Ryuutama: First Impression

Lets talk about Ryuutama: Natural Fantasy Roleplay

I'm not sure where to start with this one. Have you ever seen pictures of the Japanese translation of early Dungeons and Dragons and thought "Wow! this....

... makes regular D&D look outright grimdark.". Thats the kind of feeling I got reading this book. Its kind of adventury but also adorable anime-ish.

At first glance this looks like an adorable pseudo D&D but its really not. First of all, although there is a combat system in place and a full on bestiary at the end, the game doesn't really stress it. For the most part the game emphasizes environmental and traveling rules and the GM mechanics seem to lean the game towards teaching that table how to play roleplaying games in general than anything else.

Your Character

Four ability scores, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Spirit, that are defined by dice scaling from a d4 to a d12. For most interaction you're going to roll two of any of these to do anything. For example; Attacking with a heavy weapon is Strength + Strength, Attacking with a medium weapon is Dexterity + Strength, perception checks are Dexterity + Intelligence and so on. Often there will be some number to boost this from other character choices. Double the max number is a critical success. Double 1s is a fumble which gives you fumble dice, a kind of luck mechanic to compensate for failure.

You choose a class which is less like classes in typical fantasy RPGs and more like backgrounds and proffessions. These are things like merchants, farmers and artisans. these front load you a few abilities that often function as skills but also are just abilities that happen. almost none of them have any combat relevancy. Where you get something that's more like typical classes are when you choose a type out of Attack, Technical and Magic. Even then roughly half the abilities matter in combat. The Magic type lets you get spells each level which is split into low, middle and high magic. The magic itself has very few options and makes you less of a wizard and more of a magical housewife, with almighty spells like making someone mopey. Okay, sure there's some curing and a mystical bolt in there along with a few other combat relevant spells but you get the picture with this game. Not only are the images adorable but the general tone of most of the options add up to cutesy-wutesy adventures of traveling for miles to return the one puppy to it's mommy in Mount Cuddles and along the way you fight goblins that are also catgirls.

There are ten levels which net you some dice increases, extra types and extra classes. Not much else to say really.

Playing the game.

The item section has some abstractions but is surprisingly robust for the nature of the game. About the only part that's disappointing is that animals have no mechanics other than being an item that carries stuff and eats your food, and magic weapons aren't really elaborated on. Carrying capacity is a thing which means that your skills for traveling and strategy in doing so is actually pretty crucial since tracking food and water is important. Each morning you make a check to see how you feel so you better keep yourself healthy too. In fact where the game gets really hardcore in terms of how much foresight you need is the traveling rules. They're simple and obvious but you have to be careful about traveling in the wrong terrain without enough resources. If you just grab a few tents and potions you're going to die fast.

Combat exists but in a relatively minimalistic way. Its a little kinda almost exactly like a JRPG. You get initiative and gets one action a turn. The battlefield is enemies on one side and players on the other side. Each side has a back row, that can't be hit with melee attacks, and a front row that can. When there are no enemies on the front row, the back row becomes the front row. And that's basically it. Combat is actually a little discouraged and pretty lethal if you mess around with the wrong thing so it isn't that important so I can forgive it for being weird. Personally I think a simple closed/near/far combat distancing would go better and will probably be my house rule. But as I said, there's a pretty functional bestiary in there so you have something to work with.

The GM

The GM gets its own DMPC here. The Gamemaster controls a dragon that's basically some kind of guardian spirit that is overseeing the player's adventure for whatever reason. You get two sets of abilities that are blessings or dues ex machina for to help them out a bit, even being able to reveal the fact that you exist to them to help them. You have a limit on how often you do this because it drains your HP and really you're just as likely to remain a voyeur towards the party if they are getting along fine on their own.

Conclusion

I actually like this game. But I have to say that it is very limited. Travel is the name of the game here and you go from point A to point B with low key adventures and a few battles. Not much to it past that. The game feels like a slice of life fantasy anime than a grand adventure and I want to emphasize that I'm okay with that, its just kind of one note. That said, the rules are pretty solid. Some of the mechanics are actually pretty clever in how they handle the scaling dice. If you want to do anything that is at all complex with combat you have to put a bit of thought into it since it is beyond abstract. But that's the kind of game it is. Its minimal and does its job of having heartwarming adventures with very mundane fantasy humans and I'm just upset because I have a really difficult time finding anything to do in an RPG where something isn't getting punched in the face on a regular basis. Worse yet is that at it's skeleton its a pretty decent system that could use some more content to really get off the ground as more than just a kiddie romp adventure where you can easily die of dysentery.

One thing that this game does seem to excel at without snark from the carebear-hating violent psychopath side of my brain is that its a pretty good gateway to other fantasy games. The game is simple to understand without being totally dumb, the GM mechanic teaches you how to run a game, basic concepts like items, spells, travel and adventure are pretty hardcoded in there along with foresight and monsters. As a 'My first D&D' the game works pretty well and that's probably why I really like it. Plus you get to slow down and really have a slice of life cutesy adventure where you can just have fun and explore without the game getting so abstract that exploration doesn't really seem worth it.

Ryuutama doesn't exactly have support in the sense that there aren't any published adventures or settings or anything like that so It'll be rare that I talk about it from this point on. But its on my play list so when I find fan material I like I'll talk about it and I'll eventually talk about what I wind up doing with it.