I picked up Merchants of Haniwa (埴輪の商人) at Tokyo Game Market and had the chance to play with some friends. It’s a game for three to five players and plays for about 30 minutes.
But first, merchants of what? Haniwa are terracotta figures from the Kofun era of Japan with a distinctive shape. Once you’re familiar with the shape, you’ll spot references to them all over the place. 2023 Fall Game Market had two Haniwa related games for sale, and intrigued by the different approaches, I picked up both. We’ll be looking at Merchants of Haniwa this time, but we’ll take a look at the other one next time. Continue reading Merchants of Haniwa
New Years in Japan brings a lot of firsts. First sunrise （初日の出）, first dream （初夢）, and first visit to a shrine （初詣）are well known, but there is also first laugh（初笑い）, which is often associated with Rakugo. Thus it seemed all too appropriate to attend another TRPG Rakugo performance by Sanyutei Rakuten organized by Gurasan!
At the same venue as before, it again consisted of four stories, two traditional and the TRPG versions created from them, as well as a talk show. Previously, the original and TRPG versions were done in pairs, but this time it was split into both traditional stories, a break, and then both TRPG stories.
The first story アイテム根問 (loosely meaning Inquisitive about Items) was adapted from 千早ふる (Chihayaburu). Both are about an inquisitive person asking a know-it-all the meaning of something the know-it-all won’t admit he doesn’t know. The know-it-all then proceeds to make up the answers. The TRPG version is about items such as, “why is it called a mace?”. The traditional version is about the meaning of a Hyakunin Isshu poem.
Hope everyone’s year of the snake is off to a wonderful start! I started the year with a cute game of life, Chiikawa edition. For those not familiar with Chiikawa, it’s a very popular manga with anime. It also has a TON of goods and collaborations. One of those is a compact version of the Game of Life, which I’ve written about before.
The board is a compact folding board, and five official characters plus a blank card to draw your own are included. Like the larger version, a small spinner is used for movement. The characters have two versions, with a chance to upgrade to the higher tier partway through the course. Players are also able to collect memory cards, depicting events from the manga, to earn more money.
Game components. Glass of Manhattan not included.
Being fans, it was really fun to read out the text for each square we landed on, which really capture the spirit of Chiikawa. We were evenly matched for most of the game, but I lost most of my points one square away from the end.
Looking Forward and Back
Speaking of years, looking back at 2024, I didn’t post nearly as much as I wanted. There were several months in a row without any posts, and I hope to rectify that this year and return to at least one post a month. I already have several posts in various states of composition, and am inspired to write more. The next few will likely be board games, but I will also cover some game books and TRPGs.
In terms of gaming, a Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus game I was a player in wrapped up and I played in a Radiant Citadel one shot. I’ve restarted my Star Wars Clone Wars game after being a player in a friend’s game, and played in a Vampire 5th edition game as well. One thing I was not expecting, was to return to BattleTech after so many years away. Hoping to make more visits to the Kashiwa group and maybe find some local games.
By chance, I received a question asking where to search for BattleTech goods in Japan. While researching that, I stumbled upon a monthly BattleTech event in Chiba at hobby shop Miniature Forest and immediately jumped at the opportunity to play.
Background
But first, some personal history. As I’ve written about before, I was really into BattleTech as a teen, devouring the novels and sourcebooks. Despite having the third edition box set, Aerotech, and BattleSpace, I actually only played once or twice. When I moved to Japan, I decided to let it all go and either sold or donated it. While dormant, my interest continued to linger, so I dove right in when the HBS BattleTech game was released. It also prompted me to later back the Clan Invasion kickstarter. Its arrival was during the Covid pandemic, so there it stayed on my shelf.
Kashiwa BattleTech Workshop
Grinder game map.
Now on to the event! The shop owner created a name card for me that doubles as a point card. The cost was just the shop fee (¥1,500), with the event itself being free. Roughly fourteen people participated across three tables. The table I was at was a grinder game with the other players teaching me how to play. The other two tables escalated in complexity.
The last few months have kept me pretty busy and away from the blog, but I did manage to sneak out to a TRPG Rakugo performance by Sanyutei Rakuten. There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, so let’s start with Sanyutei Rakuten, a Rakugoka (rakugo performer) who performs both traditional and TRPG rakugo. You’re probably already familiar with TRPGs if you’re reading this, which leaves rakugo. Rakugo is a traditional spoken entertainment where a single performer sits and tells humorous stories, performing all characters and only using a fan and cloth as props. Putting that together, TRPG rakugo is rakugo about TRPGs that Sanyutei Rakuten created by adapting traditional stories to reference TRPGs.
I previously saw him perform at the Fall Tokyo Game Market, and had wanted to see another performance. I finally got that chance and attended a comparison of traditional and TRPG rakugo stories where Sanyutei Rakuten performed both versions back to back. In his words, the versions are “mostly the same”, yet it was interesting to see how small changes affected the dynamic of the story. Continue reading TRPG Rakugo
The Shin Megami Tensei TRPG has long been out of print in Japan and commands hefty prices on the secondary market. Kedamono Opera is narrative TRPG from 2022 that I’ve mentioned on Twitter previously. Wares Blade is a robot-fantasy game from the eighties and nineties that has similarly been out of print, though not as rare as Shin Megami Tensei. I happen to have a copy of the starter box set and will write about it later this year.
Wares Blade starter set box.
Domestically, Wares Blade is having a comeback in Japan. It began with a board game and fiction, but they’ve started releasing PDF versions of the core game and supplements. I purchased a couple of the PDFs and the content is very clean scan data that has not been run through OCR. A sample PDF is available from the official site.
Previous edition of Blade Arcana. The new book is much larger than the 3rd edition (pictured) that I have.
Blade Arcana, a game of heroic fantasy, also recently got a massive tome of a new version, and there’s a steady stream of new TRPGs, including one where players are cats.
I first heard of the game Goita at Cafe Subbox in Nagano and picked up a copy there. Originating in the Ushitsu region of Noto Peninsula around 1900, Goita is a game played with shogi-like tiles or cards with four people split into two teams. The goal is to be the first player to play all their cards, with the last card determining points scored. There are several variant win conditions that add complexity.
In the Box
Being a traditional game, there are multiple publishers of Goita. The one I have is from Ten Days Games and consists of thirty-two cards, four reference cards, and four score cards. The rules fit on a single small two sided sheet of paper.
The cards feel nice in the hand and are well thought out. The center of the card is Continue reading Goita
I almost walked by the store at night, but the meeples told me I was at the right place.
I was in Nagano a while back and stopped by a small board game store and cafe called Cafe Subbox. It’s about a 12 minute walk from the station and 20 minute from the gates of Zenkoji. Easy to miss from the outside, the inside is has a warm, welcoming vibe. There was a family playing a board game at the table near the door, and the owner was behind the counter. They had a sale going on, and a nice selection of games for sale as well as play in the store.
View from the entry way. A family was playing a board game to the right of the photo.
One of my first purchases at Role & Roll station was the Sky Knights Manga Gamebook (漫画deゲームブック第一弾). What sets this apart from other gamebooks is that it’s entirely a manga, not just book with illustrations. Written by Sugimoto John (杉本＝ヨハネ) and illustrated by Nakayama Shohei (中山将平), it tells the story of a humanoid bird Sky Knight hunting down the king’s murderer.
B5 in size, its fifty-two pages of black and white illustrations wrapped in a color cover was a fun adventure. Included is a bookmark that serves as a character sheet, one side for each character. It took me a total of four tries to successfully complete the story. Continue reading Sky Knights Manga Gamebook
My wife was joking that 2024 would be a year of games for me, and it appears to be on track for that. I’ve already had several board and TRPG sessions. One of which was on Board Game Arena. I hadn’t heard of it before, but the automated bookkeeping was great. Hoping that an increase in gaming translates to more blog posts, but Baldur’s Gate 3 has been a counter argument to that.
Reviewing 2023, in addition to eleven blog posts, I also created a site to search the Japanese/English D&D word list released by Hobby Japan. It was fun project, and the positive reception was rewarding. The FFG Forum Archive continues to be visited, and it’s always fun when I find it in search results. This blog continues to grow slowly, but surely, in readership. Finally, the migration of the server that runs all of the above was mostly smooth, with minimal downtime.
More broadly, the pace of TRPGs making their way into English has increased. Among those is Eldritch Escape, an upcoming dual language release with a successful kickstarter. While updating the Games with Translations page, I was surprised to find it missing several more recent TRPGs. In the opposite direction, I was very excited to see Runequest get a new Japanese version.
Looking forward, my backlog of games to share continues to grow despite seven years of blogging. My new plan is to try out alternating between long and short posts. The latter will include trips to shops I’ve visited during my travels, as well as gaming activities and news.
Here’s to a wonderful 2024, an auspicious year of the dragon!
At the same venue as before, it again consisted of four stories, two traditional and the TRPG versions created from them, as well as a talk show. Previously, the original and TRPG versions were done in pairs, but this time it was split into both traditional stories, a break, and then both TRPG stories.
