Two new quarterly RPG magazines,
RPGer and
Role
& Roll, start publication this spring.
RPGer
is a quarterly RPG magazine published by
Kokusaitsushin-sya. The company
also publishes
COMMAND (war simulation game magazine) and some business
magazines such as
Kokusai Journal. The first issue is announced
to be published on 25/Mar/2003. As shown in the theme of the issue,
"Once again, good old adventures", most articles are retrospective. One
example is
"The Seven Alters Again" article for
Roads to Lord,
the first Japanese RPG originally published in 1984, and resurrected last
year. The article's title itself is reminiscent of
"The Seven Alters"
article published in
Simulator in the mid 80's. Another example
is
"Return of TRAVELLER!". The Japanese translations of the
classic
Traveller and
Mega-traveller had been out of print
for a long time, but a new Japanese translation of the classic
Traveller
was published this March by Kokusaitsushin-sya. The most significant
feature of the magazine is that every issue has a supplement game. The
first supplement game is
Asteroid, GDW's SF board game.
Unplugged Game Magazine Role & Roll is also a quarterly magazine,
to be published by
ArcLight.
The company holds many conventions such as
Analog Game Conventions and
Japan Game Convention,
and also designs some CCGs. The terms "unplugged" and "analog" are
used to indicate the coverage of RPG, CCG and board games, and exclusion
of video games. According to
the announcement
from Group SNE, the new magazine is to be published in May, and features
many RPGs that were either designed or translated by SNE. The former
includes
Sword World RPG,
Ghost Hunter '02, and a new RPG derived
from
Monster Collection CCG, and the latter includes
GURPS.
Those two new magazines add to the three existing RPG magazines in Japan.
One is
Gamer's Field, which is published by
FEAR and features its RPG such as
Alshard,
Seven=Fortress,
Double-Cross, and
Tokyo-NOVA. Next
is
Gather, published by
Hobby
Japan, which imports and retails
Magic:the Gathering CCG. Hobby
Japan is also translating
Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition core rules
and publishing them. Although each issue of
Gather contains
introductory articles for D&D and translation of a free-download-scenario
on the Wizards of the Coast website, most contents are for CCGs. The
last RPG magazine
TRPG suppli has stopped publication for almost two
years. Its publisher
Atelier Third
translates and publishes WhiteWolf's
World-of-Darkness RPG series
and Issaries'
HeroWars, and publishes some original RPG such as
Shin-en.
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