Not About Maids

Illustration of Rita by Sue-chan (www.sue-chan.com)

Time to post about some non-Maid stuff for a change.

I Design Too!
“This guy always has all the best ‘let’s smoke some peyote and watch anime’ ideas.”
— Eero Tuovinen

I haven’t gotten a whole lot done in terms of designing my own games of late, so I’m trying to make a conscientious effort to actually get some goddamn work done, and maybe even bring one or two to fruition. Raspberry Heaven is by far the most promising of my game projects, and the one that had probably my single most successful playtest session ever. I’ve already done some fine-tuning since then, and right now it basically needs more writing, testing, and tuning.

I’m also getting more seriously started on Slime Story, hence I started a thread on the Forge about it (which is where the above quote comes from). The thread explains what the game is about (and I’ve posted here about it before), and the game is basically at this point where I have a good idea what I want it to do, but I’m still trying to work out how.

Playing Games
My group is currently doing two different campaigns. There’s my Divine Machine campaign, which runs on OVA because it seemed the best system I had on hand that could handle all the crazy stuff I wanted to do (though now the scale of events is kind of pushing past what even it can handle), and which is barreling towards its conclusion. I’m kind of starting to wish I had a game that could mechanically handle an epic struggle against a sentient nanotech menace that threatens the entire multiverse…

We also finished our second adventure (fourth session) of D&D 4th Edition. Our characters reached level 2, and we’re generally playing the game more like a well-oiled machine, rather than looking up and arguing about the rules every 5 minutes.

Much as I’m enjoying both of these, I’m kind of looking forward to Divine Machine ending and/or D&D going on hiatus, because I’m increasingly wanting to shift away from long-term play and also to jump headlong into playing more of my accumulated indie games (plus playtesting my own stuff, and playing some of the stuff I’ve translated). In particular, I want to clean up Raspberry Heaven a bit and run a playtest, give Yuuyake Koyake another go with different local friends, and try out Monsters! Monsters!. I also want to play 3:16, do a PTA game about the lives of otaku, and do a Solar System game inspired by Fairy Quest.

Maid RPG Update: What I’m Working On/What They’re Saying

Maid RPG is out in the world, which is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. My biggest hurdle–getting the actual translation done–is totally out of the way, but there’s still a fair amount of stuff to do. In particular, there are three things I’m working on, with vastly varying degrees of urgency, that will be available for free on the website, and one more thing that Andy is probably going to put together when he has time:

• Errata: I spent basically two days going over the book looking for errors. Little stuff like that drives me totally crazy. Thankfully errors that actually affect the game rules were few and far between, but we’ll hopefully be turning everyone’s lists of corrections into a proper errata file soon. Regardless, this’ll be integrated into the second printing, which will be for sale (and at the rate things are going, disappear shortly thereafter) in about 2 weeks.
• Quickstart: After prodding from a Brazilian guy in the comments on this blog, I’ve started working on quickstart rules for Maid RPG. I’m thinking of calling it a “Trainee Edition,” or something similarly thematic but punchier. It’s kind of a low priority at the moment, and I want to commission some original artwork to go with it, but it’s coming along nicely so far. It will include six pre-made maids (each with one thing you customize with a die roll), the basic gameplay rules, a sample master and mansion, the basic Contemporary Random Event table, and original scenario (called “You Can Be Replaced”) by yours truly. In short, it will follow the rough mold of the quickstarts White Wolf does, but with the added fun of being able to run random event-driven sessions with.
• Nun-Approved File: I might have to think of a better title (it’s a reference to a Monty Python sketch where a nun says, “I prefer the dirty version”), but this is basically a collection of all the stuff we changed or removed for the English version. Some of it was too obscure (like, things where there’s almost no information in English, and in some cases not even that much in Japanese), some of it was just hard to translate in a usable fashion, and some of it a bit too squicky. (For example, several entries in the item table were sex toys). This will have all of that stuff for your… enjoyment.
• Free Scenarios: There were five scenarios that didn’t make it into the printed rulebook, basically because we had to drop something to get the layout done. Admittedly, we put the scenarios we thought were the cream of the crop into the actual book, but there’s still some entertaining stuff here.
  • Farewell Master: The Master is a girl who is in line to the throne. If the maids don’t do something, their beloved mistress will be sent to a convent through foul play, never to return!
  • The Master Has Amnesia?!: Robbers broke into the mansion about a month ago. The Master is finally recovering, but he can remember very few details of what happened, and very little of anything aside from his own status.
  • Secret Base: The Master is convinced that he’s a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. He’s wrong, but there is something of a mystery waiting to be solved.
  • Tales of Suspense: The Master, Kira Tsukishima, will be starting high school in April. He’s the only child of Yoichiro Tsukishima, and he’ll be the next leader of the Tsukishima Zaibatsu. Since Kira’s high school is far away from the main house, he’s now living with some maids in a villa located a mere 5-minute walk from the campus. The main house has sent a butler, Haru Amajiri. However, Haru is more than she seems, and the maids will have to unravel the mystery before it’s too late.
  • Until the Master Is Born: The “Black Tea King,” Sir Lepton, sleeps eternally. The news spreads through England like wildfire, and his mansion and all of his assets will become someone’s inheritance. His adopted daughter Natalie sinks into an abyss of grief. Julio, Sir Lepton’s real son, has come to claim the inheritance as his own. With Julio intent on taking the mansion, what will become of Natalie and the maids?

What They’re Saying About Maid RPG
For a while now I’ve been making a hobby of Googling “Maid RPG” to see what comes up, plus checking the trackbacks on this blog entirely too often. Here are some of the things people have said about Maid RPG on the internet.

Maid RPG Update: GenCon Indy 2008

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.

GenCon Indy 2008: Almost Here

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!)

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.

• Maid RPG Minis
• Maid Sentai Minis

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.

This thing we do.

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.