Maid RPG by Comment

Introduction

posted by Comment Original SA post

The name's been brought up a few times in here, so I figure it'll be worth it to explain to those who have remained blissfully unaware thus far.

Maid: The Role-Playing Game

Full disclosure: Many people who I respect both in this thread and outside it have played this game and found it to be a fun beer-and-pretzels exercise in goofball humour. It's fast, simple, and easygoing enough to teach to and play with a group in just a few hours. That said, it's anime as shit and contains a random chart for body image issues right next to the chapter on (optional) seduction rules, so...

So when the book introduces itself with a shy maid narrator and some hopefully well-intended ribbing aimed at its detractors, well, at least you can say it understands what it is. Actually, self-deprecating humour is pretty frequent in this book.

Gliding over the stuttering, Maid RPG is intended as a kind of slapstick comedy game. The players play Maids who all compete with each other to gain the favour and appreciation of a GM-controlled Master, who sends them on increasingly absurd errands and turns a blind eye to their infighting as long as they don't stain the carpet. That probably sounds really bland, but you'll see just how chaotic that can get when we add some complicating details from the charts.

This game loves charts.

But before that, we get some helpful advice!
Shit, what am I going to do with these fifty pounds of lace now?

At the end of the intro chapter, we get a couple of pages by the book's translator, Ewen. It starts out as a brief overview of Maid's history, but spends most of its space on a list of recommended anime/manga (apparently, the two segments of the population most likely to take a maid job are runaways and robots) and, well...

So yeah, sorry if this got a little dry, but starting next update we'll be neck deep in random underwear charts and recorded play sessions by possibly insane Japanese men.

Next time: Rolled a 1, looks like I'm a- oh jesus christ

Roll for goofy accent and childhood tragedy

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 2: Roll for goofy accent and childhood tragedy

Right after the introduction, we dive right into character creation. The book provides its own example characters, but hell, I've got my six-siders ready here, let's make ourselves a maid! Just a note as we go through this, whenever I mention rolling a "d66", it means rolling two sixes after designating one as the tens digit, so a 4 and a 3 are a 43 instead of 7. Magical Burst uses the same convention for a lot of its tables. I guess it's a Japanese thing?

First off, we roll our attributes. Maid has six attributes, Athletics, Affection, Skill, Cunning, Luck, and Will. The names are pretty self-explanatory. You use Cunning to plant incriminating evidence from that unfortunate arson on another maid, Affection to disarm her with your puppy-dog eyes when she catches you, and so on. We roll 2d6/3 down the line and get:
Those are some pretty decent rolls, except for us having literally no Skill. Our maid may be strong, lucky, and likable, but she'll automatically fail any test that involves her actually doing maid things like cooking or cleaning. She probably bluffed her way through the interview.

Next we roll 1d6 twice for maid type, archetypal categories that each give a bonus to one attribute and a penalty to another. We start off rolling a 1 for...
fuck


Well, our second roll is a 3 for Pure, so the type modifiers bring our Affection and Luck up to 4 each, and our Athletics and Cunning down to 2 and 1 respectively. We apologize profusely to the ghost of Nabokov and move on.

We roll d66 twice on the maid colour table (so many tables, you have no idea) to find that our uniform is blue and pink. Nursery colours, fantastic.

Then we roll d66 twice for special qualities! A first roll of 12 means we've got freckles, but our second roll of 44 redirects us to the Accent table! A second roll of 3 means that we speak Pidgin English. Maid no take candle, I guess.

More d66 charts. Our maid roots, the factors that drove us to become a maid, come up 11, for Debts. Looks like we're an underage recent immigrant who has to work to keep her family afloat, which is... kinda bleak, honestly. Our Stress Explosion, what we do when we crack under pressure, comes up 24, for Street Racing.



...Welp, next up is our special maid power. This is determined by your highest stat, but we've got two tied for highest, Affection and Luck! How nice. I'm just going to roll on the Luck table because, frankly, as a 13-year-old who deals with her problems by going 200 km/h on the highway, we'll need all the luck we can get. We get a 3 for Teleport, which lets us move around the mansion instantly like some kind of pink-and-blue slasher movie villain. Rolling on the (optional) weapon table gives us a 23, which means we wield an assault rifle in "disagreements" with other maids.

Maid is batshit .

We wrap things up by determining our starting Favour with the Master, 8, and our Spirit, 4. We can't handle all that much stress, but at least the boss likes us. Lastly, we write down our name and age: Little Diesel, 13.

As crazy as Little Diesel, the street-racing AK-packing elementary schooler seems, there's a lot more crazy stuff possible on these tables. The default table can make you anything from a princess to a catgirl to "Actually A Guy", while the subtables could grant you a part-time job as a comic artist or grim reaper, a Yakuza tattoo, Warhammer spikes all over your uniform, membership in the Illuminati or, well...


To be entirely fair, this is a purely optional table which can replace the usual 51 entry, a table for having a previous relationship with another maid. The book emphasizes numerous times that everyone should talk things over and make sure things stay with everyone's comfort zone. This stated, let's talk about the example characters the book gives us.

Throughout the book, we get a lot of conversations between Kamiya, the writer, and three maids that he's made to demonstrate the rules. The first, who's used to provide a step-by-step example of character creation, is Hizumi, a "bashful demon" who accidentally killed her last boyfriend and chucks vases at people. The second is Yugami, a little girl who rolled the "Womanizer" perversion.

We'll be seeing much more of them next time.

Next time: Sorry, but there's pretty much no way you could make that roll if you aren't wearing underwear.

Mechanics for getting your knickers in a twist

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 3: Mechanics for getting your knickers in a twist

So we've got a sheet for Little Diesel, now it's on to the system rules to see what all these numbers actually mean. The fundamental mechanic of this game is rolling a d6 and multiplying it by the attribute you're using for the test. This means things can get pretty swingy and chaotic: If Little Diesel made a Luck test, she could get a result ranging from 4 (the suggested absolute minimum difficulty) to a whopping 24 (where a 10 is supposed to be really hard)! It's noted that, though there are attributes that are obviously matched to certain tasks, the GM can let you use any of them as long as you can defend your choice. Frail Little Diesel would probably use Affection to talk the Master out of bed in the morning, while a more musclebound maid could just roll Athletics to suplex him into the bathtub.

In combat or any other conflict between two characters, each character rolls using a GM-determined attribute (everyone can use different ones, so you want to lobby for the use of one of your high stats) and compares the results. The character with the highest result sets the Attack Power for that round, and everyone else divides the Attack Power by the attribute they used for the round, rounding down, and takes that much Stress. If they used an attribute of 0, they just take the full Attack Power. Once you take more Stress than your Spirit, your Stress Explosion takes effect. Little Diesel, with her reasonable Spirit of 20 (I miscalculated last post), is certainly going to feel the need for speed sometimes, but it could be worse. It's possible to have a Spirit of 0, so you flip out every single time you lose a contest. If this happens to you, you should note that you can concede to the winner's terms to keep from taking Stress.

Meanwhile, in example land, Hizumi and Yugami demonstrate the usual circumstances surrounding maid-on-maid violence:
Welp, time to flip to the next page.

For maids, image and identity are of utmost importance. Such is the significance of her distinctive outfit that it is an actual source of her power and competence.

What all of this high poetry actually means is that we've hit the disrobing rules.

If a part of a maid's uniform is damaged, dirtied, or removed by an attack or other tragedy, she takes a cumulative penalty to her d6 rolls before multiplying by an attribute. The frilly headdress is the most iconic part of the maid uniform, and inflicts a -2 penalty if damaged or lost. The other uniform pieces, worth -1 each, are the apron, blouse, skirt, underwear, and stockings. It's noted that you don't take a penalty for missing skivvies if you weren't wearing them in the first place, which opens up strategic opportunities for optimizing your defense by okay I can't type this with a straight face

We revisit Hizumi and Yugami for a demonstration:
Good to see you're getting along, kids.

We get some quick notes on Stress, noting that for each minute in real time you spend in a Stress Explosion you lose a point of Stress until your maid drops back down to zero, which ends the Explosion. We also get an explanation of Favour. A maid can spend Favour one-to-one to reduce Stress, can spend 10*(new ranking) to increase an attribute, or can spend 1d6 Favour to either add 1 to the die roll or attribute for one roll, or force a random event. Maids who drop to zero Favour are fired and immediately booted from the mansion, though they can opt to sacrifice a point of an attribute for refunded favour to avoid this. During the example-land follies, we get a bit of self-awareness from the authour:
We also get adorable childish shenanigans from Yugami.


There are some notes for the GM to close the chapter, like a chart for suggested NPC power levels ranging from weak like the Master straight up to godheads. There's not much here that's terribly interesting. There are some guidelines on how much Favour should be awarded for certain tasks:
fuck

This chapter has become a touch unsafe for Little Diesel, but we should give her something to do before ending the post. Let's generate a day's work for her on the random event tables! The tables are divided by setting into Modern, Fantasy, and Space, and I'm going to roll on all three because our junior militia ricer should be ready for anything.

We get a 44 for our Modern event, which means that Little Diesel starts her day by waking up to find a freak tornado has left the mansion stranded on a desert island. Hopefully, some of the china is still intact.

As she's sweeping up, we get a 31 on the Fantasy table, so a princess from a ruined country shows up at the front door. I have no idea how she found the place on a desert island in the middle of nowhere. Maybe said "ruined country" is Atlantis?

While the mansion's new guest is getting settled, we roll 35 on the Space table to find that a swarm of meteors has appeared in the sky and is headed straight for the island! At this point, the most likely result is that Little Diesel cracks under pressure and takes off in a jet-ski while emptying her clip into the sky.

Next time: Example scenarios, or, MAIDS OF THE DEMON KING

King Kong dislikes workplace harassment

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 4: King Kong dislikes workplace harassment

This next section is pretty short, so it'll be a quick update tonight. Fortunately, we're still in a thick vein of charts, so something entertaining is bound to show up.

Before we get to the sample scenarios, the book gives us a replay. Replays are apparently a thing in Japanese RPGs, and they're basically a record of a play session cleaned up to be readable as a story. They provide an extended example of play, as well as just something to entertain you while you're reading the book yourself. Apparently some popular anime like The Slayers are based off of a similar idea? You'll have to ask somebody more familiar with the Japanese tabletop scene.

Anyways, this thing has the promising title "At the Mansion of Madness." We're introduced to the trio of maids who star in this story: Tomoe, the baseball-bat wielding, cat-eared enforcer of the group; Kana, a generally unskilled 10-year-old; and Rie, who is described as sexy, scheming, and, well, "Likes Them Young".

I know this is a bit early, but fuck

We're introduced to the Master, a 13-year-old sickly girl named Lilith Origami. The beginning of the replay is about as depressing as you think, going through a couple of cycles of Rie groping one of the two minors, Tomoe beating her upside the head, and everyone struggling to get back on track until Tomoe's player spends some Favour for a random event.

Immediately, a 30-foot tall gorilla with drill arms explodes out of the front yard and tears into the mansion's kitchen. Tomoe springs into action and wipes the floor with the creatively-named "Gorill" until Rie, in a fit of either jealousy or boredom, calls for another random event, unleashing the ancient demon Mollusk Monster Golga from the vase Lilith's family sealed it in. Kana thinks the fight's about to go south, so she invokes yet another random event and ends up sucking the mansion though a portal to a generic fantasyland. They escape Golga, and the story cuts off as a refugee princess knocks at the door.

To me, the replay does a pretty good job of summing up the highs and lows of Maid: Absolutely insane chart-driven slapstick on one hand, That Guy constantly rolling for panty theft on the other.
You said it, kid.

Next up, the two sample scenarios. The second, Happy Birthday, has the maids preparing a surprise party for their shut-in Master. It's pretty straightforward, so I'm just going to skip over it and throw Little Diesel at the other scenario, Be Our Demon King!

Be Our Demon King takes place in the kind of world instantly familiar to anyone who owns an oddly-shaped die. Adventurers and monsters fight in the uncharted wilds, and the Demon King rules an empire from the bottom of his ten-level dungeon. Well, he did, but since he disappeared his advisers and lieutenants (the maids) have been boring themselves to death feeding the monsters and oiling the traps. In this scenario, each maid has a title: Little Diesel seems a little inexperienced to be Acting Demon King, so let's say she's Chief of Demonic Military Affairs. This title lets her automatically win rolls against the weaker monstrous lackeys of the dungeon.

The day after the maids decide that, hey, maybe they should just find a new Demon King, they find a young refugee on the dungeon's first floor. We roll a d6 and get a result of 6, which tells us that she's the princess of a fallen empire. She's obviously got the pedigree to run the Demon King's operation, so Little Diesel and crew decide to take her on a tour of the dungeon. It's implied that this is the part where the maids create their own trouble by jockeying for position and causing random events. The scenario has its own d6 random event table, and we get a 1 on it, which means one of the monsters breaks loose and attacks the prospective Demon King! Little Diesel loses some Favour since the Chief of Demonic Military Affairs should be able to keep this kind of shit in check, but she can just pull rank to win the fight easily.

Once the maids are able to get the princess safely to the throne room at the tenth level of the dungeon, they can hold an improvised coronation if she thinks this Demon King thing sounds like fun. However, in the middle of the ceremony, the princess' pursuers break in for a final fight. It's supposed to be tough, but Little Diesel has a sleeve full of chevrons, a belt full of military-grade rounds, and a headful of mad. She'll be fine.

Next time: Jeeves versus Maids

You rang?

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 5: You rang?

All of the game's core rules and content are established, so from now on, we're diving deep into optional rules and bonus table country. There's a bit more shenanigans in exampletopia again as the third maid, the EB-II mobile weapons platform, is introduced, but to be entirely honest I'm tired of those guys so I'll skip straight to the content.

This section contains rules for extra character types. The first, and most straightforward, is the head maid. There can only be one head maid per mansion, and they behave a lot like a regular maid with some extra bonuses and penalties. They seem to be expected to be more level-headed than the rest of the group, since they can't invoke random events but can opt to take a roll penalty instead of undergoing a Stress Explosion. They also get the right to boss the other maids around, getting half the Favour another maid would receive for doing some task assigned by the head maid (the grunt still gets her full share of the Favour) and bonuses to rolls against the other maids. However, since she's supposed to be in charge, if any other maid screws up and loses Favour she loses half as much, and she gets demoted if she hits zero Favour and has to sell off an attribute point. It's a pretty simple way to add a different dynamic to the game, I guess.

Next up are butlers. Another one-per-mansion player character, these guys are as strong alone as two maids put together. However, they're locked into a straight-man role: They can't invoke random events, they don't have Stress Explosions and have to buy off excess Stress with Favour, and they always lose fights with the maids and/or master. On the upside, they don't take penalties for disrobing (though if you aren't wearing a suit at all times you're hardly a proper butler) and they get their own unique character generation process, so let's break out the dice and get Little Diesel some friends!

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way and roll up his attributes first. They get a straight-up 2d6 roll for Will, 2d6/3 for Luck, and 2d6/2 for everything else.
There are some below-average rolls here, but you should already see that our butler is pretty potent compared to any single maid.

Next, we roll a d6 twice to get two butler types. We turn up a 2 for Elite, which gets us 4 Cunning, and 3 is... Monster! This raises his Athletics to 5, which is absolutely huge. Our butler is now some kind of scheming vizier Lurch, and already cooler than anything else Maid has ever shown me.

We get two powers, one for each type. Our Elite power is 6, Futile, which lets us weave a convoluted scheme at any time to keep anyone else from using a power or spending Favour. We get 5 for our Monster power, which means that the butler wields a Giant Weapon, getting a further +1 to Athletics attack rolls. Our butler has become Death, destroyer of worlds.

Next up, d66 charts for special qualities and weapons. We get a 41 and 16 for qualities, so the butler is a Bishonen (which makes him more likely to be interested in other men apparently. Maid, ladies and gents) and also a well-kept gentleman among gentlemen whose grooming and demeanour resembles, and I quote, "Sean Connery on his best days." I guess he's the pretty kind of vampire? He also gets two weapons, so we roll 42 and 63, meaning he wields a Giant Morningstar and Giant Psychic Powers.

We roll a d6 for butler roots and get a 4 for Affection, meaning he sticks with the Master and maids because he genuinely likes them and feels protective towards them. His suit and hair colours are determined by d6 tables, and we get Dark Gray and White, respectively.

To wrap things up, we get 2 Favour and 60 Spirit. We roll d66 for an age of 64, and name our hero Vizier Ibrahim, the Butler Your Butler Could Serve Like.

Next up, let's get ourselves a Master. I'm going to skip over the numbers the dice show for the rest of this post because I don't want it to get too large, but we start out by determining the Master's type. Turns out they're a Small Child, not even in the later years of elementary school yet. They get two special qualities, and we roll up Professional Criminal and Priest. Let's say that this means they're the heir of a particularly Jewish branch of the Mafia, the previous don/rabbi having been offed by rivals. Baby Brando derives his special powers from a combination of financial Assets and the Magical Powers of the kabbalah. When he suffers a Stress Explosion, he tries to Run Away from the mansion (probably in the Rolls inherited from Dad) and he's got Vermillion hair and Pink eyes. You should probably get that looked at, kid. I could roll up attributes, but it would just be a list of really low numbers, since it's 2d6/4 for everything but Will, which is just 2. Lastly, we pick the Master's name and gender, and decide to name him Don Tzadik.

Finally, while the dice are hot, we might as well roll up a mansion for our unlikely trio to live in. It exists in a Cyber world of advanced technology, and the usual mood around the place is one of Dark intrigue. Guess we're playing Deus Ex now. We find that the mansion itself is in the Ruins of an old elevated arcology, its next-gen Brown sandcrete punctuated by the glinting Gold statues and exposed circuitry. Still-functioning facilities include a Dungeon for corporate spies to be forgotten in and a Stable full of genetically engineered mounts for the residents' leisure. The players fill in a d6 random encounter table, and we decide on the mansion's name and age: The Tzadtech Central Campus, founded 46 years ago and looking worse for wear after the most recent Great Corporate War.

Don Tzadik and his guardians, Little Diesel and Vizier Ibrahim, settle in at the seat of the fallen empire Zeyde Tzadik built with his proficiency in nanotech spell matrices, two dozen stories above the toxic slums in their shadow and far, far away from the upcoming chapter of seduction rules.

Next time: I'm going to run out of reaction emotes.

The Thanatos drive

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 6: The Thanatos drive

Now I refuse to use anyone I rolled up to demonstrate this next section, so it's time to get back to The Exampletons. Last chapter they introduced EB-II, the psychotic robot head maid; Y, some kind of ninja butler; and Nejiri, the Master of the house, who happens to be a crossdressing vampiress. I'm bringing these guys back because, well, we've hit:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of maids, I will fear no creepiness.

In order to seduce another character, you roll a regular opposed check, usually Affection or Cunning against whatever attribute they pick to defend, taking a penalty for each time you've already tried and failed to seduce them. A seducer always wins combat rolls against their seducees, and can award Favour to their seducees for following orders. They can't take away Favour, get extra favour if they've seduced the Master, and two characters can seduce each other somehow.

As an aside, butlers take stiff Favour penalties for seducing other characters and giving seducees orders, which is kind of a relief? I guess?

Oh shit, these guys again.
Somehow.

I had to read this so now you do too.


Next up, we get tables for romantic activities. These rank a bunch of events that either remove Stress from couples (from Word of Love to Getting Uncomfortably Physical) or add stress onto one or both partners (like Clearly Insulted or Partner is Seduced By Someone Else). I'm sure that our example characters can demonstrate this in a mature and non-creepy manner.
pfffffahahaha nope

If Stress caused by romantic activities causes a Stress Explosion, a Tragedy occurs. The character in question loses a shitton of Favour and has to pass a difficulty 8 Affection or Will test, or else she rolls on a d6 table for Attempted Suicide, Harassment, Scandal, Seeking Comfort From Another, Attack Partner, or Leaves Mansion.
I'd say "fuck you, guy" but I'm afraid that might be taken as a suggestion.

Finally (oh thank god finally) there's a section on Comforting. Basically it's a bunch of bullshit that characters can do to remove Stress and shorten Stress Explosions. Hizumi and Yugami illustrate this with a pile of clothespins, a pair of buckets, and a flyswatter.

I'm out. I feel like taking a break from this for at least a couple of days, but if there's demand,

Next time: Roll for body image issues and mental trauma.

...(depressed, writing post)

posted by Comment Original SA post

Just gonna quote this again for the benefit of anyone who's browsing through the thread via the first post. Wouldn't want you to miss out on any of this wonderful entertainment.

Maid Part 7: ...(depressed, writing post)

I'm going to go through this one really fast so I can wrap up the "mature" rules section and distance myself from its stank before starting a new post.

The normal maid character generation can result in you rolling on a d6 Trauma table to see what kind tragedy happened in your past, like being orphaned or some shit. This section gives us a full d66 replacement Trauma table. It contains some reasonable things like being the victim of various crimes or undergoing different kinds of family strife, but this update isn't about being reasonable.
Roll a 22, receive loss.jpg as your comedic tragic and emotional defining moment!

Finally, we've got Complexes, which come in two exciting flavours: Physical and Mental. These are things that your maid is very self-conscious and sensitive about. It's a very good idea to keep these things hidden from other players, since they're mechanically-enforced emotional blackmail: A maid who knows one of her opponent's Complexes gets bonuses to all contested rolls against her. The Complexes themselves range from dramatic to petty, but why talk when I can quote?
I hate these charts and I cannot lie/and you other brothers can't deny
When a girl walks in with an anime case/and an example in your face/you get
God damn it all.
Please do.

Next time: Gimme a hazmat suit, I'm cleaning this one up.

Maaaaaaaaaaakeover!

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 8: Maaaaaaaaaaakeover!

Now we're breaking into the costume rules, which are, in my opinion, the only rules we've encountered so far that are actually kind of complex, so I'll take this slow. Costumes allow a maid to leave behind her job and take on another role for a while. She loses access to some of the perks and penalties of maidship: She's immune to disrobing penalties, can't access her maid powers, her Stress Explosion becomes Fainting, and while she no longer automatically wins fights with the butler, she doesn't have to take the master's orders. In exchange, she gets some kind of bonus depending on the outfit.

I don't think there are explicitly printed rules on getting outfits (they're presented as two separate d66 charts, but when can you roll?) but once you have one you can pay its Favour cost to put it on. The normal maid uniform counts as an outfit, so you have to pay in order to put it back on. Now before we actually get to the material, let me make something clear: I'm tired of this game's bullshit. Yes, in the section on dressing up your maid, there are all of the skeevy options you'd assume and more. I'm not going to cover them. I'll skip over all the schoolgirl kilts and bondage gear and see if there's anything actually interesting or, God forbid, good clean fun in here.

Skipping past some boring options and like six different kinds of swimsuit, we get to the Shrine Maiden uniform. Apparently consisting of a red skirt and white coat, Pure and/or Heroine maids can pay 20 Favour to put it on and become sicknasty exorcists. They get +3 to their dice results when fighting "occult beings" and suffer 2 less stress when attacked by anything falling under that label. This kind of thing seems actually useful and fun to me: Put it on when you need to stop dusting the mantelpiece and start dusting some vampires, hell yeah let's ride!

Coming from a different kind of adventure fiction, the Mad Scientist labcoat can be worn by Cool and/or Sexy maids in order to unlock their inner Frankenstein and take d6 Stress at any time to instantly invent a randomly-rolled item. See? Good clean fun and the probability of unleashing a swarm of genetically altered rats during a desperate crisis, this is just fine.

We even get a moderately clever idea in the Stage Costume, which explicitly puts any kind of plot event on hold and penalizes anyone else who isn't also wearing a stage costume, and the character "must open her heart to song or dance" while wearing it. It might be just me, but putting everyone and everything else on hold with some randomly-generated dickery in order to belt out some showtunes sounds like an appropriately anarchic thing to do in the competitive slapstick environment this game is supposed to create.

At the end of the table, we see that a maid can even pay all of her Favour and use some specialized costumes to become either the Master (booting the old one out of the house and starting a new game with her player as GM) or an out-of-nowhere two-stage Square Enix RPG boss fight.

Those actually look pretty good! I feel so satisfied about this that I'm going to pick one from the second costume table and hand it off to Little Diesel. I got a 54, for... Valkyrie! Apparently, Valkyries automatically win fights against undead creatures, since they gather souls as a day job, what's that mummy gonna pull that they haven't seen before? They also get Favour for killing NPCs, because such is the grim will of Odin. Our heroine is now Tokyo drifting around on an eight-legged horse, shooting blessed rounds at zombie giants.

Since Diesel has friends now, it'd be a shame to send her off trick-or-treating alone, so let's roll up something for Ibrahim. He gets #62, the Box Robo Suit. A plain brown cardboard box with arm and head holes and the word "GUNDAM" hastily scrawled across the front in black marker, it gives him bonuses to combat, particularly his first strike, because enemies can't tell if he's being serious or not. In addition, every time the Master sees Ibrahim he'll burst into laughter, inflicting some Stress but also granting some Favour.

Overall, this wasn't so bad, and I didn't even get around to the different kinds of Power Ranger suits. If you guys want me to stop ignoring the skeevy stuff then I will, but for now I'm just happy living in ignorance.

Next time: THE TABLE TO END ALL TABLES

You literally asked for it.

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 8.5: You literally asked for it.

It looks like I've dissatisfied some of you fine people, so I'll put this up before proceeding. As I mentioned, there's assloads of creepy options on the outfit tables, and after considering your responses (and the fact that I had to read these entries and you didn't) I figure I'll put 'em up here. Buckle up, kids.

We get off to a mild start with #13, the Bandages accessory. It can be worn along with other outfits, can only be worn after taking Stress, and immediately make the wearer completely incompetent (Athletics and Skill become 0). The notes helpfully point out that "To some this is quite the fetish." Fan-fucking-tastic.

But why settle for the passively unsettling when we've got the actively sickening right below in spot number 14? There, we find rules for bondage fetish Restraints. The wearer automatically loses all combats but doesn't take Stress from this, and automatically seduces anyone who attempts seduction against her. I can't even really quip about this one, it's all out there.

Coming in right after that at 15 is the Birthday Suit. The wearer can't make Will rolls because don't look I'm indecent, but gets a bonus to seduction rolls helpfully labelled "The Direct Approach".

I already mentioned the sheer number of swimsuits. These come in Competitive, Daring, and Frilly varieties, but the run of them opens with the classiest outfit so far:
Ha! You see, it's funny because it's part of a pedophilic wank fantasy.

Soon after (26) we get Tennis Wear, with a tastefully-named "Flash of White" trait that improves seduction attempts.

Coming in at 36 is the Gothic Lolita Dress! Restricted to Lolita maids only, it prevents the wearer from taking Stress for failed seduction attempts and makes her automatically fail the roll to avoid Tragedies. Flirt all you like, kiddo, but make sure you never break up or else you'll have to jump off a bridge.

Number 43 is the ceremonial Bikini Armor, familiar to everyone who's ever played any kind of fantasy RPG. It makes the wearer more competent with weapons, but switches into the Birthday Suit if the wearer has a Stress Explosion.

I'll just quote this one.

Oh boy, table 2! The very first entry is another accesory, Damage. Maids can switch into this after being hurt by weaponry or explosions. They can't take Stress while wearing damaged clothes, but the next time they're physically hit they switch into the Birthday Suit, and while wearing damaged clothes they get a "Fanservice" bonus that gives them Favour whenever making a roll in the Master's presence. I'd put a shame/disgust emote in here but I think I've already run out of them.

Next up, the Succubus Mark, which makes the wearer extra-vulnerable to seduction and gives out Favour and Stress recovery every time she gets seduced.

22 is an accessory, Showing Some Cleavage, which allows the wearer (can you wear a lack of clothes?) to spend Favour on seduction attempts. It's followed up by Soaking Wet, which allows the same thing but only for "inadvertent/accidental seduction attempts."

25 is Long Dress Shirt Only, which (everyone together now) improves seduction attempts. Apparently "this look has been gaining market share in recent years" so buy stock now. They're followed up by Underwear, which basically do the same thing as Birthday Suit with a bit less shaming (pfffffahaha) and they only work on the opposite sex because

42 gives is the Riding Suit, which equips the maid with a motorcycle but "The character cannot wear underwear, as the riding suit fits like a glove." It also comes at a discount rate to anyone with Racing as their Stress Explosion so, well, that's just great.

Finally:

Also there's example fiction throughout wherein Hizumi is forced into schoolgirl uniform, gets molested by Yugami, and then provides a teaser for the upcoming chart by being force-fed candy that shrinks her, turning one of her types into Lolita.

I'd quote more but fuck it

d666

posted by Comment Original SA post

Hey, that game looks kinda nice, actually!

Let's fix that.

Maid Part 9: d666

Okay, here it is: The Great List of Items. The biggest chart in the game, boasting a unique entry for each result of a d66 6 roll (216 results sweet jesus), this is the last chart you'll ever need for random bullshit in Maid. Composed of everything from exotic weapons to pets to rooms of the mansion to ancestral curses, it's a gigantic pile of everything that the madman Kamiya statted up but couldn't find an existing table for. I'm only going to give you 12 entries, two for each hundreds digit, and I'm tired of ignoring this game's faults so they're going to be the skeeviest entries I can find. Buckle up.

126 Mysterious Vibrating Egg: Okay let's be frank, it's a vibrator. The writeup plays coy by presenting it as a mysterious object nobody knows how to use, but I'm done taking this cutesy bullshit. A maid who straps it to herself doubles any Favour gained, but "it makes your breathing labored while it is equipped. It also scatters one’s mind, making it very hard to concentrate." Subtle.

155 Unexpected Underwear: These panties are either hypersexy or feature some logo that clashes with the wearer's personality, like Hello Kitty faces or something. If the Master sees them, the wearer gains d6 Favour, but she can only flash him for this benefit once every real-time half-hour. I suppose this is a mechanic that reinforces the flavour of the genre pretty well, since most anime this game is inspired by feature pantyshots with a frequency you could set a watch to.

213 Whip of Love: "Sometimes punishment is done out of love, not hate." If that's what you're into, I guess. This weapon lets its wielder use Affection instead of Athletics for any roll, and allows them to recover Stress as part of seducing another character once per session.

244 Corset of Fate: A black lacy corset woven from pure bad karma that, when equipped, turns one of the maid's types to Sexy. Apparently Kamiya is especially fond of corsets, since this is some kind of double-secret Sexy that provides twice the Cunning bonus.

333 Kitty Gloves (Maid Type Lolita Only): Lets the wielder attack with Luck+1 at the cost of becoming an underage fursuiter.

346 Chromosome Cream: Some kind of genefixing goop that changes female maids into men. I'd really rather not think too hard about this one. If applied to an already-male character, they become even manlier, and as a result gain twice as much Favour from "manly/!muy macho! activities." I'm not entirely comfortable mixing genderswap fetishism with Old Spice Guy shenanigans, but if you are, this item's for you! Also

I can't even

Gonna throw out a Maid Fun Fact for all of you here: Of the two hundred and sixteen options on this table, this was the only one Kamiya saw fit to use in his examples! They are used to transform Hizumi into a ten-year-old who immediately gets molested.

Twice.

Fuck Maid.

522 Fertility Goddess Milk: Used to turn one of the user's maid types to Sexy for three in-game days. Kamiya goes out of his way to specify that "If you use it, your chest will grow by two full cup sizes, and your hips will expand several centimeters, “perfect for birthing”." Thank you, sir, for bringing such a degree of detail and verisimilitude to the world of anime maid roleplaying!

526 Murder Condom: Described colourfully as a "terrifying flying demon condom", a maid can unleash it to attack a male Master. He must pass a difficulty 10 Athletics roll to avoid it, or be rendered unable to make seduction rolls for the rest of the scenario. "Nobody every asks any questions beyond that." Also, if the maid who released the condom is identified, she understandably loses Favour.

633 Popular Guy Cell and 634 Unpopular Guy Cell: These are extra rooms for the mansion. The Popular Guy Cell is an attractive room inhabited by a handful of attractive men. Any male character who attempts a seduction is immediately knocked out and wakes up in the Cockblock Cell. The Unpopular Guy Cell is invariably found somewhere in the basement, and it's filled to the brim with anime figurines, burned DVDs, and pimply neckbeards. While it exists in the mansion, male characters who haven't seduced any female characters receive half the usual amount of Favour and wake up in the Cell after they sleep.

Fuck Maid.

Next time: Chartastrophe '011

Flipping tables

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 10: Flipping tables

Okay, we're out of the woods for now, more or less. This next section is a metric assload (1.32 Imperial assloads) of random event tables for various settings and moods. I figure it's been a long time since we've seen Little Diesel and friends, so it's time to roll blind on the tables to cause some trouble for them.

Let's start out by examining their everyday situation at the Tzadtech Central Campus . The Campus is a Dark place in a Cyber setting, so we'll roll once on each of those tables: A 24 on the Dark table declares that the maid with the lowest Will, Diesel, gets overwhelmed and spends five real-time minutes crying in the bathroom. Jesus, what happened? Did slum mutants steal her favourite spinning rims or something? After she pulls herself back together, we get 13 on the Cyber table, which means that Don Tzadik falls victim to "a neurosis" and has to be taken care of until he's healthy again. Welp, looks like the boss got Snow Crashed, good luck with that one, kids.

Let's do a few more from different tables. Each setting table has three events at the end that change the setting, so I'll pick one of those at random and reroll the mansion's mood. Looks like Tzadik downloads everyone's brains into a virtual reality MMO, so they end up in a Light-Hearted Fantasy world. Our mood event is 11, so Tzadik reassures the employee who contributed the least that day. I have no idea who that would be, since both of his caretakers are incredibly attentive and professional! It was probably Diesel. Our setting event is 31, so the mansion is invaded by a swarm of cockroaches! Hopefully the instance ends when Ibrahim turns in 25 Cockroach Sphincters to the basketweaving trainer.

I figure I'll do one more before we get down to awful stuff, so the game undergoes a series of patches and ends up in a Romance Early Modern world. Uh oh. Let's roll up that Early Modern event first: The employee with the highest Cunning, obviously that manipulative genius Ibrahim, finds a hidden door with a deadly poison inside! He can use it to assassinate Don Tzadik if he wants, which he doesn't, but the idea can keep a man a man from sleeping at night... Our (ugh) Romance event comes up 26, meaning that the Don feels lonely so Ibrahim and Diesel can fight it out for ten minutes alone with him. I'll completely ignore the likely intent of this event and say it means that they fight to first blood in the gladiatorial pit, the victor getting the opportunity to go waterskiing with the boss. Just for the hell of it, I'll also roll on the random Weather table. A 66 indicates that as Kalashnikov roars and psychic blasts flare, the mansion is struck by a major earthquake and probably collapses. Hell yes

We're here for the horrible, though, so let's quickly go over the Example-Land Follies surrounding the Apprentice rules. Apprentices are basically level-zero characters: They have lower attributes, no powers, and both a physical and mental complex. They can be awarded Favour by full-rank maids or butlers, but all in all they're pretty boring. How is this illustrated?
You and me both, kid.

If you want a picture of the manual, imagine a maid groping an underaged girl - forever.

Next time: Son of the Revenge of the Replays

Please Stop Talking About Snaketail Bondage

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 11: Please stop talking about snaketail bondage

After we're shown the horrible optional rules, we get to sit back, relax and enjoy a replay! A replay in which Kamiya and his watchlisted buddies demonstrate as many of the aforementioned rules as possible. Oh joy!

The replay, "Are the Maids Burning"? , begins with everyone rolling up the mansion and master. The mansion turns out to be a palatial flying villa in a high-fantasy setting. The master, who ends up played by one of the players instead of Kamiya, is Ises, an albino prince who is currently riding his hovering castle to the Dhoom Empire for his arranged marriage. After this, we're introduced to the three maids. Gerda is some kind of northern barbarian who's built like two brick shithouses and fights with a preposterously large sword. Lamia is an outcast snake-shapeshifter who "sucks blood as an expression of her love." Mare is a succubus who likes swimming or something.
Just gonna state it right now: I didn't read further ahead than this point before writing this post, so I look forward to seeing this glimmer of self-awareness die forgotten in the dark.

Kamiya begins with a description of how the castle is half a day away from the Dhoom Empire, it's been easy sailing, but he quickly gets bored and starts off with all of the players in the villa's bathhouse. Gerda immediately forgets that she's a 300-pound murder machine and shyly mopes around in a fashion described by Kamiya as "moe". Lamia hops right into the prince's tub and starts psyching herself up to make some kind of move, but:
Kamiya's official opinion on how Maid should be played, in case you had any doubt remaining. Surprising absolutely nobody, Kamiya and Mare's player take turns describing how everyone can see right up Mare's skirt, and she makes a successful seduction attempt against both Lamia and Ises. Fuck Maid.

After a merciful timeskip, Gerda confronts Ises about his apparent cold feet for his upcoming marriage. After she figures out he's mooning over Mare, we cut to Lamia slipping into Mare's bedroom while she's asleep and biting her neck, successfully counter-seducing her.
The players proceed to rules-lawyer over what counts as cutesy censored maid sex, in one of the most disgusting examples of I've witnessed. Lamia wins, in case you care.

Gerda suddenly remembers that as head maid she isn't supposed to stand for these shenanigans, bursts into the room, and beats the other maids up with her giant sword. We get another timeskip, during which Gerda is seduced by Ises and the group finally gets to the Dhoom Empire.
Whoever Gerda's player is, I like him.

The Dhoomians show up to titter at those country-bumpkin maids, then guide the party to a beam of light elevator familiar to anyone who's seen a UFO-abduction movie. Halfway down they detect that the beam's starting to short out and the Dhoomians might be the cause.

Lamia immediately acts on the most obvious solution: Try to seduce a passerby.

For some reason, Ises goes fucking Super Saiyan. Turns out his dad turned him into some kind of magic bomb before sending him to Dhoom? It's generally confused, and I'm getting the sense that the players just made it up as they went along. Anyways, Ises defuses everything by awakening to his ancestral destiny as the Dragon Knight in a poorly-described magic lightshow.


Anyways, Gerda heads up to Emperor Dhoom and explains that Ises' country is invading before intimidating him into taking the party on as generals in exchange for Ises being made governor of his homeland once it's conquered by Dhoom. Gerda becomes the new Master, and Ises is demoted to a butler. The curtain closes on the maids heading into the sunrise to conquer their former homeland, until next time. Wait a second, until next time?

Next time: Jesus, this thing has a part 2?

Seriously, two hours. Really?

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 12: Seriously, two hours. Really?

Just a little more to go, guys. After last replay left its mess everywhere, we're going directly into a new one! Apparently, after they wrapped up their Final Fantasy erotic fanfic, Kamiya and pals elected Gerda's player as new GM and started up a new game. Maybe he can keep the rest under contraaaaaaaaaaahahaha

Kamiya immediately bullies the new GM into using the Romance random event table and rolls up the mansion: Eastern Japan Underground Shelter #666, a bunker that survived the nuclear apocalypse that was stuffed with the greatest minds of the generation and a bunch of anime maids. The Master, Masami Onji, is some kind of five-doctorate awkward lady in a labcoat. The staff includes Rei Handa, butler, crossdresser, lesbian; Jill, a childbot who apparently ends up playing matchmaker for most of the game; and Nana, who's apparently some kind of ailing foreigner elf clone lab rat? Jesus, this reads like something an Invader Zim fangirl would blurt out.

After the GM expresses suspicion that both the maids are lolitas (ugh), everyone starts off the day. I was going to say that it gets off to a boring slice-of-life start, but what do you know, Nana tries to seduce Masami in the bathroom. Nobody elects to help defend the boss, saying "It'll be more fun this way." Rei busts out The Game on Jill, who quickly counterGames for a two-way seduction. I feel like I should be frustrated or something, but the way all of this is presented is just so clinical and boring . Even Kamiya seemed to recognize this, skipping over the record to the afternoon's events.

Masami pulls Rei aside in the middle of some lab work to initiate some drama about how Nana's genetic disease is going and she'll have to be cloned again. Rei solves this problem the way she seems to solve every problem: Roll for seduction with her preposterously high butler stats.
I hope that's hyperbole, because really. Two hours. These neckbeards allowed a lesbian sex scene between two of the four guys at the table to go on for two hours .

Fuck.

Maid.

Oh hey check it out the kids are talking about kid things:
This is the most sinister Pinocchio plot I've ever seen.

Wait, shit,
fuuuuuuuuuuck
FUUUUUUUUUUCK

There's a throwaway scene where Nana tells Masami that her boneitis is getting worse, then Favour is totalled up and everyone pairs off for their own endings.

Nana takes charge and declares that Masami died of radiation poisoning, but swears to use her newly-built clone plant to repopulate Japan with copies of Masami and Rei. I can't think of a grimmer ending.

Next time: In A.D. 2101, Maid was beginning.

The Maidpunk Bible

posted by Comment Original SA post

Maid Part 13: The Maidpunk Bible

Here we are, kids: The end of the book. Just a little more material to get through, and then I can stop making bad decisions about how far I'll go to entertain people.

After the replays, we get a whole bunch of example scenarios and alternate campaign setups. Most of them are boring and predictable, like one where the Maids are supposed to play matchmaker for their Master at his private high school, or one where there is no Master and everyone has to seduce everyone in order to get any Favour income. I'm not going to talk about them. Instead, I'm going to talk about the most fleshed-out versimilitudinous maid anime setting I've ever seen. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Liberty: The Final Maid Maiden.

I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take this thing. On one hand, the authour of the scenario, an Azumi Kazu, gives us two-thirds of a page of necessary vocabulary:
Wow, this clarifies everything, thanks Kazu!

After this, we get one and a half pages of setting history. One and a half doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind that no other scenario in the book has any history at all, and most of them fit into about three pages of space. Here are the highlights:
See those little circled numbers? Those are footnote flags. He needed footnotes.

After that, there's a page on organizations and places that I'm not even bothering to read, and one and a half pages of NPC profiles and stats. This post's going to be quote-heavy, so I'll sum it up: The PCs are under the direction of Doctor Shado, "one of the foremost experts in Maidology, sometimes called the 'Maidlian Professor.'" The Final Maid, the apocalyptic behemoth of this story, is a ten-year-old girl with abandonment issues. Her head spy is the only male to ever turn into a maid without being sex-changed. There is a tragic Romeo and Juliet plot between a master and a maid. At some point the PCs fight the Mad Midget Five, except they're not midgets, they're maids.

The outline for the plot itself is four pages long. I'm skipping to the end. I'm sorry, I wasn't strong enough. In the end, the PCs are expected to endure a 100-Stress attack just before a 150-Stress attack, and then there's some bullshit about the power of love. I probably haven't done this thing justice, but it's really hard for me to talk seriously about ten pages of postapocalyptic maid-fetishism alternate history.

Next, we get full character sheets for all of Kamiya's example characters, along with in-character answers to useless trivia questions like least favourite food, blood type, and bust/waist/hip measurements. There are closing comments by the translator and some other guys who worked on the book, a few final pages of Exampleton Hijinx, and then, mercifully, the credits and dedications page.
I knew it.

And that's it, Maid RPG cover to cover. I feel like I should come up with some closing comments, but nothing really comes to mind. I hope some of you were entertained, at least. If anyone wants anything clarified, ask now because I intend to forget this thing.