King of RPGs Forum

Del Rey Manga has always had some of the most creative PR in the biz, especially with their cute convention giveaway items. But today's event is something really very different: Jason Thompson, author of the King of RPGs graphic novel that came out last week, is going to host an RPG session online.

The players? Authors Peter V. Brett (The Warded Man), Ari Marmell (The Conqueror's Shadow), and Diana Rowland (Blood of the Demon), as well as the three winners of Jason's recent contest for role-players to submit their best characters.

And the whole thing will be watchable live on Random House's Suvudu.com today at 2pm EST (that's 11am PST). I wonder what they'll come up with next? If they're not giving away dice at NYAF I'll be surprised!

Ahh, Del Rey. Such a good publisher. I'm really pleased that they got Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. That series would be next to impossible to do right if it was localized too much.
 
This series. I-- don't really know what to think. If you were to compare this to an already existing series, what would you see it being similar to? YuGiOh meets Prince of Tennis?

@FoxxFireArt: Hmm...a bit more like Prince of Tennis meets Dungeons and Dragons, or better yet, Yakitate Japan! meets Dungeons and Dragons. It's a much more intentional silly than Yu-Gi-Oh!, I think, and all of the magical stuff happens in their imaginations, not in reality like in YGO.
 
I haven't done a full review-- I'll probably do a shortie, with the disclosure that I both got a free review copy AND consider Jason a friend --but I thought it was enjoyable, particularly because I'm familiar with pretty much ALL of the card/board/tabletop games they referenced (and it's a reference-heavy manga). I don't think it does quite as good a job of establishing how ridiculous the world is-- some of the stuff in the opening felt more serious than goofy to me, which skewed the world view a little bit later on in the book.
 
But all in all it was pretty fun to read and I'm looking forward to volume two. I wouldn't look for it to be too heavily "manga"-like in art style, but in concept, structure, and some elements of panel design, the influence is definitely there. (Oh, and in having some amount of SD.)

@gia: 
I had actually been interested in playing the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, but no one else I knew was. I wasn't interested in it enough to put that kind of investment into it without knowing for sure there would be people I knew who also played.
I liked the anime and the strategy shown behind it. The monster designs were also interesting. One ascpect that always caught my attention. When Yugi unlocks his puzzle. He grows about three feet and none of his friends seemed to notice.
 
Disclosure is a wise choice. References are fine, but does it spend more time referencing things then it does creating it's own story? Is it suppose to be satire?
 
One of my favorite comics is an American manga series called Gold Digger, published by Antarctic Press. They produce their volumes in a manga book style format. It's really cool. Makes collecting back catalog really easy.

@FoxxFireArt: It's definitely a comedy. I'm not sure I'd say it's a satire-- there's certainly some self-deprecating humor in there poking fun at gamers, but all in all it's very much about the joy of gaming. There are a lot of jokes that are essentially just goofy references to a variety of games, but there are jokes that aren't as well. I know John felt like the referential humor was a miss and was overdone; I didn't have as much trouble with that side of things myself.

@gia: 
Maybe the humor just hit a little too close for John. lol