Maid RPG is this wacky little Japanese TRPG put out by Sunset Games, which they were kind enough to let me order via PayPal. The premise is that the GM plays the master of a mansion of some kind, and the PCs are all his maids. It's a wacky comedy game that can at times get disturbing if you let it.

I'd been working on translating the core rulebook into English, just for fun, over winter break, and got it mostly done. What convinced me to try running it was that a friend of mine who works as a video game tester was running one of his co-workers through character creation just to kill time, and half the office wound up making their own maid characters. When the planned OVA game wasn't ready on time, I decided on a whim to give it a try.

It wasn't ultimately incredible or anything, but it took maybe ten minutes of preparation tops (and I think I could've gotten away with less, or none) and we had a decent session. And I really want to tell you guys about it for some reason.

The setup was that aliens had conquered earth, relatively peacefully, and the maids were newly hired for the son of the East Asia Zone's governor, who lives by himself in a mansion in the suburbs of Tokyo.

• Tsunee Hatakeyama (16), a normal girl with glasses and freckles who was never sure why she was there in the first place.
• Harane Oka (22), a violent, mature woman who was there to wreak some kind of revenge on the aliens through the governor's son.
• Hiroko Koyami (21), a relatively normal maid sent by the government to infiltrate the mansion.
• Melinda Parks (15), a psychopath with a giant katana that she used for just about everything.
• Lilly Marlow (139/looks 16), a vampire girl with a whip who wants revenge, but mostly just wants to cause trouble.

In practice, the game was sort of an anime/maid fetish version of Toon; it has lots of random tables, characters can't die (they get Stress Explosions though), and things are generally random. One of the more brilliant things is that characters can spend points to invoke a Random Event, which is why during the game a fire broke out in the kitchen, Princess Anastasia showed up through a breach in the space-time continuum, and Lily found an arcane tome that opened up a gate to the Netherworld.

One of the things I liked that emerged through play was how radically different the characters' behaviors were. Hiroko earnestly tried to serve the master, and so did Melinda, in her own insane sort of way. Harane mostly tried to keep the other maids in check, while Tsunee just treated the master like a normal person, and Lily actively tried to undermine him and anything else that seemed underminable, just because.

In the game maids accumulate Stress points pretty much any time they fail a contested roll, and too many Stress points (more than the character's Spirit stat -- Hiroko's is 40, Melinda's is 0, Lily's is 10, etc.) cause a Stress Explosion, where the character can only do whatever was rolled on the Stress Explosion table during character creation. Lily, being so antagonistic to everyone but having a fair number of crappy attributes, was the only one who had Stress Explosions, and she did twice, for a total of about 35 minutes of real time (1 minute of real time per Stress Point), and hers was Complaining.

There was an epic battle against the master's older cousin Veela, an alien military officer who he described as "the scariest person in the world." With all the randomness going on, I finally ended the session with him and Tsunee opening the door to the governor's mansion, only to find Veela waiting for him there.

Anyway, when time permits I want to translate some of the optional rules from the sourcebooks (which include many, many new tables for even more wacky random fun). I'm also planning to run it at GenCon Indy, so yay. ^_^

Rock on, dude!

Man, now I've got to dedicate an hour or two to beefing up j-rpg.com in the next month to help promote your Maid sessions.

BTW, do you have Koi Suru Maid? If so, aside from the scenarios, what kinds of stuff does it have?

For those of you late to the game, here's the Maid RPG:

http://www.sunsetgames.co.jp/rpg/maidrpg/maidrpg.htm

I'm thinking that once Tenra is done and out, I'm going to get a group of fanboys together to do fan translations of various Japanese RPGs into English (and encourage folks to buy copies of the original, etc).

-Andy

Posted By: AndyBTW, do you have Koi Suru Maid? If so, aside from the scenarios, what kinds of stuff does it have?

Koi Suru Maid RPG has an actual introduction and some (much needed) errata, rules for playing a head maid or butler, rules for generating a master, tables for designing a mansion, rules for "romance and enticement," comforting (to reduce someone else's Stress), costume changes (a table of 36 alternate costumes, each with a Favor cost and special rules), items (in a D666 table of 216 of them!), and a total of 13 different random event tables.

Yume Miru Maid RPG is mostly a scenario collection, but it also has rules for complexes and apprentices, tables for two new settings (Old West and Old Edo), a second table of costume changes (including plugsuits, Gundam uniforms, and hero suits), and a weather table.

Posted By: Mark CauseyBTW, Ewen, my failure to contribute was not intentional as my time was tied up with my wife's surgery as Jason and Andy can testify.

I was wondering, but that I can definitely understand. The two scenarios still aren't done yet, and I'm going to be tied up with other stuff for a while, so if you're still interested in translating let me know. :)

I was planning on e-mailing you, having just run a google search (for "mlx rpg") and encountered your blogspot page. How fortuitous.

Your actual play report actually answered the weightiest of my questions: namely how disturbing playing maids can get. It sounds good though. Thanks for the report.

Posted By: Zach WelhouseYour actual play report actually answered the weightiest of my questions: namely how disturbing playing maids can get. It sounds good though. Thanks for the report.

It seems like it can vary. The rulebook includes a replay (game transcript) that gets much more disturbing than my game ever did, but there are also published scenarios where the Random Event rules aren't used, and the game is meant to be more of a cute anime romance thing.

OH RLY?
YA RLY!

Assuming (crosses fingers) nothing blows up and makes me unable to attend the con, I'll prolly run two sessions of Maid RPG at Indy. I'll post details once there are details to post (since signups aren't open yet). I want to run one or two other games as well, but I'm not sure what yet.

(j/k I dig their wallpapers and non-racist memes (the few that there are). Also, I like playing the game, "Spot the Jake Richmond". I've won twice.)

I do spend an ungodly amount of time on 4chan. I'm not sure why I'm comfortable admitting this.