Has anyone here ever ran a game in Ryuutama...

I've played like 3 Ryuutama games and they've all fell through. It's a cute little fun system, but needs a certain type of people and GM. So people who have fun with D&D systems probably aren't going to enjoy it, but people who like story-based systems like Fate probably will.

Best advice I can give: It's not a combat system. First GM I had for it is a classic JRPG junky and thought this was the system to do it because it's a Japanese system. It's really easy to die in this game because you're not supposed to really fight (you get HP loss just from traveling, so you wear yourself out traveling and god help you if you choose to fight in the afternoon), but at the same time, a low level group of 4 can take out some of the highest level monsters. My GM was quadrupling the HP of things to try to challenge us.

It's been described as Miyazaki meets PnP. Basically the GM is a dragon who collects stories to feed to the baby dragon they're raising, and the players are inhabitants of the world who must go on a journey at least once in their lifetimes. The combat is pretty weak, so if that's the kind of game you're looking for, find something else.

Really, where it shines is the equipment/travel rules. You have to buy the right equipment for the terrain you're crossing, manage your item load, and buy enough food for the journey. You can get lost and set your journey back a day, or break your foot and halve your travel progress, or fall down a ravine and nearly die. The GM can help you or hinder you in certain ways, but generally you're on your own.

It's a super comfy game and I highly recommend it, provided you can find non-edgelords to play it with.

This manga was way more entertaining than I was ever expecting.

I'll just repeat what everyone else in this thread has said and back it up with my own anecdotal evidence. You need the right kind of people for Ryuutama to work. Serious roleplayers are a must, and not the supr srs grimgritty no-fun-allowed variety but the people that get really into and derive a lot of joy from simply roleplaying their character; the further you stray from that ideal, the more the game will suffer.

I ran Ryuutama for exactly two sessions. The first one went really well; it was a solo introductory session with my best friend who's a serious roleplayer, and it went awesomely because we spent most of the session traveling, describing scenery, and roleplaying NPCs. The character was a merchant, I think, traveling to make a name for herself and explore the wide world instead of simply joining her father's trading company. There was a little bit of everything--the solo sessions was mostly to make sure I had all the rules down pat before prime time--including fighting the not!goblins, traveling in harsh weather, handling hazards, buying and managing gear and goods, and all that jazz; I think a good thirty minutes was devoted to finding and buying a pretty dress for formal business deals, and at the end, the merchant PC was good friends with the old Jewish tailors.

The second sessions was with the rest of the group, which included two people that are more on the CN lolrandumb side of the roleplaying spectrum. One didn't want to talk to anyone else and spent the entire sessions asleep on the hill outside of town, saying she'll join the party when they leave; eventually, the player fell asleep from boredom as well. The other didn't do much of anything except gripe and dodge quest hooks. It was a fucking disaster.

what is it?

Hoshi No Samidare, or Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer. It's a modern classic. In fact, honestly all of this author's works are above average.

NM. Should have done a basic search before asking.

Many thanks for the quick and courteous reply

Reading now. I already like the direction it's going. Thanks

As much as I like L&BH, I feel that's his weakest major work. I liked Sengoku Youko more and I fucking adore Spirit Circle to the point I'll occasionally re-read it just for fun.

I guess that's like what is saying; all his shit is good, so you can't really go wrong with any of them. All are good, some are great.

I'll check these out, too.

I've run a short campaign with some old friends - like many anons have already said, you need to have players who far prefer roleplaying rather than roll playing. I've done a few vanilla sessions about traveling and having an overarching coming of age story. Then I switched it up to a sort of dungeon-crawling, recover the Travelogues of dead adventurers to understand and record the dungeon, and even a short murder mystery style session.

Overall, it's simple to play, and pretty enjoyable with my group.

>One didn't want to talk to anyone else and spent the entire sessions asleep on the hill outside of town
This triggered my PTSD. I had to deal with a LOT of players acting like this and texting during sessions. I always feel bad for my GM when this happens.

That shit sucks in every game, but it grinds character-driven campaigns (which Ryuutama specializes in) to a halt.

Word

Really does suck that there's no tabletop that works for a JRPG-like plot/setting.

Super Console

Can anyone lead me to a Ryuutama pdf download? I'd want to give this a look.

It's in the archive. Check the pdf share thread.

Honestly I just thought of a way to deal with this. You cannot be in the same room as the rest of the players if you're not together in the game. If you want to sleep alone and do nothing, you can sit alone in another room and do that.

I'm not that user, but also thankfull for the indication.

There's always hope that Alshard/SRS reaches our shores.

I wouldn't exactly call that hope.

Also, we already have uncharacteristically good SRS (Tokyo Nova), and enough regular, i.e. bad, SRS (Night Wizard, Double Cross).
I only have Alshard Gaia, but it looks very much to be a case of the latter.

Thanks for the info, guys. It does sound comfy.

This game looks great. Can anyone recommend other comfy rpgs, either setting-wise, or source book style?

I wouldn't consider TN any more impressive than Double Cross. It has all the same symptoms DX has of over-emphasis on combat and the whole double-life set-up where your powers are only for another dimension or some shit.

Hell, DX at least has simple powers and skills to allow your character to have mechanics outside of combat.

Golden Sky Stories is supposed to be a slice of life RPG where you play as animal spirit things, like foxes and tanukis and birds and such.

GSS is like the coziest, sweetest game in existence.

...have you even read Tokyo Nova? Because what you're describing has nothing to do with it.

I'll admit that 100% of my knowledge of Alshard comes from Quick Start!!, but it seemed like a decent JRPGish game; you add combine classes into a weird character and journey through a land rife with old school JRPG tropes.

>you add combine classes into a weird character
...which is what you do in every SRS game
>and journey through a land rife with old school JRPG tropes
...which is purely setting and not reflected in the mechanics.

I own the french version of the book and i realy love this game. It's one of my favorite rpg because it's simple and generous with its content. The book is filled with illustration and lore about monster, magic, plants...
Yeah its a great game and recently i thought about sending a fan mail to the creator/translator.

There's two major issue with this game:
1) it's incompatible with a certain type of player. See comment above.

2) this game have been created to be played during short session like in a bar/karaoke because japs don't have much time for this kind of recreation. I've GM'd it 3 time and the average session is around 2 hours. And there lies the problem. It's a comfy game, but also a short one.

Give it a shot if you can. Make your own opinion on it. And try to ignore the "hahah dude cat goblin with pot on head lmao" that the setting trows at you.

Thank you.

I've only managed to run the sample scenario in the book, but that fell pretty much flat because most of my players were just messing around and only one really bought into the premise.

Have you played the Contes d'Orient et d'Occident scenarii? How is it?

Sadly no, i only have the basic game. But i played the introduction scenario, the hot source story involving a vampire (lord) blocking the source. It went good but the end sceen seemed a bit childish. After that i only played homebrew.
Sorry, i can't help you user.

I love all the guy's works, but I disagree with you on L&BH. Out of all of them, it's the only one that can easily keep me trapped in a cycle of rereading, some times as soon as I finish it.

If you can try to seek out the Crunchyroll translation, it's much smoother and might fix some of the issues you have with it

Don't worry. It's an obsure game, I'm happy to have at least found someone that played it.

L&BH is definitely *weirder* than Sengoku Youko, which makes it a little less accessible. Spirit Circle is his best work, though.