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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**Come here and talk about anything!**

​

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on /r/rpg.

​

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

​

----------

​

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

Hello!

Sorry for the scandalous title and for posting it here. r/dnd did not allow me to post this, so I am at a loss as to where to get the needed attention for it.

I will explain everything in order, but the conclusion would be that WotC is making some horrible choices that are killing off D&D in Japan and all the content creators that revolve around it. I do not want to stirr up drama... but this is the only way I can think of to send a message to WotC.

Feel free to make a video out of this, and feel free to contact me, and I can help you with any links or facts you may need.

----

I am a content creator residing in Japan, and I primarily stream TTRPGs, with D&D accounting for the largest share of my streaming. I also release scenarios with my creator group... all in Japanese. This is not self-promotion, and I am not sharing any of my links.

This is obviously biased, but Japan has one of the most ardent D&D communities.

In case you did not know (since they always leave this out of D&D beyond localization announcements), D&D is localized in Japan. They even have their Japanese YouTube channel, where they sometimes release collaborations with Japanese artists and voice actors like these:

- Kara-tur characters going to Essentials Kit's adventure

- Essentials Kit starter characters in anime style

- Dragons of Stormwreck Isle's starter characters in anime style

The anime-style character sheets can all be downloaded and actually used.

https://dnd-jp.com/tools/

-How it all started-

WotC previously granted licensing rights to various companies worldwide through Gale Force 9. GF9 then sub-licensed to Hobby Japan, a well-established company in Japan with a long history of selling and distributing hobby and western-related goods.

HJ did an amazing job at promoting and also releasing content for D&D in Japan. They even had a backlog of past D&D content from 3.5e and 4e that users could view for free.

This all changed when WotC got in trouble with GF9, revoked licensing rights, and took everything under its wing. Around 2021, HJ announced that no new books would be printed and that Icewind Dale's adventure, which had been completed in translation, would not be released.

The company that helped keep D&D viable in Japan for more than a decade was ousted.

Then we were left in the dak for 1.5 years until...

-WotC assumes control of the D&D brand-

Around 2022, WotC announced that it would bring back D&D and distribute it directly under WotC. They did really well on release day, airing promos on TV (which, btw, was the first time a TTRPG did that in Japan!)

They got famous YouTubers to play and this entire fever lasted for... about a year.

The entire lineup of core rule books was there, and even Xanathar and Tasha were localized.

During this time, adventure-wise, we got Starter Set, Essentials Kit, Dragon Lance, Radiant Citadel, and Witchlight; that is pretty much it. Previous books localized by HJ, such as Phandelver, Tombs of Annihilation, Descent into Avernus, and Dragon Heist, were all halted and never re-released.

WotC attended major conventions alongside MTG, with D&D even getting a boost from the 2023 movie.

During this time, WotC was going through the OGL scandal, and I was pretty much the only one, except for Yahoo News (!), to report on the current state. Don't even get me started on their VTT policy that would have banned my entire YouTube stream backlog.

I noticed that users speaking up about the OGL scandal prompted WotC to change, and the 2024 development was also being driven by user input. I also guided Japanese players through the English-only survey so they could express their opinions.

-Then it happened-

After December 2023, WotC of Japan went completely silent. Their Twitter feed turned into a daily grind of "Hey, did you know today is wrestling day? -> Fighters can use unarmed attacks to wrestle! -> buy our books!" with zero relevance to the topic and mostly Tweets written by someone who knows nothing about D&D (sometimes with blatant misinformation about the books) and a clear hit to their current userbase's interest. Some even speculate it's just a marketing company hired to write random tweets with AI.

A company being horrible at marketing is not a big deal. As I said before, Japan has an ardent D&D community, with people creating events and inviting more and more newcomers to the genre! I obviously chipped in my own time with content creation, but the enthusiasm I have seen here has been massive.

Then it happened.

The core books are running out of print. No matter how many new people the fanbase tries to bring in, and no matter how good they are at spreading the joy of playing D&D, new players are not able to get hold of books.

Amazon has dried out, with other book stores needing weeks to procure them. Not to mention scalpers selling them for exorbitant prices. We do not have digital releases, and we are still at the 2014 edition. (which is fine tbh as long as we can get the books)

During this time, WotC was promoting 2024 and even how it would get multiple-language releases... except that Japan was either not mentioned or removed from the list altogether.

People have been asking for an update on the situation for three years. All the time being met with silence. It is as if Japan is something they no longer want to touch and are just letting it rot.

There have been petitions, but they have fallen on deaf ears.

And that is understandable. Nothing here generates enough heat for any corporate executive to notice.

So here I am.

Please share this around so it may reach WotC, and they can finally step up and say what the hell they plan to do with Japan.

Are they backing off? Are they staying?

Perhaps they are trying to reboot again using 2024...I have no idea, but the way they treated Japan, first shafting their best partner and then leaving the entire userbase in the dark, is no way to communicate with a fanbase. It's fine if they don't want to deal with marketing, but at least the books should not be taken away. They have everything in their power to solve this, but we got zero communication.

Thanks for reading thus far!

Ever since WotC took over, stuff has been going downhill, so any buzz about this would be really appreciated. There's a fanbase over here that is silenced by the language barrier. I don't want to let that happen!

-Bonus read-

Why are you playing D&D? There's other TTRPGs out there!

Yes, I do play other TTRPGs! But I also like playing D&D on top of it!
Japan got a fresh start in the TTRPG genre when Call of Cthulhu was kick-started again in the 2010s via videos. The way D&D plays is actually a novelty in the Japanese scene right now, and many new players are discovering this playstyle.

Call of Cthulhu you say?

Yes, Call of Cthulhu (7e exists, but 6e still dominates!) stomps D&D and any other competition here in Japan by a massive margin. Or that's how it is generally portrayed. The truth is a bit different.

Ever since 2012, people have started releasing scenarios for Call of Cthulhu that involve a heavy emphasis on story and inter-character development rather than the usual cosmic horror. In essence, people released some cool concepts and ran them with CoC's engine, and it spun off into its own genre.

So people are playing CoC because it happens to have cool scenarios and not because of the system per se. (btw, sales in Japan make up for most of the sales globally)

Anyway, that is it for now!

Feel free to AMA, I'll lurk here when I have the time!

My group decided to try out a new game system and all learn as we played it. One of the players decided he wanted his characters motivation to be that he was in debt to the mob and was adventuring to try and pay it off.

We decided on what seemed like a very high amount of money to owe an started , 250,000 credits. However when doing rewards and downtime income I realized that we had both made the mistake of assuming the games currency (credits) was roughly 1 to 1 with USD.

It turned out that it very much wasn’t and after some rough math my player now owes 12,500,000 USD to the mob. We’re debating if we retcon or just keep rolling with this hilariously high debt.

I know that it might be a hard or dumb request, but does anyone know a free simple goofy system? something easy to set up and usually for short games?

i wanted to gm a short little fun experience to my players where they can make goofy little weirdos

so I just expanded 27 bucks to get my hands on the so called "dragon bonding game" Drakonym, then I opened it to see 24 classes for the rider and only ten for the dragons.

first I was like, "okay, maybe they reduced the base species to up the customization", but NO. You can only personalize their perks. The dragons horns, wings, voice, personality and even the colors are unchangeable.

Then I was like, "okay, that's a shame, but maybe the money went into the mechanics of dealing with the dragon". I went to read it and it takes LESS THAN 2 PAGES.

I was already fuming, but then I discovered that Akeroth, the world in which the game takes place is big and has multiple games dealing with different parts of the setting.

"okay then, let's read it" and in bold letters I see DRAGONS DON'T FIGHT IN THE WARS OF PEOPLE.

MF!!

You advertised a dragon BONDING game, but you barely have any mechanics about it.

You released demos only talking about the dragons, indicating they were the focus, but less than 1/3 of the book is about the dragons.

You say in the very first page about the dragons that they aren't pets, they're individuals, companions, friends, and you don't have the bare minimum of customization!!!

That whole shit feels more like an add-on for the DnD ranger than an actual dragon BONDING game.

I'm pissed.

If you want a new rpg with a cool art, buy it. It has a lot of content. But if you, like me, were expecting that drakonym was finally going to scratch that specific itch that no game cares to try, don't bother.

Drakonym is NOT a game about dragons and dragon riding. It is a game that happens to have dragons and has three times more content on things unrelated to dragons with practically no customization.

I'm so pissed that I'll homebrew my own mechanics and put out there for free out of spite. And will purposefully make it incompatible with the original rules.

Edit: just to clear it up. Drakonym IS WORTH YOUR MONEY. The game is big and runs very well. The art is gorgeous and the text is very flavourful.

BUT it is a game about Akeroth and it happens to have dragons in it. They are not the focus, most of the game doesn't talk about them and it is even against the canon to use them, just so the devs can excuse not accounting for the presence of immortals fire breathing lying lizards on the story.

If you want a power fantasy and a gorgeous book, go get it

If you expect Lancer, but dragons (like me), better keep searching.

While you have a bunch of tables and descriptions for the rider weapons and armor, dragons have 3 variations of fangs, claws, wings and tails and generic armor.

No new creative weapons like maybe bombs that you cand drop and live your Bazelgeuse fantasies.

Time is limited. If it's not important I don't create stats for it.

Recently a player asked what the stats were for the massive force field generator that covered a major city. iirc the system was MgT2e (the original MgT2e) and you could scale up anything in the books if you wanted to.

Because of the absolute massive size of the device the amount of math it would take to give it a stat block would have been a lot. More than my tired brain wants to do after a twelve hour shift moving heavy boxes all day.

All the players need to know is that it is strong enough to withstand orbital bombardment indefinitely as long as it's active. Crashing a ship into the field won't work and there are no ships large enough to blast through it. Any meteorite big enough to break the shield would also be enough to render the planet inhabitable, which defeats the purpose of trying to take the planet in one piece.

One player said it wasn't fair that I didn't give them the dimensions and numbers for the device and accused me of railroading them away from destroying it with blunt force. We eventually moved on and it wasn't brought up again, but it still sits in the back of my mind.

Was there a goldilocks perfect meteorite size that could destroy the shield without damaging too much of the planet? Probably, but I don't want my RPG game to turn into a college physics course using Mongoose Traveller hit points. My choice to be lazy and not stat the thing definitely removed a viable player option.

What are your thoughts/rules on not giving things stat blocks?

I started running a DND campaign last year which is currently on hold but which I would like to reboot in the coming weeks. While preparing for the campaign and as it progressed, I began thinking more that there might be better systems available for the type of game I want to run in the long term. I am hoping that some more experienced RPG players and DMs can suggest systems they think might better fit what I have in mind than DND.

In short, the setting is a sort of steampunk/feudal world with lots of factions and different political and social machinations ongoing. The backdrop is a world in the midst of change, the possibility of revolution, international war, or civil war. I have put a considerable amount of time planning the bones of many possible quests, some of which more resemble typical DND quests (e.g., guard the caravan, rescue someone from a cave which involves a dungeon crawl). But I want the long term problems to revolve around political intrigue, interaction with people and systems of power (think: similar themes and tone as shows like Game of Thrones and Andor), and events bigger than one group could change alone (but maybe something where the players could tip the scales). I want this to be an open world, sandbox style game.

Problems I Foresee with DND as the System

I have a great group of friends I am playing with and am ideally thinking that this will be a long term campaign that would span 20 levels if this were DND the whole way through. But one of the main issues I foresee is the issue with DND PCs becoming superheroes with godlike powers in the later levels. I don’t want the BBEG to be some sort of godlike entity that the players can overcome with their superhero abilities—I want to emphasize the systems of power and that the players are just a small piece, though one of the biggest of the small pieces, affecting the world (again, think characters from Andor plotting and doing big things, but they aren’t Superman). I am fine with players having access to magical powers, but I would prefer that this be a world where magic is rare and the players cannot use fireball to deal with all of their problems. I would probably also be adding some faction mechanics to supplement the DND rules to your add depth to the players’ interactions with different groups.

Importantly, I also want a system that allows for concrete character progression and customization as well as interesting combat that rewards clever play so that players can have that video-game-like feeling of getting upgrades which RPGs like DND provide.

TL;DR: I am looking for alternative TTRPG game systems that are more grounded, provide ability for progression but not too much, and emphasize faction mechanics and with players interacting with the world but not shaping it as if they are superheroes.

Thanks for your help!

Can anyone recommend an RPG or campaign or sourcebook set in a library?

EDITED TO ADD: I've found exactly what I was looking for, thanks to Zoetrope366.

The Stygian Library: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/257113/the-stygian-library

Thanks to everyone else who offered suggestions. I will check them out, as well.

I've just started reading Suns of Gold for Kevin Crawford's sci-fi OSR game, Stars Without Number (which is excellent and has a fairly comprehensive free version). It's really good and I plan on using it for my sci-fi games, but I'm wondering if there's anything like it for fantasy or historical games. System-agnostic would be nice, but I could theoretically make my own adaptation.

As an aside, one of the best features of Suns of Gold is the fact that it has what I might call "crunch scaling" - basic rules for narrative-focused players, more complex rules for crunchier players. Anything that also has varying degrees of crunch would be great.

Thanks in advance!

Me and some friends have been looking at both Beakon and ICON and I am interested in what people think of the two and which one is better. Also, where can I find the latest version of ICON since I know 2.0 came out, but the one I found is 1.5.

Hi everyone!

Last Saturday, we ran three game tables at a public library for the first time, and it went great! We had Mausritter, Liminal Horror and Shadowdark, and all seats were taken a couple of weeks in advance. You can see some pictures at the bottom of the linked newsletter.

Around a third of players were absolute beginners, and all of them found the experience so fun that they left asking how and where to find more places to play.

The library team was very helpful, too (I hope we didn't disturb the normal functioning of the building that much :/ )

I'm really glad we did this, and hope more public spaces open up to ttrpgs.