Maid RPG: Update 1

Japanese, projects

Welcome Back!
This is where I have to go all-out to get the translation of Maid RPG done in time, but I’m pretty confident I can pull it off, maybe even with time to spare. The last post on the game generated a heck of a lot of traffic, without me really trying to get it linked anywhere myself. This is all pretty exciting, especially when I look back at just how much I’ve now translated. Doing all three of the original Japanese books doesn’t look nearly so insurmountable anymore. In any case, I’m going to be posting about different aspects of the game leading up to its release.

Scenarios
You seldom see adventure scenarios in Western RPGs, so I have a hard time making a properly informed comparison, but I have noticed that Japanese RPGs are more likely to include at least one or two scenarios in a core rulebook, and Maid RPG adds a total of 15 in its two supplements. Compared to the very few I have read (like Gold Rush Games’ incredible Shiki collection for Sengoku), the scenarios I’ve translated for Maid RPG so far seem very constrained. They map out a very specific role for the maids in the story, such that you could easily make a flowchart of the events of the scenario. I suspect that in actual play it’s not quite as stifling as it sounds, but it’s definitely more constraining than your average Western gamer is used to. I would compare it to certain indie games, like The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, in that you’re forced to do certain things, but you get a heck of a lot of freedom within that context.

Regardless, there’s a huge variety of scenarios, from throwing a birthday party to battling other maids for the fate of the world. In between are a tokusatsu hero, a murder mystery, shrine maidens fending off an evil god, a marriage contest, a case of amnesia, and more.

Costumes
Of the many optional rules in the game, my favorite is definitely the Costume Change rules. Maids can spend Favor to cease being a maid, don a different outfit, and take on the role that accompanies it. Maids who change costumes lose their Maid Powers, but get some new powers related to the costume. This covers professions (doctor, secretary, scientist), fetishized outfits (school swimsuit, school uniform, nurse, shrine maiden, etc.), and anime references (plugsuit, Mobile Suit costume, tiger-striped bikini with horns, etc.)

Maid RPG Is Coming

events, games, Japanese, projects

With love to all of the Masters...

Update: Hard to believe it’s been 5 months since I first posted this. This is the single most viewed post on my RPG blog, by a margin of 3:1 (and the next two most viewed after are also Maid RPG related). Anyway, for information on ordering, downloadable extras, and so on, check out the Official Maid RPG Website.

Maid RPG is a role-playing game designed by Ryo Kamiya and published in Japan by Sunset Games. And, with some substantial help from Andy Kitkowski, I will be publishing an English translated version. We’re aiming to release it at GenCon Indy 2008, and I’ll be posting full details as we get closer to the con. Although we hadn’t really planned it that way, Maid RPG will be the first ever Japanese RPG to be released in English. However, Andy will also be releasing a demo version of Jun’ichi Inoue’s Tenra Bansho Zero.

In Maid RPG, the players take on the role of maids who serve a Master who lives in a mansion. That’s the basic setup, but what ensues is often an excuse for the most bizarre chaos imaginable. This is a game that embraces randomness. Characters have random Special Qualities, ranging from Freckles and Glasses to Stalkers and Cyborgs. During the game, characters earn points of Favor by pleasing the Master, and one of the things they can spend Favor on is causing Random Events.

The English version of Maid RPG is going to be a compilation of the core rulebook and both supplements from the original Japanese version. That means it’ll include not only the core rules, but optional rules for butlers, randomly generated masters and mansions, seduction, costume changes, and special items, plus a grand total of 17 scenarios and three replays, and more besides.

You might be tempted to think that Maid RPG is the kind of thing you’d put on the shelf and never play, but I can say from personal experience that it is a perfectly playable (if very weird) game. It has the potential to become very twisted (though you can use it for light romantic comedy too), but it’s a lot like an anime version of Toon. With everything we’ll be packing into the English version, this one book will be able to provide months and months of gaming. You can even play it “random style,” and do everything off the cuff to kill time.

We’ll be launching a Maid RPG website next month! Stay tuned for more news!

If you have any questions about the game, feel free to comment here.

3-Hit Combo!

anime, musings, projects, ,

Shatter The Wall Between Zero and Infinity!
I’ve well and truly gotten started on my fighting shonen manga RPG. I’ve tentatively titled it “Zero Breakers” (zero like “wandering the void between zero and infinity” and like Yaruki Zero Games). I’ve mostly been typing up the stuff that was already in my head and my notebook, but it’s going pretty smoothly so far. Assuming it doesn’t manage to completely come apart at the seams, I think I may be on the way to designing my dream game. And I think it’s starting to look more and more like a diceless technicolor cousin of Dogs in the Vineyard. OTOH I think it may actually turn out to be a great game for playing online (which I’ll definitely have to try once it’s ready).

And incidentally, I just found out that Christian Griffen is working on a somewhat similar game, called Anima Prime. I’ll have to find time to read through it, though from a casual skim its overall approach is a bit different from Zero Breakers (it uses dice for one thing).

Breaking Molds
Adventures of the Space Patrol has been kind of an unusual project for me in that while I have a certain look and feel in mind, and although I’ve certainly been putting all the B-movie cliches rattling around my noggin to good use, it’s not particularly based on something from another medium. I’m wondering if I haven’t been too beholden to source material in the past. AotSP has been an unusually easy and fun project to work on, though it helps that the rules are like a mashup of FATE 3.0 and Yuuyake Koyake, off the shelf components rather than all-original stuff. Of course, I get so much inspiration from outside sources that I wouldn’t dream of abandoning that approach, but I think I need to be more able and willing to come to projects from other angles. This is especially true considering that I tend to latch onto a genre and spend an inordinate amount of time (and sometimes money) immersing myself into it. The number of hours of sentai I’ve watched for Tokyo Heroes is literally well into the triple digits, for example. AotSP could easily have had me trying to absorb and imitate endless hours of Buck Rogers and Commander Cody, and frankly there’s something to be said for not having to spend that much time, however enjoyable, to get things done.

Interstellar Skulduggery!
I have, however, started reading the Lensman series. It’s basically the first space opera epic, and the earlier parts of it came out in the 30s. So far it’s rip-roaring pulpy sci-fi action with dastardly villains, square-jawed heroes, and lovely damsels in a universe of ancient aliens and sometimes literally world-shattering technology. I really want to know why it was allowed to go out of print, though on the plus side I was able to get a hold of the books for relatively cheap. There was a GURPS worldbook for it (and for the longest time I never knew what it was), but I’d love to see a treatment of it with SotC or similar some time.

Role-Play This! Paul Robertson Animations

role-play this

What Is It?
Paul Robertson is an Australian artist and animator who favors pixel-based art in a distinctive manga- and video game-inspired style. In addition to a host of random pictures and animated gifs, he’s completed a number of animated short films, most recently the 15-minute epic “Kings of Power Four Billion %.” These show of his amazing talents and awesomely twisted sensibilities.

Above is the trailer for KOP4B%. Below are links to all of the full videos I could find. He’s apparently working on a compilation DVD, which I want entirely too much.

(And incidentally, PersonaSama also does some great stuff, God Slayer being my favorite so far).

Mechafetus Visublog

Why’s It Awesome?
When me and my friends first saw Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, we quickly concluded that any video game company that didn’t want to hire the creator as an art director must be goddamn stupid. Robertson works wholly with video game style sprites, but he very deliberately subverts the medium. Pirate Baby has two heroes climbing the levels of a building fighting zombies to rescue a kidnapped girl, and along the way they face things like a giant octopus clutching four nude zombie women that vomit horrible insects as a means of attack. The heroes retaliate with super attacks featuring the ghosts of dead mosquitoes, the soldiers from Predator, and Christopher Walken. Kings of Power takes this to the next level, where the final attack requires the rebirth of the New Ultimate Jesus, and then the little girl from space… I don’t want to spoil it, actually. But there’s definitely nothing quite like it.

Gaming It
The other day Filip started this thread on Story Games, asking how to role-play Devil Eyes, right in between when I had decided to do the next column about Robertson’s stuff and when I got started writing. Anyway, the way I see it, there are three ways to structure one’s fundamental approach to this:

1. Traditional RPG
Run it as a traditional RPG. The GM has to be a very strange person, capable of hurling an endless stream of strangeness at the players.

2. Collaborative RPG
The idea here is that the game serves as a structure for the entire group to throw out the most insane things they can think of. The most obvious model for this is Jared Sorenson’s octaNe, which wholly hands over narration to the players at times. (Though I’d be tempted to add “Guro” as a Style…)

On a similar note, in the aforementioned thread Johnstone suggested what to me sounds like an RPG version of 1000 Blank White Cards, where each player draws weird things on cards, which become the basis of the game. There are two artists in my gaming group, and one of them likes to draw something basic, and then pass it around the room for people to add whatever details they want. To make that approach really work I’d want to corner all of the artists I know (four in all) and coerce them into playing.

3. Meme-Rich RPG
One RPG I’ve got on the back burner is Moonsick. It’s consciously based on Superflat aesthetics, with little girls going down to a radioactive Earth and becoming horribly mutated (and sometimes mutilated) while “onii-sama” (big brother) watches. The game uses cards to establish scenes and introduce mutations, and thus introducing pre-defined memes into the fiction is at the heart of what the game’s rules do. This is the approach that’s perhaps most in sync with how a video game works, and with something like cards you can have the visual elements readily accessible to the participants (which is a big part of why I went that route with Moonsick).

In any of the above methods, there needs to be a rule for doing a final super attack where you take a bunch of the cards/pictures/elements you used before and combine them into one spectacular, climactic orgy of violence.

More On Fighty Manga

anime, projects

Rob’s comments on my fighting shonen manga post, coupled with this thread on S-G have me thinking more about fighty manga and RPGs in general. I think in manga especially, fights are less about combat power, or even who wins or loses per se, and more about the costs and consequences that flow out of those things. Stories, especially melodramatic shonen manga type stories, have a certain flow to them, and a game that really wants to simulate them needs to be less about hitting or missing, and more about what kinds of consequences flow out of succeeding or failing.

I have no doubt whatsoever that there are people who like game-y combat in their role-playing (I mean, D&D. Yeah.), but while running my current campaign with OVA, I’m finding that the consequences of a given conflict are the more interesting part, for me at least. If a bad guy shows up and gets offed with little trouble, he might as well not have come at all. When the ship’s AI turned on the crew, and left Aleph severely damaged, Caden with one arm, Nameli with two out of five children dread, and everyone homeless and generally shaken up, it was what will likely be one of the more memorable moments of our involvement in the hobby. Whatever the outcome, the process of rolling to hit and to dodge and figuring damage and such just doesn’t interest me all that much, especially when it holds the threat of PC death. Danger can and often does make things more interesting, but in terms of playing a game around the table, having a dead PC is more often than not one of the most boring things that can befall a player, since (as noted in Nathan Paoletta’s recent blog post) the player’s input into the game drops to zero. Conflicts with fallout have less worry about deprotagonization and the incentive of making characters more interesting and (for this genre) possibly more powerful. (Plus fighting shonen manga characters hardly ever get around to dying for whatever reason).

Although it’s tempting to conclude that in anime a hero with sufficient motivation can accomplish just about anything, at least in the fighting shonen manga mode it’s more than a character has to have his motivations properly lined up in order to use his full power, and that power is what lets him turn his passions and principles into reality. As over-the-top and melodramatic as it is, the characters in Naruto have to find ways to use guile, cleverness, and sometimes sheer boldness to have any chance against what it otherwise a superior foe. However much Naruto wants to beat Neji for Hinata’s sake, just wanting to do it really badly isn’t enough. He has to put everything on the line, risk using the power of the Kitsune, and pull off something incredible with the Kage-Bunshin no Jutusu.

This means I’m starting to really see the shape of the system I want. In a conflict you would compare power levels, and commence a back-and-forth to try to push the advantage to one side’s favor or the other. The relative power levels determines “Standing,” which can go anywhere from a deadlock to a crushing defeat/overwhelming victory. In the end, both sides have to face a possibility of some kind of fallout, which can in turn create plot complications, from simple injuries to broken swords to a lengthy quest to prepare for a rematch. I’m thinking the final difference in power levels would become a pool of points that the two sides take turns spending on complications. (So that it’s in the player’s interests to come up with big but interesting complications so the other side has less to spend).

Characters would have a Resolve rating that could be helpful or harmful if it gets too high or too low, but its influence would be small compared to actual ability (unless a fighter’s Resolve gets completely broken and he loses the will to fight). I haven’t gotten far enough to decide on whether or not to use dice, but I know that randomness won’t intrude on the core of conflicts. There might be dice rolls for, say, trying to affect the opponent’s Resolve, but even that doesn’t feel quite right to me. I’m thinking there should be some kind of currency, as it would be helpful for moderating the flow of meta-game effects and character growth.

That still leaves a lot to figure out in terms of how to structure gameplay, how characters advance (for this genre they’ve got to be able to make major jumps in power level at times), and of course how to handle things that aren’t epic conflicts. And a name for the game itself. But I do think I’ve now passed the single biggest conceptual hurdle.

Role-Play This! Oh! Edo Rocket

anime, role-play this

Oh! Edo Rocket RPG
What Is It?
In the past, anime series were mostly either original or based on manga. More recently, there have been more titles based on light novels (Haruhi Suzumiya being the most notable). Oh! Edo Rocket is based on, of all things, a stage play.

In it, the average people of Edo are being oppressed by the government’s prohibition on luxury items, but fireworks maker Seikichi Tamaya intends to keep honing his skills. The magistrate’s special agents chase after “sky beasts”–strange alien visitors–but it is a difficult task to say the least. Then, Seikichi is visited by a strange girl who wants him to make fireworks that can reach the moon.

Why’s It Awesome?
First of all, Oh! Edo Rocket has a very unique style. The character designs are strange, but very, very iconic. The backgrounds look like woodblock prints or calligraphy paintings. The background music is mostly big band jazz. The story moves at a hectic pace, and the absurdity of it all is counterbalanced by the brutal reality of society (such as how the local policeman beats Seikichi, who in turn can only prostrate himself and apologize), and the string of murders plaguing Edo.

The show also makes a very conscious and calculated effort to break certain rules. The characters relentlessly break the fourth wall, and anachronism is likewise constant. Not only is Seikichi trying to put Japanese fireworks into orbit, but televisions, vacuum cleaners, and so on pop up in iconic places, though the characters are quick to object that “This is supposed to be a period drama!”

Gaming It
Oh! Edo Rocket is a fast-paced action-adventure kind of story with lots of twists and turns, and many characters with dark secrets. To cover that angle, I would lean towards something awesomely cinematic, like Spirit of the Century, or character drama oriented like Prime Time Adventures, though the right group could do it just fine with something like BESM. A particularly whacked-out new Oracle might turn In A Wicked Age into the right tool for the job too (the show’s “Men In Black” have some interesting and Unique Particular Strengths).

Breaking the fourth wall in an RPG is a strange proposition, considering the fourth wall implies an audience. The characters of Oh! Edo Rocket make enough references to animation cels and such that it’s hard to imagine capturing the show’s charm without some equivalent. Granted, the characters can seldom use that to their advantage per se, so it could be a pure role-playing thing that the characters occasionally get to talking about their character sheets or dice rolls. Video games do that kind of thing all the time (“Van, what’s an inn?” “It’s a place where you restore HP and MP..”), albeit usually for a specific purpose. Create and useful foruth wall breakage–being aware of other scenes, peeking at someone’s character sheet, etc.–could fall under some kind of drama point mechanic too.

Next Time: Paul Robertson’s Animations

Assorted Things

musings, projects,

So, apparently Malcolm Sheppard has decided to pull the plug on Opening The Dark, for some reason or other. Although strictly speaking I could still use it since it’s OGL, I think I’m going to stick with my original plan to use a ST-ish Fudge variant for Catgirl: The Storytelling Game.

A Certain Japanese Game I’ve been translating will hopefully be moving forward very, very soon. I will have news on it as soon as I am able to reveal such to the public. It’s gonna be neat. :3

For Adventures of the Space Patrol, I basically have the entire outline of the game figured out (it helps that most of it is made from stock parts, after all), though there will no doubt be new challenges popping up as I go along. I had to go in and give some more thought to the selection of archetypes, and finally settled on seven:

  • Atomic Ranger
  • DroidBot
  • Plucky Kid
  • Galactic Spy
  • Space Trooper
  • Astro-Jockey
  • Altarian Engineer

The trick was to focus on what core roles to cover, and then to give them appropriately spacy-sounding names. I’m probably going to write up an appendix, PDF, or whatever of bonus archetypes (Cat Princess, Martian Barbarian, Pleiadeian Mentalist, etc.). More on all that as it comes along. In the meantime, here are some examples of the awesome artwork that so inspires me:

Role-Play This! Shonen Fighting Manga

anime, role-play this

DBZ

This installment is a little different from the others, since it’s about a genre rather than a particular title, and a lot of it is about me trying to figure out how to go about designing an RPG for that genre. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled column next time.

What Is It?
“Shonen fighting manga” is what I’ll call a genre of manga (and related anime) that focuses on passionate characters engaged in epic conflicts. Most of the really popular titles fall within it (especially from Shonen Jump and its ilk), so as a genre it covers a whole lot of things that lots of people find compelling. These titles are not without their flaws, but they bring some awesome to the table in their own ways.

I could go on for days mentioning dozens of titles, but I’ll just briefly cover a handful:

  • Bleach: A teenager named Ichigou Kurosaki inherits the powers of a Death God, and must protect his town from dangerous dead spirits. But the other Death Gods are now faced with a conflict that could destroy their Soul Society, and Ichigo will find himself at the very heart of it.
  • Dragon Ball Z: This show takes a lot of flak, especially for its pacing (too quick in the manga, painfully slow in the anime), but it’s ultimately the story of a good man trying to fight tyranny while coming to terms with being an alien. It takes place in a fanciful world full of strange technology and stranger mysticism, where a car can fit into a capsule and seven magic balls and raise the dead.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha There are some people who consider this show to be derivative of every major magical girl show ever. This proves that they haven’t watched past the half-way point of the first of its three seasons, or else they’d know that once the Time-Space Administration Bureau becomes involved, everything changes. Nanoha is a kindred spirit to Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, a brave and cheerful girl whose real strength is rooted in her love for others. No other magical girl series I know of has the protagonist sit down for a frank talk with her mother about what she’s been doing in secret, and there definitely isn’t another where she becomes an elite career mage for a dimensional enforcement authority.
  • One Piece: This juggernaut of a franchise takes place in a fanciful world of dread pirates, corrupt governments, and ancient secrets. Luffy, who ate the Gum-Gum Fruit when he was young (making him elastic, but cursed to be unable to swim), wants to become the next Pirate King. He and his crew — all people shaped by childhood tragedy — set out after the One Piece, the legendary treasure. Along the way, Luffy and his friends must put everything on the line to defeat the most vile opponents imaginable and make Luffy’s naive ideals of friendship a reality in a world of unrelenting injustice.
  • Some others that come to mind include Naruto, Tokyo Underground, Shakugan no Shana, Gurren Lagann, Mahou Sensei Negima!, Rurouni Kenshin, and so on.

Nanoha StrikerS

Why’s It Awesome?
Shonen fighting manga may be overblown and cheesy, but when it’s done well it can enthrall millions. Fights can stretch across entirely too many episodes, but they always Mean Something. They’re about some guys putting everything on the line for what they believe in, against all odds. A really good fighting manga story is packed with balls-to-the-wall conflicts and world-shattering revelations.

Gaming It
It took me a while to realize it, but my efforts to design an “anime” RPG over the past few years pretty much boil down to wanting a game that excels at this genre. I haven’t found it yet, and I haven’t figured out how to make it myself. Whatever virtues games like BESM and OVA have, they’re essentially universal (action resolution based) systems with some nifty anime-inspired tweaks, and they don’t address what I think I really need for the shonen fighting manga style. The game I tentatively named “Anime Dreams” contained some important ideas that will likely be vital to my dream game if it ever comes to fruition:

  • The heart of the game is a conflict resolution engine that allows for sacrifices, reversals, escalation, creativity, and at least some immersion.
  • The group collaboratively creates and maintains a “fan guide,” a wiki or somesuch with details on the campaign and its setting, characters, and events.
  • A power scale mechanic (kind of like mass/strength scaling in Fudge), to show overwhelming differences. Half of DBZ is characters trying to raise their power scale enough to stand up to the new bad guy.
  • Series/setting creation as a group activity, with specific rules, and guidelines for adapting existing titles, since lots of people want to play something based on an existing anime series.
  • At least one pre-made setting with quick-start rules and a replay included.

Aside from making it drip with anime/manga flavor as much as possible, I think there are basically two things the game needs to do, and they’re closely related.

1. Make conflicts — whatever form they take — interesting, intense, and consequential.

It may be that I just need to hack the hell out of an existing game with a conflict engine (TSOY, SotC/FATE, DitV, etc.), but I think I need to (1) play more of those games, and (2) really sit down and think about what exactly my dream game needs.

I originally wanted to make it diceless (“A character should only win by luck if he has a ‘Lucky’ trait on his character sheet”), but now I’m not so sure. The real issue is deprotagonization, which is separate from dice vs. diceless. My previous attempts at making it diceless seem to create paperwork without all that much benefit in return. Of course, now that I’ve got a much better grasp on how Yuuyake Koyake works, it occurs to me that a character’s passions and bonds could fuel one or two simple point pools (one for being proactive, one for rebounding maybe?).

From the source material, it’s pretty clear that most character development needs to happen through conflicts. Shonen fighting manga characters improve by leaps and bounds (or just reveal previously hidden tricks) when under duress.

2. Keep the players and their characters actively engaged in the story.

That’s the major challenge of running my current OVA campaign. The game system is good at some things, but it really doesn’t address this at all, and as the GM I have to try to keep an eye on things and make sure there’s stuff going on to involve all of the PCs. It goes without saying that there’s a limit to how much the actual rules can contribute here, but it definitely needs something.

Now, if you want to run a shonen fighting manga type game without either creating a new system or waiting for someone else to, there are some possibilities. Some have suggested using a hack of Dogs in the Vineyard to do Naruto, and for that matter Filip treated us to Gurren Lagann done with InSpectres/UnSpeakables. DitV is on the right track in terms of supporting play where characters tend to engage in individual conflicts (that’s how it usually seems to work in manga after all), and the use of escalation (If Super Saiyan isn’t enough, it’s time to risk it all on Super Saiyan Level 2!) and fallout.

The Shadow of Yesterday has some ideas that point in interesting directions, but there are elements of its paradigm (like how someone Unskilled can beat a Grand Master by pure dumb luck, if not very often) that to me are at odds with shonen fighting manga sensibilities. It and Spirit of the Century both reward characters for being passionate and irrational, but would need some major hacking to handle the power levels of a Super Kamehameha or Starlight Breaker instead of the pulpy action they were intended for.

Otherwise, the alternative is to use a more typical universal system (anime-flavored or otherwise) to try to simulate the particular setting, which (as the anime/manga character page of Surbrook’s Stuff demonstrates) can accomplish more than you might think, though again it leaves the conflict and character drama largely in the hands of the participants. That’s not necessarily a bad place for it to be, but personally I want a game that can do a little more.

Next Time: Oh! Edo Rocket

My Gaming Confession

musings

I have a confession to make: I don’t like board or card games.

There are some very, very rare exceptions, like Uno and certain kinds of solitaire, but for the most part I just plain don’t derive any particular enjoyment out of them. That’s kind of a shame, considering that (1) some of my friends do like them, and (2) my awesome brother-in-law has a wall of such games, and regularly buys new ones. Some of it is simple burnout from the wrong kinds of games; Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly each went a long way towards ruining their respective genres for me. I’m also not all that good at such games, but a lot of that no doubt comes down to not feeling any desire to invest in them enough to develop such skills. Still, that doesn’t really explain it, especially since I like RPGs so much.

I think the real problem is that I don’t enjoy competition. I don’t like losing, and I don’t enjoy winning at my friends’ expense, but I’ve yet to encounter such a game that can really be fun even when I don’t play to win. It’s not a warm-fuzzy-hippie things either; it’s not “everyone should win,” but rather a dull irritation that rises up after a while until it becomes unbearable. Video games can be an exception at times. Even in multiplayer I can find ways to enjoy Halo (the glaring exception to my dislike of most FPS games) without worrying too much about winning, but I still prefer co-op, single-player, or even anonymous online multiplayer matches.

When I read or translate the part of an RPG’s text where it says that there are no winners or losers per se, unlike other kinds of games, my eyes usually glaze over from having read it so many times, but it really is an important distinguishing characteristic of the genre. On the other hand, I enjoy storytelling in pretty much any form—creative, passive, or interactive—and while some methods work better for me than others, there aren’t any I’ve dismissed outright. (Although there are some genres that don’t do it for me, and some combinations of genre and medium that I don’t care for. I only really like horror in prose form, and I have no particular interest in sexuality in tabletop role-playing).

That said, I do think that one of the ways we might innovate in and revitalize RPGs is by drawing inspiration from card and board games. Raspberry Heaven is a perfect example of that, considering it was Uno that helped redeem the game from oblivion, but that’s only one of a zillion different possible games to look at.

The other day I had the opportunity to look through my brother-in-law’s copy of SPANC (Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls) from Steve Jackson Games. It very much looks like the result of that approach in reverse. You create a crew of three characters, who are defined by four attributes (Space Pirate, Amazon, Ninja, and Catgirl, naturally). You can give them equipment cards to modify the attributes, and you basically throw them at challenge cards, picking a catgirl who tries to roll under the requisite skill (often with a modifier). You could turn it into a very simple RPG with no modification at all. Just let each player pick a character card, and have the GM use challenge cards or make up new ones on the fly, and you’re golden.

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a game that in many ways straddles the divide, and the one time my group played it (I do want to play again some time) it was surprisingly successful and won over the skeptics among us. Its basic structure is competitive, based as it is around accumulating influence tokens, but depending on how one choses to play it can be little more than a framing device. It surely has a good number of players who are interested in exploring the setting’s inherent perversity, and can do so to their heart’s content rather than worrying about “winning” the game according to the rules. The use of customized cards to keep things interesting is a definite board game touch, and it’s vital to the overall experience.

Then there’s Once Upon A Time, a “storytelling card game” that is more of a group storytelling exercise. It’s not an RPG per se (no one self-identifies with any of the characters, after all), and its use of cards is more of a way to introduce memes into the story being told and provide a way to win/end then game. Like the Roach, it shows how customized cards can be a vector for introducing information into the game’s fictional world. That’s one of the key concepts of that Moonsick game I’ve been neglecting. It also allows for a level of simplicity and abstraction not often seen in RPGs, and since (as the last post on Adventures of the Space Patrol illustrates) I’m interested in short, pick-up RPGs, this is something I think worth exploring.

Although of course there have been any number of RPGs that make good use of miniatures and maps in the style of the wargames from which the hobby originally arose, I haven’t yet seen any that take a cue from boardgames per se. If an RPG takes place in a limited geographic area, it could have a board, and the effects of different locations could be encoded into that board (this seems ridiculously common in board games). If the locations need to vary more, we could use mapping tiles (like in Zombies!!!), either randomly placed or set out according to someone’s wishes.

On a similar line of thought, a friend of mine was working on a kind of “limit break” mechanism for an RPG, which involved a 3×3 grid on the character sheet. Making use of location as a determining factor is possible even without an elaborate board, and it can accomplish all kinds of interesting things.

This is why I wish I did like board and card games more than I do (and it’s not like I haven’t given them a chance either). I really wonder what other neat things someone who’s actually familiar with a wide variety of of games could come up with.

Anyway. In another day or two I’ll hopefully be posting up the next installment of Role-Play This!, dealing with Fighting Shonen Manga.

Yet Another New Game: Adventures of the Space Patrol!

projects

I’ve come up with yet another new concept for an RPG, albeit one I think I can bring to fruition without agonizing over how to get things done or letting it slide to the back burner for months or years. It’s (tentatively) called “Adventures of the Space Patrol.”

The original idea came from when I realized that Yuuyake Koyake was in fact named after a children’s song that perfectly describes its mood. I got to wondering what other kinds of games could come from children’s songs, and the first one that came to mind was “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” When I looked up more info on the song, I found out that there’s actually a version with a full five verses, and it speaks of the star as a benevolent light shining to guide travelers in the dark of night.

This line of thought met another halfway. Professional illustrators have a certain style of cartooning that’s at least as stylized as manga, but seldom makes its way into the mainstream (with Erin Esurance and certain Nicktoons being notable exceptions) despite being so dang awesome. I had picked up a book of Shane Glines‘ pinup art (NSFW) from Amazon, and the rather silly (in a good way) picture of a girl in a retro-futuristic jumpsuit holding a raygun got me to thinking in terms of “retro-cute sci-fi.”

I’m starting to think that in creating Yuuyake Koyake, Ryo Kamiya really hit on something important. Video games, especially the simpler ones, boil down to how the designers let you do one or more verbs. Some of the cleverest games come from picking an unusual verb, such as “eat” (Pac-Man) or “roll up” (Katamari Damacy) and running with it. Role-playing games are a little more complicated in that respect, but some really brilliant games have come from this same approach. In Yuuyake Koyake the verb is “help.” It makes non-violent role-playing practical, immediate, compelling, and easy to do. Aitsu wa Classmate (another RPG published by Sunset Games) does this too, and while Elite Beat Agents is a rhythm-action video game, its story is also all about helping people (and occasionally other things). I would really like to see more “good samaritan” games come along in the future, but of course the wonderful thing about RPGs is that if you really want something, you can make it happen yourself.

Put all that together, and we have the makings of a game that has the potential to be really moving, yet doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a game where a girl in a silver jumpsuit and jetpack can comfort a girl whose mother was in a car accident.

Most of my attempts at game design revolve around a specific genre for which I can cite at least half a dozen specific works, and more often than not nearly all of those are anime/manga. In this respect Adventures of the Space Patrol breaks with that habit, which is probably good for me as a (wannabe) designer. Although I let some Japanese stuff creep in here and there, the game was inspired by a look and feel rather than a book or a TV show, and it’s up to those who play it to feel out how to put together stories, rather than trying to ape something from another medium.

So far the rules are not especially original. They’re rather like a mashup of The Shadow of Yesterday and Spirit of the Century, with some bits of Yuuyake Koyake, In A Wicked Age, and others thrown in for good measure. I’m less concerned with startling originality of rules than I am with making a quick and fun game that expresses the whole “retro-cute sci-fi” thing well. Characters are created by picking archetypes (Atomic Ranger, Martian Barbarian, etc.) and making a few tweaks here and there. It has SotC-style Aspects, but with the addition of “Bonds,” temporary aspects that define how your character connects with the current episode’s major NPCs. If I get it all the way done, I’m definitely going to include a replay and a couple of scenarios in the book, and do my darndest to get some good illustration-style art to go with it.

Another thing is that, although I really haven’t been trying to do it that way, I keep coming up with ideas for games that would be good for pickup play. (The other two are Raspberry Heaven and Dandelion Complex). I think even though I do tend to play long, convoluted campaigns with my friends, really want to be able to just throw a game together without having to worry too much about organizing a bunch of people week after week. Although it’s often rewarding, sometimes I get tired of being a cat-herder.

If I can, I’m going to try to get a version ready for playtest in the next couple of weeks.