Dee and Dee Fore

I don’t go on therpgsite basically because between RPG.net and Story Games I’m already wasting more than enough of my life on RPG forums. By a lot. Stuart in SG linked to this thread, where people mostly bitch about D&D4e. Personally, everything I’ve heard about 4e makes it sound like it’s moving more towards something I might actually actively want to play. Some of the responses on the thread make me want to play it just to spite them. (But then, I usually feel that way about people who can’t make a point without profanity). But mostly it’ll come down to whether or not one of my friends wants to run the game.

Another Celebrity Gamer: Kagami Yoshimizu

Something completely random: I’ve become a huge fan of Lucky Star, so along with the now 5 manga volumes I picked up the “Lucky Star Public Guide Book,” a guide to the manga (and other associated stuff) for hardcore fans in a manga format, similar to Love Hina 0. In the back there’s an interview with him. It turns out that he got into TRPGs in middle school (when he was enjoying the Lodoss novels and accidentally bought a replay), and started playing them more seriously in high school. All this got mentioned in the interview because when it came time to put together a 4-koma manga he was having a hard time coming up with characters, so he opened up his RPG scrapbook and pulled out some of his characters. It doesn’t mention what TRPGs in particular they came from, though it shows very tight pictures of the character sketches from the character sheets and three of the four have a box for “運命” (unmei/fate) underneath. The interview doesn’t really get into much detail about his TRPG habits, and whether he still plays or has since given it up a la Stephen Colbert. Still, especially in light of the fact that his manga is one of the key inspirations for a game I’m working on, I found it interesting.

So. Things.

Ugh. So, I wasn’t able to participate in GameChef even to help out with feedback, and I’m almost certainly not going to get any further with Moonsick in time for it to be considered for Push. School has been kind of intense and stressful lately, and my creative mojo tank is running dangerously low. Spring break is taking too long to arrive (seriously; it’s two weeks later than at the college one of my friends goes to), and Summer vacation can’t come soon enough. Hopefully then I’ll be able to get some shit done. Of course, it doesn’t help that GameChef, like NaNoWriMo, comes at kind of a lousy time for anyone who’s in college (”Should I work on this game/novel, or be ready for midterms?”). If either one was during the Summer, I’d have more free time for them than I’d know what to do with. But then it’d probably manage to be a lousy time for everyone who’s actually got a real job. I may try to make July my own personal NaNoWriMo, but then the moment I try to do something like that I usually get inundated with freelance work.

So, apart from struggling mightily to concentrate on studying (I should be studying for my midterm rather than writing this) I haven’t been doing a whole lot. I’m starting up an anime-inspired dimension-hopping campaign using OVA (”Divine Machine”) and we’re going to resume and conclude our stalled Truth & Justice campaign as well. More on those when something actually happens, which probably won’t be for another two weeks.

I got a copy of the original Japanese version of Tenra Bansho Zero in the mail the other day, and I haven’t had time to do more than skim it, but (1) damn does it look awesome, and (2) now I understand entirely too well why it’s taking Andy so long to get it out in English.

That’s all for now. go away.

Edit: One more thing: Tokyo Heroes Actual Play.

Weirdness

Fear the Roach
My friends and I played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach last night, and once it got going it was really incredible, though we only got through the first two events (that’s what happens when we play on a weeknight). We very quickly had a bunch of backstabbing and subplots going, which seems to be right where it should’ve been. The cards were great at helping give people cues for their scenes, and the assignment of NPCs to players worked wonderfully.

Now I’m buzzing with ideas for how to mess with things to make my anime RPG project more interesting. I’ve been getting caught up on Bleach lately, and some of this stuff feels like it would be a good fit for how some anime is set up.

Nihongo
The other thing is that while searching to see if anyone had linked to this blog (thanks Guy and Fillip!) I came across a thread from the TRPG board on 2-channel (probably the single biggest BBS/forum in Japan). Since it’s over 1,000 posts, I haven’t read it all, but apparently my blog posts about Japanese RPGs became a side-discussion for a while. It has stuff like “How does this gaijin know about Maid RPG and Yuuyake Koyake? LOL” (Most of the really weird games I own I discovered through the internet, lately that’s been mainly via Story Games; in this particular case it’s specifically Andy K’s fault). There was even someone who thought I must be a Japanese guy living in the U.S. and fluent in English (I’m definitely caucasian, though I also know Japanese and work as a translator). Unlike when I had this blog on Blogger.com, WordPress doesn’t display a bio anywhere that I know of. At least it looks like I’m not totally screwing things up when it comes to trying to make generalizations about the hobby in Japan.

でね、直接聞いてもかまいません。っていうか、喜ぶわけですけど。日本語でもいいし、メールアドレスはnekoewen@yahoo.co.jpです。

Hikikomori: Reviewed In Hungarian

So, I was trying out Google Blog Search, and I came across, of all things, a review of my 24 Hour RPG, Hikikomori, in Hungarian (here). I was very curious, but I couldn’t find an online translator thingy that would actually work, but as it turns out I have an acquaintance who’s Hungarian, and he was kind enough to translate. The review is surprisingly thorough, and probably more generous than I would’ve been.

Here we are!

Yay! My first new post on WordPress! I’m still working on getting acquainted with the interface and whatnot. Anyway.

In case you’re wondering “yaruki zero” is Japanese (やる気ゼロ) for “no motivation.” It’s an “extreme in-joke” (meaning I’m the only one who really gets it and finds it funny); when I and some other students were forced to do a skit for a Japanese class, after the ordeal was over I was thinking, “Well, that’s what happens when you have a group made of up people who didn’t want to do this in the first place. We’re ‘Team Yaruki Zero!’” Like my Go Play keychain, it’s also a reminder to myself to actually do stuff.

My package from Amazon Japan came in the main on Thursday, so I now have shiny new copies of Ru/Li/Lu/Ra, Alshard ff, and the bunko version of Arianrhod. I will post about these more when I’ve had a chance to really read them. At the moment I’ve been distracted by the manga I ordered along with them (new volumes of Genshiken, Yotsubato! and Rozen Maiden), plus I want to finish reading Gary Alan Fine’s book Shared Fantasy, which is a sociological study of RPGs from 1983, before I have to return it to the library.

Although the setting of Alshard looks fantastic, the underlying system is very, very similar to Beast Bind and Arianrhod (and part of why I picked up Ru/Li/Lu/Ra was just to make sure I picked up something not from FEAR). Interestingly, FEAR has taken the basic rules from Alshard (specifically the version from Alshard GAIA) and created what appears to be an open system, called (heh) the “Standard RPG System” (SRS for short). I’ll have to sit down and read/translate it, and see just how much they allow people to do with it. I’m wondering if they’d be amenable to an English translation to it, especially since it would be perfect for some of my more mainstream RPG project ideas (notably Ether Star and Catgirl: The Storytelling Game).

I also got the newest issue of Role&Roll, Japan’s main RPG magazine, and was inspired to post about it on Story Games herehere. Admittedly in posting it I was sort of crossing my fingers and hoping, but I was still (pleasantly) surprised when Tad Kelson posted saying he was going to try to put together an indie gaming mag.

I’m also hard at work on my anime RPG project (I still don’t know what to call it; I’m using “Anime Dreams” as a placeholder). I have a small notebook I use to write down stuff when I’m away from my computer, and I’ve literally filled up about 40 pages just with ideas for this game. Right now I’m mainly working on the conflict resolution rules — which will be at the heart of the whole thing — and it’s taking a heck of a lot of work. I keep catching myself staring off into space on the train and thinking really hard about it. I’m exceedingly happy with how this is turning out so far, but how well the conflict resolution rules work is going to be the main test of how good a game it turns out to be. I’ll be posting more about the gritty details soon, when I’ve got my tentative version a bit more straight in my head. At the moment it’s looking like the game will be diceless and resource-based, which in turn means I ought to go look at Yuuyake Koyake again.

Web Search II: Electric Googleoo

So, once again I got bored enough to do some ego-googling, and I actually found some interesting stuff.

On an Italian RPG message board there’s a thread about Mascot-tan, including illustrations for D&D-tan and SeventhSea-tan.

On Wikipedia there’s something that’s just pain odd. The list of fictional expletives article mentions an RPG by yours truly called F.U.N.C. (Furutistic Urbanized Needless Combat). The thing is, I don’t actually remember putting it out on the net or anything anywhere. It was something I made back in high school — cynical, satirical, ultra-violent cyberpunk with bits of Robocop and Project A-ko thrown in. I’ve toyed with the idea of reviving it, but it’d need to basically be redone from the ground up. I’ve gotten that much more cynical, and I’ve got a lot more sources of inspiration to draw on (Metal Wolf Chaos, for example) and topics to explore/satirize (violence in video games).

(BTW, it turns out that, not surprisingly one of my friends stuck the FUNC reference into Wikipedia…)

Regarding Mascot-tan

You really have no idea how happy this makes me. Definitely way more than it should.

(I don’t even actually post on RPG.net all that much — though I lurk like a madman — but I think this is the second time I inadvertently started a new meme over there).

Some Neat Things

Go Play: I like this; it reminds me of something I need to do more of.

I got Push in the mail the other day; getting that and some comics from lulu took about 9 days total. I like it entirely too much, and I want to submit something for Volume 2.

Faery’s Tale and Panty Explosion are both available in print, through their respective publishers and through Key20. Way too many games coming out I want to get, and almost none of them are showing up at my local game stores (though I haven’t been to Game Kastle in a while). And I have entirely too many indie games on my shelf that call to mind the Go Play thing.

Guy Shalev, Vincent Baker, and of course Nathan Paoletta have kindly linked to this blog on theirs. Thanks guys! I shouldn’t have to tell you that they’re all doing some really neat stuff.

I finally announced to my friends that I want to playtest Tokyo Heroes in the near future, and we wound up scheduling the first session for this coming Saturday!

Random Things

I wound up getting inspired to work on writing stories, even though I seem to be sucking at it right now (I did at least finish one short story the other day). I’ve been in a bit of a funk the past couple weeks, with regard to everything, not just games, hence Thrash 2.0 isn’t the only thing I’m not making progress on. I’m trying to read more, and watch more, but my attention span is unusually short lately. So, I have jack to say about games I’m working on (or failing to work on), but plenty on some tangential things.

Comic Con
I went to Comic Con, and it took a while for me to recover. (Not totally coherent LiveJournal entry is here). There were a couple of panels on RPGs there, which was sort of surprising considering there was no RPG programming there apart from a small smattering of RPGA stuff. Chris Chinn covered it better than I could in his blog, but suffice to say the first panel didn’t tell me much of anything I didn’t already know, and the second I didn’t attend because it conflicted with some other panel I wanted to go to. There were actually a small handful of RPG things in the exhibit hall though. There was a dealer with lots of GURPS books (amongst other things), the guy who did Artesia was selling the RPG alongside the comic, and Annie Rush had a table in the indie area (appropriately enough). I picked up a copy of House of Horiku, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Snakes on a Game, indeed. I also picked up a sketchbook called Mariachi Samurai, and damn but I want to roleplay as the title character some time. I’m thinking his name would be Pedro. Or maybe Jesus.

No More Goo
It’s sad that Guardians of Order is done with, but Mark seems to be doing okay for himself, and most of their IP is going to be getting new homes, which in turn means that BESM3e will be coming out, even if it’ll take a while. For various reasons, I’ve had mixed feelings about GoO from their inception, but I never found fault with the quality of their products. The deafening silence hasn’t been good for PR (see this RPG.net thread), and it’s good to finally hear what the hell is going on. Plus I have an acquaintance who got a book green-lighted from them just before all this nonsense happened. My general opinion of Tri-Stat is that it’s a great, elegant little system that was never adequately explained in its rulebooks (hence the lengthy essays at the beginning of my netbook). It’s also one of those games where a younger me said immature crap about it on message boards, though there are those who make me not feel quite so bad about it, for all the wrong reasons, and in a few cases I was just pointing out stuff that really ought to have been addressed (like, why the insistence on using only SI units for a game predominantly played by Americans?).

Anyway, I’m definitely going to pick up BESM3e whenever it comes out, but (1) I’m glad I didn’t give into the temptation to preorder, and (2) right now OAV would be my go-to game for that kind of thing anyway (they need to get some more stuff out at some point though). Still, in the 9 or so years it was around, GoO wound up teaching me a lot about RPGs, and for that more than anything I’m grateful.

How To Do Stuff
Inspired by this thread on Story Games, I went and checked out Elements of Typographic Style from the library. I’ve only read a little bit (it’s really good), but it occurred to me that there are certain things that apply to any creative endeavor. As I’m seriously pursuing designing RPGs and writing, and have dabbled in graphic art, I started to see patterns. I’m going to write up an essay on this whenever I get around to it.

1. Practice. A Lot.: Whatever you do, do it a whole lot. Every day if at all possible.
2. Learn the Basics: In any medium there are basic, foundation type things that should be practiced to death. An artist needs to learn how to draw straight lines, which means pencil mileage.
3. Learn From Others: Look at other works in your chosen medium and others close to it. Include works that you woudn’t ordinarily look at (i.e., even if you’re writing sci-fi with Venusian telepathic squids, go read literary classics).
4. Find out the “Rules”: In each medium there are formulas that can be training wheels for beginners, “don’ts” that can be violated if you do so skillfully and for the right reasons, and principles that become tools you can use.
5. Get and Recieve Useful Criticism: Get people to look at your stuff and tell you what’s bad about it and what’s good. If someone has nothing to say beyond “this sucks,” then Triumph the Insult Comic Dog could do the same job, and be more entertaining.
6. Find Your Own Style: Don’t imitate your idols. Don’t worry that you can’t create something as great as . Concentrate on creating stuff that only you could do.