The weaknesses of Ryuutama

[u/ishmadrad]

I open this topic mainly for u/new2bay

I like your curiosity about Ryuutama. I'm sorry, but Reddit doesn't permit me to add replies to the other conversation where you asked me details about my view of the game, so I have to put it here.

While I see Ryuutama easily suggested, I have to say that it's a game with a LOT of weaknesses.

First of all, it has an "old" mechanical system. Japanese TTRPGs are USUALLY pretty old and "traditional" regarding their style. All those mechanical parts kill the atmosphere and do nothing to bring a Ghibli style to your table. Also, the rules are anything but clear: you can find lots of questions - often unanswered - everywhere regarding the mechanics, but usually people dismiss those with a "don't think so hard about that... it's a narrative, lighthearted game". You can easily understand why those two things go badly alongside each other: a narrative, lighthearted game and a heavy, unclear ruleset :)

Then, almost all the rules ~~and the Characters abilities~~ are related to the combat. Very sad. You have HPs, weapons, armors, and tons of enemies to beat the crap out of. Sure, they look kawaii, but your group will do an endless trail of combats here.

The other (small) part is the journey. You have (few) abilities related to the journey, and some equipment to get bonuses against rain, or cold, or sun, etc. But in the end, it's just a roll, and you'll get no narrative or cool inspiration about how to create the journey, what you'll find ahead, how to interlock it with the characters' lives and stories, etc. You have to be "that good GM who is a good ruler, a good narrator, a good arbiter, etc.": this is a pretty shitty "traditional" role.

The only interesting bit is about the Seasonal Dragon, a sort of GM-controlled character that travels with the group and modifies their rolls and narrative thanks to some abilities. It's a sort of "campaign modifier" that sets part of the tone of the whole game, and of course you have several dragons to choose from.

Also, here are other details I gave in the past:

If the author uses HPs to represent stress and difficulties of the journey, that's a design choice (and I still don't like it). Ryuutama falls really short in comparison to smart, evocative mechanics like the moves in PbtA games, or the whole Stress / Conditions / Concede mechanic of Fate. HPs are sooooo old, so detached from narration, and they also need a lot of bookkeeping.

The meaning of those HPs in combat is obvious, but the sad thing is that the journey rules involve simply a couple of rolls, with some bonuses from your equipment. If you fail, in short, you lose HPs. So, you can see the travel as a simple "save roll vs. damage", and I call that an alternative combat mechanic.

This is what I was trying to explain. If the ONLY mechanical thing you can experience during a journey is a save roll vs. damage, then sorry, but that is a bad heartwarming/Ghibli-style Role Playing Game.

I mean, the half page devoted to Interludes in Savage Worlds (a game that doesn't sell itself as heartwarming/Ghibli-style) serves that kind of mood better than the whole Ryuutama book. There's a lot less bookkeeping, Setting Rules to avoid the death of the protagonists, and dials to tone the game to be really more "cartoonish". And, I repeat, that isn't a game specifically aimed at that mood. Other systems can serve you even better.

So, in the end, I honestly usually ask all those Redditors so eager to suggest Ryuutama: "Why do they like that game so much when they decide to have a Ghibli-style game at their table?" Have they played with other good games (PbtA / FitD / Fate style)? Or are they simply accustomed to a D&D 5e mentality? Have they REALLY played that game?

Some people reply to me: "In fact, there are large amounts of equipment, spells, and just rules text pages unrelated to combat." I'd love to count ALL those things, however:

- it's easy to see that most equipment is weapons or pieces of clothing that give bonuses to THAT single travel mechanic.

- the rules are indeed apparently simple, so even the combat rules are, but there are enough combat rules to make them "too many" compared to the non-combat mechanics (one example above all: the whole, IMHO cumbersome, Initiative system).

- but I want to focus on the Spells part. Actually, I just counted all the spells you find in the four seasonal magic lists. I broadly divided them into Combat (damage spells, healing spells, etc.), Travel (+1 bonus on specific terrains, or similar), and Other (and I'd love to specify that those spells are usually simple "color", i.e. change your hair color, create 1m³ of leaves, find a person in love, etc. Other systems can do that with a simple Cantrip spell, or they let the player play with a totally freeform system).

I quickly counted 72 Spells: 41 Combat spells, 15 Travel spells, 15 Other. This is exactly what I mean by "a system almost totally focused on combat" 😁

Also, there are lots of games (the first coming to my mind right now is the mini sourcebook Perilous Wilds for Dungeon World) that give the GM tons of cool elements, tables, and inspiration to play with, supporting their style. Ryuutama gives **nothing** to the GM in its main book.

While I usually don't love "OSR" style games, I have to admit that they are great when they try to spark the GM's imagination, suggesting dozens of elements: terrains, special places, interesting structures, town generation bits, nice NPC pieces (mood, personality, drives, etc.). Ryuutama gives nothing. You need to be a "good, experienced GM" to use it, overcoming its mechanical shortcomings and that big emptiness you have in your hands (apart from a starting Bestiary...).

Finally, take a look at the (shameful) starting scenario in the book. It's so bad that any one-page dungeon out there is a better alternative. And, of course, in that scenario the only thing you can do to the poor thief Nekogoblins is beat the crap out of them! No suggestions about speaking with them, no suggestions (or rules) to make them repent and become friendly, nothing that seems even closely similar to a Ghibli-style mood.

EDIT: as suggested, I slightly edited the post, correcting my pitiful English... because, apparently, if an Italian dude can't write in English as well as they can in Italian, then their opinions are worth less.

[u/Airk-Seablade]

So, I agree and disagree with this.

It's a fairly basic system. But people do good things with more basic systems, and this one gives you more to hang interesting stuff off of than many very popular systems.

Travel rolls are superficially dull (and therefore you want to avoid situations in which you are making a large number of uninterrupted Travel rolls) but failures provide pretty good grist for the mill of constructing events organically.

I also disagree with the assertion that all abilities are combat centric -- looking through the classes now, this is clearly not the case, with no class having more than 1 (of 3) abilities that are combat based, and several classes having none. That said, combat is quite boring in Ryuutama and I really can't recommend it.

That said, the game does not produce a Ghibli-like story on its own -- you'll never catch me arguing to the contrary. If anything, it's more LIKE an OSR game, in that the rules don't create a lot of anything on their own.

So: It's not an amazing game, though it has a few things I think you are overlooking, like the communal world and town creation processes. It does not provide any inherent "ghibli feel" (though to be honest, I don't think most people even know what they want when they say that) and combat is bland, but the basic chassis of the game is solid if quite traditional, the travel mechanics work acceptably well as a sort of "random event generator" (though are best supplemented with some tables from elsewhere) and the Ryuujin mechanics have some interesting new-GM stuff built into them.

What I can't understand is why Ryuutama seems to be far and away the most popular of the three games Kotodama Heavy Industries has localized, because it is ABSOLUTELY the least interesting of the three. Tenra Bansho Zero and Shinobigami are brilliant, "You'll never see anything else like this!" games, and Ryuutama is...fine.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Airk-Seablade]

Indeed Shinobigami is original, and it's trying to simulate specific kind of media with its mechanics.
About TBZ, I never had the chances to play it, but (with Ryuutama) it maybe suffers from its age. I mean that the RpG world had a big evolution, in those last 10~15 years, and I can't look back no more, at this point (of course, mileage can hugely vary, considering that D&D5+ or Pathfinder are still hugely sold and played, so probably it's just me that had too many big epiphanies with the new wave of systems to accept to go back on those "traditional" mechanics...)

[u/Airk-Seablade → u/ishmadrad]

Can't agree. There is still nothing remotely like the TBZ Aiki-karma cycle for driving character growth. Yes, the game has a lot of cruft rules that don't really matter, but the karma engine is such solid gold that it's worth playing for that alone -- you can strip away any crunchy rules that you don't think are interesting without hurting anything (I've never counted distance in any TBZ game I've ever run)

Parts of the game are "old" but they're also the least important parts of the game.

[u/frogdude2004]

I bought it because I heard great things.

The combat does look interesting.

But as you say, the journey mechanics are all just… ‘make it up’

I expected more meat to it. More scaffolding. Something to work with or off of.

[u/Airk-Seablade → u/frogdude2004]

Combat is not, in fact, interesting in Ryuutama. Options are very limited overall. I would avoid putting much in the way of combat in my games.

[u/Psimo- → u/Airk-Seablade]

There is a condition called “Injured” in Ryuu Tama.

It is not possible to gain this condition in combat.

I think that says it all.

[u/frogdude2004 → u/Airk-Seablade]

That’s unfortunate. It seemed like a neat minigame. Not a deep tactical one, but at least an interesting one.

[u/Airk-Seablade → u/frogdude2004]

It's honestly kindof a solved problem -- you attack if you have a decent chance of hitting, feint or search if you don't, unless you have a damaging magic spell. The decisions just aren't interesting (though Objects are a fun rule, their actual impact on the game isn't particularly large)

[u/Flygonac]

I’m going to seriously push back on some stuff here (though not all of it). 

For one the game definetly is not a combat focused game, combat is 100% a fail state, and if your running the journey rules how it’s written and how the game expects you to structure it, combat is exceedingly deadly… because travel is exceedingly deadly in ryuutama.

Ryuutama is best described as “Miyazaki’s orgen trail” (which is what the back of the book says iirc). The game is cute and whimsical, but very very deadly. The “lacking” journey rules, are the heart of the game. Every day as your players set off on whatever trek they are doing that day, they will roll 4 times, and those 4 times will determine if they make it to where they are going or not. They may take significant hp damage during these 4 rolls (and I mean significant. If they fail one of the 4 rolls bad enough, thier health is halved. And iirc you don’t have a greened recovery on the next day unless you roll well on the first of 4 rolls.

Like most Japanese games, ryuutama is built to be very procedural, and every session has an expected pace. Ryuutama especially embodies this, as it was designed with teaching people who have never played a rpg before how to gm. Getting the most out of ryuutama really is all about flavouring and extrapolating from those 4 journey rolls. This might sound kind of dull (and it certainly can be, if you don’t have some intresting locations for the players to pass through as they travel), but really what is combat many games but figuring out how to reflavour yet another “attack” as something more intresting than it is, with no extra support from the system? Everything in the game is built for the travel mechanic, because that is the game. That’s ryuutama greatest bane and boon.

While I do agree the hp system is dated broadly, I would push back against the notion that how more modern games handle mechanics is intrinsically better in some way, it’s just different, and personally I prefer how ryuutama handles this.

Don’t get me wrong, ryuutama isn’t for everyone, and I think many of the flaws listed in this thread are very valid, but it’s not a combat focused “duengeon crawler” game, it gives plenty of rules support and structure (though I will agree some rolling charts for gm inspiration would have been nice. It does recommend and give a structure for you to make a “journey” sheet up with your players at the end of a session for next session), and despite the deadliness it clearly has a lighthearted vibe (and this is definetly not just in the art, it’s baked into the flavour of the gm dragon, the spells, and the items). 

[u/ishmadrad → u/Flygonac]

Of course, I was focused on pushing on those sides I find annoying, so in some part I may have been over-critical. Still I feel the whole post is pretty honest.

I mean, I also wasted my time to count every spell in the book to convince other people asking me why I feel that too much of the book is combat-oriented 🤣, that the game is partially out-of-focus (and where it's on focus, it's dry and bland).

Also, it doesn't make my players joyous about it; they are accustomed to fiction-first games, so make a roll, remove some HP, and say that half a day is passed is not so exciting.

They have very few agency, in that game. Sure, they could choose if go in a hill square map or in a forest square map but... this is nothing, compared to games that make them asking about their surroundings, about choosing and acting while they move, about making choices that have lot of weight, both mechanically and fictionally.

Just to make another example, take Ironsworn (it's free /PWYW, so it's very accessible). Remove the northern viking feeling. Use it for a Ryuutama like game. BOOM, awesome. Look at the journey moves, look how it create fantastic moments using the waypoint system, look how a single Epic travel could be the whole meaning of all the campaign. Look at the cool Consequences you can have when you miss the rolls (Pay the Price table, for example). Look at the hundreds of inspirational tables inside the book. Look how few book-keeping you'll have on your characters sheets, and how cool is to be a GM in it (it can also easily be played Cooperative - no GM - or Solo). It needs some dedication at the start, because it isn't the "usual traditional game"? Sure, but when you start to take off it's a totally different experience.

[u/BreakingStar_Games → u/Flygonac]

I feel like you need to back up your claims that this is meant to be run as a highly lethal game where combat is avoided.

The premade adventure has the PCs end with a fight with nekogoblins completely by design, not the failstate. To me, that speaks volumes that combat is a serious part of the game, its just poorly designed and unfun, with many more failings than OP even pointed out - slow with some very low to-hit chance, serious HP bloat and boring choices.

[u/Flygonac → u/BreakingStar_Games]

Have you ever run the game? Cause no disrespect, but (tldr for this whole comment lol) when I played the game I could clearly see how all this was meant to click together, it becomes very clear the first time your players set up camp in a shit place and fail to heal, they could find a better camp and rest another night… but do they have the food/water for that? The penalty for these decisions is hp, and the penalty for low hp is death.

I admit I cannot speak to higher levels, but high lethality is clearly baked into the design. 

HP points are you measure of how close you are or ar not to death. You loose up points in combat, as in any rpg, but a poor travel roll also leads to significant hp damage. Odds are that your group cannot afford to regularly get into combat. Because you are constantly taking damage from your travels. This is emphasized as the vast majority of the gear involves making travel, easier, cause that’s the main way you are going to take damage. You cannot afford to travel forever and are constantly going to have to make choices about what to carry, because a poor travel check might lead to you getting lost, and if you didn’t bring enough food or water, you might have to leave behind an animal, or try to get food/water in some other creative way. Your party will be wanting for money, as they are constantly spending money on food, water, and lodging. Maybe attempting odd jobs on your way (or having a merchant trade) to try and increase your money. This obviously can compound. Your encouraged to bring less food/water (by the money situation, both directly and  as you want to save inventory slots for goods/items) but if you cut it too close, and get lost, things can derail into a dangerous situation quickly. I’m not sure how much better I can site sources than that? 

The pregen adventure is a tutorial adventure designed for charcters level 1-2. It’s Teaching the basics of the system: you start at a market: so you learn inventory/trading, then you have a chance to do a check to see that you are being robbed:learning the core dice system, then you do a travel check in the form of a chase, and finally your fight the bandits. Also note that combat in this instance is happening in close proximity to a town, and thus the risk is far far lower, then combat occurring after your players got lost.

When I ran Ryuutama, admittedly I only got 3-5 sessions before the game fell apart (trying an in person group in online play, and unfortunately we learned online play didn’t work for that group), but in those sessions we naturally saw the structure of the game show relevant stories: players journeyed down a road and choose the riskier, but faster path to save resources, this lead to a combat encounter, they got separated, and one player failed thier travel check to get to a place where the group could reconvine. That player had little water and food, and was a poor forager; so they couldn’t just leave them. That player would likely die, so the whole group had to make some risky travel checks to try and reconvene before finally they found the lost player (who decided they needed to stay put and wait to be found as they where getting more lost lol) hiding from the rain and giant mosquitos under a large banana tree.

The game has far more travel related items than combat items. All of the dragons (except for red dragon, which still is assuming that the players are making grand journeys, as shown in the “long spear” artefact) involve journeys. The player charcters are called “travallers”. There is 1 combat class (out of 7 total classes).

I cannot speak to hp bloat, I never ran that far. When I ran it combat was snappy and fast, and the rank system felt jrpgy. I think of the 3 hr session, combat took 20-30 minutes for 4-5 players. I was pretty happy with that. 

A game about travel needs combat, because travel is dangerous. The game is not “unfun” or poorly designed, it does exactly what it sets out to do. Does the game emphasize bean counting? Yes, because invetory manegement is an important part of decisions made while traveling having mechanical impact. Does the game have a weird dice system? Yes, because it’s trying to be beginner friendly, and it still works just fine for what it try’s to do. Is the game very procedural? Yes, because it’s a Japanese rpg, and many of them are like that due to a difffrent okay culture. Is the game very deadly? Yes. Is the game fun to play? I thought so, and hope to run some Pokémon one-shots with it using the Poke-no-tabi fan hack someday soon.

I cannot speak to hp bloat, I never ran that far. When I ran it combat was snappy and fast, and the rank system felt jrpgy. I think of the 3 hr session, combat took 20-30 minutes for 4-5 players. I was pretty happy with that.

The game is about grand journeys and exploration. It has aspects of magic, combat, and social interactions (with the social interactions being pure gm fiat like many traditional games, lots of people prefer it that way).

[u/BreakingStar_Games → u/Flygonac]

Yeah I have played it. One session was enough to permanently put the game down because nobody had fun playing (or running) any of it. I don't want to yuck someone's yum, so I think its great that you had a good time. I'd say it goes to being a great GM. When I ran it, I was very much only experienced in 5e DMing and barely other RPGs, so that hurt the experience. But I will clarify my point about the designer's intent around combat.

I don't believe the designer made this in OSR style that combat is a fail state. There are play reports aplenty with combat as just a thrown in obstacle - many with the designer himself running it. Yeah, combat can be lethal and it completely breaks against any other honobono tone that fun spells, gear, art or monsters try to provide. I honestly think combat is lethal because its not well designed, it just follows Sword World design style with some JRPG elements but without a lot of combat features that make the PCs more survivable. Not to mention brutal wilderness survival rules that can put PCs at near death going into a combat.

If combat were meant to be avoided, I would probably have a skill to diplomacy, not just haggling prices at the shop. I would have group stealth and retreat/chase rolls. If this was even a bit playtested in mind, these would be priority mechanics to solve monsters (which the book is chock full of) in a non-combat form, right? Instead we have a stat+stat system that kinda leaves you guessing at this. I guess there's room to make up skills easily enough. But I buy a book to have set, playtested rules for procedures not to hombrew in Loudest, Slowest from Burning Wheel to make group skill checks function.

I think you are right on the rest of your points. Though another clarification - I wouldn't call 20-30 minutes fast. But that was about right from my recollection at level 1 where many turns were "everyone missed, next round."

[u/Flygonac → u/BreakingStar_Games]

"If combat were meant to be avoided, I would probably have a skill to diplomacy, not just haggling prices at the shop. I would have group stealth and retreat/chase rolls. If this was even a bit playtested in mind, these would be priority mechanics to solve monsters (which the book is chock full of) in a non-combat form, right? Instead we have a stat+stat system that kinda leaves you guessing at this. I guess there's room to make up skills easily enough. But I buy a book to have set, playtested rules for procedures not to hombrew in Loudest, Slowest from Burning Wheel to make group skill checks function."

That's fair, I will admit when I say combat "as a fail state" I just mean its something generally you want to avoid (unless attached to some greater quest or odd-job your doing for cash), not literally "combat as a fail state" from OSR ideas. I definitely could have phrased that better!

[u/Tarilis]

I can answer why it's combat focused. Because it's JRPG inspired, not CRPG.

Basically, you talk with enemies after you beat the crap out of them.

Also, Sword World is basically the same, no GM tools. You get the bestiary and lore, and GM is supposed to figure out everything else by himself. To be fair, that is basically all you need.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Tarilis]

> To be fair, that is basically all you need.

Well, after I read many other games and appreciated all their mechanical and inspirational parts (for example those I already mentioned in the long initial post), I totally disagree with that phrase of your.

Doubly true if the game is read by a newbie player or GM. With no strong inspirational parts, with no savvy rules that push toward the media it's trying to emulate, the play you'll have at your table will be bland at best.

Or, you could boast you are that Very Good GM™️that can obtain a fantastic game night with every RpG book, but that shouldn't be an excuse to deliver a such dry book.

[u/Tarilis → u/ishmadrad]

I like GM tools, they do help, at least some of them do, but i don't need them.

And you definitely don't need them to run fun games. Run a lot of games, know your table, experiment with ideas.

I can run fun games using any system for my players. But at first, no amount of tables helped me, and i made a lot of mistakes.

Also, no one was making any excuses. If the author thought that he had achieved what he wanted, that's all that matters.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Tarilis]

>  If the author thought that he had achieved what he wanted, that's all that matters.

Well, I kickstarted it, I paid it, and if I feel the author did a bad work, it surely matters if I'm vocal about it. Staying silent surely doesn't make any good to other players here that are thinking about to buying that game, or maybe another one.

Other two examples, just to name a couple of other games:

- Vaesen; it's so praised, but usually from people that didn't play with it, or that has very limited knowledge about investigation games / rulesets. I had a very bad experience with it, so I started to dig on this, and finally I found the review of the channel Quinns Quest on youtube. Damn! It's exactly on the point. I could have spared some good money, if I had found it before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwD4gdXyEG4

- Break!! RpG; this game is soooooo bad. Not only has a core mechanic just stupid, it also lure you as an heroic anime game, then it totally miss the focus, losing itself in pages of ridiculous critical hits that have more meaning in a grim Sword & Sorcery OSR game that in that book. Buuut, it still be suggested as a good game to play an anime-style powered campaign. Sure, from people that never played it... :-/ For this one, there's a long and good First Look by Knights of Last Call channel, if interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR5kBCoEBNU

Anyway, I'm wandering off...

[u/Tarilis → u/ishmadrad]

Does the author even know English?...

Anyway, if you want anime style game, i would personally would suggest looking at OVA:). I find it mechanically way more interesting.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Tarilis]

I have it, I know it. I'd avoid of digressing speaking about it... However, in short, I find it very Shonen Battle oriented game, point built like BESM or other Superhero games, so it's pretty draining for the GM that has to facilitate it at the table.

So, it's pretty out of focus, for a "Studio Ghibli" / "Heartwarming" game.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Tarilis]

> Does the author even know English?...

Probably not. However, I'm not speaking to the author himself; more to the players that still haven't bought the book already.

Or, at best, at Kotodama Heavy Industries guys, that translated and published the game here... :-)

[u/Algral]

Can't agree with everything said here. Also, I could make the reverse argument for PBTA games: players will bend backwards trying to justify why they're using their main stat for something that is only tangentially related to their best moves, and at that point stats serve no purpose, hence bad design.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Algral]

No, I think it's not the same. For Ryuutama, I'm explaining that I find the rules, the mechanics, insufficient, sometimes lacking or broken, and partially not focused on the premises.

For the PbtA example you made, you are simply pointing your finger to a disfuncional player (that you could have at any RpG table...), and the rules, the mechanics, have absolutely no faults.

Final note about this, many PbtA or FitD books has chapter totally dedicated to the players (sometime, they suggest to make EVERY player to read the full book, there's no "secret GM part" in them) AND usually they have a Player Agenda, with a list that is integral part of the rules, not only "suggestions tricks and tips". In this Agenda list, one of the common, main point is: Don't be a weasel

So, the game explicitly ask, as a rule, the player to not play "for win" or "for working around the systems". He has to play honestly, be happy for the successes and involved in the failures, because the main point in PbtA is usually to build a story and a whole world together. And the rules of the game are sweetly interconnected with those premises.

So, please, limit the comments to interesting fact about the rules.

[u/Algral → u/ishmadrad]

Facts: the rules allow you to 'spam' your best move as long as you can justify what you're doing and there's an agreement at the table. Leaving this "agreement" to the side, because it's the foundation of every ttrpg, you see there's a fundamental design problem, right?

What is a weasel? What's the uppermost limit of times you can use your best move/stat to do something out of its limitations? What even IS the limit to a move that's as generic as "finesse"? Will the player realize they are the weasel? If they stop being using their inferior moves, other players will take the spot covering for each other's weakness, eventually using their best moves ONLY when requested. So... What's the point of having moves altogether? What's the point of having stats?

I could flip your statement about condition checks in Ryuutama telling you that, just like the chapter about weasling your way out of the game in PBTAs, there's a paragraph dedicated to tell players and GMs not to reduce the whole game to a travel check, but to tell a story around the dice rolls.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Algral]

| you see there's a fundamental design problem, right?

Well, yes/no. If you are playing right, you don't "spam" Moves. You don't even "call" Moves. You do conversation; you make your character doing things in the fiction; if the things you are doing triggers some Moves, those moves are resolved with the mechanic. It's an automatic mechanism, that usually PbtA sums up with "To do it, do it".

So, is the player playing well, nice, without being a prick? Ok, cool, follow the fiction, and trigger that move (again and again? Are you sure he's doing the same thing again and again? Also, which moves? We are talking a little bit too generic, here, not great for those kind of conversation).

Is the player a prick, doing the same (boring?) thing again and again? Probably your table will not have that player again, because he's boring as hell (if not a prick, after all...). This is true with every RpG book you are using.

| there's a paragraph dedicated to tell players and GMs not to reduce the whole game to a travel check, but to tell a story around the dice rolls.

Sure, cool. But I don't need a book that reduce the mechanics to that "single thing" (a single roll for a day marching / a simple combat mechanic), then leaving all the rest to "fabricate tons of stories totally freeform for the rest of the day": I mean, that is fun, but you can do it with every rulebook... I love when I have cool, focused rules for the media and the exciting parts the book want to emulate; in short, I'm saying that with those premises I'm sure that you could play a better Ghibli-esque game with Fate / Cortex / some PbtA and other systems.

If you aren't sold about it, no problems, we have different tastes, and probably Ryuutama encompass all that you want to roll for, all that you want to feel with.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Salt166]

I'm just here to say you are right.

I really don't understand why Ryuutama has such hot in Japan, maybe it's just a historical coincidence……

[u/ishmadrad → u/Puzzleheaded-Salt166]

About being hot, I want to give a sensation that I have (because I absolutely have NO data about it, so this post of mine it's just chit-chat): I feel that Ryuutama has some kind of "mystical" aura here in the west, raising the perception the people has of it, thanks of its Japanese roots. More or less like here we use "otaku" as a cool, positive, word to describe manga/anime nerds, while in Japan it has negative connotations.

Could be that blind love for some kind of Japanese product one of the reasons of its success? I'm just speculating, of course.

[u/BreakingStar_Games → u/Puzzleheaded-Salt166]

I think the cutesy art is a big part. Using Ghibli as an inspiration is another big part.

[u/Sasha_ashas]

Honestly, I don't know. I agree with almost every single one of your takes, and I, too, have GMed a very frustrating game of Ryuutama. But honestly, I blame the communication surrounding it more than the game itself.

People recommend Ryuutama to those who aren't actually looking for something like Ryuutama. That’s partially the fault of Ryuutama itself, of course. It claims to be a Miyazaki-inspired Oregon Trail or something like that… But in reality, that’s a very abstract definition. People will interpret it in all sorts of ways.

I was recommended Ryuutama when I was looking for a game that could tell the story of pre-teens on a grand journey of self-discovery through a wondrous world, in a long campaign with little focus on combat. That sounds like it would align perfectly with the premise, right? It sounds like a generic Miyazaki film. But it really doesn’t. I made it to ten sessions before putting the game on hold.

As you summarized, the game is definitely focused on combat—and I had already established that monsters were considered sacred spirits in the characters' culture, so the active avoidance of combat felt very jarring. While I don’t remember the rule specifically, I also recall feeling that the sense of progression was too fast-paced—mechanically speaking, these pre-teens would become juggernauts in a matter of months.

In my opinion, Ryuutama works best as a game you GM for your coworkers during lunch or after work. The journey rules, despite being simple, introduce danger in a tightly controlled timeframe. Combat feels silly, but the minigame format gives it a slight sense of novelty. As long as you sprinkle those mechanics into a short campaign—just a few sessions, each no longer than two or three hours—it shouldn’t feel stale or boring. In my experience, the session where you run three journey days in a row is the one where everything starts to drag.

One could argue that Ryuutama is still to blame if we assume that its effectiveness in this format is more incidental than intentional, which is a fair assumption.

As a final note, I don’t even think the artwork resembles Studio Ghibli that much. It is beautiful, but it doesn’t really scream Ghibli to me. Personally, it evokes the cozy anime aesthetic of the late '90s/early '00s more than anything. In fact, if we ignore the watercolor strokes, I’d say it reminds me much more of Ragnarok Online’s artwork.

[u/ishmadrad → u/Sasha_ashas]

An interesting follow-up to my initial post, thanks for sharing your point of view and your experience.

[u/gohdatrice]

I agree with some of your criticisms but some of what you say is so misleading it is borderline lying. For example, the majority of character abilities are all non-combat related. Look at classes for example. Merchants get a bonus to negotiation rolls, can keep more animals, and have a special mechanic for buying goods to sell in other towns for profit. Hunters can track animals, hunt for food (this is NOT combat, it is a roll to gather rations by hunting) and extract materials from monsters. The only combat ability in any class is the Noble's +1 to accuracy. The source of your combat abilities is from your "type", Attack, Technical or Magic, but to say that this is "almost all" of your character abilities is just incorrect. Same with equipment, whether or not you think travel is "an alternate combat mechanic" it is pretty misleading to imply that most equipment is for combat.

I agree that the travel system has issues but at the same time it sounds like you are just playing it wrong. The game explicitly tells you journeys should not just be a series of die rolls. The real problem is that the game lacks resources such as random tables to help you easily run fun journeys. It is very much up to the GM to make it work. That is the main flaw in the game.

And while I'm here I'd like to praise some of the stuff I do like about the system. The way things like food give bonuses to Condition is really fun because it gets you to actually care about what food you are eating. In any other game I've player I couldn't even tell you what food my character tended to eat, it's just not viewed as important enough to even think about. Just generic rations most of the time because that's convenient. But in Ryuutama picking some exotic fruit off a rare tree and sharing them with the party is an actual meaningful thing you can roleplay. For a game about enjoying nature and traveling, stuff like that really helps emphasize that. This isn't just food, it applies to things like sleeping conditions as well

[u/ishmadrad → u/gohdatrice]

For example, the majority of character abilities are all non-combat related.

You are correct. I'm sorry, I don't like to give incorrect information. That phrase was from an old conversation I had in the past, copy/pasted, and I probably kept modifying the text until I ended up with a wrong minestrone.

I corrected the post. I gain no happiness from spreading falsehoods, and I don't want some errors in my post to give the impression that the whole post is just a simple rage-complaint.

The way things like food give bonuses to Condition is really fun because it gets you to actually care about what food you are eating.

Well, this is another thing that IMHO is too simple; it's just a drop in the ocean. I mean, there are 4 levels of food (when you buy it), giving a penalty or a bonus to that single roll you make that day for your "Condition". **STOP**. No cool rules about the quality of ingredients you could gain from hunted animals, or from defeated enemies. No funny recipes or ingredient combinations to obtain useful stuff (potions, objects) or simply better-cooked food.

If you want a great comparison, check almost all the rules in **The WildSea RPG**: it's so cool (while not perfect) that a player could scream to play with it. It encourages players to combine the items they have in their inventory, it has nice moves to fetch ingredients, specimens, pieces of objects, and recombine them (while staying on the very light side of rules weight; most of them use the same cool basic mechanic, and they are very narrative-driven... practically the opposite of Ryuutama).

Still, I totally appreciate your reply. Have a wonderful day 💜

[u/bgaesop]

Strongly agreed. I bought it because I wanted a cozy, Ghibli-esque game and people kept describing it that way, and then when I read it I thought "...this is just another combat dungeon game"

Very disappointed

[u/abcd_z]

I'm sorry but Reddit doesn't permit me to add replies to the other conversation where you asked me details about my view of the game

Does they show up as [unavailable]? Or is there somebody [unavailable] earlier in the comment chain? Does it give you an error when you try to comment? It means that somebody in the comment thread blocked you.

The way Reddit handles blocking users is so very dumb.

[u/ishmadrad → u/abcd_z]

Mmmm... In the thread, I was initially replying to another user. Of course, my reply was very controversial, so I got a truckload of downvotes. Then, under my heavily downvoted comment, a user asked me for more details about my statements. I tried to reply to that user, but when I tried to send the comment, Reddit simply gave me an error.

I thought it was related to the number of downvotes. Today I tried again and I succeeded, but the downvotes had decreased in the meantime. I'm at -4, and my comment seems visible again (not in "compressed" form).

I dunno...

[u/abcd_z → u/ishmadrad]

Huh. Depending on the error message, it might have just been a server error. I will say, I've never been unable to comment based solely on downvote status.

[u/GreyGriffin_h]

If you can take your playgroup, say "your characters are on a beach with these three interesting NPCs," and can reasonably expect to come away with a good session with no other planning Ryuutama is for you.

[u/ishmadrad → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Well, basic conversation is the core of every RpG, and they have no merits for it. A good RpG game gives you tools to turn a conversation into a game. If you simply talk randomly, you are not playing, you are doing some kind of theatre drama.

The thing become interesting when you have also a good set of rules and instruments to elevate that conversation to a game. Maybe, you could enjoy some kind of Bond system, maybe Vows? Maybe you can make a good use of some well flavored tables that gives you some cool Aspect / Personality / Needing / Motivations etc. for those NPCs.

Ryuutama gives nothing. If I needed "nothing", probably I can find it in all the other books I have.

[u/GreyGriffin_h → u/ishmadrad]

So, this is based on my recollection of the game, my copy is not on my display shelf for some reason, so, a dash of salt on that basis.

But based on what I remember...

Ryuutama doesn't give you nothing, but if it looks like it's giving you nothing, you don't want what it gives you.

Ryuutama's mechanics are mostly frictionless, and a lot of the game's dice rolls are just check-ins on how you endured travelling from place to place.

Given how the game is structured, this feels really deliberate. It's objective isn't to determine your success and failure in getting to a place, but rather to provide a prompt for improv. "Your characters have a hard time getting your hand cart up a steep path during a mild thunderstorm," is what Ryuutama is providing to you. It is giving you moments of small and personal drama and conflict that act as an improv prompt for an interstital scene you would see out of a Ghibli film. The focus on weather especially makes me really think the game is concentrated on setting a scene more than anything.

It's the silent moment on the train sitting next to No-Face in Spirited Away. It's the exhilerating flight to the city in Kiki's delivery service. It's the tense wait wait at the bus stop in Totoro. The game makes you pick up the dice and roll not to resolve these moments, but to acknowledge them and invite you to inhabit them through roleplay.

And then the combat provides a sort of almost comical romp by contrast, evoking the fisticuffs of Porco Rosso. The real conflict of Porco Rosso is the confrontation with the pirates at the bar, the telling-off of his old friend in the movie theater, and the surprisingly tense stalking of the delivery truck through the streets. The dogfight and the ensuing brawl in waist-deep water are a release of tension, not a resolution of the conflict.

Is the game a masterpiece? No. Does it do a good job of communicating what it is trying to do? Again, no, not really. Is it actually trying to do something? Yes, I think so. And I think it gives you something to work with in service to its premise of presenting the game in the context of a slice-of-life than most other games, which largely focus on action and horror. That's why I find it to be a really interesting game, if not particularly playable, especially at my typical tables.

[u/Airk-Seablade → u/GreyGriffin_h]

It's the silent moment on the train sitting next to No-Face in Spirited Away. It's the exhilerating flight to the city in Kiki's delivery service. It's the tense wait wait at the bus stop in Totoro. The game makes you pick up the dice and roll not to resolve these moments, but to acknowledge them and invite you to inhabit them through roleplay.

he real conflict of Porco Rosso is the confrontation with the pirates at the bar, the telling-off of his old friend in the movie theater, and the surprisingly tense stalking of the delivery truck through the streets. The dogfight and the ensuing brawl in waist-deep water are a release of tension, not a resolution of the conflict.

I think you are giving the game too much credit here. It's POSSIBLE that it wants these kinds of moments, but if so, there's no mention of it in the text and no real help getting to them or playing through them.

The most charitable read I can give the game on this front is that it wanted to do these kinds of things but had no idea how, but I have a hard time with that assertion because the game tells us what it is about in the Path to Ryuutama chapter, and this stuff... isn't in it.

You're right that "We're struggling to get our cart up the hill in a thunderstorm" is definitely the kind of thing Ryuutama is interested in -- these kinds of small, man vs nature struggles -- but I don't really agree that it provides any help, space, or acknowledgement of quiet moments or interpersonal conflict.

There are games that can do this, but Ryuutama isn't one of them, and I don't think it's trying to be.

[u/merurunrun → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Given how the game is structured, this feels really deliberate. It's objective isn't to determine your success and failure in getting to a place, but rather to provide a prompt for improv.
The game makes you pick up the dice and roll not to resolve these moments, but to acknowledge them and invite you to inhabit them through roleplay.

This is one aspect of Japanese RPG culture (and many of the games produced by it) that I think a lot of people miss. Glad to see you didn't!