My French friend living in Australia tells me that In Nomine was entirely different in French compared to the English version.

Croc, authour, according to John Kim's site, of many French and English-language rpgs - Bitume, Animonde, Bloodlust, Heavy Metal, Scales, Stella Inquisitoris, etc - wrote In Nomine in 1989; it appeared in English in 1997, with Derek Pearcey listed as authour. Given that Pearcey is listed as authour rather than "translator" of the English-language version, and is also listed as the authour of the WW magazine article, "In Nomine: A Designer's Perspective", I strongly suspect that his English version was based on the original French, not a strict translation.

I don't read French, nor have I seen the French version, so this is just surmise; but I suspect that the relative costs of writing and translation led SJGames to the same conclusion I've come to here - it's cheaper to get someone to write a new rpg based on the old one, than it is to get them to translate the old one.

Unless of course you find some enthusiastic fan who'll do it free or cheap... but the same goes for writing

Allow me to make my usual plea for companies trying to cash in on Japanophilia to hire Japanese artists and write their own product.

If Shingo from Heisei Democracy can insert himself into the Japanese fantasy artist subculture using nothing but his love for Warhammer 40K and hemaphroditic porn, any RPG company could do the same.

Uhhh.... ok?

Quote from: J ArcaneYeah, though frankly, I'm starting to disbelieve that it's ever going to come to fruition

It's happening. Check the blog off the main page for up-to-date news. It's been delayed because every person involved in it on the US side has a real job (usually 50+ hours a week), but it's well along, and will be out by the end of this year. Also, the other hang-up is that we were well on our way to have GoO produce and distribute the book...

Quoteand I'm also becoming increasingly concerned that it's going to come out leaning in a much more "storygames"/"Forge" direction, from the descriptions on the site.

Which will pretty much piss me the fuck off.

Uh, you can go ahead and take that up with the original author. We're not changing the rules, sticking in new rules, converting to BESM or anything like that. We're translating the game as-is, adding more background detail, combining the data from a bunch of supplements into the core book, and adding sections of setting and text so that a western audience can jump right in, without suffering the Sengoku or Blue Planet "OK, there's all this data and background... but what the fuck do I DO with it?" effect.

But rest assured, if what you're seeing on the site is making you all bitter inside, that's the original game you're reading into there, so you will not like it. Seriously. If you smell "the Forge" on a game that was created originally six years before the Forge ever existed, and revised into its current edition two years before, again, the Forge ever existed, then you're really not going to dig it. And that's cool, different games for different folks. So concern yourself with it no longer.

Just to be helpful:
Other games that will "piss you the fuck off":
* All games by the company FEAR (the largest producer of RPGs in Japan), with the possible exception of "Alshard" or "Night Wizard", including:
Tokyo NOVA, Tenra Bansho, Terra the Gunslinger, Angel Gear, Chaos Flare, Inou-Tsukai, Nirvana, Double Cross, Beast Bind. Plus others like Infinite Fantasia, Shangai Noir, Savage Science, and more.

Other games that might not "piss you the fuck off":
* Alshard (high fantasy console-style game, same author as Tenra Bansho)
* Gehena (Japan's take on Al Qadim, anime style)
* Sword World (the first original Japanese fantasy RPG)
* Demon Parasite (new Action-Horror game written by a buddy of mine in Osaka)
* Rokumon Sekai (newer shlock-fantasy game with pretty original, but rather complicated, magic rules)
* Shin Megami Tensei game (another new edition was just released)
* Ghost Hunter RPG
* Any of the incarnations of the Lodoss War RPG
* and the original GURPS stuff produced in Japan (there's 3-5 original books)

You can find info about most of the above if you type it into yahoo.co.jp with "TRPG", or hunt for them directly on amazon.co.jp.

QuoteThere's some very intriguing games available on the Japanese market, and I'd love to see them faithfully translated into English, but I'm starting to suspect that Tenra Bansho is not going to be an example of that.

If you have a problem with the games as they were originally written, as it seems like you do (reading into the descriptions of the actual Japanese game thinking that they're all being "changed" from the original), then it really does seem a misnomer to say that "you'd love to see them faithfully translated". Instead, it seems that when you see the games for what they really are, you smell some swiney bent and get all bitter.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say, "You wish that some of the pretty art would be lifted from those intruiging, original Japanese games, and dropped into some sourcebook (sans rules, perhaps with a little bit of the original setting) for an existing US RPG?"

Sorry if I come off too harsh: I don't want to read too much into words on a BBS (that would be unfair), but I would hate for people to get the idea that the game is for them just because it has pretty pictures or whatever, when at its core the system and feel simply isn't something they're interested in. I've seen people try to pimp their game to everyone, bending over to find exaggerated examples of things that might get them to buy the game; those people buy the game, read it, hate it (because they were duped, essentially), and become bitter folks with big mouths. I don't want to dupe people, no fucking way.

-Andy

Oh, and to answer Jong as the "Japanese RPG authoratah" or whatever....

Quote from: JongWKWhy not more translated games? Is it that expensive to hire a decent translator? Or is the licensing costs?

Both. In Japan, licensing an anime or manga is relatively easy. Licensing a book? Fucking impossible, unless the author retains a lot of the copyright. The problem is that anime, console games, and manga and all is translated "as is" and sold. With literature and the like, the ancient Godzilla-like distribution/publication/IP-owning structure of Japanese middle-management tithe-takers steps in, and you're paying royalties out the fucking wazoo, and stepping through minefields of red tape to produce shit.

Remember those generally reviled GoO "Anime Guides", that basically gave you just enough information that you would already know if you saw the anime, but didn't offer you, say, a single Adventure Hook, a single Sample Adventure, or even so much as a sample PC or NPC (in other words, anything actually useful to a gamer as a gamebook)?  The reason is because if GoO did that, their contract would have changed from the "you're just translating a manga/anime without changing anything" contract, to "you're messing with our mega-conglomerate's Intellectual Property!! (for creating a SINGLE FUCKING STORY HOOK For real, I've seen it happen)", where there is no amount of money and fame worth the effort of wading through that money, time, and sould-sinking debacle.

The Battle Royale movie came out in English. So did the manga.  It was a goddamn miracle that the original book came out, and that that project didn't die somewhere after folks realized what an utter beast Japanese IP/media property licenseing could be.  It was much of this that killed the Gundam RPG, if much of what I heard is true (a lot of the "Oh, you rewrote the machine gun description on the Zaku II-A model's spec sheet? Then you need to have your whole book translated back into Japanese, and sent back to us for us to review and check for IP inconsistencies. Again.").

In the end, if I were to say, "Hey, this Japanese RPG is AWESOME. I want to translate and release it in English", and went through the normal process of doing so (including hiring out for the translation at normal rates, rather doing a majority of it myself or whatever),  the simple price, time and work involved of producing the book would be about equal to producing an entirely new RPG that you designer yourself. And that's before royalties.

Japan's a little different in that regard, though: The usual RPG freelance writer salary is about 1-2 cents per word IIRC, with more if you are "known". When I do side translation for "normal conversational stuff" (not my real job, BTW, just something I do on the side when I have time and want more money to play the market with), I get the industry standard 20 cents per word for J->E translation.  When I do side translation for technical stuff (say, scientific, legal, medical papers or whatever; I specialize in computers, network and storage) I can expect to make up to a dollar a word or more depending on the speed the project has to be done, size, scope, etc.  It is probably a much different playing field with French or Spanish or German, where I imagine that the costs are lower (especially for countries where machine translation is an option and actually works, unlike most asian languages).

So yeah, Tenra is different, unusual, even "special", which is why I'm busting some balls to get it out to the English audience in its original form, expecting about nil profit (it will truly be a "vanity press game"). After this, I hope that other companies look into bringing over some games; stuff like Alshard or Double Cross would kick ass in the US, I think (both as games, as receptive audiences, and just fucking fun). But as I mentioned above, the average game company could write their own complete RPG, pay for art and layout and production, and still best the profits of trying to sell a Japanese game.  I still really hope they try, though.

Re: "I have a hunch that some foreign language games don't get translated because the game it's self does not appeal to english speaking people enough to print." and "Different languages create different scenes, different tastes make for different games."

Absolutely true. Before Alshard, Night Wizard was the biggest selling game in Japan (even well over J-D&D 3e). But I don't think that the US/English market is into playing "cute schoolgirls in a magical/modern school environment"... at least not in the numbers that it would take to warrant such a tremendous project as trying to translate the game into English. Or even Sword World, which is a huge seller in Japan in its incarnations, and is historically probably one of the most well-played games ever in Japan (until recently; I suspect that Alshard and D&D 3e are more played now than Sword World was in its day)... but at it's core it's a simple schlock fantasy game: HP, classes, 2d6, yawn. It would probably sell less than Agone.

-Andy

Quote from: Andy K"You wish that some of the pretty art would be lifted from those intruiging, original Japanese games, and dropped into some sourcebook (sans rules, perhaps with a little bit of the original setting) for an existing US RPG?"

Is obviously.

Someone's going to wise up to that method and they're going to make money hand over fist on weeaboo RPG players.

Being, apparently, the only dude on here that has read BOTH the english and original (albeit in spanish, but a direct translation instead of re-creation) versions of the game; I can say unequivocably that the two games are NOTHING alike.

As Jong mentioned, the spanish version is a very black humour game, but played for definite laughs, about the crazy celestial/demonic beaurocracy.

The SJG version is a deadly serious game about being Angelic Powers with a very White-wolf-style game feel to it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaOne of the (monumental) editing tasks I had on a still-born RPG project I was working on once was taking a literal translation of a French-to-English text and making sense of it.  Your girlfriend is dead right -- it was one of the more frustrating writing tasks I ever did.  I'd look at the raw translation and try to figure out the context and subtext, and how to say it in fluent English, with nuance.  Sometimes I'd just wing it and write passages that I felt captured the intent of the translation.  Eventually the line editor told me to simply write my own version of the book (as you suggested elsewhere in your post).

!i!

I attempted a similar project once in the past, trying to make sense of and rewrite a really bad translation of an homebrew Italian game called "YARPG", which was something of a rules light mecha game.  I managed to get through the first chapter and then promptly realized that there was no way in hell I was going to finish it, because it would likely drive me insane.

I'm sorry if my commentary offends you, Andy.  All I know is that the commentary on your site winds up making the game sound like "Storyteller 2.0" at best (and not just because that's the name explicitly used, but in the descriptiosn of the mechanics and the "amateur theatre" vibe).  If you say that this is faithful to the original, then I can then say that based on those desccriptions I probably wouldn't like the original either.

I'm a little curious however, about your claim then, that this would somehow mean I'd basically hate every major game developed in Japan for the last couple of decades.  I find this attitude a bit hard to believe, given that Japan has been one of the strongest overseas territories for GURPS, which is one of my favorite games, as well as what I would expect to be a strong influence from CRPGs like Dragon Quest.  I would expect those to matter at least somewhat in terms of influences on TRPG development in Japan, but what you seem to be suggesting in your post is that basically every Japanese game I've ever heard of adheres to this same "storyteller" vibe that turns me off on your site.

Quote from: Andy KI get the industry standard 20 cents per word for J->E translation.  When I do side translation for technical stuff (say, scientific, legal, medical papers or whatever; I specialize in computers, network and storage) I can expect to make up to a dollar a word or more depending on the speed the project has to be done, size, scope, etc.  It is probably a much different playing field with French or Spanish or German, where I imagine that the costs are lower .

TWENTY Cents PER WORD?

Having worked in publishing, let me tell you that, yes, it is a different playing field. VERY VERY different. Makes all the difference, for obvious reasons, whether you translate Asian computer stuff or European RPGs (novels, poetry, scholarly texts...). Much $$$ will be reaped from the former; from the latter, not so much.

That said, America is eagerly waiting for Settembrini to translate the Midgard RPG. He's been working on it forever!

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalDifferent languages create different scenes, different tastes make for different games.

Oh, and just one more anecdote I thought of on that issue (re: Cultural differences).

One of the hottest new games of the last year is "Yuuyake Koyake", by Sunset games. They're a small-press publisher of tabletop games, like those strategy games with the hex maps and stuff. They also happen to produce the Japanese version of Harnworld.

Anyway, their two biggest games are the MAID RPG, which admittedly a lot of people got for fun, maybe played a session or two of it, nothing long-term.  But Yuuyake Koyake is seriously busting heads in the RPG world in sales and popularity.

http://www.sunsetgames.co.jp/rpg/rpg_index.htm < Sunset's RPG Page
http://www.sunsetgames.co.jp/rpg/youyake/youyake.htm < Yuuyake Koyake. Check out the jpg links on the left, incl Character Sheet and town map, cover art, etc.

You play a half-human half-animal spirit that has adventures in a peaceful town. No killing monsters, no real "combat" per se. Rather you wander around the peaceful town helping people solve their problems. Sometimes evil spirits get in the way, but they're more of a nuisance than anything. And again, you don't pull out swords and slay them.  

In Japan, people are totally into this kind of stuff. New gamers can get into it, and even die-hard gaming grognards have the sensibilities ("cultural love of Hello Kitty") to get into it. In the US, it would go from the shelf to the bargain bin in one motion as soon as folks opened the book and learned that the spirit-animal PCs don't battle demons with giant sword attacks. Cultural differences are too big to support a project like that as anything more than an oddity. But shit, it's a really beautiful game, from the interior art, to the peaceful feel, right down to the areas of the character sheet where you write down the friends you've made.

Oh, likewise, most Japanese gamers who know anything about White Wolf's Exalted laugh at the idea of people in Japan playing it (just the sensibilities are just too off). As far as I know, the company that licenses and translates all of WW's stuff into Japan to sell it are all over the new WoD stuff, but have not touched Exalted.

-Andy

QuoteI'm sorry if my commentary offends you, Andy.  All I know is that the commentary on your site winds up making the game sound like "Storyteller 2.0" at best (and not just because that's the name explicitly used, but in the descriptiosn of the mechanics and the "amateur theatre" vibe).  If you say that this is faithful to the original, then I can then say that based on those desccriptions I probably wouldn't like the original either.

No problem, sorry if I got spazzy. I can actually say that I don't mind that much if people hate it (because it's not my game; even though I do love it and play it myself, I'm not the rules-writer so you won't see game-designer level flames myself). I do get pissy about claims that it's not coming out, because that part IS me , and on top of that I can never seem to convey the, "We all have real jobs (50-60 hours in some cases) and families", so it takes much longer than a production house where a designer's full time job is to design.  Frankly, the speed that WW can propose, then release, a game shocks the hell out of me, seeing how much time goes into writing and organizing a mess like this.

QuoteI'm a little curious however, about your claim then, that this would somehow mean I'd basically hate every major game developed in Japan for the last couple of decades.

Sorry if I sounded snappy, but that's not true and I didn't convey that correctly. If I had more time (which I will after Tenra) I'd have built up my //www.j-rpg.com site to showcase all these games so people would know what the hell I was talking about.

There's a few "major players" in the RPG world in Japan, maybe 3-4 companies. And the largest has about 7-12 full-time employees. So they're not big.  Out of those, we have FEAR (the biggest: //www.fear.co.jp), and others like Altelier Third ( http://www.a-third.com/trpg/ ) that does WoD and the like, Group SNE which does GURPS, etc.  There are only a few houses that try to produce original japanese RPGs rather than translate them from English. FEAR is the major one of those.

FEAR started out as a bunch of guys who wrote for TORG and Cyberpunk (the CEO of FEAR wrote a bunch of stuff in English for the Cyberpunk Pacific Rim sourcebook, frex). They decided to make all these distinctly Japanese-bourne RPGs, starting with a "Japanese Cyberpunk" (Tokyo NOVA), and pushing on from there.  The only 'problem' (from a trad gaming point of view) is that in doing so, most of these games have elements which "smell" like "story gaming".  Double-Cross, frex, is a great strategy/combat/intrigue focused RPG, a dark superhero game about late youths who were infected at birth with viruses that give them powers. It's really dark, really cool and has a lot of focus on the combat elements, cool powers, etc.  However, it also has mechanics for gaining and losing relationships, and it has this element that looks like a postcard called the "Scene Player Card", which gets put in the hands of the person for that scene, act or adventure that the game "focuses on" for that round.  

See where I'm going? Each one of these has distinctly RPG elements and coolness going for it... yet the designers naturally added some stuff to make the game work the way that they want it to work. To them, it's just another rule or whatever. But to us, we can look at that and say, "Hey, that looks like Fan Mail from Primetime Adventures!" in one game, or "Oh, that looks like it was inspired by the Town Creation System from Dogs in the Vineyard", even though it wasn't.  That stuff appears in a LOT of original Japanese games, even really traditional-focused ones, and it's hard to, like, find a game devoid of those elements.  

I came up with that list above that fit pretty close, though: Including one FEAR game, Alshard (the bestselling game in Japan right now, for a few years running). It's got a system that was tricked out to be accessible to New Gamers, and CRPGers (folks who had never seen anything but Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest), and yet involved enough for old hands at gaming to really find cool things to do. It focuses on that sort of thing, and there's really no "story rules" or "relationship rolls" or anything like that. So I thought that might fit your interest.

The other ones out of the list above that I'd highly recommend are Gehenna (because it's gorgeous, and again a fun take on Arabian fantasy from a Japense Anime-ish perspective, yet it's still darker and grittier than Al Qadim), and Demon Parasite (for the sole reason that my friend wrote it; but it too is a high-combat focused modern horror game, with very little in the way of those story-ish rules). If you have played any of the Shin Megami Tensei console RPG games, the TRPG of the same name is the densest thing you will ever put your hands on, but it's very traditional, all abilities, skills, demons and magic and no "love dice" or whatever.

But a majority of the Japan-born sruff is pretty new in those regards. This game over here has relationship rules; that game over there has a scene structure; that other game over there has playing cards instead of dice. Over here, we see people go "Ohh Forge Smelly Boo Boo" or whatever, but over there it's just natural, and not 'gimmicky' either (usually the gimmicks, if any, are in the settings not the rules).

Other than that, there is a huge element of Japanese gamers that like to play what we look at as the traditional kind of game.  They get that frm playing D&D 3E (and in no small numbers, IIRC D&D is #3 top selling RPG). Since gamers get that fix from imported games, the domestic games market make games for folks interested in those other elements.

QuoteI would expect those to matter at least somewhat in terms of influences on TRPG development in Japan, but what you seem to be suggesting in your post is that basically every Japanese game I've ever heard of adheres to this same "storyteller" vibe that turns me off on your site.

They were phenomenal to the origins of TRPG development in Japan: Sword World, Japanese GURPS, about a dozen other J-made games that came and went. In the early 90s (probably with the advent of the first Japanese Edo-era RPG, and Wares Blade the fantasy-mecha game) companies split into "the folks who translate and release US RPGs in Japanese" and "the folks who produce original Japanese RPGs". The latter group tends to be more experimental. The rest is pretty much history.

But as for the "storyteller" vibe (do you mean, like, "White Wolf Storyteller System there, btw?"), most of the popular, Japanese-born, pretty-art stuff tends to go the "experimental" route in at least some form, usually in setting and art, sometimes in rules.

-Andy

Quote from: fonkaygarrySomeone's going to wise up to that method and they're going to make money hand over fist on weeaboo RPG players.

There is a huge population of talented junior high school, high school and college-aged Japanese teen manga artist shut-ins.  If I could harness their collective power somehow, I could produce the most gorgeous RPG ever (as long as you can stand manga art) for peanuts.

I've got connections in the dojin comic world, including some pretty famous folks (I hung out with Yonekura Kengo at the Comiket and the like before I really knew who she was, frex) in those circles. Unfortunately, I don't currently need any RPG art that features fist-sized dildos in gaping anuses, lolita schoolgirls being manhandled on a train, or abused nurses with 20kg tits. So I must look elsewhere for answers

-Andy

Hmm.  Thanks for the informative post andy.  I confess that most of my familiarity with the games, not being a Japanese speaker myself, is from what little info one can find in English.  And you and I both know just how little.

And to some extent, you also do alleviate some of my own knee-jerk reactions too, because it sounds like these "storygame-like" features and things, it tends to be more a small part of a whole that's likely to be more familiar.

So I did get a bit knee-jerky, and accused you of something you didnt' really deserve, for which I apologize.

Honestly, though, I can enjoy some of this story focused stuff sometimes, I always kinda liked Wraith in that regard.  But it also means that it's basically a freakin' hell of a lot harder to get anyone this side of the pond to play it too.  

Something more like the heavily CRPG-based stuff I'd probably get more out of, and I've wanted to see the Megaten game since I first learned of it's existence.

Hell, I'm pondering my own project of late that's intended to be a tribute to Dragon Quest.

And yes also to the artists.  There seem to be literal hordes of incredible amatuer manga-ka in Japan, and I've often wondered if there might be some way of capitalizing on this, even for the Western market.

The obvious solution is for RPG companies to troll 2chan and FFXI until enough hikikomori are under their sway.

There's also a staggering amount of output coming from Korea, where the professional market might not be so expensive as the inflated Japanese one.

These days the only RPGs being translated into Finnish are indie efforts like My Life With Master, The Mountain Witch and PTA... More expensive projects of the sort presumably wouldn't prove profitable since the majority of gamers are fluent enough in English to simply purchase the original books, and there already are a few local products which can serve as an introduction to the hobby. (Lately I've been thinking about translating Praedor into furriner-talk just for the heck of it.)

Quote from: RPGPunditYeah, but if I recall correctly, Nephilim was considerably changed in the translation, the English version was VERY different than the French original.

I know that this was the case with In Nomine, which was a totally different game in English from the original.

  Actually, the English Nephilim was quite close to the French version of the game.  The problem was that the french version of the game appeared with loads of very well written adventures straight off the bat so it was immediately obvious that we were in Cthulhu country for questions of tone.

  The English version came out without an adventure, the supplements took radically different approaches to tone and content of game (ranging from quite inaccessible discussions of the occult to gonzo nazis in UFOs stuff), this was then compounded by a published campaign where all the episodes seemd to have been written separately resulting in the adventures moving from investigation to fighting flaming wicker T-rexs .  The problems of tone were not improved by Chaosium then deciding to completely re-design the game through the supplements, adding a new magic system and changing the character advancement rules.

  The problem wasn't with the game itself (in terms of rules The Chaosium Nephilim book is substantially better than the confused and confusing first and second edition french books) but with Chaosium's complete failure to communicate coherently what the game's possibilities were.


  As for In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, I've read and run the original french version and own a couple of editions of it along with the SJG version.  Clearly SJG wanted to make a WW style game featuring angels and devils but effectively removed all the humour and satire from the original game.  To a certain extent this isnt that huge a problem as different editions of the French game have been more or less satirical.  There's always been a slightly mocking tone, treating the bureaucracy of heaven as being a lot like... well... french bureaucracy with the nepotism and short-sightedness that comes with it but the game's real reputation was forged, weirdly, by the flavour text included in the second edition.

  With each angel or demon prince you'd have a little short story of maybe 500 words and what really worked was the idea to not hold back AT ALL.  Any idea the writers had could be written up.  The result was a story in which the pope is depicted as a coke-snorting chronic masturbator who hates black people but loves soap operas, there's another story about fist-fucking children and then jokes about rape, murder, racism, porn cinemas, white supremacy and infanticide.

  The main difference between the SJG and the Croc version was that while Croc wrote about a celestial bureaucracy and made it clear that he thought that bureaucrats were wankers, SJG wrote about a celestial bureaucracy and depicted it as a noble thing modelled on classical music.  You were never going to get a US version of the French second edition (I mean, I don't think I've ever seen the word "fuck" in an RPG let alone the kind of jokes that would get you banned from RPGnet) but the second edition effectively distorts quite how vicious the game was over its multiple editions.