It’s possible to play Danganronpa in D&D and here’s how.
I recently decided that I wanted to run a Danganronpa-themed D&D campaign, but a lot of online posts insisted that it was not possible. Obviously I’m a stubborn little shit and didn’t listen, and so I set to work. I ran part one of the campaign on Saturday, and it was a huge success. I figured that after seeing people online asking about Danganronpa themed campaigns, I would explain how I did it.
It works best as a whole-day one-shot, or just a few sessions. My party got through the prologue and the first two chapters in six hours, with the prologue and chapter one taking significantly longer than chapter two. It does vary and I recommend making sure your players don’t take too long on the prologue.
You don’t have to create your own murder cases, but I did since a few players had played Danganronpa before and I wanted to use my own cases. Make sure if you do this that you don’t have too few or too many clues. I had between 4 to 7 clues/Truth Bullets per case and that has worked well. (Also side note, feel free to have the culprits use spells to help them get away with murder! For example, my bard culprit was able to access the incinerator over night without a key or lock picks by using the spell Knock.)
To branch off of number 2, I advise having a “tutorial NPC” kind of character that can help point them in the right direction when they’re stuck on something during a murder case. The players have really done well on their own, but they also like to get the opinion of the Ultimate Forensic Analyst when investigating crime scenes.
Combat is a big part of D&D, so I made sure to work a fair amount into the game. I first added serious combat in a sort of dungeon-style manner, where in order to freely explore each floor of the building as it’s made accessible, the party would have to fight a wave of what I call Monobots (Monokuma robots). The party additionally can fight the culprit in my rendition of Danganronpa v3’s Argument Armament, though this is more of an opportunity to just absolutely demolish a character they don’t like (I found out pretty quickly that unless you really boost the killer’s HP and roll well for them in initiative order, they don’t stand a chance.)
Give the players opportunities to kill. After every motive, I allow my players their opportunity this chapter to commit a murder (their way of killing and the case that follows are pre-written with the help of the player). However, similar to Danganronpa itself, the players are not guaranteed the kill, as their target can roll against the player’s AC to determine if they succeed in fighting back (which, depending on the target, can result in just a fail or even killing the PC, though I don’t recommend that). Player killers would have a similar trial experience in the sense that if they get away with the murder, everyone else dies, and if they are caught, they die.
We’ve covered combat and puzzle-solving (murder cases), so the third big piece is Free Time Events! My players loved talking to the NPCs, or even just each other. Make sure you give them enough time to form stronger connections, and encourage them to learn more about their classmates. Additionally, and this can vary depending on the DM, I allowed the players to use a Romance Meter where if they spent six free time events with an NPC, they could romance them. Mostly because one of my PCs was head over heels for an NPC (it didn’t end well) but still, it was a fun touch and a few others began to use it.
Bonus: I made all the default route executions and body discoveries from scratch, so there was a visual aspect to the game! I also handmade physical headshot cards of each NPC with their name and talent written on the back, and this helped players keep track of everyone alive/narrow down culprits during a case.
Anyways, that’s all I can think of! Let me know if anyone has any questions down below and I’ll be happy to answer to the best of my ability!
P.S. Never let internet strangers tell you that you can’t make a concept into a D&D session. There is ALWAYS a way to do it, no matter how much time, effort, and homebrew it takes!
P.P.S. Here’s some of the things that I made that I described above, there’s a lot more than this BUT I know for certain that one of my players is on tumblr and could see this ^^
