Japanese Tabletop RPG Thread

Not really. Setting info is left untranslated and there some info that isn't well explained well. Like abilities with unclear descriptions.

I doubt they want to.
Also, Lanternworks Unlimited is or is not officially supposed to be working on it.

Amazing RPG with really good, well-tied together mechanics and absolutely abysmal layout holy shit it is bad.

But if you make some cheat sheets (how to create a character, how to advance, the rolling and combat) it's great.

Kancolle TRPG, but I don´t understand those combat rules at all. Also, I probably won´t be able to persuade my non-weeb friends to play a shipgirl game, fml.

Yeah that makes sense. Maybe there is something on the horizon though

There's plenty of jttrpgs out there untranslated. Stuff like Terra the Gunslinger (Steampunk Western based on the old West that uses playing cards) Tenra WAR (The crossover between Tenra and Terra, basically samurai vs Cowboys with aliens), and Beast Bind (Which looks interesting but I know nothing about)

bampu des'

>absolutely abysmal layout holy shit it is bad
You're probably thinking of Double Cross. Tenra Bansho Zero's layout is pretty normal for RPGs.

Yeah, backer here. I'm waiting for updates, hoping to get it before the end of the year.

I like it, still groups are hard to find...

It was mentioned earlier, but has anyone actually played Meikyu? I can't find any replays out there.

Yes.

...

I've ran it many times what do you need to know?

Is there a list of JRPG's available, I have a large trove and may have some of them. It would also make scouting out missing books easier for me.

How does play work? Between the dungeoncrawling and the other half of the game? Does it mesh well?

As far as I know, this is what's translated. Between official and unofficial ones.
Double Cross (Core Book, Advanced Rulebook, Public Enemy, Infinity Code), Grancrest, Golden Sky Stories, Kancolle, Log Horizon, Monotone Museum, Meikyu, Nechronica, Night Wizard (3E), Ryuutama, Shinobigami (Soon), Tenra Bansho Zero, Witch Quest

Which ones do you have?

The Kingdom and End Phases are mostly just preparation and cleanup, not much to mesh there.

"How does play work?" is an awfully vague question.
It works.
Quite formulaic, but with lots of randomly rolled prompts for interesting and zany roleplaying, so it relies on the players not just going through the motions. That said, the mechanics are quite interesting and varied, so there's enough fun to be had there, too.

They're complementary and the base gameplay loop is built on that. The kingdom phase gameplay is about mission briefing and preparation before hitting the dungeon and endphase is the debrief and clean up. The dungeon is where your preparation pays off or doesn't, and with the spoils of your dungeon run you get materials to build up the kingdom which is important as your character progression is tied to the kingdom's and the facilities you get help in various ways.

If you're talking about narrative elements and how they mesh with the gameplay cycle the translation has some blurb about putting heavy role playing bits before you do the kingdom phase. Plus player backstories can be used as justification for the dungeon crawls.

The question about "how does play work"
is as said really vague.

The general feel is that of a casual old school D&D dungeon crawling campaign with board game elements. Combat is a bit strategic since you got positioning and abilities which do various things and which you'll be metagaming to see what is the wombo-combo within your party.

But honestly just fucking play it or run it.

Just post it anyway, all else fails we just have another location to download everything from.

>Lanternworks Unlimited is or is not officially supposed to be working on it.
That's the problem

It's fucked. On an SA thread months ago they said there was an issue with communication with the company not giving them materials cuz the publishers thought they weren't working or some shit and are being stonewalled.

Things could be changed but I don't know because I'm not paying 10 dollars to access the forum.

I'm gonna guess that "immunity:katanas+Desert Eagles" is an overpowered defensive trait in all of these systems?

Not really, no. It'd be a waste, really.

My collection is large, over 500 gigs large. I can't just share that.

There is a RPG meet half a block away from my house in two weeks, so I'm gonna run this with strangers.
Would be the first time I run it, any recomendations for first time? 4 players max, with 5-6 pregenerated sheets to chose from with some options here and there.

So what came first, the Grancrest RPG or the light novels?

I'm fairly sure it was the light novels

>the publishers thought they weren't working or some shit
Well, of course. I think so, too. I have serious doubts as to whether Lanternworks Unlimited even exists.
I mean, what kind of complete fucktards make Something Awful and Veeky Forums their only online presence? If you're too lazy to put even just a rudimentary one-page website to your name so people can actually contact you, you deserve every single communication problem possible.

It would basically never trigger.

Yes, you can.

They existed to a certain point and that point was 3 years ago for whatever was translated for that German gaming convention.

>I mean, what kind of complete fucktards make Something Awful and Veeky Forums their only online presence?

From the standpoint of their contract work I doubt that matters. The translators are this clique that post on SA and have translated games from an equally small pool of game companies which makes them all fairly interconnected. No really like the guy who translated Maid worked with the same author for translating Golden Sky Stories. TBZ and Double cross are from the same publisher F.E.A.R. And said translator is friends with these other translators that have worked on these other games.

If you're talking about the standpoint of potential customer with interest in buying a properly translated version of meikyuu, than yeah the decision to have no presence beyond those areas is utterly lacking in transparency as well as frustrating.

>you can contact me via RPG.net, SomethingAwful, or as someone did in here, via email from the press release contact. I was posting about it on Veeky Forums awhile ago, but other than that there isn't much to discuss right now and the content has been archived. I am reluctant to make any dedicated accounts for this pretty much until we're in the release phases. I don't need more social media on my plate to keep updated with - not to be rude, but just the team (including me) is well enough loaded with other stuff already.

Make of it as you will

DESU at this point the only way I can see a proper translation of it coming out is if Shinobigami proves successful and sparks goodwill in trying to translate more games by Adventure Planning Service who publishes both games.

I-i-is that nathan explosion in a skirt?

I thought the EXACT SAME THING before I expanded the image.

If they're friends with Kitkowski, Sanchez and Cluney, why have I never heard about that clique? Usually, they're all about cross-promotion.

Do you have raws of Grancrest? I wanna look at pictures of Lords, Artists, and Mages.

I was intending to call the collective pool of the people that have worked on most of these professional translations of Japanese games a clique cuz a good chunk of them post on Something Awful where they do discuss progress their work as well as what other games they might be looking at to translate.

I don't know if they're friends but they're definitely connected and networking with each other. plus.google.com/106336779568808404452/posts/EbHYsQZTSSf?sfc=true

Here you can see one of the meikyuu guys talking about communication breakdown stalling progress on the translation and Kitkowski saying he'll email the guy about it as well as inadvertently confirming that there is some terrible fucking levels of communication which is the most culpable cause of why the project died.

No, I have very little in the way of books under 'G'.

>Tfw no Tenra WAR ever

Bumping thread

Would you say there are certain aspects that make a game feel Japanese, the same way Japanese video games Greek different from Western video games?

Has anyone actually played the Log Horizon RPG?

I've looked through it, but for some reason some of it makes me want to smack the person that made it.

What's the problem with it?

I'm not sure, and that's what irks me.

That's why I asked, to see if anyone has any actually played it and see if anyone has had any issues with it or if it's just my autism acting up.

If it's any comfort, I have the exact same impression.
Something about the system is incredibly off, but whenever I try to look at something in detail, it more or less checks out.

>focus on one-shots
>inter-PC drama
>ROC (roll or choice) elements in chargen
>detailed session structure
>pre-determined PC roles for scenarios

...is what I can think off the top of my head.

>detailed session structure
>pre-determined PC roles for scenarios
What did you mean by this?

The TL;DR is railroading

Double cross is the most notable example with how strict it wants the play to go, I think it even encourages what amounts to cutscenes with NPCs and having scenes where not all PCs are there

>session structure
Meikyuu Kingdom sessions always move from Kingdom Phase to Dungeon Phase to End Phase. Each Quarter in the Dungeon usually goes from Enter a Room to Encounter to Camp.

Shinobigami sessions are intended to have an Introduction Phase, a Main Phase with three scenes per player freely divided between Drama and Combat Scenes plus Master Scenes as needed, followed by a Climax Phase and cleanup.

Double Cross sessions consist of an Introduction Phase, a Main Phase with a couple investigation scenes and one fight, followed by a Climax Phase once the required key scenes have been triggered and cleanup to see who gets to make a new character.

>PC roles
Tenra Bansho Zero has the GM prepare the rough story along with PC handouts that require the player to pick certain archetypes and give them a Scenario Fate.

Shinobigami sessions start with the GM distributing handouts containing each PC's Mission and Secret.

Double Cross handouts consist of a required Work/Cover/etc. and a quick description of the PC's role in the session.

>If it's any comfort, I have the exact same impression.
>Something about the system is incredibly off, but whenever I try to look at something in detail, it more or less checks out.

Looking over it again, part of it may be due to how Character Rank =/= In Game level. Meaning, that you could have a Character Rank of 1 (starting) but in the narrative be a level 82 Monk or something. Which throws things way out of wack and causes some cognizant dissonance with the fact a group of low level kobolds could kill a high level character just because they both happen to be Character Rank 1.

That's just a minor nitpick, really. Level is a purely cosmetic number, so as long as you're being reasonable about it, it's not a problem.

No, my impression is that there's something wrong with the mechanics themselves.
I will try it sooner or later, but I'll have to make a playset for a con first. And for that, Giant Allege and Shinobigami currently take precedence.

I don't know.

Considering the fact that it's a game based on an Anime based on a Light Novel that's set in that universe's more hardcore version of WoW. The fact that it doesn't actually try to wear the trappings of an MMO-type game is a pretty big nitpick.

Abstraction. Trying to cram MMO-style levels into the system just creates unnecessary complications. And Japanese RPGs very much value efficiency over faithfulness to the source material.
Also, it's based directly on the Light Novels. The author himself worked on the TRPG.

What's wrong with that? I usually write up a short vignette for my players after every session to introduce new characters, look what the villain is up to, etc

How is Ryutama? A friend is quite happy with it, but I'd like extra opinions before I buy anything.

I believe this to be the strongest combo in the game, to the point that all other methods of damage dealing are meaningless.

>Monks don't use up Pursuit when using Tiger Echo Fist
>Monks can use Aerial Rave as a minor action to trigger all Pursuit on the target in one hit

All you need are Monks and high-Pursuit classes.

I don't know whether this eventually becomes an issue or not, but Cleric's Reactive Heal doesn't scale with character stats. Only skills, which are capped.

Meanwhile, Druid has a regeneration skill that scales with two stats and lasts the entire fight. It only takes one more point in a skill to add Recovery to the regen.

>Giant Allege

Mah nigga

Before this post, I had no idea something like Giant Allege existed.
The premise sounds amazing

I'm reading about it now, too!

When you read the translation, please note that it is incorrect.
I haven't gone through the entire document, because my Japanese is not that good, but as I was turning the Forms and ARMs into cards for easier character creation, I noticed that about half of them are incomplete or flat-out wrong.

It's awesome.
What exactly do you want to know?

Magic scaling is OP.

Common misconception.

You guys are probably the authority on this on Veeky Forums (aside from touhoufag I guess)

What do I need to do to make my generic d&d campaign more "anime-like" Yeah, yeah, I know, anime isn't a genre. But anime itself has a recognizable style and trappings. I just want to isolate those styles and trappings and inject it into the game.

I didn't even know there was a Giant Allege translation. All I know about it was from that somethingawful review.

Graft noncombat rules to your game from elsewhere.

Play Mutants and Masterminds instead. It's based on d20 and has sourcebooks for "anime-like" characters.

The easiest way would be to switch to a JRPG.

My god, my love for Legal drama's and giant Mechs has been personified in RPG form....

Can anyone here conjure up an English version of the Giant Allege character sheet while I write down the corrections that need to be made to the Forms and ARMs?

Actually, screw writing it down. Have a spreadsheet.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VoLneSpfzsTFLVYo_-N-mQiDdHNVp5V8dZ0nVhT7PoA/edit?usp=sharing

The thing to note about Forms is that any adjustments to Quick, Break and Armor are applied to the Base values, which is important for a couple of ARMs.

Pretty excited for Ryo Kamiya's next game, which for all intents and purposes, except copyright, seems to be the Monster Hunter RPG we have been waiting for so long.

What's it called? It sounds interesting.

Colossal Hunters. Looking forward to it, too.

Is there a release date?

plus.google.com/111810242507576225952/posts/GR6nczfTfpk?sfc=true

Thanks.
Seeing all of those people together makes me realize how small the community is

...

Is this an inappropriate place for me to ask how I go about pirating TBZ? Because I'd really like to get it for free. I admit I'm scum

This is the official "Printer friendly" version. Book one, posting book two in a little bit.

Here is the full setting.
There is a full pdf with both books, bookmarked and with all the delicious art, but can't upload right now.
The PDF sharing thread OP has a link to it, I'm sure of it.

Thank you very much!

Bump

Not with that attitude you can't.

Since we're on the topic of Shinobigami, the first two books are coming out some time soon,but there's at least six other supplements in Japanese. What's in those?

Stuff we're probably not going to get unless Japanese publishing houses suddenly come around to the idea that properly formatted pdfs are not EEEEVIIIILLLL and the fan translation community explodes as a result.

Well you see by putting the books on PDF it makes it easier for the Japanese to pirate it and re-translate it back.

What?

Retranslating a pdf from English to Japanese makes no sense, especially when they have access to the books and could just scan them. Or, buy them, because they're not very expensive and they don't have to pay for international shipping.

What the other guy was talking about was the Japanese publishers not making pdfs in the first place

On top of that the books are 270ish pages, only 40 of which are the actual rules. So if you were Japanese you could just type the rules and distribute them, no pdf required

I thought the context was Jap publishers being hesitant on doing digital releases over physical copies for these translations due to piracy concerns and was making fun of the inane reasoning.

Sarcasm does not work too well with purely written communication.

There's an app for that fampai

I remember reading somewhere that the Ninja clans could have equivalents outside of Japan, like the British Isles having a subdivision of the MI6, the Knights of the Round Table and the Túatha Dé Danann instead of the Hirasaka Agency, the Kurama Shin Clan and the Bloodline of Oni, respectively.

Anyone have more ideas along those lines?