Are there actually any decent tabletop games out of Japan? There's a small scene for translating them...

There is. Can't post it though, since it's on my desktop, which is a victim of recurring IP range bans.

Upload it on sendspace or volafile? You can upload it here on vola /r/mystical_secrets

>Nechronica

2nd or I guess 3rding this.
Nechronica is quality.

Ryuutama's great. Meikyuu Kingdom, Golden Sky Stories, and Maid are fun if you know what you're in for. Tenra Bansho Zero seems like an amazing game I'll never play, but sure as hell enjoy watching/listening to other people play if they're good at roleplaying. Looking forward to Shinobigami.

Never heard of Dorasure. Is that a Japanese game? What about?

Is there any translation for Zettai Reido?

It is definitely Japanese. DoraSure is short for Dragon Slayer, so it's presumably about slaying dragons.

Second for Ryuutama. Been playing it for a little while and really enjoying it.

It's on BGG. Dorasure is a board game, not an RPG.

I currently live in Japan and fuck me there are so many table top games and rps. However the japs have a greater focus on painting. I just left my LGS, I would've snapped a picture for you guys. Maybe next time

Anyone ever finish translating the log horizon game?

Don't be fooled. Most of those RPGs are SRS garbage, the Japanese equivalent of d20 system games.

Japan user, would you be willing to help me hunt down something on whatever passes for jap eBay?

I'm not too comfortable with sharing files that are not really mine to share in any permanent capacity.

That said...

And a victim of file size limits.

Thank you

If you have any questions and manage to keep the thread alive for a couple hours, I'll be happy to answer them.

Never said they were good but yeah. A lot of it is trash.

Depends what do you want? And If I have time. give me the Deets.

What's Make You Kingdom? Haven't heard of it before.

The Basic and Expert books, pic related. I've given up on finding the three volume Rules Cyclopedia.

Also known as Meikyuu Kingdom, you create a country then do dungeon delves to fund your kingdom.

That sounds fucking awesome. I'll need to hunt down a pdf, that's entirely my kind of jam.

so, Pen-and-Paper Majesty

It is translated. Never played it though.

OP here. It looks like I found both books for sale, but they're expensive (Beginner is $50, Expert is $80). I can scan it, but I can't afford to cover the costs (especially since they're only 48 pages each). Post a picture of the Rules Cyclopedia and I'll see if they have it.

The nice thing about Meikyuu Kingdom/Make You Kingdom is it's a lot of fucking fun. It offers a semi-boardgame experience of managing a kingdom, but also the dungeon-delving experience for gathering resources. I love the idea of other kingdoms encroaching and needing to be dealt with. Several of the PCs (even the king/queen!) may even be spies from the other kingdoms!

On the other hand, it does sometimes dictate to you changes in character relationships and even what you do/how your character reacts to something. Fine if you're cool to roll with it, but people who really enjoy the roleplaying part may want to discuss how far they want to handle those incidents (agree to follow it as a prompt but do your own thing about how to get there, or just reroll entirely).

The English fan translation is pretty decent and very playable. Might want to hunt down scans of the Japanese too, just for the pictures to get you on the same page. There was supposed to be an official English translation of it, but it's pretty dead since I haven't heard anything official about it since the announcement at that German board game convention years back.

No, at 50 bucks a pop, I wouldn't go tere either. Thanks for looking, though.

Here's the RC.

I imagine that to be the going rate for vintage rulebooks. Is there any special reason you want them? Nice art though.

I'll look around. Yellow Submarine usually has slightly damaged copies for a cheap price.

I collect stuff like this for the love of the hobby. I've got the Hebrew AD&D stuff just because it's an interesting footnote. And since D&D informed JRPGs and some types of anime, I thought it'd be cool to add.

Also the first two volumes of this are on Yahoo Auctions for about $20 apiece. I wouldn't mind scanning any of these, I just don't want to pay for 'em.

Ah, so no scanning then. Yeah, they're out there probably, just have to put up the cash for them. Everything you listed except Cyclopedia 3 is online with a cursory search.

So what are we looking at, ~40 for the first two volumes, then the same for shipping?

If you're just going to put them on your shelf, I would sign up for Zenmarket. They make buying on Yahoo auctions really fucking easy. You need Paypal though. Shipping is probably gonna be $25 or so depending on how fast you want it to arrive.

Forgot to link the site.

tradersguild.cart.fc2.com/ca30/677/

Awesome, I think I will. That saves us both a lot of hassle. Thanks for pointing that out, user.

Take some pics of the art and make a thread later.

I work for a manga publisher and we've discussed doing a kickstarter to localize some JP tabletop games.

Which untranslated games would you be most interested in seeing an official release for?

Will do! While using Zenmarket, any particular advice on searching? For example, ルールサイクロペディア (which Google Translate says is "Rules cyclopedia", doesn't turn up anything)

Assuming rights don't become an issue, the Log Horizon TRPG looked pretty cool (got a copy of it that I cannot read for lack of knowing moonrunes, which I acquired to assist me in studying how to moonrune). I'm sure Kamigakari would be an interesting one to try localizing.

Just make an account and paste these into the URL bar at the top of their page.

page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g256564138
page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g256564086

Oh, here are what I primarily use. If I can't find something here, I check the smaller or specialized shops that I find online.

auctions.yahoo.co.jp
order.mandarake.co.jp
suruga-ya.jp

Suruga is more reliable for rarer books, but Mandarake has direct international shipping (the other two require a proxy to ship it to you). Mandarake sometimes has the same books as Suruga though. As for searching, either D&D or Dungeons and Dragons works. I never see it in katakana.

It becomes trickier if there are manga rights involved, as companies like Viz get first look on titles tied to big conglomerates like Shueisha and may defensively take the license just to block us.

Meikyuu Kingdom would be fun. I'd love to see stuff that can't legally happen and is kind of pointless, though. Like the Earthdawn translations ported back to English, but keep the art. Again, I know it's pointless.

Elsewise... Blade of Arcana? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_of_Arcana

Wares Blade.

Double cross is another good option. The system is a bit confusing a bit, but its easy to read. The problem is some of the powers and stuff like.

Could you elaborate a bit more on what about it is interesting?

The only untranslated/not in talks* JTRPG game I'm aware of that I've ever heard is good is Gear Antique:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear_Antique

But I know nothing about it other than what's in that wiki link + one guy saying it was cool, so I don't know if it's a safe bet at all. Premise seems like it has potential, though?

I'm personally looking for anything that feels like a JRPG (Ryuutama, Meikyuu Kingdom), has unique mechanics that you don't really find in Western games (TBZ, Meikyuu, GSS), or is good for a laugh (Maid, Meikyuu). Being easy to learn and pretty "friendly" (meaning, very low or no ecchi) is preferred, as I'd like to have intro-level games ready to go for family or friends.

*Well, I will say that some of the games that use the same system as Shinobigami sound like a ton of fun, but I'm not listing them as it's possible Kotodama may be pursing their rights in the future, considering they're the ones that asked if we'd be interested. I'm talking specifically about the one about pop idols, some sort of supernatural/paranormal one, and iirc there was one with magical girls.

Not the person who recommended, but I hear people recommend it a lot for people who want to play a good superhero game. Apparently, the power sets are a lot of fun.

The "Lois" system also sounds interesting, as it's about making personal connections with an NPC (or PC?) and then having a source of good (power boosts, iirc?) and bad (crazy???) things related to relying on that connection. I'm talking out my ass here, as it's been a good year since the last time I ever talked to someone about the game and my memory has just retained the idea of, "The Lois system introduces are really cool dynamic and brings the interpersonal connections/character drama I really enjoy in roleplaying!"

How did you join a group? I take it that you're all speaking Japanese when you play.

It's been years since I read the book and run through the sample scenario, but the Lois System really is interesting. Double Cross is way more gritty than it looks. Using the default pregens and scenarios as presented, the PCs are liable to get oneshot a lot. This drives up Encroachment Rate (a percentage they need to keep down if they want to not turn into monsters) as you keep reviving from death. Eventually, you'll stop receiving free revives, so you'll start burning your Loises to revive. You begin thinking shit like, "welp, looks like it's time to sacrifice my good relationship with my mom if I want to win this fight!" etc.

The game really emulates those anime where the protagonists have to rely on a monstrous power within them that's rampaging.

Double Cross is kind of a neat setting, but the system is all sorts of fucked.

The main problem is that it's a typical case of SRS-style design. Take a stereotypically boring "two sides punch each other until one drops dead" system and put in a interesting-looking gimmick without considering how it actually affects the system as a whole.

In Double Cross, that gimmick is Encroachment and Resurrection. Long story short, Encroachment is the actual "stay alive" stat on the player side and makes HP pointless, while the rest of the system still acts as if HP were everything. As a result, doing anything but stacking the biggest modifiers for the biggest attack with as few powers as possible just means shooting yourself in the foot.

The "Lois" system sounds nice, as well, but it just serves as an extension of the PCs' Encroachment limits. No real weight to it, just use every scene to make a connection until you have seven, then burn them to stay alive. Like anything else in Double Cross, the idea of personal connections keeping people with inhuman powers from going off the deep end is best just taken as inspiration for doing something in another system.

I find HP and defense being functionally useless kinda reinforces the theme though, but given that you're more experienced with "SRS-style design" that may just be a happy accident.

I made a full set of English cards for MYK with all the card art from a scan using nandeck. Big fucking file though. If anyone's interested, I'll look into uploading it somewhere.

Magicalogia, please. Or just about anything Saikoro Fiction in general.

It's an accident, but certainly not a happy one.
Most of the powers, especially any thematically interesting ones, are utterly pointless. The only powers worth taking are the simple point adders that are identical between the different syndromes. There are no interesting decisions to make.

If the system had been built around the idea that attack is everything and created gameplay and character creation decisions based on that idea, it would be pretty appropriate and amazing. But as it is, any sort of interesting character concept you can come up with just falls painfully short.

That's the thing about SRS-style design. The games just sprinkle in one or two enticing ideas onto a boring and mindless system, without implementing them in any useful capacity, leaving it to the players to fix their shortcomings.

Kamigakari and Night Wizard are much the same way, except that school of design even extends to their settings. Throw the entire kitchen sink into the modern world, then put safeguards in place so that the kitchen sink can never meaningfully interact with the world or even other parts of itself outside of their stunted combat systems, so the writers don't have to think about what any of it does.

>I made a full set of English cards for MYK with all the card art from a scan using nandeck. Big fucking file though.
I'm interested. MYK kinda loses something without the art.

also interested

Currently uploading.

The train wreck continues, btw. I forgot to mention that the only piece of encounter building advice in the system is to make offense pointless as well.
You're supposed to take the party's average damage output per turn and triple it to get the enemies' HP. No mention of abilities, enemy types, enemy roles, statuses, terrain, no. Just make combat last three rounds.
If you take this into account, the best way to build your character is actually taking only defensive powers, so that you can attack without taking Encroachment. Because you're supposed to kill the encounter in three turns, no matter how much damage you can do.

A comment I read here about comparing SRS style games to the glut of poorly made D20 supplements makes more and more sense now.

I want to see this one translated.

Here you go.
mediafire com/file/jwl9wayplbnvbja/MYK.pdf

I re-translated all the Engrishy names the fan translation just took straight from the Japanese original, but since there aren't many references to those names outside the cards themselves, there shouldn't be any problems with that.

That would be mine.

Funny thing is, not all SRS-style games bear the SRS logo, while some games bearing the SRS logo are not SRS-style games.

Well, at least one. Tokyo Nova. It is based on the SRS (Standard Roleplaying System, in case you were wondering), but it's just amazing in how well thought out everything is.
It already starts with the core resolution system, which uses cards. And not just as a convoluted dice replacement, but actually taking advantage of suits, hand management, even giving you a reason to want and keep low cards. The rest of the system keeps up that level of thought and consideration.
We currently have 27 classes translated, all of which manage to feel different and thematically coherent in both fluff and gameplay. Compare and contrast to Kamigakari and Night Wizard, where most powers of most classes are just slight numerical variations of "deal more damage".

I'd had it on my DrivethruRPG wishlist for awhile as I like collecting JTRPGs, even though I can never find a game for them when I have the time. But after hearing you talk about it, paired with what people have said about the translation/layout quality of the book being poor, I'll give it a hard pass unless I pick it up second-hand or in a pdf bundle. (And then just steal the setting.)

Does look sweet. Pic related is my white whale. I'd translate it myself if I could get a copy.

Thanks!

...

There's foreigners and Japanese who want to try speaking English or keep up their English

Oh, don't even get me started on the translation and layout.
As a professional translator (DE-EN, no JP just yet, unfortunately), that shit is downright offensive to me. No proofreading, not even internally, no spellchecker, not the slightest attempt at separating the English text from Japanese syntax...
And even though I have not studied layout, the ridiculous amounts of whitespace, the gratuitous use of centered text, especially in fucking stat blocks, the general formatting, everything is so obviously wrong.
And as if that wasn't enough, the core book is physically faulty. I can't really describe it, but despite me handling it as carefully as all my other books, it quickly started bending and discoloring and disintegrating in weird ways.

Yeah - I heard rumors that they cut corners and it seems like aside from not having editing or hiring someone to professionally do layout they must have also skimped on the print quality. That's damned disappointing.

I know that someone who genuinely loved the JP version of the book ranted in one of these threads once about how shitty it was that a "good game" got picked up by such a trash company, because now they'll sit on their rights for awhile before anyone else could approach the JP company to negotiate doing a new edition... and who would do that if a previous English edition exists?

Kind of why I'm glad whoever has Meikyuu Kingdom hasn't actually published it yet. Based on what I've heard and observed, it seems like they're cut from the same cloth as the DoubleCross team. At least if they don't publish anything at all, someone else might be able to swoop in and save the project.

Thanks for the cards, by the way! Nice and clean looking.

About MYK, last Essen I talked to a translator working with Bouken, and apparently they're working on a German translation? I assume it's to sidestep the issue with Lanternworks Unlimited. Didn't hear any details, though, and it sounded like they still hadn't completely figured out licensing yet, so it's pretty up in the air.

Meikyu Kingdom sounds really sweet. What's the best fan translation available at the moment? I'm learning Scribus and fancying up a copy to print through lulu would be good practice.

Nandeck makes it pretty easy. Extracting all the images from the scan was what took me the longest.

>What's the best fan translation available at the moment?
The only one. With my cards, I guess.

Time to hunt down the translation, then. This should be fun.

If you mean the game - yep! It's also a damn easy game to solo if you're into that.

If you mean hunting it down, nah. Should be first result on any logical Google search.

Oh, I forgot.
I made the both the Giant Allege and the MYK cards to fit standard sleeves, if you print them at 100%.

Double Cross is also quite good as well.

I translated the player's section 2 -3 months ago, the pdf file's floating around the JTRPG discord somewhere. I am sorry that I haven't been working on the GM section, been busy

Log Horizon is actually translated, though a bit wonky. It's workable, though it's very hard to play as-is as the translators took a... Strangely D&D-esq approach to it.

The supplement is coming out on March 20th and that'll probably not get translated much.

Idk if that's the final version of translation, but that's what i have in my folder.
anonfile.com/1fIcJ9d1be/Zettai_Reido.rar

Found a 300 page fanlation, assuming it's the one. Also found the raw PDFs. Would it be worth suffering through google translate and trying to fish out the fluff?

File size checks out, seems legit.

Please refer to
>the translators took a... Strangely D&D-esq approach to it.
What do you mean by that?

This looks like it's easy to find online, do you just not have the money?

There was a blog translating the fluff. It's not complete, but it translated enough to fire up the imagination. Apparently humans don't bury their dead in the setting. They just place the bodies in an elevator and the Angels/Demons give gifts in return.

>It's also a damn easy game to solo if you're into that.
Can also confirm this. It's got enough rules and random tables to feel board game-ish at times. Just supplement it with Mythic GM emulator and you can take the game for a spin.

awesome, I'll hunt that down as well.

I've never actually played any Japanese TRPGs. Which ones can I just print out and play?

...all of them? We're talking about TRPGs here, not CCGs or wargames.

Oh, okay then. I looked at OP's and saw setpieces.

Read the thread, will ya.

I tried setting up a monthly game of Meikyuu Kingdom at a local con, maybe even with multiple kingdoms.

Unfortunately, the attendees would rather stare into the air doing absolutely nothing than read as much as a single character sheet.

Meikyuu Kingdom.

I want to play around with the expansion materials as well