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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalmi" data-source="post: 8968011" data-attributes="member: 7040713">To be clear, I live in Japan, and I've been to Japanese gaming stores. It would be incorrect to say 5e isn't present in Japan, it does actually have a fairly prominent placement in the stores I've been in. At the same time, it's just one of the big boys, rather than THE TTRPG.As you mentioned, the way Japanese people play TTRPGs tends to be different from in the west. Long campaigns aren't popular, likely because of the time constraints of Japanese jobs. I would guess this is another reason for CoC's popularity, as it simply lends itself better to stories that begin and end in one night. The "replay" scene as mentioned is a vital part of the TTRPG community here, and in recent years that has expanded to youtube. And now of course there are also livestreams of TTRPGs, often played by youtube vtubers.I would mention another potential obstacle for D&D is the price investment, it costs quite a bit just to get a D&D game running. The aforementioned Sword World is sold in 3 books representing different tiers of play, basically similar to the old B/E/C/M D&D format. It's sold in a very small A6 format (basically the same size as a small manga) with minimal manga-style artwork in B&W. The first book costs about $8. That's a super-small investment to start playing a TTRPG.BTW, I highly recommend checking out Sword World if you're interested in TTRPG history, it's fascinating as an example of parallel evolution. There are no official translations unfortunately, but there are fan translations of the latest editions. The game started as essentially a D&D clone (the original Lodoss campaign was OD&D I believe), with small changes to make it more palatable to a Japanese audience. For example, the game ONLY uses d6 dice, you essentially roll 2d6 for everything, and use "power tables" to convert the results to different numbers. d20 and other polyhedral dice weren't really available in Japan in the 80s, although you can easily buy them now. Despite starting as a D&D clone, it's extremely different from modern D&D, the class system is essentially a skill system now, each level in a class essentially just gives you a skill point in particular skills. It also has some really neat rules for simplified/TOTM combat which are fully supported by the writeups for actions and spells.</blockquote>

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