Sun 26 Oct 2008
I love the totally pure-indie indie scene in Japan, filled with guys and girls who basically write complete RPGs, photocopy or print them loosely, then sell them for like no more than $3 cost at local conventions. I often feel these days that the western scene is tainted by the fact that since one *can* make a buck, everyone feels entitled to do just that. I’m working on something on that front, though.
But for now, here’s a picture of the cover of “The Call of Moe“:

In this game, which uses the Call of Cthulhu system as a backbone, you play normal humans, salarymen, police officers and teachers who somehow come into contact with vile, dark tomes of otaku lore (basically your run-of-the-mill anime/otaku geek shit). From that point, you lose SAN. You keep losing SAN as you do things like:
Buy your first doujinshi (1d4 SAN loss)
Write your first doujinshi (1d8 SAN loss)
Attend your first Comic Market Convention (2d10 SAN loss)
and so on. This interior illustration of San Loss sums up the game pretty well:

Man, this is some self-referentual hilariousness.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:40
Haha, that’s really cool. I like the pic from the interior of the book. Where is this TRPG indie scene at exactly?
November 11th, 2008 at 10:39
Heya: The indie scene in Japan is:
1) Entirely on the internet, making their games available in txt, html or (occasionally) PDF.
or
2) Entirely organized in little groups, who meet up with booths over at the Comiket doujin comic conventions in the TRPG area, selling their printed games for $3 to $7.
-Andy
November 11th, 2008 at 18:36
Any suggestions on where to start on the net to find these indie groups? I’d like to check some out.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:38
Here’s how I normally go about scoring doujin RPGs, reading their sites and blogs, etc.
1) Find a place that talks about them. Currently, the best list - period - for Japanese RPG releases is the ps-hiroshima site:
http://www.ps-hiroshima.com/rpg/
They have a section on the left for Doujin RPGs, which takes you to this frame:
http://www.ps-hiroshima.com/rpg/doujin/doujin.htm
2) Find something you find interesting, and google it (or use yahoo.co.jp, which I find provides better search results for Japanese lang searches).
3) Find official pages and blogs, email the author in Japanese, start a conversation. Offer to send an international postal money order in exchange for a copy or two with shipping.
That’s about it, for folks who can’t make it to the Comikets (like me these days).