Tabletop RPGs in Japan are typically referred to as “table talk RPGs” to emphasize the role that conversation plays in any given game. The most popular system available in Japan is probably Sword World RPG (SWRPG), which is based off of the franchise Record of the Lodoss War. The latter began life as a collection of published play reports. In recent years, the Japanese localization of Call of Cthulhu has also been pretty popular.
Today we’ll be looking at a system with a multi-lingual pun title. Its English title is Make You Kingdom!! and its Japanese title (迷宮キングダム), pronounced meikyū kingudamu, sounds the same and can be translated as “Maze Kingdom” (note that “Labyrinth Kingdom” or “Dungeon Kingdom” would be equally valid translations; I stuck with “Maze” to match the “M” sound of meikyū). The English title will make more sense after reading the game mechanics explanation below. Both Japanese and English titles are prominently featured on the cover. We’ll use the unofficial acronym of MYK when referring to this system hereafter. Below we discuss some of its features and highlight some of the parts
that make it unique.
The system is divided between two books: the Kingdom Book details character creation and the general rules of the game; and the Maze Book (which, unfortunately, I do not own) is where the Game Master will find details about how to build the dungeon, as well as monster and item stats. At least, that’s what the short description in the Kingdom Book (page 8) says about the Maze Book anyway.
The setting of this system is simple but effective. From page 4 of the game’s introduction (with my rough translation below it):
百万迷宮の冒険
君の分身、ランドメイカーのいる世界は、百万迷宮という名前で呼ばれている。無限に続く迷宮という意味の名前だ。百万迷宮は不思議な場所だ。ずっとこの世界に住んでいるランドメイカーにとっても、何が起こるか判らない、お祭りの夜みたいな場所なんだ。
Endless (literally “Million Mazes”) Maze Adventure
Your characters’ world is named the Endless Maze; it’s the world of the Land Makers. The name means that the dungeon continues without end in every direction. It’s a mysterious place. Although the Land Makers have lived here forever, even they don’t know what can happen. It’s a place that feels like the night of a festival.
That brief description alone makes me excited to plan for a campaign set in an endless dungeon. What would society in such an environment look like? How would creatures cope without natural sunlight? It’s a tired joke that GMs can sometimes struggle to get players to go to a dungeon that they’ve spent hours preparing. To solve this problem, MYK simply makes the entire world a never-ending dungeon.
Character creation looks to be fairly straightforward. Players are encouraged to generate completely random characters, even down to the characters’ names. Random tables are provided throughout for convenience’s sake. There are six classes, including: King, Knight, Oracle, Vizier, Servant, and Ninja. One player must choose the King class. Characters are defined by four stats: Wit, Charisma, Quest, and Warfare. Quest stands out as strange, but it relates to how well a character can find things. For whatever reason, it’s also connected to a character’s hit points. Rather than rolling for these stats, they’re determined by a character’s class. For example, a King gets to assign a 4, 4, 1, and 0 freely. Many Japanese systems eschew polyhedral dice entirely and rely
exclusively on six-sided dice. Arguably polyhedral dice didn’t catch on
as much as they did outside of Japan. MYK is no exception to this convention.
At this point you might be wondering why one player must pick the King class. The answer is simple: unlike the other classes which must put their highest bonus in a predetermined stat, the King’s class bonuses are left up to the player’s discretion completely, meaning that the King character can pick up the slack in an area that the other characters are weak.
MYK also includes kingdom creation and management. Prior to making characters, the entire group randomly generates a kingdom. The kingdom is defined by four stats: Life, Culture, Governance, and Military (生活, 文化, 治安, and 軍事 respectively). If any of these stats reaches zero, the kingdom is kaput. Players must also pay attention to the kingdom’s population, which cannot be reduced to zero either. The population not only includes the player characters themselves, but also the various NPCs that will come to live in the kingdom. The population must be kept relatively happy; a disgruntled populace will have negative consequences for the kingdom. Each session includes a phase where the players must decide what to do with their growing base. The game rules seem to describe a city-management style mini-game. The players can construct new facilities for their kingdom, including (but not limited to) a theater, a temple, an inn, and a colosseum, with each providing benefits to the kingdom’s stats or population limit.
There are twenty jobs available to characters in addition to the classes above. These seem to offer stat bonuses and skills for the character and benefits for the kingdom as a whole. Some of these jobs are quite silly, such as the Executioner and the Drone (怠けもの, which is perhaps better translated as “Lazy Bones”). My favorite by far is the Happymancer, which is an exceedingly clever way to refer to a jester. Keep in mind these classes, jobs, and stats are written in both Japanese and English. There are definitely a few mistakes, such as the misspelling of executioner as “excusioner.” Nevertheless, it’s usually easy to figure out what the intention was.
Because MYK only uses six-sided dice, there are some quirks regarding its random tables. For one thing, there are quite a few d66 tables that require a throw of 2d6. These types of tables can generate 21 results, treating one die as the tens column and the other die as the ones column.
Combat is abstract in a way similar to the style popular in older Japanese RPG video games. Characters and their opponents are placed on a battle mat with six sections, three for each side (players and their enemies). These sections determine a creature’s approximate position in the battle (vanguard, rearguard, and encampment). Player characters and their enemies can move among these sections during the battle.
Skills, items, and the facilities that can be added to a kingdom are printed as cards in the book. If a GM were so inclined, they could photocopy these cards for use during play. If memory serves, printed color cards are also available for purchase from the publisher. The cards don’t seem to be strictly necessary to play the game, but the artwork featured on them is appreciated. Some other tabletop role-playing systems would benefit from more illustrations of their magic spells.
The artwork in this book deserves some special attention. They’ve
gathered an eclectic group of artists to fill in the book’s 136 pages
with a healthy variety of styles. It still feels largely cohesive, which
is likely due to the game’s straightforward (though original) setting. The art is
generally light and cartoonish in tone, implying that the game isn’t
meant to be super serious or dark. The item cards section is the only
one that seems to be a little lacking; compared to other cards in the
book, the simple silhouette illustrations leave a little to be desired.
My Japanese ability is such that I wouldn’t be able to run a session of MYK any time soon. For example, the specific rules for making an attack in combat still elude my understanding; it’s unclear whether or not an attacking creature needs to roll to hit or if a successful attack is purely contingent on static stats. Moreover, I still need a copy of the Maze Book. These reasons are why this post should be considered an overview rather than a proper review. Regardless, I’ll still be able to use some of MYK’s ideas, of course. It would be great if an official English version of the system was released. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an effort to do so yet. Considering that the game has been around as early as 2004 (my copy from 2014 proudly proclaims the system was celebrating its 10 year anniversary at the time), an English version is probably not going to happen any time soon. There’s an unofficial English translation floating around online, but I can’t in good conscience encourage people to seek it out. It might be a moral grey zone if you already own the Japanese version, but I leave that up to others to decide for themselves. I’ve avoided referencing it while writing this post to ensure that what is written here is based on the version of the rulebook that I own rather than a translation made without the permission of the Japanese authors.
The Kingdom Book cost around ¥1700 (approx. $20 USD) a few years ago. It was the very first tabletop RPG book that I ever bought. Hopefully it’ll still be easy to find the Maze Book when travel to Japan is possible again. Although I’m still a proponent of not buying too many RPG resources, it’s nice to have this one on my shelf. It’s especially fascinating to see what tabletop role-playing is like in different cultures/countries.
Bibliography
Kawashima Tōichirō 河嶋陶一朗. Shinikaru poppu danjyon shiatā: Meikyū kingudamu: Shin ōkoku bukku シニカルポップ・ダンジョンシアター：迷宮キングダム：新・王国ブック [Cynical Pop Dungeon Theater: Maze Kingdom: New Kingdom Book]. Tōkyō: Bōken Kikakukyoku 冒険企画局, 2014 (6th printing).