Raspberry Heaven: Quirks

In terms of the game’s rather simple mechanics, Raspberry Heaven characters are defined by a set of three “Quirks” chosen by the player. So far it looks like I have a good selection of quirks figured out, considering it was pretty easy to figure out the quirks for the Azumanga Daioh cast.

Here’s the current list of quirks:
Baka, Boke (clown), Busty, Complex, Cool, Cute, Delicate, Diligent, Feral, Gaijin, Genius, Genkisugi (hyper-active), Innocent, Jock, Lazy, Nice, Obsession, Physically Gifted, Plain, Slow, Softy, Space Cadet, Timid, Tsukkomi (straight-man), Tsundere (here), Worldly

So, here’s my attempt at the Azumanga Daioh cast. Note that Kaorin is a “wallflower” character and is supposed to get less Quirks, and also that teachers are assumed to be good at whatever their main subject is.

Chiyo (Mihama Chiyo)
Cute
Innocent
Genius

Kagura
Baka
Jock
Softy

Osaka (Kasuga Ayumu)
Space Cadet
Slow
Delicate

Sakaki
Cool
Softy
Physically Gifted

Tomo (Takino Tomo)
Boke
Genkisugi
Baka

Yomi (Koyomi Mizuhara)
Tsukkomi
Diligent
Complex (Weight)

Nyamo-sensei (Kurosawa Minamo)
Diligent
Nice
Tsukkomi

Yukari-sensei (Tanizaki Yukari)
Lazy
Worldly
Boke

Kaorin
Obsession (Sakaki)
Plain

Next time, Lucky Star. :3

Raspberry Heaven: Three Friends

I haven’t been able to get a whole lot done lately, but I did manage to sketch out character designs for Rika and Natsumi (the sample characters for Raspberry Heaven), and their new friend Ayumu:

Raspberry Heaven Characters by ~nekoewen on deviantART

起承転結

Since it’s looking like it’s going to become an important part of two of the games I’m working on, I decided to write up a blog post about kishoutenketsu (起承転結). Kishoutenketsu is a four-act structure commonly used in Japan. Although it originally derives from Chinese poetry, it has been applied to all sorts of longer works, including novels and manga. The four stages are introduction, development, climax (or turn), and resolution. Just like the three-act structure (set-up, confrontation, resolution) more commonly used in the West, it is ultimately just a model, and it certainly can’t be used to explain the structure of every story out there.

On the other hand, there’s the case of yon-koma (four-panel) manga. These are comic strips consisting of four vertical panels, and are more or less Japan’s version of our newspaper comic strips (which, possibly not coincidentally, are mostly three panels). When you examine yon-koma comics from the point of view of kishoutenketsu, more often than not the panels correspond exactly to the four-act structure, wrought in miniature. In case you’re wondering I learned about this through (1) a fan-translation of Welcome to the NHK, which mentioned kishoutenketsu in a footnote, and (2) a how to draw manga book I saw at a store and have never been able to find since.

Anyway, with Raspberry Heaven most of the source material (notably Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star) started off as yon-koma manga. Even when I come up with a good idea I usually need some prodding in the right direction, so it wasn’t until Jake Richmond egged me on that I came up with a good idea for how to use it in this game, and in a way that will hopefully make the game that much better. Essentially it’s going to be a part of the rules structure for how scenes are set up and run. The four phases are:

1. Ki/Introduction: The player sets up and initiates the scene.
2. Shou/Development: The group commences role-playing.
3. Ten/Climax: The scene comes to a head, and a “challenge” (a thing that requires rolling dice) happens.
4. Ketsu/Resolution: A little more to bring the aftermath of the climax into the game, and to close up the scene.

With Tokyo Heroes (at Filip’s urging) I’m also planning to use it, albeit on a different scale. As a genre, sentai has a relatively rigid plot structure, so the four acts could correspond fairly tightly to the stages of the story of a standard episode, with mechanical effects (or a lack thereof) appropriate to each.

1. Ki/Introduction: The game starts, with the heroes doing something ordinary (for them) that, though they don’t know it yet, is going to lead into this week’s conflict.
2. Shou/Development: The inciting incident hits. The heroes have to do whatever investigating is necessary to be ready for this week’s battle. For this I’m thinking of taking a cue from Gumshoe/Esoterrorists, and making it more about how the PCs find clues rather than if.
3. Ten/Climax: The battle finally happens for real. The heroes go all-out and beat the monster of the week.
4. Ketsu/Resolution: The game goes a little further, to establish what happens after the monster is defeated. The people affected by it turn back to normal, the girl it kidnapped is freed, etc. The heroes go back to base and things settle down. Credits roll. Preview plays.

Raspberry Heaven is coming together fast enough that I might actually be able to playtest it before the month is up. With Tokyo Heroes it’s kind of a different story in that Filip sent me a LONG e-mail (8 pages when I printed it out) with a blow-by-blow critique. It’s been tremendously helpful, but it’s required me to rethink some very basic parts of the game’s structure, and a massive rewrite is in order before I do more playtesting.

(Some day I’ll work on Thrash 2.0 again…)

What’s your bliss?

I lost count of how many blogs I’ve seen this in. I don’t know if it’s my moe otaku tendencies showing through, but whatever. ^_^; I gave into temptation and pre-ordered by the way, so I’m definitely looking forward to this. :3

“I’m an Innocent Sweetheart!”

“People say that I’m too young to pilot an ANIMa, but I just want to do my best… for everyone!”

Personality: As an Innocent Sweetheart, you’re the youngest pilot, under-trained and inexperienced. But you make up for it with a heart of gold and an energetic spirit that just won’t quit. Although most people don’t have a lot of confidence in you, who can help but catch your infectious enthusiasm?
Advice: Believe in yourself more. You can do anything you set your mind to as long as you don’t let your self-doubt get in the way. Your greatest asset is the trust that others hold in you, so never forget your friends and loved ones. At the same time, it might pay to be more realistic in your view of the world.
Which Bliss Stage Pilot are you?
Bliss Stage

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In other news, it turns out that Sunset Games is releasing a new RPG called “Moe-kei?! Gakuen: Aitsu wa Classmate!” I’m not sure how to properly translate the title, but it’d be something like “Moe-style (?!) Academy: That’s my Classmate.” According to the blurb on the website in the game your goal is to help out those who are troubled (”They’ll surely say to you: “Thank you.”) It’s slated for some time in the summer, so I’m thinking I’ll order it along with Mononoke Koyake (the Yuuyake Koyake sourcebook) after GenCon.

The other day I checked out some books from the library on educational role-playing. I’m currently reading The Effective Use of Role-Play by Morry van Ments, which is a nice overview of role-playing as an educational tool. I’ll be putting together a full post about it when I’m done reading, but the differences in goals and the emphasis on “debriefing” after the actual role-play is finished are striking. It’s helped me think a bit about the kind of atmosphere and approach I want for Raspberry Heaven, while Filip Luszczyk, Ben Lehman, and Fred Garber have all offered me very solid advice via the Forge.

Yarukimantan: Raspberry Heaven

Now that my freelance translation stuff is mercifully done (for now), I want to get back into doing creative stuff over what’s left of the summer, including getting back into the swing of things with game design. Although I need more time to think about my Slime Story idea, I wound up coming up with a new game idea that while not groundbreaking per se is definitely promising and doable. There’s nothing quite like it as far as I know, and it’s not so ambitious that I’m worried about (a) whether I can actually finish it, or (b) whether the end result will be complicated enough to be a pain to get fine-tuned. More importantly, I’m actually excited about it.

Raspberry Heaven (bonus points if you get the reference) is meant to be a game about Japanese high school girls, but where Panty Explosion has them being mean to each other (plus the occasional exploding head), this would be about fun, everyday stuff. It’s Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, Ichigo Mashimaro, or Hidamari Sketch (take your pick) with the serial numbers filed off. Basically, a light-hearted slice of life kind of thing. I’m still working out how the rules will function, but I’m thinking the end result is going to look like a mashup of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and Best Friends, but with a general feel more akin to Yuuyake Koyake. It’ll most likely be GM-less, something I’ve been wanting to experiment with anyway, and revolve around the players setting up scenes, very much like in the Roach.

It’s still very much in the preliminary stages, so while I have a rough idea of how I think the overall game will work, lots of things are up in the air, and there are lots of bits that I’m looking forward to discovering how I’m going to make them work. Of the four anime titles I mentioned above, three were originally done as yonkoma (4-panel) manga, so one wacky idea would be to somehow fit the four stages of kishoutenketsu (起承転結; introduction, development, climax, resolution) into the game somehow.

Update: Started a thread in the Forge’s First Thoughts forum.