Progress

Okay, so here’s what’s going on:

Slime Story is finally starting to properly come together. I had to throw out a lot of my previous ideas for how the game might work, but the gears are actually fitting together. Right now the game in my head is like a mashup of Aitsu wa Classmate, Bliss Stage, and Tunnels & Trolls, with some Arianrhod, Yuuyake Koyake, 3:16, The Shadow of Yesterday, and D&D thrown in for good measure. It still needs a whole hell of a lot of work, but it’s getting there.

I’m increasingly thinking that fringe-y games that distribute creative input are more what I want to do. Running traditional games is proving too psychologically taxing. Not bad, not unpleasant, but they have a way of leaving me mentally exhausted at the end of the night. Besides, the friends I play with are all very creative people anyway. Also, I realized that, perhaps as a result of being the GM so often, immersion is not a priority for me.

I started on three different Kyawaii RPGs, and have been neglecting all of them, even the one that’s nearly finished.

For no particular reason, I’ve started working on a thing called “Anime+2d6.” I’ve basically taken the Anime d20 SRD and started re-working it into something kind of like Tri-Stat and kind of not. I will probably never actually play it, but it’s a mildly amusing way to kill time, and White Wolf isn’t showing any inclination to do anything with BESM3e ever again. It’s going slowly, partly just because I feel the need to edit out the SRD’s relentless abuse of the passive voice, though I also have to basically reconstruct the mecha rules and a few other things. When you think about it, the rules bloat BESM has undergone is pretty amazing. Needless to say, I’ll post it here when I feel I have something worth posting.

I still hate identity politics in RPGs. It’s like, with the whole Proposition 8 thing there are people speaking against gays even more than usual, and in a lot of cases, I want to walk up to them and say, “Have you ever actually met someone who’s gay in person? I’m guessing no, because if you had, you’d have realized they’re human beings like everyone else.” The way some people talk about indie RPGs reminds me of that. We’re all gamers, who want to have fun playing games.

Raspberry Heaven, I’m Coming Back To You

Watching Hidamari Sketch and Sketchbook has done wonders to help me deal with crippling stress and anxiety lately, so I got inspired to get back to working on Raspberry Heaven. Out of my excessive collection of unfinished game projects, it’s the most promising and playable. It also doesn’t hurt that the kinds of 4-koma manga that inspired the game are becoming more readily available in English. You can buy all of Azumanga Daioh in one $25 book, and Yen Press (which has been putting out some seriously great stuff in general) has released the first volumes of Hidamari Sketch and one I hadn’t heard before (but which turned out to be great), S.S. Astro. Plus, Bandai has supposedly licensed the Lucky Star manga. Sketchbook is absolutely wonderful, but so far no one’s picked it up.

Anyway, the major issues with the game as it stands are as follows:

1. Turn Order: Originally I had players just put down cards as they felt like it. I’m contemplating using some kind of turn order mechanic, but I don’t know if it will help the game or screw things up.

2. Special Moves: I went through and cleaned up the selection of Special Moves (so that none of them overlap), but I need to see if they’re all more or less equally useful. In the one playtest session we did, no one used any non-wildcard Special Moves. At this point it may just be a matter of playtesting.

3. Memories: So basically, I want to have something where the game sort of archives particularly memorable things that happen during play. However, I don’t think much of the rules I have in place right now, and I’d happily chuck them out in favor of something better. Or I may just drop that aspect of the game entirely. I’m thinking that Memories should be something that belong to the whole group, which in turn let me to the idea of doing a Mad-Libs type thing to create one or more Memories when you first start playing.

4. Applause: After seeing meta-game player encouragement work so well in both Yuuyake Koyake and Peerless Food Fighters, I’m thinking Raspberry Heaven could benefit from something similar… but the existing structure of the game doesn’t really lend itself to that.

5. Snippets: Basically, I want to let players to individual mini-scenes during the game.

On the plus side, Tobias Wrigstad was kind enough to send me an article he did that is an overview of jeepform. While I intend for Raspberry Heaven to stay a tabletop game where you play with cards, the game is getting some jeepform influence here and there, especially when it comes to telegraphing, which to me is one of the most fascinating new things in role-playing, like, ever.

Also, I realized that if you want to make a visual representation of your character and you’d don’t have $200+ worth of Pinky:St dolls on hand like I do (some of them were gifts. shut up.), you could use an avatar creator website. Tektek.org’s Dream Avatar would be my favorite (in case you couldn’t tell), but there are plenty of others.

More Random Thoughts

What was he thinking?
I wanted to translate Maid RPG because I think it’s a really fun game. That’s it. Seriously. I really didn’t give it any more thought than that.

Terminology and Stupidity
Somewhere along the line, people started trying to change the definition of “weeaboo” from “obnoxious fucktard who thinks Japan is superior but actually knows next to nothing about it he didn’t learn from Naruto” to “anything that seems even slightly Japanese–even if you have to squint really hard to make it seem that way–and comes from someone without a certificate of Japaneseness issued by the Emperor of Japan.” The former can be useful for pointing out where American anime fandom goes wrong. The latter is nonsense that perpetuates the notion that anime and manga are somehow “special” media with ludicrously high standards of authenticity, rather than just another kind of entertainment we can freely draw inspiration from.

Old School
I got the Tunnels & Trolls 7.5 boxed sex. I’ve never seen an RPG that came with so many goodies.

New School
The next Kyawaii RPG is going to be a bit longer than the previous ones, and possibly more of a rough draft for a full game. Cliche, but neat in its own way.

Kerfuffle
It is strange that people would think they have any right to make demands of the creators of things they like, but it’s in no way odd that people might want stuff they like to stay available and perhaps become better. The creator still gets final say–that a-fucking-given–and some people are jackholes about it and need to be ignored or kicked, but still. It’s like when people talk about music piracy; the thing that’s reasonable and important to discuss (flaws in the record industry) gets hopelessly, idiotically intertwined with stuff that isn’t (the idea that it’s okay to pirate stuff).

Wacky
Penguin Musume Heart seems like it uses Maid RPG’s physics engine.

Long-Awaited, Sorta
I wanted to like Anima: Beyond Fantasy, but it’s exactly the kind of tome of a derivative traditional RPG that makes me lose interest almost immediately. (For the record I have nothing against traditional RPGs; just the derivative tomes). It’s an incredibly pretty book, but it feels like it should have “In development for 12 years!” on the back, as though we should be excited by how someone fixed the perceived flaws in AD&D Second Edition. The Japanese-style art is mostly from actual Japanese artist, but the actual game shows no traces of any kind of Japanese TRPG design aesthetic. I may be being unduly harsh, but that’s where my tastes lie these days. If you like it, more power to you.

Maid RPG Update: Viva La Revolution!

Maid RPG is now available through Indie Press Revolution!

They should have print copies in stock some time in early November, but you can preorder if you like, and you can order the PDF through IPR right now. That’ll pretty much be the only way to get it while Andy’s off in Japan.

PDF Version
Print Version (Pre-Order)
Print + PDF

This should also make it easier for retailers to get a hold of copies to sell next month. I know some of the folks at my awesome local game store (Game Kastle) are eagerly awaiting it. Plus, you know, you can brows tons of other kickass games.