Classroom Deathmatch reviewed

Andreas Melhorn gave Classroom Deathmatch a very nice review on is blog Einige Seiten des Buchs Eibon. The review will also show up in an upcoming issue of Envoyer. Here’s an excerpt from the review (with the crappy google translation following):

“Classroom Deathmatch ist ein abgefahrenes, dunkles Spiel und sicherlich nicht jedermanns Sache. Ein derartiger Überlebenskampf bietet aber neben tödlicher Action viele Möglichkeiten für emotionales Rollenspiel. Die Regeln unterstützen ein flüssiges Spiel und verteilen die kreativen Aufgaben gleichmäßig über die ganze Gruppe. Auch wenn der Wiederspielwert naturgemäß eher gering ist, ist “Classroom Deathmatch” für jeden Horrorfan und Freund von ungewöhnlichen Rollenspielerlebnissen zu empfehlen.”

And in English:

“Classroom Deathmatch is a driven off, dark play and surely not everyone thing. A such survival fight offers however apart from deadly Action many possibilities for emotional game of roles. The rules support a liquid play and distribute the creative tasks evenly over the whole group. Even if the replay value is naturally rather small, “Classroom Deathmatch” is recommended for each horror fan and friend from unusual game of roles experiences to. “

Thanks Andreas!

-Jake

New “Yaoi Explosion” forum

You may have heard that we’re working on a new yaoi game. Instead of doing a quick PE spin off game we’ve decided to take our time and make this new game something special.  We’ve set up a new section in our forum for talking about this game. We hope that you’ll share with us what you’d like to see in a yaoi game. We’re also looking for good yaoi manga, anime, dojinshi and computer games that we can check out to get a better handle on the genre. Feel free to tell us about your favorite title!

Jake

Pan-Baku!

Kaz has put together a really great new Japanese Panty Explosion site. You can see it here! This is a great place for Japanese players to get an introduction to the game and find out what it’s all about! The site includes info about the game, a translation of the Student creation rules and some other stuff as well. It’s super cool! Kaz mentioned that some of his friends are working on some new art for the site. I can’t wait to see it.

I guess the next step is to publish a Japanese language version of Panty Explosion. Hmm…

Jake

What happened to the site?

You may have noticed that our websites front page is… gone. I got tired of it. For now and the foreseeable future this page right here will be the entire Atarashi Games website. If you look at the sidebar to your right you can still find everything that was on the old version of the site. Now it’s just on one easier to use page.

Why? I was never really happy with the way the site looked. If I can’t design a site that5 I feel good about, I’d rather condense everything into one page. makes sense, right?

“Give me an example of Psychic Shoolgirl” manga”

We often get asked about what manga and anime inspired Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch. Way back when we first released the game I put together a list of material that matt and I had drawn on while working on the project. I posted it on RPG.net and a few other places, but never got around to putting it here. Well here it is! You’ll always be able to find this list at the top of this site (or on the sidebar to the right).

I read a few manga this week that I wanted to add to the list.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki

This is a neat little manga about students of a Buddhist college who make money using their supernatural powers and strange talents to speak to the dead and help them find peace in the afterlife by bringing their bodies to their final resting place. This is a really neat premise for a Panty explosion game, and a pretty fun read.

Unbalance x2 byDall-Young Lim and Soo-Hyon Lee

A Korean manga about a beautiful but strict teacher and a strong willed student beginning what looks like a romantic relationship. Lots of panty shot style comedy mixed in with romantic angst. TA great model for Panty Explosion games that focus on the relationships between teachers and students (romantic or otherwise).

Parasyte by Hioshi Iwaaki

I read Parasyte years ago. It was my first exposure to the fucked up world of Japanese horror. I just noticed that the book is back in print. Hooray! Parayste is about aliens that take over human bodies by replacing the head with a shapeshifting, cannibalistic blob that kills with lightning speed! I think of this manga more then anything else when I talk about Panty explosion being a horror game. i think this would work well for Classroom deathmatch too.

The Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu

I’ve been hearing about Drifting Classroom for years, but only recently have a been able to find it in english. The story of a middleschool that is transported to an otherworldly wasteland where the students and teachers face starvation, murder, insanity and giant monsters! Outside of Battle Royale this was the biggest influence on Classroom Deathmatch. Drifting Classroom has everything that makes Panty explosion and Classroom Deathmatch awesome!

More Panty Explosion actual play

I just found this actual play report posted on Shakalooloo’s livejournal. It sound like the game got pretty wild, but it looks like everyone involved had a lot of fun!

“And I heartily recommend Panty Explosion! Just remember that there can never be too much blood or fan service!”

“Panty Explosion is great. The simple character creation process allowed the players to all go through it at the same time and get to know each others’ characters a little. The spiteful best friend/rival system put the consequences of actions into their hands (and left me free to fret about coming up with some outside forces to throw at them when I had none prepared), and the method of selecting their own agendas gave them their own reasons to continue, rather than relying on me to hand down tasks (thankfully!).

So, popular green-haired tom-boy Kawaii Oshii (Wooley), prim and proper organistaion fiend Akimara Noru (David), belligerant bully Saito Aiko (Odo), bad girl biker Asako Meiako (Beef), short yet embarassingly chested Kawasaki Mei-Mei (Ash)and creepy psychic goth Sato Haruka (Will) found themselves needing to pass some exams to prove they were clever enough for college and to avoid having to take summer school to catch up.

Somehow, this required the following events to complete:

Giving their ambiguously-gendered homeroom teacher an early period;
Oufitting half the school with pocket-frog companions;
Imprinting exam answer sheets on breasts;
Pulling the fire alarm every time it stopped ringing;
Punching the psychic girl in the face whenever at a loose end;
Having naked bath-time frolics with school nurse Lo-Thing;
Taking camera-phone pictures of said naked bath-time frolics;
Texting these photos around the school;
Setting up a website to promote these photos;
Stripping the principal naked and stealing her clothes;
Calling in a police armed response unit;
Impaling an attempted-rapist on motorcycle handlebars;
Convincing a knife-wielding maniac to calm down through the use of origami moments before he was crushed by a giant frog-demon;
Molotoving the school;
Commanding the demon’s frog-spwan to become a personal army of vengeance;
Slicing Lo-Thing in half with a ninja-to;
Taking photos, texting, and uploading the event;
Creating a kanji ouija board to question the spirit of their murdered teacher;
Dying hair black with bottles of ink;
Having a choice between salvaging exam papers from the stomach of a giant frog or losing their breasts;
Punching the pervert chief of police so hard that he changed gender;
Having wild sex with the newly female chief shortly after inheriting crazy pyrokinetic powerz;
Calling the government men in black to detain the psychic;
Giving birth to Lo-Thing’s artificially inseminated children;
Setting a katana-wielding grandfather loose on the nation;
…And many more totally justified actions.

It was a blast. Perfect free-form stuff, as the players have free rein to add their own twists to the plot to the detriment of their classmates (all in the best possible taste, o’ course) and the process for resolving actions is ludicrously simple. The only slight problem was the slight overlap of best friends and rivals, but that’s an easy quirk to resolve.”

Neat!

-Jake

Everyone talks about Panty Explosion

ICv2.com just ran a short article on Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch. As always, we appreciate the favorable attention! They even mentioned that our next game will be “Yaoi Explosion”. Guess we better get back to work on that.

Heidi MacDonald made reference to the ICv2.com article in her short blurb about Panty Explosion on her comics culture blog The Beat. She said:

“contains magic and monsters instead of crying in the bathroom, worries over monthly bloat, and shopping for knee high white socks. You can also sing “Let’s play Panty Explosion” to the tune of “Master and Servant” by DMode!”

Not the most awsome quote ever, but I’ll take what I can get. The game does encourage crying in the bathroom though!

Also, Wootech posted a brief bit about a recent Panty Explosion game here.

“Played the Panty Explosion RPG – a game of psychic Japanese schoolgirls. (Thankfully, it wasn’t a larp.) The system surprised me by being actually pretty fun. Each player picks another to be their best friend and someone else as a rival. If you succeed at a dice roll (to flirt with someone’s brother, rescue a puppy, or make someone’s head explode with your psychic powers) then your best friend gets to describe the results. If you fail, your rival does. With the right group of people it could be great fun.”

Finally, over at Yaoisuki.net it was reported (again) that our next game will focus on yaoi.

“Atarashi Games will make a yaoi RPG next. “

We seriously have to do some real work on that.

Jake

Andres from Templo de Hecate sent me an email

In my last post I quoted a CDM review from Templo de Hecate. Andres, who wrote the review, contacted me and said that he would like to comment on my post.I told Andres that I’d repost comments here for him. It’s interesting and worth reading.

I´m Andres, the CDM´s review author on Templo de Hecate. I take the liberty
of translate to English the piece of my review you have commented, please
accept my apologies about my English since I´m not a native

“I want to mention also that the game has had some polemic in USA becauseits launch has coincided with the Virginia Tech slaughter, precisely athands of an Asian´s origin student. It is an incomprehensible polemicbecause as we always say in theses cases: it is only a game.”

Here at Spain, the RPG have had very bad reputation because of an infamous
crime known as El asesino del rol or the Roleplaying killer. The killer
admitted that he was playing a roleplaying game created by himself, but it
was demonstrated also that he is a schizophrenic with 43 multiple
personalities who gives no value to the life. He is insane. Period.

Since then, and although the situation has improved, whenever there is a odd
crime or vandalisms acts with no suspect known, the media says that the
felony is suspected to be related to an rpg. So we have similar feelings
about your situation.

The ignorance leads to the suspicion, the suspicion leads to the fear, and
you know that the fear leads to the anger and hence the Dark side is only at
few inches

Good luck and congratulations for your games, I expect to buy CMD soon and
I´ll write an extended review in our web.

Best regards,
Andrés

Templo de Hecate on Classroom Deathmatch

Spanish language site Templo de Hecate posted a favorable overview of Classroom Deathmatch. You can read it here!

Because the controversy around Classroom Deathmatch is still luke warm (only 2 really nasty emails today) I think I’ll post my favorite bit from the article. This is in Spanish, followed by badly mangled babelfish translated English:

“Comentar también que el juego ha tenido algo de polémica en USA al coincidir su salida con la matanza del instituto tecnológico de Virginia, precisamente a manos de un estudiante de origen asiático. Una polémica incomprensible porque como siempre decimos en casos así: se trata sólo de un juego.”

“The game has had something of controversy in the USA when agreeing its exit with the slaughter of the technological institute of Virginia, at hands of a student of Asian origin. An incomprehensible controversy because as we always say in cases thus: one is only a game.“

That made me feel better.

Jake

TMP Classroom Deathmatch discussion

Here’s an interesting discussion on the TMP page about Classroom Deathmatch. It seems like a lot of th visitors to The Miniatures Page had a pretty common reaction to Classroom Deathmatch and found it offensive in light of the Virginia Tech shootings. Thankfully there were plenty of people on TMP who were either familiar with Classroom Deathmatch and could explain it or understood what it was about right away. The discussion is worth reading because it raises a number of valid points and concerns. I wish I had been able to post on the TMP page, but it looks like doing so requires a paid membership. let’s talk about it here instead!

The primary concern is that the name “Classroom Deathmatch” is in bad taste and that it cashes in on the Virginia Tech shootings. Of course we had no intention of trying to benefit from these shootings. Classroom deathmatch was in development for months and months before this happened, and was released a day or so before the shootings. It’s an unfortunate coincidence, but that’s all it is. As far as the name being in bad taste, it most certainly is. That’s the point. Classroom deathmatch deals with an almost unbearable subject. Murder, betrayal, suicide and the sacrifice of friendship and love should never be easy topics, but a good role-playing game forces the players to deal with uncomfortable situations and ask really tough questions. This is what Classroom Deathmatch is all about. Pretending that the concept isn’t horrifying does a disservice to the players, to the game and to the concept.

Of course, I understand how easy it would be to hear the name and think of the Virginia Tech shootings. I get that. For anyone interested in learning more about the game, information is just a quick google search away. For the people who are ready to condemn the game based on only it’s name… well, I can’t do much about that.

But here’s the thing. Much like with Panty Explosion, if the name really offends you that much then I’m guessing that you wouldn’t want to play the game anyway. I can’t imagine someone who was really offended by the names “Classroom deathmatch” or Panty Explosion” would actually ever be interested in laying either game, no matter what they were called. that’s fine with me. Almost all games have very narrow target audiences, and few appeal to “almost everyone”. Classroom Deathmatch was made for people who wanted to play a Battle Royale type game. If that’s not what you want to play then I imagine Classroom Deathmatch is not the game for you. Which is okay. I don’t feel like I need to win over every game player.

A lot of people here about PE and Classroom Deathmatch for the first time from Steve Jackson’s e23 site, and think that Steve actually publishes the game. Not true. e23 is a store that carries digital content. They’ve decided they like Panty Explosion and classroom Deathmatch and have gone out of their way to include both games on their store and to say nice things about them. We’re extremely grateful for that! Both Panty Explosion and Classroom Deathmatch are published by Atarashi Games. You can find both games in retail stores world wide (well, Classroom Deathmatch won’t make it to stores till late this month) and on dozens of online stores, including our own Atarashi Games store.

Another common misconception is that our games are only available as PDF’s. Not true at all. Both Classroom Deathmatch and Panty Explosion were designed as print products. Although many people first come across the games on sites like e23 or DrivethruRPG, the games are widely available as perfect bound books.

Several of the TMP members may find it interesting to know that sales of Classroom Deathmatch have been poor in the US but fantastic in Japan, Italy, Australia, Korea, England, France, Sweden, Israel and Canada. I do think that a number of potential American customers were turned off by the title. This clearly hasn’t been the case for oversea customers, who have been ordering the game steadily. This does not suprise me at all. As I said before, the games release date is an unfortunate coincidence, and I think it’s unreasonable to expect an enthusiastic welcome for a product that superficially resembles a recent national tragedy. I get that. Fortunately (or unfortunately), we Americans have a short attention span. I suspect by Gencon this will all behind us and copies of Classroom deathmatch will fly off the shelf as fast as Panty explosion did last year.

But we’ll see.

Jake

Classroom Deathmatch at e23

Diod I forget to mention that ClassroomDeathmatch is now available from e23! e23 offers digital content from Steve Jackson Games and other quality publishers. e23has been a big supporter of Panty Explosion, and I’m really happy to have them carry Classroom Deathmatch as well! If you’re looking for a quality PDF sellerthen e23 is the site for you!

Jake