Slithering into 2025

Chiikawa Game of Life board and money closeup with Hachiwari and Usagi finishing the game.

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 spread out on the table a glass of Manhattan partially visible. — 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.

Expect to see another post soon. Very soon!

Kashiwa BattleTech Workshop

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

3D terrain map for the grinder game I was in. — 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.

Continue reading Kashiwa BattleTech Workshop

TRPG Rakugo

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 TRPG resurgence continues

I wrote about a resurgence of role playing games in my New Years post, and that trend has continued well beyond expectation. First, Lion Wing Publishing announced several English TRPG translations, including the Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne TRPG from 2004, Kedamono Opera, and Wares Blade!

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 opened. Box lid on the left with content partially in the box to the right. — 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.

Cover of the third edition of Blade of Arcana. — 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.

Very exciting times!

Goita

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.

Goita box and its contents laid out flat on grey felt.

The cards feel nice in the hand and are well thought out. The center of the card is Continue reading Goita

Cafe Subbox

Storefront with white calls and blue highlights. — 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 of the shop from the entry. A narrow entry leads to space that widens with more tables and shelves of games. — View from the entry way. A family was playing a board game to the right of the photo.

Continue reading Cafe Subbox

Sky Knights Manga Gamebook

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

Welcoming 2024

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.

ダンジョンカバン player board and four face down cards.

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!

Tokyo Game Market 2023 Fall

A bit later than usual, the 2023 Fall Tokyo Game Market was on December 9th and 10th. I normally attend Sunday because there are more TRPG booths, but this year Sanyutei Rakuten had a performance on Saturday that I really wanted to see. I wasn’t sure how crowded the special stage would be, so to make sure I could watch up front I splurged on an early access band, which got me in an hour early. It was nice having a quieter event space during the early hour. Continue reading Tokyo Game Market 2023 Fall

Table Game Cafe Sirocco

Storefront at night. Large glass windows.

Coffee beans and tea leaves samples in metal cans with clear lids. — The coffee and teas lined up for inspection.

The owner has puts a lot of effort into his drinks, occasionally adding new concoctions to the menu. The “Underdark” beer cocktail (Guinness beer and expresso) a new addition that I’m looking forward to trying next time I’m there. Coffee is from a shop in Northern Kamakura, and the tea is also local or from a shop in Yokohama. Continue reading Table Game Cafe Sirocco