Delayed Ryuutama - Natural Fantasy Roleplaying ("Hayao Miyazaki's Oregon Trail")

[klawzie]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/ryuutama-natural-fantasy-role-playing-game

 

Ryuutama is a fantasy RPG originally published in Japanese and now translated into English!

 

It is meant to be a game that takes the "NPCs" of a fantasy world (farmers, merchants, etc) and has them go on journeys. As they go on their journey and encounter strange new lands and exciting new things, a dragon (played by the GM) watches over them and records their journey... and can assist them. The type of dragon the GM chooses influences the "flavor" of the story.

 

I've been looking forward to seeing this game translated for years now! The company doing so has already successfully Kickstarted another project, Tenra Bansho Zero (and fulfilled beautifully). They also were a part of the Maid: The RPG translation project. So they have experience and are working very closely with both the original creator of the game and also one of the original artists for the game.

 

I wish I could tell you more about the game than is available on the Kickstarter page or the webpage, but it's honestly all I know about the game as I'm very, super slowly learning Japanese and haven't read or played it before.

[Sabith]

This looks pretty cool. My wife and I are Miyazaki geeks, and a roleplaying game that embodies that same spirit sounds awesome!

[MonkeySloth]

Love quirky stuff like this.

[aku-chan]

If this came with minis I'd be all over it.

[klawzie]

If I understand the battle map thing, it could easily be played with miniatures. I would love if Reaper made some Ryuutama inspired minis!

[klawzie]

As an update for anyone interested or fence-sitting, yesterday's announcement confirmed awesome things:

 

- Instead of a few color pages, the book will be in full color! Huzzah! Even in Japan, they weren't able to do that!

 

- The card deck (not necessary for play, but a good visual reminder for your players what the day's weather and terrain is and a possible randomizing element) will be made print and play. There was talk in an earlier update that they might use a POD service for it too, but nothing confirmed about whether it'll be an add-on for this KS.

 

- Confirmation that they'll be taking some of the material from the French translation (like new character classes) and add them in as well.

 

- More material from the two Japanese supplements (wagon rules, "unique road creation" rules, "ab-lib" style plot scenario generation).

 

 

If you missed the previous update on the milestones, they were:

 

- Random NPC generation tables. As I understand, it covers more than just what an NPC looks like, but you might roll up (as per the video), "An older woman who has a dream." So motivation or subplot hooks, not just looks and skills.

 

- New rules for herbs. Written by the game's original creator and translated into English for us. This adds more herbs and things they can do to the base game, which had (iirc) one or two per terrain type.

 

- New PC race - the Konekogoblins. So you can play the wacky little cat-goblins as PCs using these rules.

 

- More material from the two Japanese supplements. (Wagon travel rules and ocean travel rules.)

 

- New PC class (Navigator) from the second supplement. Having watched the lead translator's games on Youtube, it seems like he created a variation on this class called the "Pilot". This has not been officially announced as one of the things being included, but I'm pretty sure that we'll see it officially or unofficially sometime.

 

============

 

Even if you're not interested in playing Ryuutama, these random tables and the rules might be useful in your other games.

 

For the curious, the lead translator is running a Ryuutama game every other week and posting it to his Youtube account. They're three sessions in, and this is the first:

 

 

It cuts off at the end, which is disappointing and the one after seems to start a few minutes into the game.

[Nocturne]

Damnit Klawzie!

I wanted to forget about this one as I love that style of fantasy but know that I would never get to use it.

 

I really cannot justify the postage unless I have an unexpected windfall though.

[Shadow Whispers]

- The card deck (not necessary for play, but a good visual reminder for your players what the day's weather and terrain is and a possible randomizing element) will be made print and play. There was talk in an earlier update that they might use a POD service for it too, but nothing confirmed about whether it'll be an add-on for this KS.

 

I imagine they'll be up on DriveThruCards which does support POD; TBZ's pdf is on there, so I can't imagine Ryuutama and its associated goodies won't be, at which point if you're not going to do a full-scale printing of the cards it seems a waste not to sort 'em out for POD.

 

Have to say, this is one of the few KSs that actually made me stop and really consider the art pledges. Love the style, and they were really quite affordable. Fortunately they sold out before I could bankrupt myself >.>

[klawzie]

Look into the PDF at least, Nocturne! *tempt tempt*

 

Two reasons why you should grab the PDF:

- You are allowed and encouraged to take the PDF to your local printer and have them print up a copy for you. So no S&H fees if you've got a good printer local to you. You'd even have the option of stuff like spiral binding, if you fancied such.

- After the Kickstarter, if at any time you decide, "Y'know, I want the physical version of the book!" they'll take the cost of the PDF off of the price of your physbook! So think of it as saving money in the future! (And since in the future, it might be cheaper to ship to you, you might win for other reasons!)

 

 

@Shadow Whispers - I didn't know they had a card POD site too! I thought they were talking about using another custom printing service (I think it was this one? www.thegamecrafter.com ) - but maybe they just said it was one of their options they were looking into or I just sort of assumed as that was the POD for boardgame things I was most familiar with.

 

I do love her artwork! It's beautiful!

[ShadowRaven]

I want, but my friends wouldn't be at all interested in playing ~sad Shadowraven is sad~

[Berik]

I'd love to get the physical book, but the shipping is a bit much for me. I think I'll go for the pdf though!

[klawzie]

I'm pretty well counting on the G+ community for Ryuutama (and my own "Honobono and Pastoral" games G+ community) to get me into the game. I'd even be willing to run it myself. xD

 

But I think the nice thing about Ryuutama is that the different dragon colors/play styles can make things more interesting for players who might not be into the "honobono" style as much. So you just run it red dragon style or even black dragon style.

 

Yes, I may be trying very hard to talk people who are interested, but don't think they can get people to play it with them just for the pure selfish motive of the more people out there with the book, the more chances I'll find people to play with. ;) I might be able to talk my best friend into playing with me, but she'd rather play freeform. So it's not so much the theme (which she'd be into) as it is that there are rules at all. xD

 

I feel so awful for the international people, though. I know that feel. I'd have ordered the Japanese books from Japan ages ago if it weren't for the murderous shipping rates. And they've only got worse. Hopefully Amazon's partnering with the USPS will make shipping rates static or at least keep them from climbing static or possibly lower them. :x

 

EDIT: I can think in words.

Edited November 15, 2013 by klawzie

[Carnacki the Ghost Finder]

They have a reasonable Canadian shipping pledge. Tempting just because it seems like such a fun RPG.

[klawzie]

Obligatory update!

 

They're now promising air travel rules!

Just as with the Ocean Travel Rules, there will be stats for several classes of airships, campaign ideas, sky combat rules, and even monsters to encounter.

 

And, as I predicted earlier, the pilot class rules go with the air travel rules! Huzzah! Just in case you like airships in your fantasy.

[klawzie]

If anyone is interested and available at around 3pm central time zone, someone is running a game on G+ today: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c4jam4dkmlsr55t74d1q9cjdmic?authkey=COCA-5LW6eLGpgE

 

Anyone is welcome to join, regardless of your experience with the game, we will go through character creation to start the Hangout.

 

I found the link in the Kickstarter comments and am going to try to attend myself. If it matters any, I don't think I know any of the people involved in running this game.

From the comments, the person who posted the link said that once he has the text version of the English rules, he intends to run a game weekly or bi-weekly.

 

Last minute, I know - but I thought I'd share in case fortuitous intersections of time and interest applied.