Legendary Arms RPG Kamigakari Translation

Yeah, I know what you mean. I was the one who translated NW3, and by the end of it I was so burnt out on same-y mechanics that it was just... too much. I didn't even run a game of it, myself.

I super recommend Kami, though! It has a lot I'm not even mentioning yet, like how damage is calculated (hint: it also interacts with Spirit dice swapping, because it's calculated based on your highest die in a roll.)

This is amazing, OP. I can't thank you enough.

Hey, it was fun for me to translate too! I hope you enjoy it.

I've always been under the belief that we need more stuff translated, so this is a treat.

Every Awakened has a Spirit Crest, which is an iridescent, rainbow-sparkly glyph somewhere on their bodies. It suggests a shape, and what shape it is is determined by your Main Shard. So if you have Dragon Carrier as your Main, you might have your Crest in the shape of a piece of a armor or a shield, or something. The shape is formed by 22 individual lines, a bit like a Command Seal in Fate/stay night.

Similarly, you have a resource called {Crest}, which you have 22 points of. This is spent using an ability all Godhunters have, called Spirit Burn. There are three effects of Spirit Burn, and which ones you can access depends on how many Bonds you have. Bonds are like Connections in other Japanese games, or Loises in DX (remember this for in a minute). If you have only 1-3, you can use the first level of Spirit Burn. 4-6, the second level. And 7, the max, you can use the third and final level of it.

The first level lets you add 1, 2, or 3d6 to your roll. Naturally, this increases your ability to swap dice. After the roll, however, you need to roll the same number of dice you added to your roll, and you lose that much Crest. The second level lets you, 1/combat, revive from being Downed with a small HP heal. And the third level won't make much sense, but it basically gives you more damage. These last two both cost 2d6 Crest.

You can use Spirit Burn as often as you like, and can even go into negative Crest. However, if you are below 0 Crest at the end of the boss fight, you have to make a Crest Check! You get a set amount of dice to use to recover Crest, based on the number of Bonds you have. If you get back to positive values, you're fine. But if you're still negative...! Then unfortunately, something bad might happen. You probably die, and you might turn into an Aramitama too! But you also might live.

This is a cool and flavorful mechanic, since it's linked with the Crest on your person being 22 lines, and you have 22 points to spend... yeah. I just liked it a lot.

"Karate Bugman" isn't a class you usually see in tabletop games

Rikizou loves him some henshin hero. There's even a motorcycle you use as a weapon to make charge attacks with. I haven't actually watched Kamen Rider but I'm *fairly sure* it's a reference.

Dragon Carrier can also be used for mahou shoujo.

Not him, but I ran a game off of your translation of NW3. Thanks for the translation, and for the nicely formatted spreadsheets.

The system is alright, but to make it remotely interesting I tried switching it to grid combat and making new logics, enemies, items, and a few skills and classes to make it more interesting. From what I saw, the base system isn't too bad, but the designers didn't do a whole lot with what was there.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't bad... just, it felt like "SRS" rather than "Night Wizard" I guess? That's what it was like to me.

I played NW2E when it was new and maybe it's nostalgia/rose-colored glasses, but I felt that had a bit more charm to it, even if it had serious math problems.

In any case, I'm glad you had fun!

Ah, I never looked through 2E. My only view of what Night Wizard actually is was finding as much source material as I could find, which wound up being the anime and some manga.

They painted an odd picture.

100% Confirmed for not heresy and in line with the teachings of Rowboat Girlyman.

Also the only true recreation of Rennaisance swordfighting.

It's an odd series. Back when I was doing the data translation for NW3, I wasn't really good enough at Japanese to do all the world information, but I sort of wish I had been able to, because it's definitely weird.

I mean the evil bad guys can take any shape they want, so in order to get the prana they need, they... become moe girls. I mean it actually makes a dumb kind of sense, but still.

The NW2E game I ran had a huge, masculine guy in a habit riding a chaingun in the form of a cross like a flying surfboard, arms always crossed. It too made a dumb kind of sense.

I take these as the most sacred of compliments, thank you! I hope you have fun.

Oh wow, I've never heard of this before. But it looks awesome. Thank you, op!

Yeah, it's only been mentioned a time or two going by the archives, but it definitely hasn't generated much buzz over here.

I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to ask any questions.

Yeah, wikipedia was actually a minor source of information for previous editions and the stuff like needing to become moe to get worshipers but also prana. And details like weaker demons being niche fetishes because they couldn't take the mainline fetish prana.

I wound up dropping some of that because I think that sort of maximum anime would've gone down poorly with the group I was running for. So the maou the party ran into were a ghost pirate, a pair of gimps with fashion sense, a really lazy demoness, and stuff like that.

One of the party was a transforming robot dog built by the previous pope from meteorite metal before he retired from popery, though.

And there was another group of night wizards who they sometimes worked with who were wrestlers. I wound up adding a wrestler class in part because of that.

Haha, that sounds awesome! Yeah, it was a really wacky setting and I like that, at least, no matter what the mechanics might be. I wish I had been better at Japanese then, but well, the practice/exposure that gave me allowed me to do Kamigakari!

Could this game be used to run a Fate game?

The lack of most of the setting info did hurt a bit, but thankfully there's a bit lying around on the internet to cobble a game out of. It's good to see that it was a steeping stone to a more complete translation, though.

I'll have to think about running this at some point. We're on a japanese game kick right now, so I'm running Tokyo Nova at the moment. I'll have to see how everyone feels about another SRS game after NW3, though.

Fate/stay night? Well, I do mention the Crest lines being the same as Command Seals, but that's really only visually. They work nothing like them mechanically.

But like, it does accurately represent the power level of Servants. There's no Line of Sight nor friendly fire, and by rules you can easily destroy buildings if you put your mind to it.

Not really any way to accurately represent Noble Phantasms, though... hm. Well, I mean, it's possible, you'd just need to work at it some I guess?

Nevermind that in one of the expansion books there is literally a Heroic Spirit race.

You are not the user we deserve, but you are the user we need.

Can we expect to see those expansion books in the future?

I say it's SRS-derivative, but that's just because it kind of looks SRS-y. Even TNX is "SRS-derivative" because it has a lot of the same things that "look the same". Kami, TNX, and NW are all not actually SRS, just... derivative of it.

Look through the rules yourself, though! The Spirit mechanic is definitely really interesting. It makes play so different from anything I've done before.

I won't say no, but I'm not gonna rush on them either. The first book I'd really like to get out at least, because it has Sanctum rules, which are like dead zones from Grancrest... or well, dungeons in general. It also has Heroic Spirit, so that works well.

Is it possible that we may see a translation of that expansion one day? I don't want to sound ungrateful, of course. It just sounds like there's a lot of cool stuff out there for this game.

See ! I'll try to get it out to you guys, but it'll take time.

Awesome, thanks. Do you mind if I tinker and tweak your pdf to create booklets for my players and add page numbering?

Go for it! Let me know how that goes.

Will do. Thanks again, and happy birthday.

P.S. Really glad you translated the little explanatory comics, those things are adorable.

Aren't they?! I couldn't leave them out. Rikizou might be mad if he ever sees it, but they're just too cute.

And, thanks!

I'm a fag for multi-booklet boxes. So what I'm looking at, based on your bookmarks: Chapters 1 and 2 will be in the Player facing book. 3 will be its own book. And 4 will be its own... Though I may split the adventure section out into its own thing.

One of my holy grail games for collecting is to pick up the 3-volume D&D Rules cyclopedia as it came out in Japanaland.

Absolutely based, always love seeing what kind of settings and systems Japan comes up with. Have a fantastic birthday!

I have a question about powers. I'm seeing 1# come up a lot under the target section, but I'm not sure what that means. It it just one? One per cast? Or is there some other variable?

Is there a way to get the original Japanese pdf?

This. Having the art and such would be really nice.

That sounds cool! Yeah, that sounds like an appropriate division of the PDF.

Thanks! I hope you have fun reading and playing!

I'm now regretting I didn't put in page references, but if you glance at page 246 in the PDF, it has this. To clarify, though, 1# means 'one target'. Which can be different each time you use the Talent.

If a Talent has 2# or 3# or whatever, it means it can target two things, or three things respectively.

Nope. There are no PDFs of it in the original language. Japanese companies generally aren't... trusting? of this sort of practice, so they don't really do it. I own the physical books.

While I do agree the art would be nice to have, and I know not everyone has the money to purchase the book, I have to leave some reason as to why would would buy the book, right? I'm sorry! But I did include the comics and diagrams, at least. And the map!

All right, let's talk about damage now. So in most systems, you have a damage roll. Not so in Kami. It uses the very same roll you made to attack with. How it achieves this is by having a stat called Rank, which is cross-referenced with the highest die in your attack roll. Essentially it works out to be Rank x your highest die in the roll + any modifiers. So this means that when you're considering how to Influence your roll by swapping dice, you must also take into account how you'll be affecting your damage.

Physical Rank, used for physical attacks, is usually Rank 1. Magical Attacks depend on what you're using, and usually hovers around 2. You add the PD of your Combat Stats and the PD of your equipped weapon, and that's your damage. So if your highest die is 5, and your Rank is 1, and your total PD modifier is 7, then you're dealing (5*1)+7 = 12. This number is then modified by the target's Damage Reduction step, which usually means they reduce it by their Armor (for Phys damage) or Barrier (for Magic damage). There's also other effects they might use, such as Skeletons [Halving] damage from Form: Spear weapons.

There's also another element, which is Element! You might have a flaming sword or a lightning spear, and every Mononoke in the game has elemental weaknesses. Should the element on your attack match the Mononoke's weakness, bam, you get +1 Rank. Naturally there are enemies who Halve certain types of elements as well.

Now, I should also mention that the final level of Spirit Burn, Concept Destruction, gives you... +1d6 Rank.

I should also mention that if you manage to Critical in this game (which is rolling two 6's), your damage behaves in a special way. In addition to being able to change any one of your Spirit dice to any value you want (which is the basic effect of a critical), you treak your highest die as though it were... 10.

Incidentally, if you fumble (all dice end up 1's), you are forced to turn your highest value die in your Spirit to a 1.

>From what I saw, the base system isn't too bad, but the designers didn't do a whole lot with what was there.
That is the main issue with SRS games.
SRS is a bit like RPG Maker in that it provides an easy-to-use framework, but if you don't make any meaningful additions and alterations to that framework, you end up with bland garbage.

Night Wizard 3e and Double Cross 3e are examples of SRS done wrong. NW focused on combat to the exclusion of everything else and then failed to make combat interesting in any way. Double Cross tried to make a meaningful alteration to the framework with Encroachment, but then completely forgot to consider what effect that alteration has on the game.

Tokyo Nova The Axleration and hopefully Kamigakari are examples of SRS done right. Tokyo Nova has a strong central gimmick (cards and combos), is designed around that gimmick and adjusts the SRS rules to make sense for its system and setting.

I hit the character limit, but during a test game I ran, a player attacked with 4 Rank, and hit a critical. She decided to do Concept Destruction as well and rolled a 5, so her Rank was 9 total. 9 x 10 = 90, plus whatever her PD was (15 I think?)

She slapped off half of the boss's health.

Yeah, that's basically how I see it. I think Kami does a lot of things very differently. It even went out of its way to use different terminology, like "Timings" instead of actions, and you're able to get more than one Attack timing, for instance. And of course it's heavily different in terms of dealing damage, its Spirit mechanic, etcetc.

In any case, I can only hope you'll agree it's a great game!

Interesting, I'll have a read.

I hope you enjoy!

I'll enjoy you.

Terminology doesn't mean much. It's the mechanics behind it that counts.

By the way, I can't help but notice that quite a bit of your phrasing and word choice is... unusual. Are you a non-native speaker or is that just an effect of translating from Japanese.

It's an effect of translating from Japanese. I'm still not GREAT at it and wouldn't even consider myself fluent. It takes me an hour or more to do a single page.

I did try to do a pass on it editing-wise, though I know it still doesn't sound very... natural. It's hard for me to edit my own words, I'm too close to them, and I don't know anyone with a good editorial hand.

That said, just like I grew from Night Wizard, I grew from doing this, and have begun to understand how to better carry meaning to English.

Also terminology does count for at least a little bit. Mechanics are more important, definitely, but terms help make it feel different. In my opinion, anyway.

Lewd!

>It's hard for me to edit my own words, I'm too close to them
Well, duh. Every translator knows that struggle.

>It takes me an hour or more to do a single page.
And yet you completed an entire book? I wish I had your kind of dedication.
I've been putting off finishing just a few pages for a while now, because I can't get the English to sound right.
In my entirely insufficient defense, I am translating from a language I'm bad at to a non-native language.

In the end I decided even a not-entirely-great product is better than none at all, I suppose. I know it's not perfect, but no one's paying me for it, and it was largely done because I wanted to play it, and because I wanted to practice my Japanese! Plus I'll be happy to explain any shitty wording on my part.

What are you translating? Maybe I can help.

Wow
Great Job, man! You´re doing the empras work user.
Could you please provide the link for your night wizard translation?

Oh, sure thing. It's partial, like I said, but here you go!

mediafire.com/file/3ubsz9f12jepxp1/Night_Wizard_3E.zip

The final thing I'd like to point out is the way weapons work, specifically what's termed the Arms System in Kami. In this game, while armor is largely still a stat stick, weapons are at least a little different. In this setting, the Artificial Regalia you wield is a weapon with partial sentience, as it has a small Shard in it. In order to reflect this, you can grow and evolve your weapon(s) to make them suit your style.

Each weapon starts with a Form. In the core book, there isn't a great variety of them, unfortunately, but more books add far more choice. Regardless, let's say you want a sword. You must choose between a one-handed, switch-handed (hand-and-a-half, where you could wield it one or two handed, didn't sound catchy), or two-handed sword. Once you have that, you then apply Additional Effects. The form itself will likely have a basic additional effect (for instance the two-handed sword can increase your physical rank by 1), and then the Form itself will have several types of Additional Effects you may choose to add onto the base Form.

Most of these are things like, increasing its PD or INIT stats, but Forms have different specialties. For instance, Spears specialize in range, and even have an Additional Effect that bypasses cover bonuses (which would be a problem if you're at range). Hammers meanwhile can destroy obstacles, and also create them. Axes are about extreme damage, even allowing you to shave off HP in addition to damage you deal.

In this way, you get to customize your weapon to suit your preferences! Neat, huh?

And there's so much more I could mention, but I think this is a good enough spread of me proselytizing the mechanics. If you guys have any questions at all, please let me know.

Wow, that is really cool!

Right? I really like the Spirit mechanic, it adds a really interesting depth to the system. Hope you enjoy it too!

It's got a lot of legal terminology in it.

What I need is not help. What I need is motivation and a new head, because this cold is making it hard to be productive.

Colds are awful! I hope you feel better soon. Motivation... I-I can't help you with. But I wish you luck, anyway!

I want to play with you. How can I contact you to run a game for you?

I appreciate the offer! But unfortunately I'm already slated to run two games of this for friends, and between that and work and more translation... I don't really have time! Thank you, though.

I just want to talk to you

You're a good man.

>cyborg maid

I'm in.

Thank you! I hope you enjoy.

Well, to avoid the crushing disappointment of not having Cyborg in the race options in the core book, this is for you, user!

pastebin.com/CYHt7S3U

thank you.
Very nice work again.

Not the guy you replied to, but I think those cyborg rules are definitely going to come in handy. I know at least one of my players will play just about any game that lets you play a cyborg.

Not a problem.

Oh, great! I'm glad. There's some stuff like uh, Cyborg-specific weapons and armor that they won't have access to, but really that can be played around. At least I hope so. Hopefully you all enjoy!

This is pretty cool.
I don't think I'll try the system but the setting is certainly inspiring a few ideas.

Thank you very much for translating user. May the god emperor's light shine wherever you go.

Ah, thank you! Glad you could find something of value, at least. Please enjoy yourself.

...

user, please.

Thank you very much for working on something for free just so you can share a cool game that you like.

Do you have a link to the raws? I want to look at the art.

Something about this system really tickles my brain in a real good way. The spirit pool sounds cool. Makes you pay a lot of attention to your die results.

Who knew you could do so much with the humble d6? I love it. I'm not a system master so, I have no idea how mathematically rigorous or balanced the game is, but if it sounds good in play, that's good enough for me.

I dunno I been kinda tripping over it here and there, but I'm sure an actual person from Japan knows how to do it better than most.

Thank you for the kind words! Unfortunately, no raws. I have the physical book, and as far as I'm aware, Arclight/R&R doesn't publish PDFs of their books.

Yeah, I'm not great with probability and stuff either, I just like my attention to be kept with interesting mechanics. The real fun is against mob enemies, the game recommends you use fixed values, and if the PCs can ID the enemy, they know what those values are. So if they know they need to meet or beat a 12 to hit the enemy, they can really think about how to give themselves the dice they need for Talents. It's really fun!

I actually own this book, so thank you for now allowing me to be able to read it in some form

Oh, cool! Thank you for supporting Rikizou, and I'm glad I've enabled you to hopefully enjoy it.

Did that one guy who was gonna do Giant Allege end up doing it?

Can this be turned into a general Japanese PnP rpg thread?

If you want, sure?

I've looked over all the rules related to using a combat bike as a ranged weapon but it just doesn't click for me, unless you're doing a wheely each time you charge by to smack the enemy in the face. I must be thinking too literally.

Maybe this will help?

youtube.com/watch?v=dRweD27QsHk

I assume it's largely a ranged weapon by virtue of it being a charge attack thing. You damage enemies by running into them, wheelie'ing, or the like. Or like the video shows, maybe you leave warding script on your rubber burn marks.

That was helpful actually, thanks.

The Spirit pool system is amazing... I want to steal that.

Glad I could help!

Go for it! What will you do with it?

Not him, but I could see it used for a replacement for LotW's Rivers and Lakes as a much simpler and versatile set up.

Oh yeah, it is a lot like that. I even got inspired for the terms I used, a little bit, from it. LotW looked really cool, but reading reports, it seems to suggest it's heavy in the execution.

Sounds like fun. There's even a Style called God Hand in the first expansion book for Kami. Its Type A has a Talent that lets you rip up an Obstacle on the map and use it as a weapon. Type B turns Obstacles into missiles by punching them and sending them flying at an opponent.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, PCs normally get four dice in their Spirit pool, and using a talent with a Cost temporarily removes one dice for that. So in combat, starting PCs can only perform up to four talents with a Cost?

Where's your rigging Nagato?

This is super cool, OP! Thanks!

It's always interesting to see both how similar and how different Japanese RPGs are to western ones. They have a unique flavor which I just can't define easily, but is very much "theirs". It's not "better", and I'm probably far too used to western style RPGs to be able to comfortably use it myself but it's good in its own way.

Speaking of Sword World, does anyone know if the intention to translate it into English ever went anywhere?

swordworld.wikia.com/wiki/Sword_World_Wiki

This seems really interesting.
Any way to sign up for getting info about you translating the expansions?

This is damn cool. It'll be a while before I can go over everything myself, but I'd been thinking about similar mechanics to the Spirit Pool, only with cards.

What's a good way of finding people willing to try these kinds of games out? I've tried convincing my group, but they just keep wanting to play D&D

Create a Discord server?