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Japanese RPGs
Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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What the title says. As I have a fair amount of (albeit very niched ones) Japanese RPGs, I figured a GeekList that lists them all would be suitable.
For those interested, there is a guild for those who wish to discuss Japanese TRPS: http://rpg.geekdo.com/guild/714
Feel free to add anyones you feel are missing (please add only RPGs, not items.)
Note: With "Japanese RPGs" I mean "RPGs designed in Japan, for the Japanese market". I don't necessarily mean RPGs designed by Japanese people, and I certainly don't mean RPGs that have Japan as a setting.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Probably the most major of all Japanese RPGs, Sword World was created by Japanese RPG legend Ryo Mizuno and comes as a paperback pocket book.
It uses a simple 2d6 system, but is thus much less a simulation and much more a game than most western roleplaying games. I guess this influenced a lot of the coming Japanese RPGs.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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I like to refer to this game when I hear about RPGs being a lot of hit tables and whatnots. There are a lot of crazy RPGs out there, but few major ones in the west that are so steered as this.
The basic traits are Strength, Reflexes, Empathy, Intelligence and Hope.
The rules stat that the GM is supposed to give the word to (aim the camera at) one player at a time, giving him/her about 10-15 minutes to act. If someone else wants to enter the camera's view, they have to make a Hope save roll.
All players have three arcanas - three totally game-breaking supeerpowers like stop time for 5 rounds or revive after death or whatever. And all sessions should always end with a battle against a marauder - a guy who has stolen other's arcanas and thus have more than three.
And the GM gets XP for his/her character for the session he GMed.
When I heard of these rules I shook my head and said "This is brilliant!"
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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All I know about this one is second hand information. I know that it's cyberpunk and that it's major, but I know little more.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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The first Monster Maker RPG. Monster Maker was in the beginning a card game by Ginichiro Suzuki, illustrated by Kugatsuhime (September Princess). With the "small RPG book" wave, they made it into a simplistic RPG.
While I was used to the now-simple but still rather "simulationist" RPGs from Swedish 80s and onwards (most based on Basic Roleplay), I was blown away by the dramatic-yet cute looking style where you didn't have to explain everything and where the die rolling system was so simple that you realised it was only a tool for the story-telling.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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When the Collectible Card Game frenzy reached Japan, Monster Maker was an obvious choice. What they did was that they revived a lot of the old heroes of the Monster Maker world and sort of made them active in the same era (to faciliate for the card game). And this was the RPG version.
It's not written by Suzuki, but I really liked the setting anyway. As the designers realised that a lot of RPG playing consists of conversation, this book features rules for conversation with NPCs as long as the combat rules. NPCs and players have moral standings and conversational goals and if the player can steer the conversation in a way that it affects the moral or the goals, he/she gets a bonus for the rolls during the conversation. There are conversational skills just like combat skills, and all have conversational hit points as well. Amazing idea.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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After the Resurrection RPG, base creator Ginichiro Suzuki went back and created Monster Maker Legend. Just like many of the MAGIUS system RPGs, this game has a set goal: reach level 20 and become a Legend. The game comes with cardboard cut-out standees for a large amount of the famous Monster Maker characters and is more board game combat-oriented.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Part of the Fujimi anime RPG series, but not of the MAGIUS system. Dragon Half RPG is a pretty well-made thing, using the same simple "2d6+trait should be higher than difficulty" system, but has a nice silly feel of it. Comes complete with a solo adventure that, if you choose the wrong way, advices you to play another RPG.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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A silly comical RPG set in a school of magic. Now in the days of Harry Potter it would be seen as a HP clone, but it was released far earlier than Potter. Given the rules of the book, the players aren't really meant to leave campus, but rather RPG in the breaks between classes and on holidays. The rules and spells could be heavily exploited if played in a serious setting.
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9.
RPG: MAGIUS
[Average Rating:7.00 Unranked]
Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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The start book to the MAGIUS system that Fujimi wrote to be used with one supplement at a time. This is a simple system that uses three basic traits: Body, Mental and Technique, and with basically an unlimited amount of skills (depending on setting and module). A die roll for something of which the chara has no skill is 2D+trait to exceed the difficulty (set by the GM), whereas if the chara has a skill, it's the 2 best of 3d6, plus trait and the level of the skill.
Many MAGIUS modules was goal-oriented and was more like set adventures with set goals instead of merely campaign worlds using the MAGIUS system, and although the official number of modules was small, the fan-made MAGIUS modules were extremely many.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Part of the MAGIUS system that Fujimi made to be used with one supplement at a time. I haven't looked into exactly what Lunar! was about, but I wasn't a huge player of the video game either.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Part of the MAGIUS system. I haven't looked in this much, but as I gather it's more of a game with set goals than an open-ended RPG.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Part of the MAGIUS system. Even moreso than its predecessor, this game is largely a tabletop board game without the board, with set goals.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Based on the TV anime with the same name, and part of the MAGIUS system. I haven't looked into this much, but I don't think it's as goal-oriented as some of the other MAGIUS RPGs.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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Part of the MAGIUS system. Haven't looked much into this either.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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A home-made RPG based on the comic "The Rose of Versailles". I haven't played it yet, but it seems to be pretty cool.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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A light RPG based on the popular shooting games "Toho Project" (Shrine Maiden). For a home-brew it's well made, but I have to admit the rules were somewhat incomprehensible at times, and I have yet to play it.
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Ewen Cluney
United States
California
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Yuuyake Koyake is a uniquely heartwarming RPG about magical animals helping out ordinary people in a small town in rural Japan. And, it's from the same designer as Maid RPG.
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Robert Saint John
United States
Cleveland
Ohio
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Here's one that few know about: the 1983 Tsukuda Hobby RPG Enterprise - Role Play Game in Star Trek. I had no idea this even existed until late last year. I only came across it while browsing through Yahoo Japan. I'm a huge Trek and Trek RPG fan, so I grabbed it immediately. I spent the next two months researching the history as much as possible, and then translated the whole thing.
It's a completely original game, not an adaptation of the Heritage game or the FASA game (which was released shortly after this, actually). It was designed by Tama Yutaka who -- with his partner Hitoshi Yasuda (translator/author of the Hobby Japan Traveller) -- edited the Japanese version of the UK magazine Warlock - The Fighting Fantasy Magazine for a number of years before they continued the magazine with original content.
As RPGs go it's not very sophisticated, but certainly notable as the first Japanese domestic TRPG (though arguably preceded by Donkey Commando, a tactical sci-fi minigame published in 1982 in the Japanese Tactics magazine). It's definitely lightweight, but has some fun mechanics such as a unique Trekish take on alignment and "ESP" rules.
Tsukuda also published an original sci-fi RPG called Star Quest, their answer to games like Traveller and Space Opera. It was actually designed by Ed Lipsett, author of the 1979 Spacefarers' Guide series from Phoenix Games. I need to gather what little material I have on that game and submit it.
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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I don't know more about this than what's here on RPGG. It looks pretty fun, though. I'd love this one.
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Tony Rowe
United States
West Hartford
Connecticut
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The Wizardry Role-Playing Game is based on the long-running computer RPG series of the same name, developed by Sir-Tech Software. The CRPG series proved to be very popular in Japan and this pen-and-paper version was only released for the Japanese market.
Gameplay is class-based and each character has six ability scores (Strength, Intelligence, Piety, Vitality, Agility, and Luck). Many stats used are similar to D&D (Hit Points, Armor Class, Experience Points, etc.).
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Plainville
Massachusetts
I SO want to get one of these!! I'm obviously nervous that I won't get too much value from it as my Japanese is limited to a few kanji for Video Games (I import a lot from Japan). Any that have lots of great fantasy art or sci-fi images that I might get at least some visual value from?
-Dave
Örbyhus
madison
Alabama
CARY
North Carolina
Not really. A German version of Beast Bind Apocalypse (another FEAR game) is on the distant horizon. And Yuuyake Koyake in maybe the next year or two. Other than that, and a fan translation of Witch Quest and Monster Maker sloooowly in the works, there's not much. I'm diddling around with Sword World 2.0 and Double Cross 3rd Edition.
Paris
Region Parisienne