based on having two runs through it under my belt now.

I didn’t take that many pictures, but here’s what I did get. Mike (the Ninja Burger Mike) took some pictures of things I missed, including this unbelievably cute girl wearing bunny ears and holding a copy of Maid.

Non-Maid RPG stuff after the cut.
Continue reading Maid RPG Update: GenCon Indy 2008 →

GenCon Indy 2008: Almost Here

events

Why does GenCon have to be so soon? I’m barely recovered from Comic-Con. (GenCon is big, but I’m grateful that it’s not nearly as unwieldy and ginormous as Comic-Con). Anyway.

Preparations
Yeah. I’m flying out to Indianapolis on Wednesday (anyone know a good way to kill four hours at the Atlanta airport?), which means I have to finish up the rest of my prep for the con over the next two days. That mainly means printing up a bunch of reference sheets and character sheets for Maid RPG, which’ll probably take me a few hours just to put together.

Because I Said I Would
Here’s the first draft of my rules for creating “stewards” in Maid RPG. Stewards are basically male versions of maids (whereas butlers in Maid RPG are uber-powerful but have to be calm and collected at all times), so you can make characters like Hayate.

Where To Buy Maid RPG (And Two Other Kickass Games)
This will be my first time coming to GenCon as a booth monkey, which should be an interesting experience. We’ll be sharing a booth with both Hellas and Ninja Burger. Those are three very different games, but also very awesome ones. It’s mainly the Hellas booth, so you’ll find it under Khepera Publishing, booth #2630, which according to the exhibit hall map is one of the booths between the art show and the Wizards of the Coast boothstravaganza, and across from Closeoutcards.com.

If you’re at the con, come by and say hi! /^_^\

Happy Little Bonus
I will be bringing along my fan translation of Yuuyake Koyake in the hopes of getting a game together at some point, but I have an overly full schedule for the con, and the game only supports groups of 2-4, so we’ll see how it goes.

Addendum
I hate being short of cash for a con like this. *sigh*

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!) →

This thing we do.

musings

I started trying to write a long post on identity politics of RPGs and the Internet Drama(tm) they create on blogs and forums, but then I realized that this is the only part that matters:

RPGs can be goddamn near anything, which is as it should be. An immersive world, a shared storytelling exercise, an excuse to make weird jokes, a board game with dialogue, and a million other things no one’s thought of yet. No one is obligated to play or not play anything, least of all on the basis of what some guy on the internet says.

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.

D&D 4e Actual Play: First Impressions

actual play, musings

My group played D&D4e for the first time last night. We have a strange and quirky bunch of characters, but once we got into combat the role-playing part fell away almost completely in favor of figuring out how to use the rules. It was fun, but definitely not the kind of fun I usually play RPGs for.

Anyone who says that 4e characters are “superheroes” is totally full of shit. The heroes’ numbers are higher, but so far even the weakest monsters are consistently vicious and dangerous. Kobolds with slings were dishing out as much as 9 points of damage at a time, where my fighter has 31 hp (the highest in the party). And that’s before we mention the fire beetles. We really had to go all-out using powers, Second Wind, and other little tricks just to avoid a TPK. (Though it doesn’t help that the rogue has a sub-optimal build, something the DM will hopefully let him fix before we play again).

The logistics of playing the game are a bit more intensive too. We played the game with minis and a map, and after doing so I really can’t imagine playing it without them. There’s also the matter of referencing powers, which in turn has us wanting to make cards or worksheets with the necessary info. (This site has links to lots and lots of promising stuff) I found that just writing the page number down on the character sheet (a trick I got from some Japanese RPGs) helped ameliorate the difficulty somewhat, though even with 3 copies of the PHB we were contantly having different people trying to grab a copy to look stuff up. But regardless, the powers were consistently useful, though some more than others. I almost got to use Cleave once, but Sure Strike was very important tactically.

We got through two encounters, so apart from some initial role-playing and killing kobolds, not a whole lot happened that session. However, all my friends who’d played 3.5 marveled at how fast it went.

Update: We wound up playing D&D again and finishing the dungeon on Sunday. I had bought a pack of cardstock (why is it they sell packs of 250 sheets of white cardstock for $12, and packs of 100 sheets in funky colors for $10, but not packs of 100 sheets of white for $4-6?) and printed out power cards for everyone. My friend Tim brought card sleeves to go with them, and they definitely did help. Everyone is also getting to know the rules better and generally adjusting to the attendant paradigm and avoiding stupid mistakes.

The final battle was against a young white dragon. It first used its presence attack ability and its breath weapon, which hobbled half the party with status effects, but once we recovered enough the rogue got his Blinding Barrage off on it, the fighter and paladin flanked it, and we all generally pounded on the thing until it died (though the paladin took a lot of bad hits and was knocked out just before the battle ended).

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.

Two Roles For octaNe

game material

If I’d thought about it, I would’ve posted this a while ago. I finally got around to playing octaNe a few months ago with my friends, and I wound up devising a couple of new roles. One was inspired by an artbook I picked up at Comic-Con, and the other is undoubtedly from my association with a certain RPG about maids. (Now if only the Japan sourcebook that it alludes to repeatedly had come to fruition…)

Role: Mariachi Samurai
Profile: You were once an ordinary mariachi, making your living using your guitar to make beautiful music with your friends. Then a man killed your friends, and your wife. Then another man offered you the means to take your revenge. You were trained in a secret dojo in the depths of a blasted cityscape, trained in the ancient hypersonic killing style of swordsmanship. And yet, unlike those who came before you, you use your sword to protect the weak. You sweep into town, right the wrongs, stop for a drink, and leave without another word.
Stomping Ground: New Texaco, The Wastelands
Quote: “Amigo, I don’ think you wanna’ do that.”
Mode: Psychotronic
Gear: Massive samurai sword, sixguns, sombrero, cigars
Styles: Daring, Might
Skills: Swordfighting, quick-draw, stoic

Role: Rogue Battle Maid
Profile: You were brought to the Maid School as a young girl, and every day they subjected you to a brutal training regimen. The only thing more perfect than your etiquette and housework is your combat prowess. You were taught to protect a rich Master, but when your last Master died you were left to find your own way. Now it’s up to you to seek your own destiny.
Stamping Grounds: Anywhere
Quote: “You’ve made a really terrible mess. And as usual, it falls to me to clean it up.” (Readies her machinegun)
Mode: Psychotronic
Gear: Dangerous-looking weapon of choice, maid uniforms, cleaning supplies
Styles: Daring, Charm
Skills: Fight like a girl, cook and clean, act ridiculously polite, seduction, protection