Tell me about your anime/Japanese-inspired games, /tg/. How did they go? Did you like them? Have you ever run one? Thoughts on how a good one could be done?
>be me
>tell everyone i'm relenting on my dislike of anime, that I'd found some inspirational material, and they should make up characters for a game
>game day comes
>campaign world is set in Earth, which is one of three intersecting worlds, the other two being Hell and Beastworld
>everyone excited
dareyouentermymagicalrealm.jpg
>tentacles, tentacles everywhere
>shouting occurs
>everyone leaves
>shitpost on 4chan
>>48183460
What's funny is that Urotsukidoji has a pretty interesting setting for a CoC, WoD or Nemesis game.
>beastworld ain't exactly "good", but Shikima is filled with monsters driven by the most bestial and violent of motives that they look good by comparison only
>half-beast, humans-with-shikima-penis-powers and mundane human PCs all viable
>End Times Prophesy that is like Gehenna mixed with the Left Behind novel's Tribulation, but with a tentacle-dicked Godzilla/tarrasque as the Anti-christ/Cain's personal bodyguard
>series explored the post-apocalyptic future AFTER the equivalent of Gehenna, so you can have the "end of the world" be a mid point in the campaign and have lots of material for the second half of the campaign
The series is even more "ecchi" than "hentaI" by modern standards, so you could easily pare back the magical realm elements and make it a straight forward urban/post-apocalyptic fantasy game without changing too much.
>>48183460
>tentacles cause everyone to spaz out
is this some sort of joke I'm not getting?
>>48183599
>The series is even more "ecchi" than "hentaI" by modern standards
It's hentai anon. Just because it has a rad setting and plot doesn't mean it isn't hentai, let alone one that would make a pretty great campaign in those systems you mentioned.
>>48183599
I know, right?
Use the system from Apocalypse World that allows for "intimate relations" with others, and you can create a smoldering campaign world full of sex and violence, just fade-to-black or imply-traumatic-event-just-occurred and I think it would lend a great flavor to a setting. Having three worlds intersecting with one another (and three races) and you've got great potential.
>>48182933
Currently running my second Adeptus Evangelion campaign.The tumbling down is proceeding on schedule just as planned.
>>48183724
What's are the setting/characters like? Planning my own AdEva campaign.
>>48183707
>It's hentai anon
It's not any more porny than Berserk, or Murcielago, or Gantz or a lot of seinen stuff.
>>48182933
We did a Rail Wars style setting, where we were Americans who were sent to Japan to test out new locomotives (and secretly kidnap JR excutives because the Japanese goverment coudlnt' do it,).
It was half wacky hijinks, half BLACK OPS, inflitratiating private mansions, multi track drifting, and making money. We even managed to bring back 4 700 series shinkanen to set up our profit making network back in the US.
>>48183832
Four out of five players decided to play a Manufactured, so manufactured ended up being a very important part of the setting. Turns out that you're not so much a pilot that's placed in an Eva unit, as you are a manageable meat puppet that acts as a key to operate the Eva's core. The one pilot that wasn't manufactured has had so many organs replaced, she might as well be manufactured.
Since it's the second game I'm running, there's a checklist of plot issues that need to be addressed in a game of AdEva... why is it kids, why does NERV keep antagonizing the kids, why don't they get told anything, why are the angels attacking, why are the angels trying to get at the fortress-city, what are the angels, what are the Evas, what happens when you die, what happens when an angel or Eva dies, what happens in the end...
I'm co-running the game with a second GM, which is something I typically would not recommend unless you and the other person can feed off each other and occasionally read each others' minds. It's been a big help to be able to bounce ideas around. I'm the "plan everything ahead of time" kind of GM, and the other guy is more of a "I know how things work so everything appears planned where in reality it's just very internally consistent" and we've been able to put both those styles together where I paint the broader strokes and he fills in the details that I neglected to mention, and then I keep him in check, and then he edits my pre-written descriptions or dreams.
It's difficult to answer your question. Specifically, instead of a single "second impact" there was a series of meteor bombardments; wars; geological disasters including flooding, volcanoes, earthquakes; nuclear winter; volcanic winter; a global plague that created terrifying pseudo-angel creatures and was deadly to almost all humans. The game is set in the radioactive wastes of Israel in the rebuilt semi-autonomous fortress-city of Ascalon that's run by the Ascalonian MAGI. cont.
>>48184123
The Operations Director is an American man who is terrible with children and one of ten who survived the plague and the plague creatures in Pennsylvania, the NERV director (pic related) is from the currently-underwater Netherlands but he takes a back seat to the Japanese Vice Director who has her well-manicured fingers in everything going on at NERV. Since nobody in Ascalon is native to Israel (because they all died in the wars), it's just a big multinational cast.
The pilots mostly started out as "let's all work together and save the world!" (in stark contrast to the first game I ran where the pilots were literally at each others' throats by the second session), but we (as GMs) been able to breed enough distrust both in NERV and in the team that all that good will is falling apart. Since the pilots can't actually die (they just get decanted again, whether they like it or not), there's a big feeling of hopelessness that wasn't apparent until they started dying and bad things started happening.
The players themselves have to be responsible for a lot of what goes on. If they can't play characters that undergo significant change -- mainly a slip into insanity -- you're not going to have a very memorable game. The most memorable stuff from my first game was always player-initiated: going grave-digging for dead parent bodies that weren't there, paradroping into an active combat zone, breaking into each others' lockers and triggering a base lockdown, freeing the blood god... all good stuff. But there's only so much you can do as a GM to enable this. You need to be able to dangle enough things in front of the players and have them actually take initiative instead of worrying that they will die forever. Then you need to deal with the fact that the PCs are children and don't have adult-level reasoning or base access so their shenanigans have to at least feel not awfully-contrived.
>>48184259
But that's just what I think, I've heard some people run their games completely different. Probably the most important thing to me is that the game turns into some kind of manic-depressive episode where characters will alternate between utter hopelessness and fuck-everything-here's-the-thunder moments. Just doesn't feel like Evangelion otherwise, know what I mean?
>>48182933
Japanese-media inspired yes, anime-inspired, no.
Anime is a very loose form of art style not a genre, and while I do often include stuff from anime as inspiration for my games (good god old Japanese stuff had some great horror shit to draw from), nobody does face-vaults or gets exaggerated nosebleed or does any of that other stuff you see in anime.
I was once at a table where they did.
It was cringy as fuck. Like "never going to get laid and dying alone and fat" level of cringy, I legitimately felt bad for them.
>>48184384
What sorta Japanese media do you take inspiration from then?also, story time?
>>48182933
DoubleCross is one of my favorite games and it plays just swell.
I ran a Neptunia-inspired Pathfinder game, and that went very well.
The only bad experience I had was with a nigger furfag Narutard whose behavior convinced me to leave an otherwise good game of Moretsu Pirates-Rogue Trader.
Gundam, except instead of a giant white bird carrier and mobile suits, it was a tank column.
>tfw your players realize they just killed Ramba Ral and gave you shit for weeks.
>>48184496
Anime, novels, films, etc.
You're confused; you seem to think that taking inspiration from "anime" means everything you do will end up looking exactly the same, and all combat will be high-flying ninja junk involving screaming and flashing lights and Yamato-damashii asspulls because players couldn't think of a way to actually think their way around a problem.
Part of the problem stems from how increasingly identical most genres in anime have become largely because the economic market for them in Japan gets narrower and narrower as time goes on and they have to focus on the increasingly insular and sad otaku market to make any money back.
For mecha games I've drawn heavy inspiration from everything from Gundam to Mazinger Z, for horror I've used shit like all that nightmare-inducing early 80's and 90's OVA gorefest stuff, for crime I've taken ideas from Black Lagoon and Jormagund, for cyberpunk I've drawn liberally from Ghost in the Shell and Bubblegum crisis (Japan is THE BEST at cyberpunk because for awhile there they were actually living that shit), for crime and mystery I've done Detective Conan and Lupin III, etc.
I haven't done any shounen fighting series games because most of the mechanics for those games are pretty lousy and they all sort of have the same plot anyway so there's nothing for me to use beyond interesting powers I already come up with on my own, I don't have waifus or imuoto stuff because I don't approve of my players being unable to control their masturbatory fantasies, no one has ever been an Ordinary High School Student because even in the few games that DID take place in a high school it was not a JAPANESE high school and so the PC's kind of had actual personalities.
And no, I won't storytime.
It was bad and embarrassing, but one of my long term players was rescued from that group and I see no reason to disrespect him or those in that group who already lead pretty sad lives.
It was pretty awful, suffice to say.
>>48184799
I'm actually a fan of using Japanese style worldbuilding/setting structure and magic system mechanics for my campaigns. The ranking/power level shit of battle shounen actually fits fairly well with TRPGs too.
>>48184799
lol you sound like a stuck up retard
>>48183945
>HA I DRANK YOUR SEMEN!
>>48184974
Japanese style worldbuilding is just regular worldbuilding with more bright colors; I've seen the same level of stuff in Western fantasy literature plenty.
Shounen stuff I avoid mostly because it lends itself very well to a very narrow form of storytelling (when everyone gets stronger and stronger and regardless of what the actual plot is the only real objective is to beat the next "boss" with your new moves) that has some appeal when done correctly but largely is rather repetitive in tabletop gameplay. Nobody is ACTUALLY shocked that the new villain is "showing off his new power greater then the last guy" more powerful then you after the fifth time you've done it. It's just expected at that point.
I try not to pidgeonhole myself into single-track plotlines where the solution and method is always the same regardless of what hand I'm playing.
I don't do much in the way of traditional dungeon crawls in D&D for example; where they go from room to room killing monsters dodging traps in trap rooms and getting increment amounts of treasure until the boss encounter and the large treasure haul either for example; that gets tiresome and predictable quick.
Instead my dungeons are all deliberately designed the characters have actual goals and objectives for going there and the monsters are there for actual reasons and there's a story to be had by going to said dungeon, usually a fairly elaborate one at that.
>>48185093
I suggest you read stuff like Mahouka and Raildex as well as HxH. It sounds like you have a very narrow view of what consititues anime.
>>48185069
It it made the 69 that had just happened an important plot point!
>>48185171
I probably just have an older view, not a narrower one. I got into the stuff WAY before it was mainstream much to my personal shame (shame because WOW the early anime market was insular and creepy sometimes). Means my preferences and expectations are a lot different because like every form of media what people even THINK of as being "anime" has changed a lot in the last 20 years or so. I mean hell, you probably remember what the ORIGINAL anime stereotypes were compared to now.
And I've read HxH and borrowed here and there from it for one game, though only loosely since HxH's overall structure didn't fit what my current game was particularly well.
Still looking for a game that can use more HxH ideas, but for now I'm not really ready to just borrow entire settings and storylines just to use a few ideas I saw on something else.
>>48185171
Anyway, what I was originally getting at is that anime is not a "genre" at all and thus I can borrow lots of elements from it for insertion into similar genre games or different ones entirely if I dress them up a bit.
The problem is that a lot of players who come to me verbal explicitly expecting "anime" stuff in the game generally speak of the lowest common denominator type of Japanese anime that gets churned out by the truckload over there; it's a bit of a red flag for me because anyone watching decent anime knows that it's NOT actually a genre, just an artistic style influenced by the culture.
Kinda like Mexico's old 70's Spider-Man comics which gave Gwen Stacy an ass like Nicki Minaj; same kinda stories, but the details and elements of it are altered to fit the culture in question showing it.
As long as a PC is coming into my game expecting a fun time with an appropriate genre that he might recognize some stuff from various anime from then there's no problem at all, because he'll likely get it. It's just when a player comes asking for me to literally replicate an existing anime for him to enjoy playing that there's gonna be some problems in what he expects and what he actually gets.
>>48183599
Shin Megami Tensei is also pretty good for that sort of thing.
>>48182933
>Run a Pathfinder game set in Not!Japan during the Not!Sengoku-Jidai
>Players are a Ninja seeking revenge for his slaughtered clan, a Buddhist War-Monk seeking inner peace (and revenge on the Samurai who killed his family), and an Arcane Archer Samurai on her "year off" traveling the nation at war
>Party investigates Jack-the-Ripper style case involving the Not!Chinese ambassador and a vampiric sword
>Monk defeats a (thinly veiled Space Marine) Gaijin in a fistfight in order to win over the Yakuza
>Purified a Kami that had been corrupted by Oni magic
>Defeated an army of gunpowder-wielding Kenku backed by the Shogun (a thinly veiled Darth Vader reference)
>Watched a cannon instantly vaporize a city with one blast, said cannon being so big it required several huge dragons to carry it (Not!Death-Star)
>Fuckloads of dishonored samurai committing seppuku everywhere
If real life commitments hadn't cut that game so short, what could have been...
>>48188136
Addendum: I can elaborate on any of the above if someone cares for a light storytime.
>>48188162
>>48188136
How did you purify the kami? What sort of kami was it?
>>48188183
Keeping in mind my understanding of actual Japanese mythology is amateurish at best...
Okay, so the Kami in question took the form of a white wolf, but she was a Mountain Spirit in truth. She was wed to one of the Emperors way back near the founding of the Empire, and she'd been in retirement at her shrine (a major spring under a boulder in the middle of a deep wood) for many centuries. Her blessing basically made the region around her the best farmland the Empire had, which made it a target for every Samurai Lord looking to unite the lands for the first time in 100+ years.
One such Lord was Shogun Oga Morinabu (the Vader-guy). He wanted to break the will of the lords who lived near the shrine, and so sent his best Sorcerer/Assassin Oga Hamata (Darth Maul) to curse the Kami with black magic. This took the form of black ink kanji being scrawled across the boulder said to have birthed her.
When the party took the job to head in and see what was up, they noticed the river had turned to poison, and the woods had become a dark and twisted place. Diseased Blight Wolves, once the Kami's servants, tried to devour them. When the party confronted the Kami, she had transformed into a Giant Spider with a Wolf Head and was psychically living off stolen souls. A tremendous battle ultimately returned her to normal (for some reason a lot of cursed Kami I read about had to be fought to change back) and kept the Oga's influence from spreading, at least for a while. The party specifically had to use windchimes to try and draw out her original personality while trying to erase the cursed kanji on her boulder.
Due to incredibly lucky rolls the party survived despite being completely tapped out by the end, and the Kami made certain to reward them properly for their efforts.
It was a MAID game where at one point Shaquille O'Neal fought a wolf. Shit gets weird fast
>>48188901
For us we had to survive a haunted mansion full of Liam Neeson clones. And since none of us wanted to be maids, we ran the mod that let us all be Butlers. So it consisted of a party that consisted of (not)-Valkenhayn, two musclemen that wouldn't be out of place in Cho Aniki, and a vampire metalhead. And our master was based off Slayer according the DM.
>>48182933
I tried to run a game in a sort of medieval hong kong. It went alright, aside from a player bitching out on me.
I played a 30 year old loli conspiracy theorist with blood bullet powers.
It was fun.
So do you always have to have a "beast-people" race for catgirl/foxgirl characters or can anime style settings survive without?
>>48196431
They don't NEED one, but I don't see why you'd want to go without
