First Shadowdark, now this?  I guess 2025 is going to be a year of trying things that are very much “not me.”  It’s not just that I’m not a fan.  I actively dislike anime, manga, and JRPG video games.  Going back to my childhood, I hated Voltron and similar cartoons.  When I was a little older, I hated the Final Fantasy video games.  And when I was older still, I grew to dislike a much wider array of anime TV and movies, as well as develop a dis-appreciation of manga.  Some of it is the storytelling.  Some of it is the voice acting.  A lot of it is the art, specifically the faces.  There was a tabletop RPG from the 90s that hit the nail on the head.  Big Eyes, Small Mouth.  I know there’s technically different styles of anime & manga art.  But while I recognize some have bigger heads, bigger eyes, and pointier chins, there is a certain something that makes anime/manga stand out, and whatever that something is, I don’t like it.  And then you get the various storytelling features, from Miyazaki’s often ham-fisted moralizing, to the over-reliance on romantic triangles, to the repetitiveness, to the yelling…So. Much. Yelling., to the repetitiveness, to the preponderance of child/teen characters (or worse, child/teen-coded “adult” characters), to the infantilization and abuse of women, to the repetitiveness, to the misappropriated Western religious imagery/terminology, to the hodgepodge and often thoughtless mixing of genre.  And don’t get me started on the rabid otaku.  I once had an acquaintance literally stop speaking to me, like forever, after I said I didn’t really like the Beetles.  She had nothing on American otaku.  Part of the reason I’ve seen so danged much anime is that I’ll watch almost anything, and so many anime people kept trying to convince me that I was wrong and kept loaning me tapes of various anime.  The breaking point was when someone loaned me Serial Experiment Lain and Key the Metal Idol.  I don’t remember which one came first, but whichever one came second broke me.  The first episode ended and I just yelled out, “it’s the SAME SHOW!!!” and that was it.  I was done.  I’ve since watched very little and I’ve been pretty selective.  Consequently, most of the anime I have watched in the last 20 years often makes my short list of anime I don’t hate.  When it comes to manga, there’s the added problem that I simply can’t get my brain to process reading right to left.  I’ve tried a handful of times and I just can’t do it.  And while a few manga have been “reversed” to read right to left, none of them have been comics I’ve had the slightest interest in.

That little rant and mini-biography is simply to set the stage and explain why Okada Atsuhiro’s Ryuutama was a weird game for me to buy this past Free RPG Day.  Especially as my friend Rob, who would have really dug the game, passed a couple years back, and so isn’t around to enjoy it or enjoy that I, of all people, picked it up.  If I believed in the afterlife, I’d bet he was there, laughing at me and shaking his head.  It’s all to let you know that I am NOT this game’s target audience, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Of course, expecting any kind of consistency from me is a fool’s errand.  The long and short of it is that I have developed an interest in variations of so-called “cozy” games.  No, I’m not playing a bunch of Stardew Valley or anything.  But I like the idea of games that focus more on exploration, problem solving, community building, and…vibes, as opposed to violence and tactical combat.  Anime aesthetics aside, several reviews of the game from people I respect led me to picking it up and reading it for myself.  

As mixed as my feelings before picking up Ryuutama were, I think my feelings after reading it are even more so.  There’s a lot I like, a few things I don’t, and a lot that is maybe fine, but not for me.  One thing is for sure, it’s an “opinionated game” and I like that.

So, what’s the deal?  In the way that D&D is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, and Call of Cthulhu is about uncovering cosmic horror and going insane, Ryuutama is about groups of folks going on trips between towns and generating stories to feed dragons. 

There are classes; the Minstrel, Merchant, Healer, Hunters, Artisan, Farmer, and Noble.  Once you’ve chosen the class, you can choose the type, Attack, Technical, or Magic.  An Attack-type Farmer is going to approach things differently from a Magic-Type.  The core system is pretty easy.  You have different die types representing your stats, and in order to do actions, you combine two appropriate stats (sometimes the same stat twice) and roll those two dice, adding the numbers together and comparing against a target number.  So, if you have a Dexterity of D6 and an Intelligence of D8, and you’re trying to shoot an arrow, you roll a six and an eight sided die, combine the two (and subtract 2, but only because that’s a specific thing for the bow & arrow, not something done on every check).  A difficult target is a nine, so if your combined roll equaled nine, you were successful.  There are also critical hits and Critical failures.  If both dice roll their maximum (six & eight in the previous example) or if both dice roll a six (not possible if a stat is a D4), you have rolled a critical.  This could mean different things depending on the action being taken.  And if you roll two ones, you’ve had a fumble.  Results will vary on that, as well.  That’s the core mechanic, and so far, so good.  Unfortunately, the game is just getting started.

One of my biggest problems with the game is that a lot of rules are presented, a lot of moving pieces to keep track of, while the author continually reminds the reader that what’s important is that games don’t become soulless procedures.  The book lacks a lot of practical advice on how to balance the equation, however.  For example, a lot of the “game play loop” is traveling between villages.  You start your day by rolling to see how your character is doing.  Did they sleep well?  Bad dreams?  This will have a mechanical effect on your character for the rest of that day.  Then you roll to see if you manage to travel without getting hurt.  Then you roll to see if you travel without getting lost.  And then you roll to see if you are able to make camp safely and without incident.  If your first roll is unfavorable, you roll to see what condition you have that day.  If the second is unfavorable, you roll to see what encounter you had over the day.  If you reach a town, you can roll for shopping or what services are in town.  There are also rules for if you’re traveling with animals.  Each of those things have various aspects, rolls, and choices associated with them.  But “don’t let it become about the rolls.”  OK.  Great.  How?  That’s not really covered.  There are some gameplay examples, and I suppose they’re helpful.  But what starts out feeling like it’s going to be rules light, is actually pretty complex, with a lot of things to keep track of, and not nearly enough practical advice on how to do so.  I can’t help but think the game would have been better served having a lot of mechanics removed in favor of some practical advice on bringing the game to life at the table.

So far, I haven’t talked about one of the game’s defining features.  The Ryuujin is one of the stranger aspects of Ryuutama.  It is, essentially, an in-world manifestation of the GM.  It’s not really a “GM character,” often considered one of the cardinal sins of running games.  It’s not just a regular PC played by the GM, who joins in with the rest of the PCs, stealing their thunder and generally being a problem.  No, this is something else.  Narratively, I think of it as being something like The Dungeon Master from the old D&D Cartoon, or maybe a little like Gandalf, or Q from Star Trek.  It could even be like some of the Greek gods, the way they took special interest in Human heroes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  An alien entity that can be both a boon and a bane.  Like the PCs, there are specific mechanics, stats and abilities, for these Ryuujin.  They’re not, as written, a vehicle for GM fiat.  They can serve as cheer leaders, quest givers, secret patrons, possibly tricksters, and perhaps even tormentors.  But they are restricted by their own set of rules, and they have their own drives and successes that are tied to those of the groups.  Ultimately, they’re trying to gather stories which are then “fed” to the world-shaping Seasonal Dragons, and they need the PCs to generate those stories through their adventures.  

I’m definitely not saying every game should have something like the Ryuujin, but there are aspects of it that I find rather interesting and that I think have a good deal of potential, if used well.  Normally GM characters are deeply problematic for a number of reasons.  But this is a way to make the character more than just a regular NPC without becoming the Mary Sue star of the show, taking away all the things that make being a player fun.

Another problem I ran into while reading the book is that several times, future releases are mentioned.  “X thing will be covered in an upcoming book.”  The English language version of the game came out in 2016, and to the best of my knowledge, there have been no subsequent releases.  One review video I watched said there were a lot of online resources for the game, but my admittedly poor Google-Fu returned very little beyond other reviews and people generally singing the game’s praises.  

Overall, there’s a lot to like in Ryuutama.  I’m actually really interested in playing the game, run by someone who is well versed in how it’s supposed to play.  While there seem to be too many mechanics for my taste, I can see the possibility that after a bit of play, many of the systems might become second nature.  Heck, I remember how clunky Deadlands felt when I first started playing it, but after a few sessions, I was having a blast, and those mechanics were no small part of it.  That said, I don’t see myself running the game.  And sadly, I don’t know anyone who might, nor have I noticed it being run at any local shops or conventions (not that I’ve been looking until recently).  I’ll probably strip out a few elements and ideas to plug into some of my other Fantasy gaming. This includes some of the dragon stuff, as I think if I’m going to bother with dragons, I’m going to want to make them weird and special, not overly rigid and compartmentalized, like D&D.  But whatever the case, Ryuutama doesn’t quite scratch the specific itch I was hoping to get at, either.  It sort of came down to this and Wanderhome, and I chose Ryuutama mostly because it was in hardcover, and the store only had a softcover of Wanderhome.  Maybe at some point, I’ll get a chance to read through that game and see if it’s what I’m looking for.

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