Indie Game of the Month

General/Looking For Group
1

Hi all,

since I occassionally get asked “what are Indie RPGs all about?” or “which ones are there and what makes them so ‘indie’?” and the like, and since Neil recently asked me to maybe make a thread about the topic, I decided to do this.

In this thread, I will - in no particular order and with no particular regularity - present certain “Indie” RPGs that have attracted my interest at one time or another, and talk about them in some detail.

First off, though, a disclaimer:
The term “indie” is itself a problematic one. Wikipedia gives its definition as:
“a role-playing game published outside of traditional, ‘mainstream’ means. Varying definitions require that commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator, or that the game should just be produced outside of a corporate environment. The validity and exact definition of the ‘indie’ label is disputed.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_role-playing_game
(And before anyone asks, yeah they taught me at university to never ever use Wikipedia as a source, but what can I say - I’m just a rebel that way :wink: )

Anyways, the “indie” label has become established in a way, even though many people today prefer the terms “storygame” or “narrative rpg”.

The history of these games is tightly interwoven with The Forge website, its founder Ron Edwards, and his theory of GNS. That theory (describing gamers’ “creative agendas” as breaking down into Gamism, Narrativism and Simulationism) is as disputed, potentially problematic, and frequently misinterpreted as the term “Indie RPGs” itself.
For those interested anyways, Ron Edwards’ essays System Does Matter and his three essays elaborating on the GNS concept(s)
Simulationism - The Right To Dream
Gamism - Step On Up
Narrativism - Story Now
may make a good starting point to look into the matter.

But let us not concern too much with theory here, as these essays are lenghty and may seem rather dry at times. And the debates they have spawned in the last decade or so, can be even more so :wink:

To conclude this brief history section, the first “Indie” RPG ever to be written and (self-)published was Ron Edwards’ own Sorcerer (2001), a game that radically deviated from established RPG traditions in both mechanics, and themes. In short, it was a tightly focussed game in which characters have but one (1) stat - Humanity - and the question is raised and treated “how far will you go to get what you want?”

I have never played it though, as I came to the Indie movement only years later, and never had an opportunity to actually try it out (so far).

I will therefore start the thread off with another game, namely the first-ever Indie game that I actually ever played. This will be the content of the next post herein.

Apart from all that, let me just establish a few things for this thread right away: Everyone is of course welcome to ask questions, add their own observations and experiences, and ask for clarification if I expressed anything in a confusing or muddled way… (it’s been known to happen :slight_smile: )
If you’ve got an Indie game you’d like to talk about, go right ahead! No need to limit the thread to one game per month or anything like that, never mind the thread title :sunglasses: (titles always lie to you anyways, same as trailers and covers do of course)

But: one big caveat - please NO lenghty discussions of GNS theory in here!
I know its widely perceived as ridiculous, and I believe I might just convice a few people of this not being the case (or it applying differently than you might think it would), but if we really want to go into that, perhaps the place to do so would be another thread rather than this one… :wink:

2

[quote=“Auburney”]
To conclude this brief history section, the first “Indie” RPG ever to be written and (self-)published was Ron Edwards’ own Sorcerer (2001), a game that radically deviated from established RPG traditions in both mechanics, and themes. In short, it was a tightly focussed game in which characters have but one (1) stat - Humanity - and the question is raised and treated “how far will you go to get what you want?”[/quote]
actually Sorcerer has 4 Stats :wink:

Stamina, Will, and Lore … as well as Humanity (which starts at the level of Stamina or Will, whichever is higher^^), but is always seemed to me that Humanity is less of an attribute and kinda resembling the “Humanity-score” in all those World of Darkness games. :slight_smile:

Well o.k. you roll on Humanity to resist your Demon after all :smiling_imp:

3

ah, thanks for the correction!

So the game does have a “base stats Body-Mind-Soul” (well kinda) thing going on… who knew? :wink:

But Humanity stuck most in my memory of the reviews and stuff I read about it, because it did one interesting thing:
You tried to roll over your Humanity when you tried to summon a Demon and when attempting to make it do things for you. And you tried to roll under Humanity when trying to resist its temptations or exorcise/banish it. (Or something roughly along those lines, don’t remember exactly I’m afraid)
Which basically meant that Sorcerers that were very good at summoning demons were very bad at resisting their temptations…
Sorcerer thus invented (afaik) the “ambiguous stat”. A thing that we shall see again with My Life With Master, later, and which can make for a very interesting game mechanic.

(to compare, most traditional RPGs have stats like Strenght or Intelligence, or Skills such as Stealth, Lore, Tactics etc. - all things that are always, unquestionably a good thing to have. Or they have things like disadvantages, flaws or negative attributes (greed, cowardice and others in Das Schwarze Auge, for example). But apart from Call of Cthulhu with its “Cthulhu Mythos” skill, I know of no examples of ambiguous stats in traditional RPGs)

In that it can actually be used for something, it (Sorcerer’s Humanity) also differs from the World-of-Darkness (well, just Vampire: the Masquerade, really) Humanity, which was basically not a stat but merely window dressing in an otherwise pretty traditonal rule system.

(By which I mean Vampire had attributes, skills, backgrounds and a category for special powers (“disciplines”), and then had Humanity next to all those. I think it was the only stat you never rolled on for anything. It pretty much merely put a number (from 1-10) on the state of your character’s moral degradation/deterioration, a trend for which comes inherent with the whole “being a vampire” thing in that game. But that number never even meant anything much to anyone in that game either, because, well, very complex moral and ethic things going on - it actually performed worse for tracking morality than D&D alignment did, imho. At least alignment had two axes.)

Werewolf: the Apocalypse did much better with its Rage stat (which werewolves had in place of Vampires’ Humanity). Now that was a stat that actually did things in the game! But it didn’t have a lot to do with morality anymore, either…

4

@World of Darkness

1.1 Vampires
Humanity also limits your dicepool for social action with mortals :smiling_imp:
and limits your dicepool for resisting the fear of fire/sunlight and resisting anger as well as hunger frenzy.
(Plus in the Dark Ages Version the “aura” of your personal Philosophy (including Humanity) modifies certain social tests.)

…aaaand it limited ALL your dicepools during the day and also stated how easy it would be for you to wake up and how long you would be in Torpor (~“vampire hibernation”).

In the New WoD gameline Vampire the Requiem this is even more enforced, since the drama tend to be more on a personal then on a globel level.

In most games, when a typical non-n00b vampire character interacted with a mortal, he rolled his Humanity stat. :smiling_imp:

1.2 Werwolves

The closest WoD Werwolves had to Humanity was “Harmony” in the New WoD Werwolf: The Forsaken (WtF! :laughing:) line.

Rage (and Gnosis) in Old WoD worked totally different.
(as far as i encountered/played them)

@Sorcerer

Do not misunderstand me - I like the game.
I just fail to see, how this game is different from many others out there.

…it has Humanity as a derived stat, that influenced certain tests.
…and it will give PCs boni () on tests, if players would describe the “stunts” of their characters well.
… it gives PCs penalties () for unimaginative ("I attack " grabs dice) or repetitive (“O.k. I attack again” grabs dice) actions.

nice but not new (in 2002, when Sorcerer was published) :nerd:

(*) Note: If you play this game, you will often need these boni to be able to succeed.

5

Excellent post!

I’m already looking forward to reading more. Even though I don’t always see all things indie from exactly the same point of view as you, it’s always interesting, and I’ve learned a lot from you and the other indie folks here.

I do believe, however, that ambiguous stats go back a long way. In Toon, for example, you had to roll equal to or under the Smarts stat to do things involving intelligence, but over Smarts to do certain impossible, cartoony things. (Cartoonity rather than Humanity?)

Toon was released in 1984. It also includes several more elements that people these days consider highly indie.

6

Whaaat?! Really? I didn’t even… really?
That’s funny, I played quite some V:tM, but we never encountered that rule…

You sure it’s not from Requiem or V20? Or some kind of optional rule from one of the many supplements…?
Or maybe it was because Humanity often starts high enough (and/or social interaction skills start low enough) for that not to trigger…?

[quote]and limits your dicepool for resisting the fear of fire/sunlight and resisting anger as well as hunger frenzy.

…aaaand it limited ALL your dicepools during the day and also stated how easy it would be for you to wake up and how long you would be in Torpor.[/quote]
Yeah, virtues could never be higher than Humanity (or something like that), and the Torpor thing rings a bell as well… But okay, even if all that’s true, that’s technically still not “rolling your Humanity stat” :wink:
But granted, it makes Humanity a little bit more than mere “window dressing”, it makes it a limits-imposing variable instead.

I don’t know too much about (never played or read) the V:tR or Dark Ages lines…

I don’t understand. I thought they rolled their social stats, just limited by Humanity? And even so, shouldn’t especially noob vampires still have rather high Humanity, and rather low skills? So, the limit thing wouldn’t necessarily trigger a lot (or at all) for young vampires?

(say you have Manipulation 3, and Subterfuge 3 (both on a 1-5 range) to start out with, and your Humanity would typically be in the 6-8 range at the beginning… no limit triggers in this case :wink: )

[quote]@Sorcerer

Do not misunderstand me - I like the game.
I just fail to see, how this game is different from many others out there.

…it has Humanity as a derived stat, that influenced certain tests.
…and it will give PCs boni () on tests, if players would describe the “stunts” of their characters well.
… it gives PCs penalties () for unimaginative ("I attack " grabs dice) or repetitive (“O.k. I attack again” grabs dice) actions.

nice but not new (in 2002, when Sorcerer was published) :nerd: [/quote]
That all sounds pretty much run-of-the-mill, true, perhaps with a bit of an increased focus on narration and “roleplaying”.

As I said, the interesting innovation here was the “ambiguity” of Humanity as a stat - that it could be both good and bad, depending on situation, whether you had it high or low.

(It is interesting that you don’t seem to have encountered that (strongly) in your games though. So I’m willing to concede that perhaps I read too much into it from the reviews and APs I read. But in theory at least, that would be an interesting innovation.)

AND the very low number of stats that were there on the sheet at all… after all, that was still the time when the absolute majority of RPGs had character sheets that spanned at least one page (occassionally more) of stats and stuff in rather fine print…

7

Interesting! And hilarious :mrgreen:
I’ll add that to the rare cases of this being done in games, ever.
(Because even in the Indie movement, I can’t think of too many games that did that)

spot on! :mrgreen:

8

At the beginning “yes”, but play it for a time and your Humanity should reach 2-3 pretty fast (for most player characters).

I really like the VtR lines: it’s more a “Vampire” game
Vampire The Masquerade often felt like:
“Clanwar with superheroes, that tend to have fangs”
Especially the later editions.

But sooner or later the party has ~ Humanity 3.
Say one character, a “warrior-vampire”, has Humanity 1 and the “troubled pazifist vampire” has Humanity 6.

(Keeping a Humanity of 8 for a long period of time is almost impossible.
Remember that “Theft” is a sin against Humanity 6.)

The last character rolls up to 6 dice.
The “warrior vampire” rolls just 1.

To get away from all that World of Darkness stuff.
Legend of the Five Rings (first published 1997) has “Honor”.
(there is no “ambiguity” of having a low Honor, though - having a low Honor is its own reward since you tend to use tools, others don’t)

True,
… but typically you want to keep it high. At least look, that it does not drop too quickly. There is just one (Summon Demon) type of test, that gets limited by your Humanity. (Contact Demon does not give you a penalty, and Bind Demon does not give you one as well)

:laughing: o.k.,
that soooooooooooooooooooooo very true

9

[quote="-H-"]
Toon was released in 1984. It also includes several more elements that people these days consider highly indie.[/quote]
As well as Over The Edge (1992),
inwhich each character has “traits” instead of attributes/skills.
Like: “Secret Agent” or “From An Alternate Timeline” etc.
(Starts with: one primary, two secondary and one flaw - that’s it. [one of those is chosen by the DM btw. :mrgreen:])

or [as -H- once mentioned] the James Bond RPG (1983) with its Hero Points / Survival Points
(may be used to increase the Quality Rating of a roll or to affect the enviroment to your characters favour)

10

So, without further ado, I present to you - the first Indie RPG I ever actually played :slight_smile: I just had to try it out after I read about the funky bits with the changing GM roles in it!

City of Birds

It came out in 2006, and self-described as “an innovative role-playing game that eschews common assumptions in favor of light-weight rules focused on story. “

it might as well have had the catch phrase “how few rules can an RPG have and still be an RPG?” :wink:

The setting of City of Birds is a City (duh!) that lies at the heart of a mighty empire: “the seat of all power, the source of all culture, the hub of all trade”. The description is kept intentionally vague, so the group can add whatever details they like to it.

Mechanically, the game keeps up the trend of simplicity, as seen in Sorcerer with its mere 3-5 stats
[yes, I’ve discovered a fifth one, Cover, but it is merely a derived stat, just like Humanity, so really you could say it has only three stats]
but it goes about it rather differently:

Characters are basically defined merely through a number of informal traits, called Roles, Elements and Links. So you might be a soldier (Role) who is desires to get promoted (Element) but is hated (Element) by his superior officer (Link). Also, you might be a father (Role) whose only daughter (Link) has yesterday made off (Element) with some rogue from out of town (Link)
No numbers or anything involved. Just descriptions. Not dissimilar to New Fire with its traits, actually.

City of Birds does have a reward/levelling system, but it is rather rudimentary, involving various tokens (called Stones and Coins), which allow a player to make changes to their character after they have played several scenes with it. These changes are made mainly to the informal tags and traits that define the character, such as giving them away, changing them into something else, or getting entirely new ones…

… but that doesn’t tend to play too big of a role mostly, as far as “advancement” is concerned. It can come in handy to reflect “character development”, as in “personality changes”, or the like, however.

(The soldier may have impressed the superior officer who hated him, by doing heroic stuff in a recent battle, and now he hates him no longer. The player changes the “hates me” Element to a new one, perhaps “is jealous of me“, or “is afraid of me”. Or he simply gets rid of the “hates me” Element, whatever makes sense in the fiction :wink: )

Socially / Metagaming-wise, the game adds something new to the RPG experience, or rather it breaks up something old (and often taken for granted), by reassigning the traditional GM/player roles amongst everybody at the table.
Essentially, all players present take turns in GMing the game. Every player thus switches between fulfilling traditional GM-roles and playing their own character, on a scene-by-scene basis.

How does all this not get out of hand within seconds, you ask? :wink:
The game achieves this by doing two things: on the one hand, at the very beginning of the first session, while agreeing on the setting for the game and fleshing it out to some detail, a “Focus” is agreed on by the players. This may be an important person or organization (not one of the PCs themselves), which the story will then revolve around. Something urgent, big and pressing is happening around that focus, and the PCs are people somehow involved with all this. (Their Links, Roles and Elements should be connected to it)

Examples might be “an influential house of merchants, grasping for power after the recent death of the Merchant Baron”, or “the queen is sick and will soon die, and she hasn’t named an heir yet. You are some of her closest courtiers and each of you has some stake in what her last couple of decrees will be about.”

After a setting, some details for it, a Focus, and some urgent situation is agreed upon, players then communally create their PCs. All this helps keep everyone on the same page, and keeps the story from drifting too wildly while different people GM it all the while.
Often, some conflicts are already almost pre-established by this point, such as e.g. between “the priest who wants to convince the queen to convert to his faith before she dies” and “the general who belongs to a secret cult that would be persecuted by the priest’s religion” (both of whom could be awesome PCs)

So, Focus helps keep things, well, focused :wink: in this game.
But also, and here’s an interesting bit, the various GM roles that players assume are quite rigidly codified and clearly distributed. The game uses a kind of animal metaphorism for that, which works like this:
One player starts out as “the Voice”. The Voice’s job is to pick one of the other players, who will be “the Bird”. The Voice may ask the Bird where their PC currently is, what they’re doing etc. Then the Voice narrates a situation this character gets into – something related to the Focus of the game, and the PC’s Roles, Elements and Links. The Bird plays their character just like a player in any traditional RPG does.

The other players, they get something to do as well. The player to the left of the Voice is “the Snake”, and the one to their right is “the Tiger”. Both listen in closely to what the Voice and the Bird play out, because they also have roles to fulfill: briefly summed up, the Snake player introduces conflict into the scene, by narrating in hostile elements, or whatever threats that arise.
Either the Bird or the Snake will at some point announce “Crisis!”, which is when the Tiger comes into play. The Tiger player basically gets to decide the outcome of the scene, based on what the Bird says it does, and what the Snake narrated the problem to be. The Tiger also describes the consequences.
After the scene is concluded, the role of the Voice switches to the next player, he picks a new Bird, and so on…

At some point, tensions will escalate, and the inevitable thing that was coming as part of the Focus (e.g. the death of the queen) will happen. After that is suitably resolved, another round of scenes is played, where the aftermaths and epilogues of the PCs get played out.
The game ends there, but nothing prevents the group from playing a sequel or spin-off story the next time around.

… in the game we had, my character (the wizard from a neighboring nation) ended up imprisoned by royal guards and accused of murder; and of the other’s characters, one ended up dead, one got everything they wanted, and one had left the City, never to come back… good times! :mrgreen:

11

Sounds really nice :mrgreen:

(there is another game from the same year [2006] that had a similar mechanic
… but more tomorrow)

12

Tokyo Brain Pop

…or its older more infamous name:

Panty Explosion
(The title is supposed to be a joke about Engrish).

… was first published 2006 and is a game about a Tokyo girls highschool troubled by Demons. Think about it as classroom-drama meets “The Grudge” and/or Cthulhu.

Real Life Backgroundinfo:

The college entrance exams required to get into Japanese universities are notoriously grueling, and students often spend an entire year or more preparing for them either in cram school, exam clubs or with intense private study. Because of this high school is often a tense and stressful time for students who hope to get into good universities.

Wrist-cutting and other forms of self-injury are becoming more common problems in Japanese schools. Wrist-cutting had been cited as a problem in high schools in the past, but recent surveys show that over 14 percent of the female Japanese students said they had purposely injured themselves at least once, while 6 percent said they had done so at least 10 times.
When asked why they had injured themselves, most students talked about frustration, anger or stress related to the expectations to do well in school and go on to a good college. Japan’s college entry exams are famously grueling and stressful, with students often preparing years ahead of time. Since the exams determine which college a student can attend, and since the choice of college often determines whether the student will be able to find a good job, preparing for them can be especially intense. The suicide rate of Japanese high school students, especially those preparing for their exams, has been on the increase for over a decade.

Studies claim that molestation and statutory rape is not uncommon in schools across Japan, and that victims rarely come forward. To do so would violate a lifetime of learned social conventions.
Students are not just vulnerable to abuse in the classroom. Japan’s commuter trains have long been famous for reports of groping and harassment. Female students commonly report groping in crowded train cars and buses, especially on express trains that go long distances without many stops.

Bullying among students has become a serious problem in Japan. Bullying is usually carried out by a group, the targets often being unpopular, weak or delicate teens. Usually the bullies don’t see the bullying as anything serious, and often consider it a joke. When a victim of bullying hurts or kills her self as a result, the perpetrators are usually surprised and often find it hard to believe that their actions were the cause. Shunning, a kind of bullying which involves entire classes completely ignoring a student to the point of denying her existence, has been growing more and more common in the last decade.

…And This Game Is About:
… a school of ~15 year old japanese schoolgirls fighting Demons … and struggling with their own psychic powers.

Character Creation:

Every Schoolgirl has 2 “Details”.
e.g. “I’m in a band.” or “My head is detachable and can fly around.”
Every character can use each of them in the upcomming act* to lower the difficulty of a roll by 1. Each can “Detail” only be used once per act*.

Every schoolgirl character has a “Goal”. Something that she wants to acomplish in the upcoming act*.
e.g.: “We are choosing class-president tomorrow and I’m going to make sure its me!” or "“I need to find out how to control the demon, that hides inside me, before it eats my soul!”

Then each player picks a “Best Friend” and a “Rival” from her fellow players. It is suggested to go for
sits right next to you = “Rival”
sits left next to you = “Best Friend”
… to make it easier to keep track, but is does not have to be this way.

Finally you choose if your Schoolgirl has psychic powers or not.

At the beginning of each act* the PCs vote the “Most Popular Student”. You cannot vote for yourself plus you should pick a non-psychic schoolgirl PC. Afterwards the PCs vote for the “Least Popular Student”. Again, you cannot vote for yourself, but this time you should pick a psychic schoolgirl PC.

System:

One Player is the “Superintendant” (DM) (although it is very easy to run this game without having one … my guess is that he serves as a backup-plan to ensure that everyone is on the same page and keeps the pace).

All Players & the Superintendant (DM) choose one Demon that their characters will face in the upcoming act*. A Demon could be anything … even something non-supernatural like “Government Agents”.

Clockwise one schoolgirl PC after the other will be in the “Focus” for one scene:
First the PC in the “Focus” narrates together with the Superintendent (DM) a scene. Other PCs could makle suggestions, if they want to. Then the “Rival” of the PC adds an obstacle to the scene.
At anytime anyone (except the PC in “Focus”) can shout “Challenge!”
Should the “Rival” be the one, who shouted that - her character makes an appearance. If it is someone else, the Demon appears.
When this happens the PC, who shouted “Challenge!”, describes how the “Rival” / Demon appears.

Beat the Challenge / Tests:

one d6 … the target number is 4+
(3+ if you are the most popular student; 5+ if you are the least popular)

If you used a “Detail” it lowers the Difficulty by 1. Each “Detail” can only be used once per act*. You have to declare before rolling the die, that you will use a “Detail”.

Narrate the Outcome:
If the PC in “Focus” was victorious, her “Best Friend” narrates the outcome. If she failed her “Rival” narrates the outcome.

Psychic Powers:
Instead of rolling a die a psychic schoolgirl can use her powers to succeed without rolling. But her Rival will narrate the outcome (and she should make it as nasty as possible).

Other PCs
Other PCs, who are present in a scene can be “Challenged!” too. Again if their “Rival” shouted that, they will too make an appearance. So several PCs can be in a “Focus” of a scene.

Challenges / Scene:
There can be any number of “Challenges!” in a scene. A scene ends, when the PC, who was initially in “Focus”, declares that the scene is over.
Typically when she has achieved her success or when she gives up.
Then the next PC clockwise will be in “Focus”.

Demon:
If the Demon appeared in the first two scenes in a row, he cannot appear in the next one, if it had been “wounded” (at least once) in some way.
To defeat a Demon the PCs must take (at least) 3 successful actions against it (usually an attack, or some other kind of harmful action). Each successful action raises the Demons target number for success by 1. For example, if the PCs take a successful action against a Demon, it’s target number for success will be increased from 4, 5 or 6 to just 5 or 6!

The End / Completing your “Goal”:
Every PC stands in the “Focus” for two scenes, then the act* ends.
If you have the feeling that your character has reached her “Goal” and your “Best Friend” agrees, you will be allowed to set a new “Goal” before the next act* for your character - if not, your Goal will carry on to the next one.

You can replace one of your Details with a new one, that reflects how you accomplished your “Goal”. You’ll still get to participate in the rest of this session, playing your PC in other scenes, narrating as a “Best Friend” and “Rival” and taking control of the Demon.

Final Notes:

  • I described the rules of the newest edition (2013) of the game.

  • (*) act: The game writes “game session”, but since they tend to be short (2 scenes per player character) I chose another word for clarification.

  • There are also some suggestions from the developer to use this game for a different setting - such as “JEDI ACADEMY” etc.

13

Looks like it’s starting to be the “Indie Game of the Day”, here :smiley:

I just received (today!) a game I backed 2 years ago (in a equivalent to Kickstarter)… the French translation of

[size=150][color=#0040FF]RYUUTAMA[/color][/size]

I copy/paste the presentation, in English (a Kickstarter was also made for the English version) from the Ryuutama website in English :

“At one point in their lives, everyone embarks upon an exciting journey…”

Ryuutama means “Dragon’s Egg”: Travelers go on a journey, and their stories are recorded by mysterious dragon-people observers called Ryuujin. The Ryuujin then feed the essence of the stories to the Seasonal Dragons, which gives them strength, helps them grow, and this in turn renews the world.

Ryuutama is a Japanese tabletop role-playing game, now translated into English. The original author is Atsuhiro Okada, a lifelong gamer who works in a “Tabletop Gaming Cafe” in Tokyo, the first of its kind in the country. He wrote this game to bring new people into tabletop role-playing, as well as to provide a heartwarming experience which other games at the time did not.

Ryuutama calls itself a “Natural Fantasy RPG”. It is a fantasy role-playing game set in a western medieval-style setting. The conceit of this setting is that at one point, in everyone’s lives, people get this intense feeling of wanderlust. They put their daily lives on hold and travel the world with new-found companions. They find out more about the world, and at the same time learn about themselves.

Ryuutama emphasizes travel, exploration, community, friendship, harmony and growth. There is also a “Console RPG-like” combat system: But while combat certainly happens, it’s not the central focus of the game. Adventures usually involve traveling from one town to another, packing gear, crafting items, cooking and sharing along the way; getting lost, meeting people and (sometimes cute) monsters along the way; braving the elements and trying to set camp properly.

Ryuutama is a game that gives off a “feelgood”, or in Japanese, “Honobono” feel. The feeling of the game is like a Hayao Miyazaki anime: While there is adventure and excitement, there is also a warm sense of wonder, exploration, and companionship (versus an emphasis on violence and extreme action).

To play Ryuuutama, you need a few friends, some multi-sided dice, some pencils and paper, and an open heart. One person will take on the role of the Ryuujin or “Dragon-Person”, the person who creates the scenario and guides the other players (this is also called a Game Master or “GM”). The other players will take on the roles of the Travelers, creating characters and engaging in exciting adventures in a world created by the players.

I will soon start reading it :smiley:

14

[quote=“Melchior”][size=150][color=#0040FF]RYUUTAMA[/color][/size]
…
I will soon start reading it :smiley:[/quote]
Ryuutama (Dragon Egg) is really sweet fantasy travelling RPG :slight_smile:
(Oregon Trail & Dragons ? :laughing: )
Let me add something :slight_smile:

Class /Type
You pick a class, an average character from a village, who now decided to travel with some friends, (Minstrel, Merchant, Hunter, Healer, Farmer, Craftsperson and Noble) and choose a Type (Fighting, Magic or Skills) for your character.
(btw. lots of the magic is seasonal flavoured and really sweet)

System:
Each of your stats (Body, Agility, Mind and Spirit.) is a single die of one type (d4, d6, d8 or d10). In a test you roll two of them together.
(e.g. “Attack with a sword”: Body+Agility)
Afterwards you add boni (e.g. a sun-hat will give you a bonus, derived from its quality, to resist exhaustion [aka Hit Points loss], if you travel in hot enviroments.)
The Target Number will be ~7.

Hit Points:
You loose much more from travelling, than from fighting.
To regain life you have to feed & accommodate your characters well - so setting up a camp will be very important, if you want your character to stay happy!

Equipment:
The System is very equipment dependant (plus that your characters are happy (slept well & well fed)).
A lot of the adventures of a party will include purchasing gear, keeping track of food and water, keeping pack animals, tracking supplies etc.
So bookkeeping of your party items will be essential.
(btw. Bookkeeping or writing an ingame journal will be extra rewarded in the game.)

Dragon:
The GM also has one character, a Ryujin (Dragon God), who watches the PCs in secret (later in the Game she can make an appearance).

The type of Ryujin emphasises the type of game that your group wants to play:

Green Dragon - Travel & Exploration (this is the default dragon)
Blue Dragon - Friendship & Companionship (also very common)
Red Dragon - Combat & Dungeoneering
Black Dragon - Drama & Intrigue

As the PCs gain XP - the Ryujin also gains XP and can gain abilities that help the PCs as well as emphasises her Dragon-theme.

Conclusion:
It is a sweet little heartwarming travelling game plus with a “Gandalf-style” dragon-themed Character for the DM.

Download Links:
(legal & free, but only in japanese^^)

> Player Summery [Japanese]
(Excerpt from the Player section from the Core Book)
(its in full colour / ~3MB)

> Ryuutama Core Book [Japanese]
note: just klick on “PDF”; the lower green box on the left side
(cover in full colour; interior is in b&w / ~25MB)

15

Thanks for the details, Darth !

I had the opportunity to play it once, almost two years ago, in France. The French editor and one of the (French version) illustrators, who was GM that time, are friends of mine… Before that game session, I had huge doubts about it, since I am not fond of “kawaii” things, sweet & pink happyness, etc. Since we were playing with a group which is used to play Bitume (post-apocalyptical French Game) from time to time, it was easy to meet on common desires. We had a Black Dragon, and the game was… well. Excellent. Fun, Quick, really good. And without too much of sweetnesss inside. With a lot of Sadness instead, tragically sad situation… It was great moment.

I discussed it with the editor, since my desire regarding this kind of game is more about dreamlike sessions than “kawaii japanese” sessions, and we both concluded that the game would brilliantly suit to these desires… So I ordered it… I am planning an online campagn in French (forum-rpg) to give it a try (huge freedom for players, dreamlike atmosphere)… let’s see if the “feel-good rpg” deserves its name :wink:

16

Interesting! And hilarious :mrgreen:
I’ll add that to the rare cases of this being done in games, ever.
(Because even in the Indie movement, I can’t think of too many games that did that)[/quote]
You ran into this every once in a while in ye olde days, although I’m not entirely sure whether such things were always explicitly part of various rulebooks or just logical extensions of those rules. In most cases, these were traits that were generally positive, but had drawbacks on occasion (one exception was Call of Cthulhu’s Size stat, which truly was double-edged). For example, reputation is a great thing right until you try to blend into a crowd. It just seemed natural that in such instances, you’d want to fail that check. I didn’t even know a term for this existed.

17

I guess the Dragons are there to give the game a different vibe
e.g. The Blue Dragon is especially suited for the feel good vibe.

So if you run a game with e.g. a Black Dragon (or a Red one) there would not be much of a “Honobono” (aaaaaaaaw) feel.

18

Yes, for sure.
But even with the different dragons, you may play the game with or without the gummy kawaii-like feeling :wink:

19

[quote=“Melchior”]Yes, for sure.
But even with the different dragons, you may play the game with or without the gummy kawaii-like feeling :wink:[/quote]
Jop sure :laughing:

20

[quote=“Auburney”]Socially / Metagaming-wise, the game adds something new to the RPG experience, or rather it breaks up something old (and often taken for granted), by reassigning the traditional GM/player roles amongst everybody at the table.
Essentially, all players present take turns in GMing the game. Every player thus switches between fulfilling traditional GM-roles and playing their own character, on a scene-by-scene basis.[/quote]
I kind of hate to bring this up, but this also predates indie games. Rune comes to mind; there may have been others.