Tag: TTRPG

Eyes on Wares Blade – Magic and Machinery – Box Set

I still remember the first time I was at Yellow Submarine and happened upon the original Wares Blade box set, its cover instantly piquing my curiosity. I later found it again at Mandarake and picked it up. With LionWing Publishing’s English translation in the works, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at the original box.

Wares blade box, front and back side by side.

But first, just what is Wares Blade? In its own words, Wares Blade is a “magic and machinery”, a fantasy world with mecha. And while we’ll be looking at the TRPG today, it’s a world unto itself. There is a plethora of novels, and an active movement to make them available again. Back at the 2019 Tokyo Game Market I stopped by the Wares Project booth and heard a bit about their plans, including a board game “Legion”. Six years later, with out of print books being made available as PDFs and now an English translation, Wares Blade is very much alive!

Set on the continent of Ahan (アハーン大陸) with three cultural areas, the core set focuses on the Western area. Later supplements, of which there are many, look at other areas.

To be clear, the Kickstarter is for the revised edition that came out in 1994, while we’ll be taking a peek at the original 1989 version. I’ve only skimmed the sample English rules, but have referenced it a few times for consistency with speciality terms (eg 練法師 as Word-Caster). With that said, on to the box! Continue reading Eyes on Wares Blade – Magic and Machinery – Box Set

Sword World RPG English Version Announced

Cover of the Deluxe Edition showing three crossed swords: red, white, and green.

Mugen Gaming recently announced that they’ll be translating Sword World 2.5 into English! The version making its way to English is the upcoming deluxe version, a 432 page A4 sized book that compiles the first three rulebooks into one volume. Crowdfunding starts in 2026, but a one shot PDF with basic rules will be available to those on the mailing list from the official site.

In the meanwhile, for those wanting to learn more about Sword World, I’ve written about it several times in the past. The first time was a look at the 2.0 starter box my friend ran for me and its gameplay. Next was a look at the 2.0 core rulebook. There’s also a look at some articles about its history and the transition between 2.0 and 2.5.

Very excited to see Sword World soon to join the list of translated Japanese TRPGs!

Catalog of Many Indie TRPGs

Cover of Doujin TRPG Catalog 2023I’ve been totally impressed with the Doujin TRPG Catalog 2023 (同人TRPGカタログ2023) edited by Suguru Cioya. It’s a follow up to the previous catalog (同人TRPGカタログ201X) published in 2020. That version contained 175 entries, while the new edition has expanded to 283! Well, 246 are in the main book, and another 37 are in a separate book dedicated to derivative works whose relation to copyright may be questionable. While both are available in print, the latter is also freely available on Booth.

Coming back to the main book and its 104 black and white pages, there are Continue reading Catalog of Many Indie TRPGs

Foretelling the Elements of Trade

CoverAs a kid I adored the Torneko story arc and running a shop in Dragon Quest IV, so when I saw the indie TRPG Hakke Gogyou Shou (八卦五行商) and its beautiful cover, I was immediately intrigued. A slim fourteen black and white pages with a glossy cover, it’s a game of merchants peddling their wares in an ancient China inspired fantasy.

The name itself is composed of three words: Eight Trigrams Divination (八卦), Five Elements (五行), and Merchant (商), with the shapes behind the title corresponding to the concepts. Not being very familiar with them and the book assuming some familiarity, a bit of research helped with reading. Continue reading Foretelling the Elements of Trade

Message on the Palm

I stumbled upon a simple solo journaling game with an interesting mechanic while researching TRPG ebooks. Called Message on the Palm (てのひらの伝言), its premise is awakening to find a palm-sized visitor outside your window. What that visitor is depends on the last digit of your previous Tweet. In fact, this is the only randomizerーeach tweet references the ID of the previous one to customize the prompt from a list of options.

Templates are provided for each tweet to serve as a guide. Most tweets have a single template, but the fifth has two options: one for if the visitor is invited in and one if the visitor is driven away. Continue reading Message on the Palm

TRPG Digital Delve

The last few years have seen a proliferation of digital editions of TRPG books and related tools in Japan. While many books are still physical only, there’s a growing number of both indie and commercial games with digital editions available.

While several sites focus on games and fan made content, many that originally focused on digital comics have extended their selection to include TRPGs. The sites focused on gaming products tend to have more categorization and filtering specific to games. They also usually provide the content as PDFs and/or zip files of contents instead of EPUBs with DRM or browser/app based viewing.

There are a lot of options, but I usually start my search at Booth and Conos, and then branch out to other services if they don’t have the content I’m looking for.  Many publishers list on multiple sites, and while the pricing is uniform, their offerings will sometimes differ.

In terms of pricing, physical and digital editions of commercial games are often the same price or only a slight discount provided. As an example, the Japanese edition of Cyberpunk RED costs ¥7,200 for either physical or digital, while the English edition costs $60 for physical and $30 for digital. Indie games often have a bit of a discount. The indie game Praise for Angels, for example, costs ¥1,800 for the PDF and ¥2,900 for the print edition. Some services provide point systems, often with sales that increase the points received for a purchase while leaving the purchase price unchanged.

A word of warning for those hoping to use built in dictionaries: from what I’ve seen, text is not selectable in most rulebooks except those sold as PDFs. Replays formatted like a novel that I’ve read on Kindle have had selectable text and the dictionary worked, but I haven’t tested replays on other services. PDFs generally don’t have this problem, though sometimes text selection can be odd. Continue reading TRPG Digital Delve

World’s End Journey

World’s End Journey (終末紀行RPG) is a rules light indie TRPG about two travelers, human and robot, surviving in a world that has ended. The text from a promo image sums it up as, “No school. No society. No food. No bullets. No anything. With partner.” Using a d6 pool for resolution, it focuses on generating stories using roll or choose charts (ROC) .

World's End Journey CoverBoth the free 16-page and paid 40-page PDFs are A4 landscape with a three column layout. Primarily in black and white with a few images, the sample characters are illustrated in full color. The sections are clearly labeled and handy reference numbers are provided to make navigation even easier.

Setting

The setting is loosely defined with several core principals: mankind is long extinct; no other humans nor robots are around; there are no resources left, with only remnants from the past being repurposed; and the world is dangerous: in addition to the harsh landscape, mutants and drones pose a threat. The journey itself is one of survival. There’s enough guidance to set the mood, while the details are left to the GM and players to weave together. The exact year is undefined, and there both realistic (eg machine-guns) and far-future (eg laser guns) items available, but as we’ll see later, the items are about expressing the character and don’t have mechanical benefits. Continue reading World’s End Journey

Dark Souls TRPG Solo Play Report

Character sheet on a tablet, with the cards comprising the map and dice behind it.
Early in the scenario.

After spending so much time with the Japanese Dark Souls TRPG (part one and part two), I wanted to give its tutorial scenario a try. The following are my play through notes with my impressions at the end. I played with real playing cards and dice, but marked up a PDF version of the character sheet on my tablet. Now, it goes without saying, but this post contains spoilers for the solo Dark Souls TRPG tutorial scenario.

The scenario is intended for a single player, and I ended up playing it solo. To make it more interesting for me, I did not read the scenario beforehand. Instead, I played through while reading it for the first time, and did my best to not read ahead. Continue reading Dark Souls TRPG Solo Play Report

Dark Souls TRPG Deep Dive: Behind the Screen

Our deep dive into the Japanese Dark Souls TRPG continues with a look at the GM portion of the book. Part one covered the first half of the book, which focuses on player content. I’ve done my best to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I do show the data of the first enemy encountered in the tutorial scenario. The remaining three sections we’ll look at today are Scenarios, Enemies, and Charts and Sheets. After that there’s a quick look at the bonus GM screen.

Scenario Section

The scenario section begins with helpful advice for the GM and an overview of both solo and multi play. It continues with an overview of how scenarios work, mapping, treasure, and the ominous malevolence sheet. Continue reading Dark Souls TRPG Deep Dive: Behind the Screen

Dark Souls TRPG Deep Dive

We’ll begin our deep dive into the Dark Souls TRPG by looking at the player-focused first half of the book. Part two will cover the game master focused latter half. Designed by Hironori Katou and
published by Group SNE, Dark Souls TRPG is a book that has been sitting in my blog backlog since it was published. It’s a crunchy, class and level based system that seeks to evoke the feeling Dark Souls III, while also avoiding what would be tedious in an analog game. As with many Japanese TRPGs, it only uses six sided dice. Continue reading Dark Souls TRPG Deep Dive