31 Days / 31 Characters - AKI RUSH

Some Japanese Tabletop RPGs are intrinsically 'Japanese'; understanding and appreciating the premise of these games requires knowledge of and an affinity for Japan's culture and storytelling devices.

Others are just universally freaking AWESOME! 

Imagine a setting that combines Cyberpunk, Giant Robots, NASCAR Racing, and Space Travel. Sounds like a fun premise for a game, right? 

Character: Aki Rush

AKA: 'Go Psycho' (a pun on the Japanese word 'Saiko' meaning Maximum or Ultimate)

Player: I forgot his name. A friend I'd made through work I believe. So sorry I can't recall. 

System: Mobile Racer Championship

Additional rules from Metal Head, Mekton, and Cyberpunk. See Origins for details. 

 

Nature: Short Campaign: The Off-world Colonies 5000.

Gamemaster: Adam Dickstein

Circa: 2010-2011. I think. Pretty sure.

Origins: Mobile Racer Championships is an RPG that came out in monthly installments published in Hobby Japan Co. LTD's RPG Magazine from sometime in 1997 to sometime in 1998. Unfortunately I don't have exact dates in this respect. I have several issues featuring the game but sadly no where near all of them (More on that in a moment). Each installment added to and expanded both the rules and the setting.

Mobile Racer Championships logo scanned from the April 1998 issue of RPG Magazine, No. 96

Recolored by me.

I loved everything about the concept and the artwork inspired me even further. I really wanted to run the game but I was unable to find all the issues I needed to create a complete game. Luckily, I noticed many similarities between the system and setting and that of the Japanese TRPG Metal Head, also from Hobby Japan. Hmm. On further examination, MRC seems like it might be a spin-off of Metal Head's post-corporate war milieu. With the help of some friends I was able to splice Metal Head into Mobile Racer Championships, filling any gaps with the first editions of R. Talsorian's Mekton and Cyberpunk. 

Backstory: Following the death of his father in a racetrack accident, a very young Aki wanted nothing to do with mecha, racing, or his father's legacy as an Off-World Colonies Champion. That's until he was 18 and received a message from his dad's old partner and mechanic Tetsuo Smithson which said that the senior Rush's death was no accident! Instead, he was murdered in connection to the father's service during The Corporate Frame War. Aki didn't even know his dad had served in the war!

Aki took a year off from school, traveled to the Colony World where Tetsuo was located and spent the next year learning everything he could about Mobile Racing. Meeting two other Frame Drivers with connections to the situation, the four men and a female manager formed a racing team to solve the mystery and win The Off-World Colonies 5000!

Overview: Following the Corporate Frame War, the Earth, the Solar System, and the various Off-World Colonies were divided up among the remaining major Megacorporations, Humanity found itself in a situation not unlike that post World War I, with lots of trained pilots and their planes but no real use for them. Far too many qualified Frame Pilots and Mobile Frames (Mecha) were still around with nothing for them to do. This lead to many people trying to find work and doing so as Deep Sea Miners, Construction Workers, Firefighters, Mercenaries, and Colonial Militia. Even so, unemployment and Mobile Frame crimes became rampant.

To remedy this situation, a group of Sports Entertainment Megacorporate concerns created the sport of Mobile Racing; high speed contests were former 'Heavy Soldier' Battle Frames are converted into fast moving, agile Racer Frames to outrun and outgun each other to the delight of fans across Human Space. 

25 years later...

The campaign started en media res, with the three PC Drivers and their Mobile Racers blazing down a racetrack on a desolate moon (desolate except for the hundreds of fans cheering from the seats above the track). Rolling randomly for their positions, Aki 'Go Psycho' Rush was the furthest ahead of his team but third place out of a dozen on the course. Through some seriously tricky and 'visually' exciting maneuvers, two of the PCs moved into position to block attackers from targeting Aki. Aki went full throttle and straight up tackled the second place Racer INTO the first place Racer, badly damaging both. Unfortunately, his Mech was also damaged, allowing the fourth place Racer to get really close. The two then competed to finish the final lap first, with Rush just barely crossing the line ahead of his opponent. 

The win results in a massive payout to a local bookie who then gives the team some key information that leads them to the next clue or revelation. This became the basic pattern; win a race or do a favor for a contact, get a clue, and learn the next piece of puzzle. Sometimes they'd have to sneak in to a place to help someone, that would give them a clue, then they'd have to hurry back to the track in time for the next race. Mixing it up were little character development moments between the various Player Characters and NPCs. 

Unfortunately, the campaign ended on a cliffhanger, with the PC team finding Aki's father alive but in Suspended Animation for some nefarious purpose. So bummed we never got to the end of the story.

  

The Highlights:

Aki and the gang didn't win every race and when they lost they had to get creative in order to accomplish their goals. After losing on race to an attractive female competitor, the team's bad boy/smooth talker tried distracting her so Aki could sneak into her Mobile Racer and download a map from it. He stops just before doing it, walks back to where the  race winner and his pal are talking, and he confesses their scheme to her. He also apologizes profusely, leaving his buddy dumbfounded and her amused. 

She asks why they need the map, Aki tells her honestly, and she decides to just give it to him. She then kisses his cheek before sashaying away. Aki turns red while the 'ladies man' dies of embarrassment. Sooo Anime. 

In another session Aki is sure to lose, lagging behind the lead Racer with his speed dropping due to a busted leg. Using another member of his squad as a jumping off point, Aki hops up and then leaps his Mech through the air to land on top of the Racer ahead of him. Aki's Mech basically rides the other one piggyback, then tumbles off to cross the finish line first. Hilarious and nail biting at the same time.

Game Info:

Ugh. I can't find any of my notes for this. Haven't been able to for years and trust me, I've looked. I'd love to run another Mobile Racer Championships campaign. I could probably convert it over to my homebrew Mecha System Variant game but I'd be missing one key component. THE key component to be honest. 

The game had a mechanic for figuring out who was in what place in the race at the end of the first lap. Then, you would take action to speed up, overtake another racer, attack another racer, and other moves. There was a also a neat 'speed resource management' system to figure out who would win purely by speed and driving. Of course, every action taken by PCs and major NPCs would throw this calculation off, which was the point. 

Notes:

The players loved the setting so much they participated in its world-building. One guy kept designing racetracks. A couple of them kept coming up with Megacorporation logos to sponsor decals on the mecha like tthose all over modern race cars. The lot of them kept suggesting other civilian/commercial uses for the Mobile Frames. Everywhere we went the player would say the farms must have Farming Frames, the news channels should use News Satellite Frames, the Cyberpunk city had to have Sanitation Frames, etc.Very fun. 

Legacy:

I haven't tried to run MRC game in 12 years or so. Not being able to recall the racing mechanics is a big part of why. If I could figure out or find a system that gives the same feel of speed, tension, and excitement as the original game I would definitely give it another go. 

Ho there fellow adventurer! Journey with me to the world of Forcelia and traverse the continent of Alecrast as to reach the Western City-States known as The Ten Children. Our guide throughout these perilous lands will be none other than BOON BRUSHBORN! Verily! 

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Barking Alien

Thorough Thursdays : Hobby Japan's RPG MAGAZINE

Prior to this post, I have never specifically tagged a post or dedicated an entry to RPG Magazine. I have shown covers from issues that I own and may have referenced the publication on rare occasion. 

That's just wrong.

RPG Magazine was a monthly periodical published in Japan by Hobby Japan Co. LTD., from May of 1990 to August of 1999. While the Hobby Japan company is best known for its self titled modeling hobby magazine which was first published in 1969, they have expanded into many other hobby fields including the production of manga, prose paperbacks, artbooks, and tabletop RPGs and support publications. 

The magazine was originally 'saddle stitched', with a flat, stapled, spine but changed to a thicker, sturdier, 'flat stitch' format in later years (more like the spine of most softcover RPG books today).

During the 'saddle stitch' era, the magazine was heavily focused on useful RPG articles including adventure scenarios, articles on Medieval Japanese culture, sample NPCs for various games, and other helpful bits. The magazine covered many games including American RPGs like Call of Cthulhu, MegaTraveller, Rolemaster, and Rune Quest, as well as Japanese tabletop role playing games like Gundam Senki, Metal Head, Satasupe, Seventh Fortress, and Wares Blade.

When RPG Magazine changed to a flat spine format, it mainly did so in order to add additional pages of Replay Manga and short Manga serials. Replay Manga is an awesome and uniquely Japanese invention. It is essentially a comic book story showing people playing a particular game. In addition to showcasing cool elements of the game's setting, it teaches you the rules as you read it. It is often accredited with clearing up confusion over rule misinterpretations by both showing and telling how a given mechanic works. 

While this change left less room for detailed, in-depth gaming articles it did have one feature I loved. Often it would give you a new mini-game or game expansion [to an existing RPG] explained as an illustrated prose novel, with a side order of rules (similar to how WotC's Dungeon Magazine did in their Polyhedron issues). 

My two favorites were a cool expanded Mobile Suit Gundam story that filed in the gap between the original series 'One Year War' tech and the later 'Stardust Memory' tech and Mobile Racer Championship, a giant robot competitive racing sport game set in the Cyberpunk milieu of the Metal Head RPG. 

RPG Magazine was eventually discontinued in 1999 and replaced by other titles as the gaming hobby and industry changed in Japan and the United States. While RPGs remained a small but popular past time, card games such as Magic: The Gathering took precedence and brought in more money. GAME JAPAN was the magazine to take over RPG Magazine's legacy, though it was strongly focused on collectible card games, computer games, and board games with just a smattering of RPG material mostly aimed at Dungeons & Dragons. I believe it may still be in print.

Traditional RPGs became even more of a 'niche' hobby, yet Japanese fans of it were fiercely loyal and remain so. This resulted in a resurgence in popularity over time, with more independent and small press games filling in the gap left by fewer big companies like Hobby Japan supporting the interest. 

Nowadays the main tabletop gaming magazine is Role & Roll, though there are a few others. I'll talk about Role & Roll in future post. 

I personally first discovered RPG Magazine in 1991 at the age of 22. I had a couple of friends who could read Japanese and we poured over issues after issue trying to mine even the smallest nuggets of information out of them. 

Interestingly, it was fairly easy to use the MegaTraveller, Call of Cthulhu, and Rune Quest material, as the formats used were nearly identical to those in the American products and the numbers were often written in English. The UWP and UPP Codes used in Traveller to describe planets and characters respectively were identical in both the American and Japanese games. 

Even if I could only understand [with help] 25% of any given issue, I still look them over again and again. The art was so cool and so different from what gaming products looked like in the USA. The ideas that formed the basis of the games made by the Japanese for the Japanese were unusual and incredibly intriguing to me back then.

Though only a handful of issues have survived the intervening 25+ years, I still go back and look at them all the time. Each time I do I am inspired by the visuals and promise of genres that are a tad off the beaten path here in the states. 

Maybe soon I will find a way to reawaken the power within their pages

Until then,

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Barking Alien