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A History of TRPGs in Japan – Part 8 – Stranger Aeons (2013-Present)
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<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 9156109" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>This next part will focus more on <strong>GroupSNE</strong>, partly because it is probably the most influential organization on TRPGs in Japan, but also because two of my sources for this are by <strong>Hitoshi Yasuda</strong>, so I have the most information about them. I looked for some sources by or about the other groups, but they’re a little harder to come by.</p><p></p><p>A little historical/cultural context should be mentioned here. 1985-1986 marks the beginning of the Japanese bubble economy. The causes of the bubble are little too esoteric to describe here, but suffice it to say that in the late 1980s, an enormous amount of money was being pumped into the economy which resulted in profligate spending, at both the corporate and the individual level. And there should be no doubt that this had a commensurate effect on the RPG market. The RPG market in Japan has <em>never</em> been of significant size, not even reaching the heights of the post-Egbert fad in the States, let alone the tremendous growth seen in the hobby today. Nevertheless, 1986-1995 saw skyrocketing RPG development, at probably a rate greater than the market could handle. Hobby and publishing companies had money to burn, and the burgeoning TRPG market was one place where they happily burned it.</p><p></p><p>With <em>Dungeons & Dragons</em> the newest RPG to appear in the Japanese market, <strong>Syntax Error</strong> decided to go with that for the Comptiq replay. <strong>Ryo Mizuno</strong> was chosen by Yasuda to be the DM because he knew Mizuno to be gifted writer, and expected him to be a novelist someday. (In general, replays are written by the GM, so as to provide the GM’s thought process.) Comptiq began serializing the replay, “Record of Lodoss War,” in September of 1986, with the first part lasting until April 1987. Though written by Mizuno, it was credited to Hitoshi Yasuda (whose name had some cachet) and Group SNE. (It must be noted here that Group SNE was at this time still merely the Syntax Error gaming group.) It was extremely well-received, so a second replay, set in the same world but with different PCs, began in June 1987.</p><p></p><p>Also at the tail end of 1986, a publishing company called <strong>Shakaishiso</strong> saw an opportunity to turbo charge their “Gamebook Magazine” (a magazine about gamebooks, e.g., Fighting Fantasy, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, etc.) by obtaining the Japanese license for the UK’s Warlock magazine. Again, Hitoshi Yasuda was tapped to oversee the project, and as mentioned before, he brought on Yutaka Tama as <strong>editor-in-chief</strong>.</p><p></p><p>But just as the inaugural issue of the Japanese Warlock went to press in December, 1986, they were struck by the shocking news that the Games Workshop Warlock magazine was being discontinued. What to do? A January 1987 issue was put out in the meantime, as Yasuda, Tama, and Shakaishiso debated whether to try continuing the magazine or discontinuing it. Then someone had an idea: the Corgi Books paperback of <em>Tunnels & Trolls</em> 5th Edition had just been released in the UK in 1986. Could the translation rights be gotten? Yasuda knew that T&T was well-suited for solo play, and also had many solo adventures already published. This would thus A) be palatable to the magazine’s gamebooks fans, and B) be the perfect bridge to bring them over to RPGs. A February issue was canceled while negotiations were underway. Finally, the deal went through. Shakaishiso got the translation rights. A March issue was put out, and then starting with a special RPG-focused issue in April, the magazine slowly shifted from being a Fighting Fantasy and other gamebooks magazine, to being a gamebooks/RPG magazine.</p><p></p><p>As Yasuda’s workload increased, he relied more and more on the members of Syntax Error to do translations, write articles and replays, and other work. He tasked the translation of T&T to young <strong>Miyuki Kiyomatsu</strong>. Eventually, Mizuno, who was just a year out of college, came to Yasuda and said, “Yasuda-san, I really want to help you with your work, but my parents won’t accept my becoming a freelance writer. I’d like you to set up a company.” And so in October of 1987, Group SNE Co., Ltd. was established. The original staff was 7 people: Yasuda (age 37), <strong>Hiroshi Yamamoto</strong> (age 30), <strong>Yohei Sawaki</strong> (age 24), Mizuno (age 23), Kiyomatsu, <strong>Nao Kitagawa</strong> (both age 22), and <strong>Hiroshi Takayama</strong> (age 21). Yasuda’s concept for Group SNE was less corporation, and more pirate ship. The young members were not his employees, they were content creators. The creators all held a share in the company, and so all received a portion of the profits. In addition to shares of the profits, the creators also received royalties on the things they authored. In those bubbly days, that meant they were taking home a lot of money. Hiroshi Yamamoto even told Yasuda, “You must not be worldly-wise, to give your writers so much money.”</p><p></p><p>Group SNE’s first product as a company was the Japanese translation of <em>Tunnels & Trolls</em>, 5th Edition in December of 1987. It’s launch had been prepared with many articles throughout the year in Warlock. And then here Group SNE and Shakaishiso did something new and unexpected. Shakaishiso published Fighting Fantasy books in Japan’s established and popular <em>bunko</em> format: an A6 (4.1"×5.8") paperback. The readers of Warlock were used to the <em>bunko</em> format. The original source material was a paperback. Thus, <em>Tunnels & Trolls</em> was published in Japan in the <em>bunko</em> format.</p><p></p><p>This was a first, and Yasuda wrote that he received a surprising amount of blowback from this. RPGs were box sets! Every RPG, foreign and domestic, that had been released in Japan from 1983 to 1987 had been box sets. Yasuda and Shakaishiso were upsetting the apple cart. But the T&T paperback ended up being a big hit. In addition to the groundwork laid in the issues of Warlock, the paperback format drew in many gamebook fans. And it allowed RPGs to get out of the hobby and toy shops and into bookstores. As a company, Group SNE just hit the ground running. (Sidenote: Group SNE continues to support T&T to this day, and even introduced its own "advanced" variation called <em>Hyper Tunnels & Trolls</em>.)</p><p></p><p>Rewinding a bit, earlier in 1987, Kadokawa’s imprint, Fujimi Shobo, saw the success of the Comptiq replay, and decided they wanted to create an RPG-focused magazine, called <strong>Dragon</strong>, planning for launch in January 1988. They approached Group SNE and asked them to create an original RPG that could be used to help promote the new magazine. Although a little leery of Fujimi Shobo, which was then primarily known for trashy romance novels, Groupe SNE was not particularly averse to the idea itself. Many of its members wanted a shot at creating something that scratched the itch <em>Dungeons & Dragons</em> did, but that was wholly and uniquely Japanese, as well.</p><p></p><p>Ryo Mizuno and Miyuki Kiyomatsu were raring to go, but first there was much to be done with the Record of Lodoss War story. Given the popularity of the first Comptiq replay, and the positive response to the second replay, Group SNE and <strong>Kadokawa</strong> decided to turn the first replay into a novel. Naturally, Ryo Mizuno was assigned to write it, and <em>Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch</em> was published in April of 1988. While Dragonlance followed the Lord of the Rings trilogy of thick books model, Mizuno and Group SNE decided to go for a slighter, more readable format aimed at a youth and young adult market. <em>Bunko</em>-sized, it came in at 295 pages. (For comparison, the first volume of the Dragonlance Chronicles was split into two <em>bunko</em>, at 459 and 323 pages respectively.) <em>The Grey Witch</em> was a huge bestseller. It would go on to a long-running series of novels, computer games, and anime. In fact, it is credited with essentially creating the “light novel” genre of books still popular today.</p><p></p><p>With the second Lodoss replay nearing completion, Group SNE wanted to compile the serialized replays into single volumes. But they ran into a snag. While Shinwa, the Japanese publisher of D&D, was happy with articles that promoted the game, they would not work with Kadokawa/Group SNE as far as book publishing rights. But Lodoss was printing money for both companies just then, so it was decided to abandon D&D for something they could control. The RPG requested by Fujimi Shobo was still in development, and wouldn’t necessarily mimic D&D so well. So Group SNE whipped a quick set of rules (more or less D&D through RuneQuest) that covered all the bases for continuity, replayed the first campaign with those, and published that replay as a single paperback volume. They followed suit with the second campaign as well. When it came time to start the third replay series in Comptiq, they simply continued play with those rules. With Lodoss a huge moneymaker at the time, even these rules were eventually published in October of 1989 in a trilogy of books called <em>Record of Lodoss War Companion</em>.</p><p></p><p>But prior to that came <em>Sword World RPG</em>, the original RPG requested by Fujimi Shobo. Yasuda and Group SNE didn’t want it tied wholly to <em>Record of Lodoss War</em>, so they could have more creative freedom. But on the other hand, Lodoss was too successful to ignore completely. So <em>Sword World RPG</em> was set in Forcelia, the same <em>world</em> as the island of Lodoss, but on Alecrast, a different <em>continent</em>. Although the RPG itself would not be developed in time to coincide with the launch of Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon magazine, as with T&T the groundwork for the RPG would be laid with an ongoing series of articles describing the lore and geography of the new continent.</p><p></p><p>Officially, the now famous author Ryo Mizuno was listed as the author (along with Group SNE), but the system was designed by Miyuki Kiyomatsu. In design, <em>Sword World RPG</em> took influence from <em>Traveller</em> with its ability score generation (2d6 on top of a base attribute that varied by race) and task resolution (2d6+bonuses to match or beat a target number). Races were basically D&D. In lieu of hard-siloed “classes”, they went with “skill packages” that foregrounded what was essentially multi-classing, a kind of middle ground between D&D-style hard classes and the skill system of Basic Roleplaying. Magic used a spell point system. Combat was just opposed roles based on specific skills, but a new innovation was the Power Rating Table for damage (and healing). Weapons and spells were given a power rating, and so determining the result of an attack or spell meant rolling 2d6 and cross-checking the appropriate Power Rating to determine the degree of effect.</p><p></p><p>Having seen the success of T&T in the <em>bunko</em> form, Sword World was planned from the outset to use the same size. The already popular setting, the fairly straightforward gameplay using only 2d6, an aesthetic very similar to Nintendo's <em>Dragon Quest</em>, and the <em>bunko</em> form factor, all contributed to monster success for <em>Sword World RPG</em>, giving Group SNE three straight years of success from 1987-1989. Most importantly, <em>Sword World RPG</em> and the Lodoss light novels made inroads to junior and senior high school students. A 1993 survey of most read books by high school students had Record of Lodoss War top the boys list for all three grades. For its part, <em>Sword World RPG</em> would be <em>the</em> dominant Japanese RPG for the next 20 years.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-history-of-trpgs-in-japan-%E2%80%93-part-3-%E2%80%93-group-sne-rides-the-bubble-1986-1990.700267/post-9157975" target="_blank"><strong>Next: Part 4 – Other Developments in the Late 1980s</strong></a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 9156109, member: 6680772"] This next part will focus more on [B]GroupSNE[/B], partly because it is probably the most influential organization on TRPGs in Japan, but also because two of my sources for this are by [B]Hitoshi Yasuda[/B], so I have the most information about them. I looked for some sources by or about the other groups, but they’re a little harder to come by. A little historical/cultural context should be mentioned here. 1985-1986 marks the beginning of the Japanese bubble economy. The causes of the bubble are little too esoteric to describe here, but suffice it to say that in the late 1980s, an enormous amount of money was being pumped into the economy which resulted in profligate spending, at both the corporate and the individual level. And there should be no doubt that this had a commensurate effect on the RPG market. The RPG market in Japan has [I]never[/I] been of significant size, not even reaching the heights of the post-Egbert fad in the States, let alone the tremendous growth seen in the hobby today. Nevertheless, 1986-1995 saw skyrocketing RPG development, at probably a rate greater than the market could handle. Hobby and publishing companies had money to burn, and the burgeoning TRPG market was one place where they happily burned it. With [I]Dungeons & Dragons[/I] the newest RPG to appear in the Japanese market, [B]Syntax Error[/B] decided to go with that for the Comptiq replay. [B]Ryo Mizuno[/B] was chosen by Yasuda to be the DM because he knew Mizuno to be gifted writer, and expected him to be a novelist someday. (In general, replays are written by the GM, so as to provide the GM’s thought process.) Comptiq began serializing the replay, “Record of Lodoss War,” in September of 1986, with the first part lasting until April 1987. Though written by Mizuno, it was credited to Hitoshi Yasuda (whose name had some cachet) and Group SNE. (It must be noted here that Group SNE was at this time still merely the Syntax Error gaming group.) It was extremely well-received, so a second replay, set in the same world but with different PCs, began in June 1987. Also at the tail end of 1986, a publishing company called [B]Shakaishiso[/B] saw an opportunity to turbo charge their “Gamebook Magazine” (a magazine about gamebooks, e.g., Fighting Fantasy, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, etc.) by obtaining the Japanese license for the UK’s Warlock magazine. Again, Hitoshi Yasuda was tapped to oversee the project, and as mentioned before, he brought on Yutaka Tama as [B]editor-in-chief[/B]. But just as the inaugural issue of the Japanese Warlock went to press in December, 1986, they were struck by the shocking news that the Games Workshop Warlock magazine was being discontinued. What to do? A January 1987 issue was put out in the meantime, as Yasuda, Tama, and Shakaishiso debated whether to try continuing the magazine or discontinuing it. Then someone had an idea: the Corgi Books paperback of [I]Tunnels & Trolls[/I] 5th Edition had just been released in the UK in 1986. Could the translation rights be gotten? Yasuda knew that T&T was well-suited for solo play, and also had many solo adventures already published. This would thus A) be palatable to the magazine’s gamebooks fans, and B) be the perfect bridge to bring them over to RPGs. A February issue was canceled while negotiations were underway. Finally, the deal went through. Shakaishiso got the translation rights. A March issue was put out, and then starting with a special RPG-focused issue in April, the magazine slowly shifted from being a Fighting Fantasy and other gamebooks magazine, to being a gamebooks/RPG magazine. As Yasuda’s workload increased, he relied more and more on the members of Syntax Error to do translations, write articles and replays, and other work. He tasked the translation of T&T to young [B]Miyuki Kiyomatsu[/B]. Eventually, Mizuno, who was just a year out of college, came to Yasuda and said, “Yasuda-san, I really want to help you with your work, but my parents won’t accept my becoming a freelance writer. I’d like you to set up a company.” And so in October of 1987, Group SNE Co., Ltd. was established. The original staff was 7 people: Yasuda (age 37), [B]Hiroshi Yamamoto[/B] (age 30), [B]Yohei Sawaki[/B] (age 24), Mizuno (age 23), Kiyomatsu, [B]Nao Kitagawa[/B] (both age 22), and [B]Hiroshi Takayama[/B] (age 21). Yasuda’s concept for Group SNE was less corporation, and more pirate ship. The young members were not his employees, they were content creators. The creators all held a share in the company, and so all received a portion of the profits. In addition to shares of the profits, the creators also received royalties on the things they authored. In those bubbly days, that meant they were taking home a lot of money. Hiroshi Yamamoto even told Yasuda, “You must not be worldly-wise, to give your writers so much money.” Group SNE’s first product as a company was the Japanese translation of [I]Tunnels & Trolls[/I], 5th Edition in December of 1987. It’s launch had been prepared with many articles throughout the year in Warlock. And then here Group SNE and Shakaishiso did something new and unexpected. Shakaishiso published Fighting Fantasy books in Japan’s established and popular [I]bunko[/I] format: an A6 (4.1"×5.8") paperback. The readers of Warlock were used to the [I]bunko[/I] format. The original source material was a paperback. Thus, [I]Tunnels & Trolls[/I] was published in Japan in the [I]bunko[/I] format. This was a first, and Yasuda wrote that he received a surprising amount of blowback from this. RPGs were box sets! Every RPG, foreign and domestic, that had been released in Japan from 1983 to 1987 had been box sets. Yasuda and Shakaishiso were upsetting the apple cart. But the T&T paperback ended up being a big hit. In addition to the groundwork laid in the issues of Warlock, the paperback format drew in many gamebook fans. And it allowed RPGs to get out of the hobby and toy shops and into bookstores. As a company, Group SNE just hit the ground running. (Sidenote: Group SNE continues to support T&T to this day, and even introduced its own "advanced" variation called [I]Hyper Tunnels & Trolls[/I].) Rewinding a bit, earlier in 1987, Kadokawa’s imprint, Fujimi Shobo, saw the success of the Comptiq replay, and decided they wanted to create an RPG-focused magazine, called [B]Dragon[/B], planning for launch in January 1988. They approached Group SNE and asked them to create an original RPG that could be used to help promote the new magazine. Although a little leery of Fujimi Shobo, which was then primarily known for trashy romance novels, Groupe SNE was not particularly averse to the idea itself. Many of its members wanted a shot at creating something that scratched the itch [I]Dungeons & Dragons[/I] did, but that was wholly and uniquely Japanese, as well. Ryo Mizuno and Miyuki Kiyomatsu were raring to go, but first there was much to be done with the Record of Lodoss War story. Given the popularity of the first Comptiq replay, and the positive response to the second replay, Group SNE and [B]Kadokawa[/B] decided to turn the first replay into a novel. Naturally, Ryo Mizuno was assigned to write it, and [I]Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch[/I] was published in April of 1988. While Dragonlance followed the Lord of the Rings trilogy of thick books model, Mizuno and Group SNE decided to go for a slighter, more readable format aimed at a youth and young adult market. [I]Bunko[/I]-sized, it came in at 295 pages. (For comparison, the first volume of the Dragonlance Chronicles was split into two [I]bunko[/I], at 459 and 323 pages respectively.) [I]The Grey Witch[/I] was a huge bestseller. It would go on to a long-running series of novels, computer games, and anime. In fact, it is credited with essentially creating the “light novel” genre of books still popular today. With the second Lodoss replay nearing completion, Group SNE wanted to compile the serialized replays into single volumes. But they ran into a snag. While Shinwa, the Japanese publisher of D&D, was happy with articles that promoted the game, they would not work with Kadokawa/Group SNE as far as book publishing rights. But Lodoss was printing money for both companies just then, so it was decided to abandon D&D for something they could control. The RPG requested by Fujimi Shobo was still in development, and wouldn’t necessarily mimic D&D so well. So Group SNE whipped a quick set of rules (more or less D&D through RuneQuest) that covered all the bases for continuity, replayed the first campaign with those, and published that replay as a single paperback volume. They followed suit with the second campaign as well. When it came time to start the third replay series in Comptiq, they simply continued play with those rules. With Lodoss a huge moneymaker at the time, even these rules were eventually published in October of 1989 in a trilogy of books called [I]Record of Lodoss War Companion[/I]. But prior to that came [I]Sword World RPG[/I], the original RPG requested by Fujimi Shobo. Yasuda and Group SNE didn’t want it tied wholly to [I]Record of Lodoss War[/I], so they could have more creative freedom. But on the other hand, Lodoss was too successful to ignore completely. So [I]Sword World RPG[/I] was set in Forcelia, the same [I]world[/I] as the island of Lodoss, but on Alecrast, a different [I]continent[/I]. Although the RPG itself would not be developed in time to coincide with the launch of Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon magazine, as with T&T the groundwork for the RPG would be laid with an ongoing series of articles describing the lore and geography of the new continent. Officially, the now famous author Ryo Mizuno was listed as the author (along with Group SNE), but the system was designed by Miyuki Kiyomatsu. In design, [I]Sword World RPG[/I] took influence from [I]Traveller[/I] with its ability score generation (2d6 on top of a base attribute that varied by race) and task resolution (2d6+bonuses to match or beat a target number). Races were basically D&D. In lieu of hard-siloed “classes”, they went with “skill packages” that foregrounded what was essentially multi-classing, a kind of middle ground between D&D-style hard classes and the skill system of Basic Roleplaying. Magic used a spell point system. Combat was just opposed roles based on specific skills, but a new innovation was the Power Rating Table for damage (and healing). Weapons and spells were given a power rating, and so determining the result of an attack or spell meant rolling 2d6 and cross-checking the appropriate Power Rating to determine the degree of effect. Having seen the success of T&T in the [I]bunko[/I] form, Sword World was planned from the outset to use the same size. The already popular setting, the fairly straightforward gameplay using only 2d6, an aesthetic very similar to Nintendo's [I]Dragon Quest[/I], and the [I]bunko[/I] form factor, all contributed to monster success for [I]Sword World RPG[/I], giving Group SNE three straight years of success from 1987-1989. Most importantly, [I]Sword World RPG[/I] and the Lodoss light novels made inroads to junior and senior high school students. A 1993 survey of most read books by high school students had Record of Lodoss War top the boys list for all three grades. For its part, [I]Sword World RPG[/I] would be [I]the[/I] dominant Japanese RPG for the next 20 years. [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-history-of-trpgs-in-japan-%E2%80%93-part-3-%E2%80%93-group-sne-rides-the-bubble-1986-1990.700267/post-9157975'][B]Next: Part 4 – Other Developments in the Late 1980s[/B][/URL] [/QUOTE]
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