Gaming in the Orient

[FireLance]

The gaming population in Singapore is small, but we can get gaming stuff fairly easily. There are a few shops (including one chain of stores with three branches) that bring in material from WotC and other d20 companies. There's also Amazon for more obscure materials and pdfs can be sent anywhere in the world.

Incidentally, one of my gaming group has a Japanese PH, so I'm fairly sure gaming exists in Japan. What may be contributing to the perception that gaming is rarer than it actually is in Asia is that ENWorld is an English-language site, and Asians who are less proficient in English may not frequent it.

 

[MonsterMash]

Of the posters that are on RPG.net in China I think that they are all expats from english speaking countries. Its not so surprising that Singapore as a wealthier country seems to have a number of RPGers.

In Japan and South Korea I know that CRPG are big and that probably takes some of the market and many tabletop RPGers will probably post to Japanese and Korean language sites.

 

[tetsujin28]

Of the posters that are on RPG.net in China I think that they are all expats from english speaking countries.

True. The posters from RPGnet in China are mostly from the UK and U.S.

Japan has a fairly long history of rpgs (It's one of the countries that Chaosium's done a fair bit of business with), and I've heard there's a gaming scene in Hong Kong.

 

[DragonLancer]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

 

[Zander]

I've been to a gaming store in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, so there must be at least some gaming there.

Probably Yellow Submarine. It's a great store. It's part of a chain but the Shinjuku branch is the best.

I've played D&D in Japan but only in English with gaijin. There must be a fairly active native RPG community because most WotC books get translated into Japanese and there's at least one Japanese RPG magazine. It's called Role and Roll IIRC.

I have a number of 2E products in Japanese including the Complete Fighter and DM's screen. I also have the (1st level) wizard spell cards in Japanese - they came out before they came out in English in the US.

For 3.x, I have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain module in Japanese.

 

[Dragonbait]

Probably Yellow Submarine. It's a great store. It's part of a chain but the Shinjuku branch is the best.

I second this.

There is another Japanese gaming magazine called Dragon (not to be confused with WoTC's Dragon) It caters to fantasy in general, and I think the Sword World game, which is a Japanese-made TTRPG

 

[Alzrius]

Probably Yellow Submarine. It's a great store. It's part of a chain but the Shinjuku branch is the best.

That's the one!

Incidentally, be careful when searching for that store in Shinjuku. There's three Yellow Submarines there, but only one of them has D&D/d20 products; I learned that the hard way, walking all over the district to get to the first two before finally finding the right one.

For 3.x, I have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain module in Japanese.

Hm, I don't recognize that product. Is that from WotC?

 

[painandgreed]

Incidentally, be careful when searching for that store in Shinjuku. There's three Yellow Submarines there, but only one of them has D&D/d20 products; I learned that the hard way, walking all over the district to get to the first two before finally finding the right one.

Do they have a website/map? Seems like you need a map or instructions to find anything in Shinjuku (or all of Japan). I'd like to check it out next time I'm there.

Editted to add:

While Looking around I found this article on RPGs in Japan.

Japanese TRPG FAQ

 

[Alzrius]

Do they have a website/map? Seems like you need a map or instructions to find anything in Shinjuku (or all of Japan). I'd like to check it out next time I'm there.

There's a map of the district that I think I found in the train station there. While it was able to direct me to each store, it's still a crap shoot to find the one with the D&D/d20 stuff. I was unlucky in that regard.

 

[Dragonbait]

bumping in hopes of having this and its parody on the same page.