GURPS Ring Dream & Manga - Part One, Comic Life (UPDATED)

Here is another installment in my Dungeons & Manga series. However, this time I'll be going as far from D&D as you possibly can, both in terms of system and use of manga-style art.

Today I'll be looking at GURPS' Ring Dream: Women's Pro-Wrestling RPG.

Funnily enough, in my old bookstore scavenging, I have come across a fair amount of GURPS material. On the one hand are translations of books like GURPS Magic or Martial Arts, all with manga art boiled down into the pocket size versions that are still popular here. On the other are 'Japan-only' games created for the home audience. The same phenomenon happens for video games, where dating games or JRPGs might sell on the PS in Tokyo, but are never intended to go beyond Japan's borders, for both gaming niche and cultural unintelligbility reasons.

GURPS Ring Dream is one such Japan-only GURPS product. It would be interesting to see how the license was obtained...

Anyway, GURPS Ring Dream is described as a Women's Pro-Wrestling RPG, a genre represented in video games by Rumble Roses. Whereas English RPGs usually start with a blurb of fiction to set the scene, from the first page Ring Dream uses manga as the fictional underpinning to the game. The manga introduces us to Chika, the orange-haired girl who dreams of being a pro-wrestler. Allow me to translate:

Chika: (carrying two ice creams) Here I am older sister!
Sister: Look, it's starting! Hurry up! Did you get my coffee-flavored ice?
Chika: And my brown rice, green tea, and strawberry-avocado ice. It's delicious!
Sister: Chika, watch out!

(A lady pro-wrestler falls onto Chika) KER-SMASH!
Sister: Watch out! (guffaws at Chika smeared in ice cream)
Chika: (notices ice cream is all gone from her cone) Hunh?
Ring Announcer: Kumano has grabbed Ajihara's hair and thrown her to the center of the ring. Here comes the starting gong!

Downed wrestler: (groans)
Ring Announcer: Uh oh, Ajihara is completely pinned! Sonic is still outside the ring!
Chika: (spies the ice cream on top of Sonic's head) If I can just grab the scoop on top... it's do or die!
Ring Announcer: Ajihara is in a pinch!
Sonic: (jumps to her feet) Hiya!
Sister: Chika. what are you doing?
(sounds of battle as Sonic jumps in the ring and throws around her opponents)

Ring Announcer: With a Plasma Sonic Bomb and a Lobster Hold, Sonic and Ajihara win the match!
Chika: (outside of wrestler's dressing room) Thanks for your time!
Wrestler: No problem, sorry about what happened.
Sister: I was surprised that you went to Sonic's dressing room, Chika!
Chika: I've decided!
Sister: On what?
Chika: I'm going to become a pro-wrestler!
Ajihara: Sonia, who was that girl eating that load of ice cream?
Sonic: No idea...

I don't know about you, but this set up goes far beyond the pale of my GURPS experience. How would you GM this?? It sounds more like a storygame, or a Japanese storygame like Yuyake-Koyake than GURPS.

The manga fiction does not end there. After these 2 splash color pages, an entire manga chapter details life in the women's pro-wrestling dojo. Let's see what Chika goes through:

Chika: (carrying a bucket of water) I've brought back the water.
Girl 1: OK, let's clean this place up and go for breakfast!
Chika: Today's breakfast is dark seaweed broth with cucumber pickles and rice with a raw egg on top! (slobber slobber)

Chika: (notices the bucket she has spilled) Hunh?
Girl 1: Ack! We haven't gotten anything done!
Chika: I'm sorry!
Girl 1: Nothing! (smacks Chika in the ribs) Do you really wanna be a pro-wrestler or not? Unbelievable.
Girl 2: Hold it! Just because you like eating doesn't mean you don't have to hurry up and do things...

(sounds of girls scrubbing floor)
Chika: (gets slapped by both girls) Ouch!
Girl 1 & 2: Too late, we missed it! I don't want to get another convenience store meal...

Older Woman: (puts a tray laden with food down) Tah-dah!
Chika: Thank you ma'am!
Older Woman: I put aside enough for you three.
(girls hug her)
Older Woman: Cut it out you three.
Girls: I could marry you!

Girl 2: (grabbed from behind by Ms Yamaguchi) Ms Yamaguchi?
Yamaguchi: You're so slow! Eating is a part of your work, you three! OK, once you've finished let's go to the practice mat. Take your time but hurry up, chew slowly, and only have two refills or else you'll barf.
Girls: We understand!
Girl 1: (looking at Chika gobble down her food) I don't care either way, but you ever seen this girl puke?
Girl 2: She's already on her 3rd plate.

THUMP!
Yamaguchi: Hey! You there, do a proper breakfall! A breakfall!
Girls: (seeing Chika flop on the mat) Wow!

Girl 1: Chika did a true breakfall!
Girl 2: That's a first.
Yamaguchi: (grabs a girl from behind) Beginners shouldn't laugh at other beginners, or they'll learn a painful lesson! (throws the girl on the mat) You try a breakfall too! Who's next?

Yamaguchi: Next is neck muscle training!
Chika: (has girl pushing down on her head) Ack ack ack!
THUMP
(sounds of heavy breathing, running)

Yamaguchi: (breathing heavily) Ok, let's do some light stretches and end MORNING practice!
Girl 1: Chika seems to be keeping up with practice recently, even though she's still the slowest.

Girl 2: So what?
Girl 1: That girl, when she came here, she couldn't do nothing. She still can't do much even now. I thought of the ten who joined here she'd be first to quit. The only thing she is good at is running.
Girl 2: And Chika...
Girl 1: What?
Chika: (thought balloon) I feel sick but it'll be a waste if I puke...
Girl 2: She was a long distance runner in junior high.

Girl 1: Long distance runner? That is no help in pro-wrestling.
Girl: Yes, but it means she's tough.
Girl 3: It means she's had a more normal existence than us tough fighter-types.
Yamaguchi: Shall we put Chika under Eriko for training?
Manager:  Don't be stupid! It's only been a few years since Eriko debuted as a pro.

Manager. (speechless for a second) If you say that, it means you have something up your sleeve. Tell me what.
Yamaguchi: Just seems interesting.
Manager: We've decided to put Chika under you for training today.
Eriko: But...
Manager: It's decided!
Chika: (bowing) Looking forward to learning from you!

This manga is a snapshot of the Japanese apprentice system used to educate craftsmen and martial artists. Shit rolls down hill, but with a reason - to toughen you up. Unlike western RPG fiction, this manga concentrates on what would normally be downtime training to set the scene for play. Still, as nice as it is, it leaves me scratching my head on how to use this in a game.

The manga doesn't end there, but continues in set piece spreads throughout the book. I'll skip over these, however, to take a look at something far more interesting - the mangatized descriptions of pro-wrestling moves and GURPS character sheets.

But that is a tale for another time...

Next up - Ring Dream Part Two: Piledrivers and Money Shots!

Dungeons & Manga #1 - Knowing D&D Part One

Not having the time to compose the long (winded) discursive thoughts on games I used to, I thought I'd start a new series of posts that would require less time to write for but also provide something interesting for gamers until I can get more time to think and compose. I've turned to my fairly extensive collection of Japanese RPGs, most of which are fantasy games, to present what I call 'Dungeons & Manga', namely manga-style art used in Japanese TRPG books. Whereas English RPGs and D&D in particular took some time before accessing professional artists, Japanese game designers had access to the immense pool of relatively inexpensive manga artists in Japan.

Today, I will be looking at 1987's D&Dがよくわかる本、D&D ga yoku wakaru hon, loosely translated as Knowing D&D Well, or more simply D&D for Beginners. This book is much like a Japanese Judges' Guild resource, and the series it is a part of includes extensively written and illustrated guides on dungeons, monsters, and other RPG accoutrements.

First, the cover (below) presents a whimsical reversal of position of PCs and the dragons they are supposed to be gunning for. It reminds me a bit of the old Dragon magazine comic where adventurers sit around playing an RPG in which they take on the role of office workers. It also shows a high degree of self-deprecating humour, which is still evident in Japanese TRPGs today, but I feel somewhat lacking in self-important western RPGS. Anyway, here it is:

Moving inside, we see that Japanese gamers knew what captured goblins were good for. This is not surprising given the velocity with which unchi rolls downhill in a vertical society...

From the bottom of the dungeon hierarchy we soar to the top. Next stop, dragons!

With the reader's appetite whetted with images of adventure, the tone shifts to tongue-in-cheek comic art to present the classes. There's the fighter:

The top panel is captioned "The fighter is D&D's superstar!!", while the bottom states "However, they are none too smart..." and show the wizard saying "Hey, get back to work!" Unsurprisingly, the next picture is the wizard:

The mage's thought balloon reads "For MU's, choosing the right spell decides your fate." Below that the wizard mumbles "Without magic, I'm just an average human..." and chooses from a golf bag with the words "Fireball", Levitation", "Lightning", "Phantasm" and one other illegible spell name. Next, the cleric:

The cleric thinks "Clerics can't use bladed weapons!" while the elf behind quips "Razors are OK, right?" The bottom caption reads "They have the power to protect the party from undead and injury!" Whereas individualistic westerners might cringe at being in a support position, group-minded Japanese players would instead find supporting the party a worthy and attractive role. In contrast, next up is the thief:

The upper panel reads "The party uses me as a treasure detector..." while the bottom is captioned "The highly dexterous thief also levels up quickly." The thief himself quips "I aim to be guildmaster!", interestingｌｙ using the Japanese term 大親分　（o-oyabun, or yakuza chief) to anchor the character in Japanese culture. Moving on to the elf:

The female elf has been a Japanese fantasy trope since Deedlit of Lodoss War, and that archtype is here. The caption on top reads "Elves can fight, use magic, are intelligent, and long lived...". This totally fits the critique of elves as a token instead of individual characters that appeared on Playing D&D with Pornstars, perhaps implying that this simplification is even stronger across cultures. The bottom reads "But their advancement is also incredibly slow." This same simplification is seen with the dwarf:

"Dwarves are small but tough!" reads the caption, evoking Gimli to an almost painfully stereotypical degree. The humouruous bottom quip "Because we eat minerals (just joking)" lightens this image, but unintentionally adds an explanation for dwarvish miserliness and mining that I would add to any mythos I used in game. How about the hafling?

"Haflings are hard to hit" promises the caption, and the character breaks the fourth wall to counsel " You have to be strong, dextrous, and tough if you want to be me!" Here ends the cutesy art and manga style realism returns for the equipment section:

Chainmail, shield, platemail, and leather are all here.

Hand axe, shortsword, battle axe, and two-handed sword as well...

 Mace, crossbow, bow, dagger, and club...

Ending with lance, spear, war hammer,  halberd and sling. What, no katanas? Oh well, now on to character sheets:

For those of you that can read katakana, yes they have named the thief 'Darth Vader' and the wizard 'Ben Kenobi.' If that seems like a jr high D&D camp type of thing to do, remember that they are coming from another culture, and so are not much different from the L4R players who call their PC Musashi or Nobunaga. Similarly, the fighter is Pendragon and the elf is (wait for it)... Legolas. Sigh, there was also a cleric named Rasputin, but my tablet ate the photo, so I shall spare you.

That's it for this installment, tune in next time for the dynamic action scenes accompanying the sample adventure!

If you liked this post or have any suggestions or questions, leave a comment.

LODOSS RPG REVIEW

It’s been a dog’s age since I last posted, but family & career deadlines hijacked my freetime this month. I’m still in the docket until Friday, but I thought I’d take a few minutes and review a Japanese D&D clone to blow off steam.

Without further ado, I present to you ロードス島RPGベーシックルール, Lodoss Island RPG Basic Book!

BACKGROUND

Most RPG fans know of or have seen Record of Lodoss War, a Japanese manga & anime set in a D&D style world. Lodoss was created in the mid 1980s, and the story goes that the creator, Ryo Mizuno of Japanese RPG powerhouse Group SNE, simply turned the session reports (or ‘replay’ as the Japanese call them) of his D&D game into the story of Lodoss and serialized them in a gaming magazine. I myself have seen Lodoss Replay books in used bookstores out here in Kyoto, some with the main characters statted out for Tunnels & Trolls. Regardless of the particulars, the original manga & anime bring fantasy roleplaying to life with beautiful art, so it is no wonder that Lodoss has inspired gamers for so long, and even a fan-made RPG using the Fuzion system of Cyberpunk & Mekton (available HERE).

Today, however, I will be reviewing the 1995 Lodoss Island RPG’s Basic Rulebook from Sneaker Bunko.

THE BOOK

The Lodoss RPG book is in the typical Japanese RPG pocketbook format, making it much more portable than western RPGs. The layout is clear with a logical chapter progression – About This Book (including setting details), Characters, Skills, Combat, Items, Magic, Character Growth, Monsters, Other Rules, Gamemaster Section, a Sample Scenario, and finally copies of all the charts you’ll need to run the game thankfully reprinted from the main text. It also contains a foldout character sheet stapled into the front cover, a removable cover and highly readable text inside peppered with generous examples of manga-style art. Which brings me to my next point…

THE ART

As you can see, the Lodoss RPG cover picture of elven main character Deedlit is GORGEOUS (excuse my somewhat dark cellphone camera and my computer for turning it sideways for some reason). The fantasy watercolour style fits the feel of Lodoss perfectly, although Deedlit’s features are arguably a bit too Japanese for the genre. Inside, there are three styles of art – hyperrealistic action manga style for the bestiary, a simpler line drawing style for equipment sections, and a cutesy bobble-head style for the examples of play. 

The grotty action style really makes the monsters come alive, while the simple line style presents items efficiently and allows players to imagine them on their own character. The bobble-head art, though irksome at first to me, has grown on me, and I feel it fits the ‘pathetic aesthetic’ (to quote Dr Bargle) of beginning characters in old school games. There’s even a dirty pun on the similarity of the words ‘donkey’ and ‘condom’ in Japanese (‘roba’ or old horse and ‘rubber’), which I think a fine tongue-in-cheek antidote to the melodramatic seriousness of modern fantasy game introductions.

THE TEXT

The font is easy on the eye, while the text is eminently readable and understandable. In fact, Lodoss RPG was one of the texts I forced myself to read before taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I passed with some thanks to studying eclectic and interesting texts. If you’re a gamer and can read Japanese even a little, break out your dictionaries and use Lodoss RPG as a study text and you’ll be gaming in Japanese in no time.

THE GAME

The mechanics show old school roots but are cleaned up and straightforward, consisting of 7 attributes (Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Luck & Charisma), with some derived bonuses. The chassis is a d100% system much like Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying, which as a diehard fan of Stormbringer and Cthulhu, I adore. The spell system is point-based and contains an eminently useful and wide variety of spells, while monster statblocks are very manageable.

Playable races include human, elf, dwarf and half-elf, and these are expanded with grassrunner (aka hobbit) and dark elf in the Expert Book. Classes include Warrior, Knight, Priest, Thief, Elementalist Shaman, and Mage. Magic is further subdivided into Sorcerer Magic (in Japanese ‘Ancient Tongue Magic’), Common Magic, Priest Magic, Shaman Magic and Demon Scream (‘’Dark Magic’ in Japanese).

It’s been a while since I read the Lodoss RPG, but scanning the book again confirms my good impressions. Chargen is straightforward and involves no intricate calculations like Swordworld RPG, just the addition of a bonus to skills based on attributes which is very reminiscent of the old Stormbringer RPG. Players choose race but randomly roll background like Stormbringer, which gives them different skill points to allocate. The skill list is generous and logical, as is the list of spells for each discipline. Level advancement gives bonuses to hit points, but also ‘Growth Points’ that can be used to improve skills & attributes, while XP advancement for all classes are on one table. XP is gained from defeating monsters and achieving mission objectives.

All in all, Lodoss RPG seems a near perfect blend of D&D and Chaosium system-wise, with some very efficient modern changes made to the chassis of these older systems. It is not without its flaws, however, and the two most glaring problems are the Dodge skill and weapon damage vs monster hit points. The Dodge skill is SUBTRACTED from the attacker’s weapon skill, which would seem to make the ‘whiff’ factor of combat rather high and make melee somewhat tedious. Perhaps this was done to make combat ‘one-roll’ like D&D, but is unnecessary and easily remedied by using Chaosium-style back & forth attacks and defenses.

Another odd rule is that weapon damages are all rolled on a d10 or d6 with arbitrary modifiers, plus Strength bonus if any. Again, this is not a deal-breaker, but makes for some odd choices with a dagger doing d6 + 3 and greatsword or bow doing d10 + 5. Monsters have similarly wonky hit points based on d10 + mods, with an Ogre having 5d10 + 30 and a Kobold having d10 + 5. Meanwhile armor is all static values that are subtracted from damage inflicted, with a robe being AV 2 and a suit of Mail AV 9. Perhaps this works in practice, and I would play RAW before making any changes, but it admittedly feels odd to someone used to dice tube progression in weapon damage and straight rolls for hit points.

SUPPLEMENTS

The rulebooks are split somewhat like B/X D&D, with the Expert book giving details for levels past 5, more spells & skills, monsters, races, rules for figurine & mass battles, and ‘Advanced professions’ that function very much like prestige classes of latterday D&D and thus are very ahead of their time in this respect. I also own two fullsize (i.e. western softcover gamebook size) supplements, with adventures, more gorgeous art, reprints of Basic book content for player reference, replays (i.e. session reports), and designer advice. All in all, Lodoss materials are a beauty to behold and are a great addition to my RPG collection, especially since I got them all 2^nd hand for a few dollars.

I should note that the few scenarios for Lodoss I have read seem somewhat…odd to me. For example, the Basic Book scenario, “An Adventurer’s Nature,” involves the characters joining an ‘Adventurer’s Guild’ right off the bat. They are sent on a ‘test’ by the guild to some caves, where they solve some riddles they find in a trail of letters, ‘fight’ some guild members dressed as goblins, then come upon a real robbery in progress. I would imagine this scenario would not be to the taste of most north American gamers (I could be wrong), both due to its railroadey nature and the concept of joining a guild to go on a fake dungeon crawl. I’d prefer to run B2 with it myself and see how it stands up to The Caves of Chaos.

CONCLUSION

I would certainly love to run or play the Lodoss RPG, and of the 3 Japanese RPGs I have reviewed, it is the most runnable straight out of the box, while also having the smoothest rules. Lodoss RPG shows both its western old school roots, the Japanese aesthetic sense of design, and the strangeness (from the north American standpoint) of Japanese culture.

Sword World RPG for OFRGAD

Sword World RPG for OFRGAD

As I noted in an earlier post about the Dragon Half RPG, the tropes of D&D would be reflected and recontextualized in many ways in different countries. The first major Japanese re-creation of fantasy roleplaying was the Sword World RPG by Group SNE, originally published in 1989. Sword World set the pattern for fantasy RPGs in Japan, offering not only core rulebooks (basic, advanced, & monsters) in the pocketsize format so familiar to Japanese gamers, but also the replay (basically the transcript of a gaming session) and novelizations. It also saw a fullsize book, a revised edition, and currently Sword World 2.0 graces the shelves of any new bookstore in Japan, while second hand bookstores shelves groan under the weight of rulebooks, replays, and adventures for the older edition.

LOOK
 The original edition I am holding is a 440 page pocketsized tome devoid of art except a psychedelic snake-wrapped swordhilt on the cover and a minimalist setting map.

Although later editions such as the monster manual had some art by the incredible Yoshitaka Amano, and the fullsize edition was gorgeously illustrated, the book I have looks like a trigonometry text. There are 19 chapters in the book: Welcome, Characters, Skills, Combat, Armed Combat, Magic, Adventurer Skills Other Than Battle or Magic, Character Growth, Character Making, FAQ, Combat Notes for GMs, Magic Notes, Skill Notes, Monsters, Treasure, Awarding XP, Advanced Combat Options, Magic Options, Monster Skill Options, ending with Designer Notes and a Chart Book. The poor organization and focus on combat really betrays the early fan origins of Sword World, and it is a wonder that Group SNE is still in business and has made some fine rpgs like Lodoss and Paradise Fleet since Sword World.

SYSTEM

Sword World reads like a trigonometry text as well, and that is not a good thing. There are tables of effects for combat rolls and more tables of trivial modifications for attributes. The example of filling in a character sheet looks like a flowchart for taxes. All in all, not fun, which is a shame because the Dragon Half RPG which is derived from Sword World reads, looks, and probably runs ten times better and is a hundred times more enjoyable. The system is 2d6 plus mods, check a spreadsheet for result. Ho hum.

SETTING

The setting is the New Kingdoms of Fosseria in the Age of the Sword. You may notice the island at the bottom of the map is called The Cursed Island, and would later become the setting for The Lodoss War RPG.

CONCLUSION

As a RPG history buff, Sword World is an interesting relic to have on my shelf, but I doubt it would last beyond a session of play with all the more intuitive and fun games out there. It does, however, really showcase the difference in RPGing culture expectations in Japan, and comparison with recent games like Sword World 2.0 and Araianrod show that Japanese FRPGs may have gotten prettier as books, but not any smoother as systems.

Dragon Half RPG Review

OK, it has been a week-and-a-half from hell, but work and studies have calmed down a tad so it is time to post away some stress.

This time I’d like to review the Dragon Half RPG, my contribution to Mesmerized by Sirens’ “Obscure RPG Appreciation” initiative.

INTRODUCTION

When D&D first hit it was a global phenomenon, translated into tons of languages and sold worldwide. Its core concepts were also translated into other tongues and worldviews as local reimaginings of the game, sometimes losing and sometimes gaining elements as it mutated. Britain gave us “Dragon Warriors”, Germany created “Dark Eye”, while France offered “Epees et Sorcellerie,” all versions of D&D as seen through the lens of their creators’ own culture.

Further afield, Japan fostered many indigenous FRPGs, from the early wave of D&D clones like “Sword World” and “Lodoss War”, to more recent creative reimaginings like “Ryutama”. Living in Kyoto, over the years I have made a small collection of these Japanese children of D&D, and today I’d like to present one of my favorites, the 1991 Dragon Half RPG.

BACKGROUND

For those few who don’t know the name, Dragon Half started out as a manga then successful anime telling the story of Mink, a young girl whose mother was a dragon and father a lecherous dragon slaying knight. Mink is a spunky young girl with dragon strength, wings and a tail, who drags her friends along on a quest to see dragonslayer/rock singer Dick Saucer.

As you can tell from the description, Dragon Half has its tongue firmly in its cheek, overturning D&D tropes or simply following them to their absurd end. The art, although evocative and highly polished, is also highly sexualized, alternating gratuitous crotch shots and nudity with cutesy bobble-head style characters, understandable as the author Ryusuke Mita cut his artistic teeth in the lucrative world of pornographic manga, like so many animators in Japan. Still, the story is great, the humour is funny, and the laviscous art plays into both the fantasy and fandom aspects of the genre.

THE BOOK

The RPG is in the pocket size format so popular in Japan, and while lacking the hefty tome feel of western rpgs, this small size belies a large 556 page punch. The writing is clear, the pages uncluttered and legible (if you read Japanese), and the art is top notch, as it is all taken from the manga. Contents include Ch. 0 Starting, Ch. 1 Character Making, Ch. 2 Skill Rolls, Ch. 3 Battle & Character Death, Ch. 4 Magic, Ch. 5 Character Advancement, Ch. 6 Special Rules & Addendum, Ch. 7 Equipment, Ch. 8 GM Section, Ch. 9 Making & Repairing Constructs, Ch. 10 Miscellaneous Damage, Ch. 11 Special Options & Rules, Ch. 12 Magic Items, Ch. 13 Monsters! The book has designer’s notes and useful charts at the end, and a character sheet stapled inside the front cover.

THE RULES

The rules are a simplified form of the Sword World RPG, Japan’s 1989 answer to D&D. Since the pages of damage charts and monster statblocks of Sword World make my head throb like a high school algebra test, I find Dragon Half’s pared down mechanics much more enticing. Basically, you roll 2d6 plus mods against a difficulty determined by the GM. In combat, there is the extra complication of a MSHAG-like table of damage results ranging from ‘Unharmed’ to ‘Destroyed’ and everything in between.

Having run a few simulated combats the system seems well balanced and eminently playable. Magic seems a bit underdone, with a very limited range of spells, which can be remedied by cribbing from Sword World if so desired. Skills are basically occupations like Princess, Thief, or Bard, and the descriptions are Risus-like in their brevity. In fact, a knowledge of Risus mechanics might be a serious asset for anyone interested in playing Dragon Half, as the Risus mechanics of ‘pumping’ skills and resolution could come in handy.

Just as skills are underdeveloped, the most glaring problem with the rules is the weakness of the Gag Level rules. Dragon Half characters become stronger as they advance in Hero Levels, which are basically synonymous with D&D levels. There is a parallel system of Gag Levels, however, which include unexpected great effects for failure and a ‘Gag Skill’ that you can fail spectacularly in, but without any real incentive or explanation of why a player would want to. Once again, the infusion of Risus rules to allow characters to ‘milk’ skills for success and pay this off in gag failures would seem a good patch for this lack of definition.

However, there are a lot of great, humorous touches in the game – all PCs are ‘halfs’, basically with one human parent and one of another species. I rolled a (boring) half-elf preparing for this article, but could just as easily gotten a half-vampire or half-mermaid if the dice had rolled a different way. All monster statblocks include an ‘Edibility’ rating, as a preoccupation with food is a staple both of the source material and Japanese culture (see the movie Tampopo).

SCENARIOS & GAMEPLAY

There were three supplements as far as I know (BGG has the cover of “Labyrinth of Laughter” mislabeled as the gamebook on the BGG website), and all were filled with great art, funny descriptions, and ludicrous adventure. It would take a great GM and players who were fine with gonzo-style D&D parody gaming to get the most out of these, with a familiarity with the source material a must. If you like gonzo-D&D that is a mix of Paranoia and Adventure Time, then the Dragon Half RPG just might be your thing.

Better start practicing kanji…