Tokyo NOVA: The Axleration.
Posted over a year after being fully translated because reasons. Images stripped because reasons. PDFs are ungodly huge because reasons.
To the other guy who was translating TNX: Seems like you vanished months ago, but if you haven't, we're really sorry for wasting your time. Pretty sure we were finished translating long before you started, though.
Enjoy if you can.
https://mega.nz/#!oBABVIAQ!hF9D_ofyL_3T2wbgyD9ys6WbtHp_zeXynSUItDB1DvI
>>48036291
Well, I've got a copy.
Never heard of it before. What's this about rationing axles?
>>48036703
Tokyo Nova is a cyberpunk action game set in the far future after cataclysms known as the "Hazards" put the Earth into a new ice age. It's set in Tokyo Nova, which is said to be a modern day Dejima, in that it is the only city (megaplex) on the continent of Japan that non-Japanese people are allowed access to. You can play lots of things in this setting, like a Vasara who has magical abilities, a Katana who can slice mecha in half, or a mutant who lives on the outskirts of society yet possesses amazing powers. Or all three, as the system lets you pick (up to) three different "styles" to fill out your character.
System is played with cards. You get a hand of four playing cards (just normal poker cards), and when you're called upon to make a check, you need to play a card with a suit matching what is "valid" for that skill. Your abilities can be combo'd into one another, quite like DoubleCross if you've played it. So if you have an ability that allows you to add your Degree of Success to your damage, and an ability that lets you expand the attack to a whole area, you can use both at the same time (with some stipulations.)
Finally, every Style has a Miracle, or Kamiwaza. These are super high powered abilities. For instance, Katana has Danse Macabre. When you declare the use of it, you can kill anybody, instantly, with no check needed. However, enemies have Miracles too, and many of them are as defensive as Danse Macabre is offensive.
This looks like pretty interesting stuff, thanks OP!
Bumpin' through the night, as it'd be pretty sad if the usual Japanese TRPG crowd didn't see it.
Downloading.
Thanks OP.
Reading this, I immediately thought of Double Cross, Log Horizon, etc.
But it would appear that while it uses a framework similar to SRS, enough thought has gone into the system proper to remedy the usual issues.
Forgot to throw this thing from TOS in the "More Stuff" directory: alternate rules for Kuromaku PCs that allow them to actually have a henchman with stats and skills (including the best cover skill in the game.) The catch is that it all comes out of your own XP.
http://pastebin.com/aD0cxB05
>>48042097
Thanks for that. I've been going over the pdfs and this system looks really cool.
Holy shit, someone finally translated Tokyo Nova? I've been waiting on this shit since forever. I love you Op, gonna grab this when I get home.
Have you had the chance to play this, OP? I'm curious to hear some impressions from people who have actually played the game.
>>48047400
I ran a campaign lasting about six months.
In my opinion TNX is one of F.E.A.R's more balanced and mechanically solid games. On par with Grancrest and TBZ, and a lot better than Double Cross and any version of Night Wizard.
I really dug playing with cards instead of dice, skill combos, and the built-in multiclassing that lead to some truly unique characters. When a friend tried to run their own campaign (which sadly only lasted a couple sessions,) I made a Fate/Mannequin/Kabuki tank that was an adorable little girl. During the Setup Phase, she used an expansion book skill from the Mannequin style with the effect "You behave so cutely that your foe loses the will to attack you. If successful, the target takes [BS: Fear]" (normally a Major Action skill, but comboed with Fate's Grey Matter ultimate to allow it during Setup) on the toughest enemy, and then used Kabuki's Provoke skill to force them to attack her with a nasty hit penalty.
Another notable feature is that appearance checks actually make sense in this game. They're in almost every Japanese tabletop because... I dunno, Japanese GMs can't handle every player at once? Japanese players like being totally excluded from scenes because of bad luck? But in TNX they actually work.
My pet peeves with the system would be:
1) What we called the 'tit for tat' miracle problem. All the instant kill miracles are basically just ways to cancel out a defensive miracles. And all the defensive miracles are basically just ways to cancel out OHKOs, whether from a miracle or some insane attack combo. And without the latter, you will get OHKOed. It makes Miracles less awesome than they seem and restricts the players' ability to really build the character they want.
2) Vehicles, especially Walkers, are very imba. You can see our attempt to deal with this in the quick reference PDF.
Despite these issues it's definitely worth a try. If you're a fan of high lethality, those two things may not even be an issue for you.
Player in OP's game here. It was a short-lived four player game. We had a Highlander/Arashi who piloted an AI-driven mech a little like a Tachikoma in behavior if not in appearance (it had far too many missiles to be a Tachikoma), a Kugutsu/Katana/Kage corporate ninja who worked for Heilong, a cybered-to-the-nines Kaze/Chakra who knew motorcycle-fu, and my character was a Kuromaku/Mistress/Mayakashi blonde foreigner lady who had strong ties to the Kawato-rengou, but was strongly focused on helping and protecting others (she in turn was protected by an NPC using the alternate Right Hand rules who was a Hiroku/Kabuto and regularly tanked missiles.)
The story started out by getting invited to the soiree of one Aldora Dolphan, Overlord of the Ayakashi Night Clan (vampires), that party being attacked by goons with assault rifles, and then those goons turning out to be kugutsu from TerraWare, one of the leading megacorps. Investigation led to a crazy-deep conspiracy that chained between TerraWare, mystics, several of the orbitals, and the Overlords themselves, and ended up with us murdering the Youkai Clan Overlord Vasily (he started it, though, when he assaulted a Nightblade HQ to try and kill us), then outrunning the cops on a high speed case down freeways (police cars versus a mech, a motorcycle-fu courier, and a car-hopping ninja? no chance), then finally assaulting the castle where all the Overlords met to discuss Ayakashi matters, and killed a Kagemusha that was pretending to be Aldora.
And that was essentially episode 1.
>>48047941
I'm definitely not opposed to high legality. And I'm glad to hear that it's an improvement over Double Cross, a very flawed game that I really enjoyed.
Oh, if it's not too much to ask do you have any art from the core book? I feel like that might help sell the system/setting to my group. Or at least give them some sort of visual inspiration.
>>48048719
That sounds like a pretty kickass campaign you had going.
>>48049172
>high legality
I too like for my group of jacked up cyberpunka to keep it all above board.
>>48049916
I can think of at least one way to run a high legality cyberpunk campaign.
Do you have the pdf of the original book?
>>48047941
>On par with Grancrest and TBZ
Wait, Grancrest is good?
When I read it, it seemed pretty damn similar to Night Wizard and Log Horizon, except with less options.
What makes Grancrest work?
>>48051977
Over NW2: Some semblance of game balance (for starters, that game made it very hard not to have enemies whose average attack would neither deal zero damage to some PCs, nor OHKO other PCs. And when dice exploded, all bets were off.)
Over NW3: Abilities that are actually somewhat interesting instead of just flat bonuses to numbers. Tactical grid combat instead of some ultra abstract thing that only seems to exist because people expect there to be a difference between melee and ranged attacks.
Over Log Horizon: Slightly more interesting skill checks. Country management and mass combat shake things up from just slaying monsters all the time.
It helps that half of my group knows enough Japanese to take advantage of the expansion books. Log Horizon is supposed to be getting a second book eventually but it still has no date, and may turn out to be just all the online stuff on paper anyway. With the four expansions so far, Grancrest has plenty of options.
Grancrest is not the best system ever, the fluff is kind of uninspired compared to TBZ and Tokyo Nova and even Night Wizard, but it's one of the few F.E.A.R. games without any major design issues and was a pleasant surprise for me when I played it.
>>48051977
Not OP, but in my opinion, while Grancrest is mechanically similar to NW and LH, it also has better designed abilities.
As an example, in Grancrest, if you're a Paladin, you automatically get Guardian Seal. This is a cover ability that allows you to take damage for someone else. You can use it once every turn, your armor (rather than the target's) is applied to the damage, and on top of that you even increase your armor some so you're taking even less damage for protecting people. Also, it has a range of 1 square, which increases when the ability is leveled up to 2 squares.
By contrast, in Log Horizon, the Warrior archetype's Covering ability has you take the damage the target would've taken (meaning your higher tank defenses don't matter), it has no range at all, and it can only be used once per round unless it's leveled. I think similar abilities in Night Wizard are the exact same.
Wow. Like, double wow. I thought this was gonna end up like that translation of Meikyuu Kingdom, i.e. never seeing the light of day.
Fucking congrats, man. Much appreciated.
>>48053255
There is a Meikyuu Kingdom fan translation similar in scope.
It's just the official one that was never heard from again after the Essen announcement.
>>48052510
Expansions, great.
Even if my Japanese was good enough already, I can't really afford to pay triple the price of the books in shipping and customs.
What about characters being one trick ponies?
>>48052553
Abilities in LH are generally poorly thought out.
Castle of Stone is not a tanking ability but a "go attack someone else" ability.
Since this is a Japanese TRPG thread of sorts, anyone wants to buy and translate this collection of 1 page Japanese TRPGs?
http://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ172625.html
>>48053618
No worries. I'm compiling a spreadsheet of all the expansion styles and abiliites, for Grancrest. I'll release it... hopefully within a month or so?
Each style has about 20 more abilities each, and that's just style-specific, as they added a lot more to the general class abilities, too. And then in book 3, they put out rules for obtaining a "sub-style" when you hit level 10, which lets you access another style's abilities within your class. Plus, you know, a lot of new styles and stuff.
Grancrest book 1 and 2 are seriously meant to be taken together, I think. But I'm going beyond that and grabbing stuff out of book 3, 4, and 5, as well as a replay that introduces a new style (if it gets here soon anyway).
>>48036291
This is one of the missing links of big name JTTRPGs. Thanks OP
>>48053801
I would try my hand at it, but I don't actually have access to any of the listed payment methods.
>>48053879
Nice. I'm looking forward to that.
>>48054479
No Credit Cards? Oh well.
How do you run a cyberpunk game, anyway?
My only chance at ever playing this game is running it myself, but cyberpunk is not exactly a genre I'm familiar with.
>>48054766
To get yourself in the mindset, I'm gonna recommend a few different movies to watch. Easier than giving you more books to read through, and these are quick enough to watch that you'd be able to get the concept of cyberpunk without much hassle.
I'm always as ever a fan of Ghost in the Shell and Akira when it comes to more commonly known anime, though Akira might be on the more magical enddue to phenomenal psychic powers being a thing. I've heard good things about Bubblegum Crisis and it's spinoffs too, though I haven't personally watched it. I'd also say to watch Appleseed; I've only watched the original OVA, but the newer stuff looks good, too.
Actual non-animated-movie-wise, Blade Runner is pretty much the ubiquitous choice when people think of Cyberpunk, for good reason. Edge of Tomorrow is adapted from a book/manga called All You Need is Kill, and while it's not completely faithful to the source materialfucking Tom Cruise fairytale ending bullshit, is still not completely terrible.
>>48057043
>Edge of Tomorrow
I pretty much hate this movie but aside from that I wouldn't recommend this as a cyberpunk genre film. It's Sci-fi for sure but there are none of the elements of cyberpunk unless you count Tom Cruise not wanting to help the military at the beginning as punk.
>>48057144
Yeah, it's more like... whatever genre you would put Starship Troopers into.
>>48057043
>Bubblegum Crisis
You need to see this. The 80s original really sums up that era's cyberpunk, it's a real visual feast.
If you prefer things with blood 'n' titties get some AD Police Files. It's the same setting, but a much darker prequel with one of the side characters from BGC taking a lead role.
>>48054766
Here's a cartoon list:
A.D. Police
Akira
Appleseed
Appleseed: Alpha
Appleseed: Ex Machina
Armitage III
Armitage III: Poly-Matrix
Armitage III: Dual-Matrix
Black Magic M66
Bubble Gum Crisis
Cyber City OEDO 88
Ergo Proxy
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell II
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Gunm (Battle Angel Alita)
Parasite Dolls
Psycho-Pass
Renaissance
Serial Experiment Lain
The Animatrix
Twilight of the Dark Master
Venus Wars
I have put mostly Japanese stuff as NOVA will be most likely inspired by Japanese works.
Also interesting are:
Avalon
Natural City
Tetsuo
Tetsuo: Bodyhammer
>>48057043
> Akira might be on the more magical end
To be fair, the original topic of this thread, Tokyo NOVA, is also deep in the magical end. It has magicians and vampires and werewolves, though nothing precisely the same as Akira's psychics. It's basically Shadowrun with less elves and orcs.
Speaking of which, if >>48054766 prefers playing video games to watching shit, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is a great game that would also be a solid introduction to the genre. Shadowrun Returns and the older Shadowrun RPGs for Genesis/SNES are also OK, though not as good storywise. Really the only Shadowrun games that aren't worth playing at all are the free wannabe MMO and that old first person shooter.
>>48054766
Wikipedia has a phrase I just saw, "high tech low life," which is a pretty good summary of cyberpunk. Think of something like Eberron from D&D. It has "everyday magic." Well, in a cyberpunk setting, you have "everyday super technology" where even the most destitute jerkoff probably still has a IANUS system and can view AR streams. And in fact that destitute jerkoff is probably where you story begins, because the idea is that despite all the frippery, people are still basically downtrodden with the upper crust doing the trodden'ing... with basically no oversight whatsoever because they've at least dropped the pretense of being controlled by literally anyone.
But when you have that many upper crust people, all of them working to get the edge over one another, that sort of creates a shadow war of corporate espionage, secret dealings, and desperate attempts to find that edge. And all the while, those destitute jerkoffs are just getting stepped on more and more.
In the end, all you really need is a good conspiracy, or at least a plot where "things aren't as they seem," with plenty of untrustworthy characters, and you're off to a great start.
I'd double down on the suggestion of Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Easily the best of the series (though I liked Hong Kong okay too). If you want to read something, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is also pretty good, but it can get kind of, uh. Violent. So take care.
Someone want to make a channel to testrun this iirc there was something for night witches and Maid.
>>48057419
Military Sci-Fi?
>>48063568
>Someone want to make a channel to testrun this iirc there was something for night witches and Maid.
https://discord.gg/DUTan5p
>>48051977
Grancrest seems pretty alright. I'm looking forward to the possibility of someone translating more supplements.
Skimming through this now. Is there an actual character sheet to go along with this because right now I'm keeping a character I'm generating in a composition notebook?
>>48068036
This is the Japanese character sheet if that helps: http://www.fear.co.jp/novax/download/nx_ctl_profile_v2.pdf
>>48036291
Nice work, I'm going to look this over.
Maybe I'll even run it.
>>48068134
"It's better than nothing" - Keiji Inafune, 2016
This will help, thanks.
>>48036291
Any chance we could get more actual art from the book?
>>48068602
found some tokyo nova art here http://www.tarotcollectors.com/view_topic.php?id=484
>>48070406
The card for the Highlander provides a better image of what the style is. Weird spacer child. I'd kill for a deck of these just to run this..
Going through character creation has been pretty interesting. With no tarot deck I'm just using RNG from 0 to 21 for the styles but I've made a Martial arts style Cop (I'm imagining Jackie Chan). But I also got the Kugustu style which makes me affiliated with a corporation so I'm running with the idea that he's been planted into the police force by a megacorp. His job is to make sure that evidence disappears and investigations go cold regarding his company. Gotta read through skills but if this thread is still up tomorrow I'll dump the finished character.
>>48068602
Wonder if anyone will edit the pdfs at somepoint.
>>48036291
God's work Anon. I've been wanting a translation to read about this ever since they did a bit on it in Quick Start. Looking forward to reading it tonight when I have time.
>>48036291
>Images stripped because reasons
Which are? The map portion in World Guide is really weird without the maps.
>>48036291
The more I read of this, the more I like it.
I kind of reminds me of a Japanese version of SLA industries with its industrial aesthetic and unexplained magic shit everywhere.
>>48073397
Agreed. At least post the maps. The book is useless without them
Also character sheet when?
>>48074897
See >>48068134 it's in Japanese and formatted for A4 though. Is 8.5x11 not the standard in japan?
>>48075562
Letter is pretty much limited to North America.
>>48075562
>Is 8.5x11 not the standard in japan?
8.5x11 is not the standard anywhere but 'murica.
>>48073397
>Which are?
I feel like hazarding a guess that maybe there might have been talks for something official but it fell through or something.
>>48075619
>>48075630
Learn something new every day.
>>48075562
Is there any chance ANON could translate this into english?
Instead of bumping, let's talk about character concepts?
Legger(P)/Kabuto(K)/Kuromaku
Street Urchin taken in by the head of the Kawato-Rengou. Dedicated to ensuring no harm befalls his surrogate father and more than willing to get his hands dirty in service of the gang.
Inu(P)/Fate(K)/Mayakashi
Idealistic employee of SSS with a lot of leeway. Has a friend who keeps him on the SSS payroll by spinning his latest bout of heroism into good PR for the company.
Chakra (P,K)/Vasara [Electronic-]
Wet Martial Artist from Kurultai who was drawn to the Hazard City on a quest of self-improvement. Slowly gaining a rep as a weirdly efficient mercenary and walking techbane.
I'll give it a try
Kabuto(P)/Mistress(K)
Owner of a private security company, believes his team are his family and works to keep everyone alive.
Talkie (P,K), Kabuki (S)
Reporter who will do anything to get the next big story, doesn't matter who it's about or who the news might affect
It's an interesting system, lots of non-combat options for conflict and resolutions.
So the highlander skill "hidden skill". Can I take multiple instances of this or is it just the one?
>>48080184
There is no such skill.
>>48080252
Meant sealed memory
>>48080578
Then read it again, because the skill very explicitly answers your exact question.
>>48080660
Well i'm retarded
Can you take multiple instances of ANY skill?
>>48083158
I'm not sure there's a specific rule against it, but that's probably not what's intended. Otherwise you could take four instances of say Mikiri from Katana and be able to use it four times per Cut.
Why it's called out in the case of Sealed Memory is that in SRS-inspired games, when there's an ability that says "choose one of these, then record the skill like "Blahblah: Chosen Thing", you CAN explicitly take multiple instances of it. Except in Sealed Memory, you explicitly can't.
>>48083158
I want to say no, once you purchase a skill you can only put ranks into them. But I can't find any wording outside of stuff like Sealed Memory that says otherwise. And given the wording on that it's possible that you can have multiple instances.
