#ryuutama

[digital-meat]

the Ryuutama community has rejected my adventure "Escape the Nekogoblin Breeding Pits"

[fengtianshi]

TTRPG Character Creation Challenge 2026

During the month of May, I'll make each day a character for different games I like.

19/05

Tayshe - Ryuutama

One thing I like about Ryuutama is that the GM can have their own character too, which is the Ryuujin, a dragon guardian spirit whose mission is to protect and guide the party throughout their story.

Tayshe is an Ao-Ryuujin, an azure dragon spirit who focuses on Love and Friendship. He's playful, but he can show a very serious and dedicated character in his friends are in need. One of his fellow Ryuujin lost their dragon egg and while investigating Tayshe discovered that other Ryuujin suffered the same loss. His mission is to help his party in a quest to retrieve them and maybe also understand who stole them and why.

[worldbuildingweirdo]

Okay so already off brand from this blog but here we go.

(TT)RPG idea! Players are a group of mages that explore the wild world they're in! Fantastical adventure awaits in lush forests, mountainous chasms, searing deserts, anywhere where magic and life abounds! They travel with Archon, magical creatures that live symbiotically with mages, and are capable of summoning great spirits for aid.

Each mage has a pool of Unaspected Mana that they can use to cast spells. When they do so, the mana doesn't go away, it just becomes aspected according to the spell's element (so something like Fireball would aspect some of their mana to fire). That aspected mana can then be used by creatures called Archons, magical creatures that can turn Mana into Soul. They act as like, special moves, as they have abilities that activate when they're used. Once a mage has Soul, they can use it to cast a Summon, a more powerful elemental being or deity that responds to the offering of soul and grants you aid in whatever hardship you're overcoming.

It's heavily inspired by Golden Sun, specifically the one on the DS.

Some other small notes:

You can re-aspect mana at a 2:1 ratio, so if you need Earth mana but you've used all of your unaspected mana, you can convert some of that already aspected mana at a cost. The excess mana is "burnt" and cant be used for anything until you've had a chance to rest.

Once an Archon shifts your mana to soul, it's untouchable. You cant get it back except by resting or using a Summon.

After you use a Summon, the soul used for it goes back to being unaspected mana.

The only way to ever lose mana irretrieveably is by burning it, but even that comes back with some good sleep and a hot meal.

Meant to have cozy vibes, a bit Pokemon, a lot Golden Sun, and a bit Ryuutama if you know it.

Lots of random generation, like for Archon and Summons, since sometimes you cant prep for a player making friends with a spirit in the middle of the woods.

[felix-immergruen]

I can't draw eyes

[vodka-and-ocs]

my boy i played tonight yayyyy

[vodka-and-ocs]

[othernaut]

Character Creation Challenge 2026, Day 7: Ryuutama

I guess if you're going to know me at all, you should know this: When I was fifteen years old, my father died peaceful. My other father, though, he didn't take it very well at all. He could garden, which was a good thing for all of us, but not much else - and my brothers were ten and seven, and my sister only four years old. It had to be me. I loved them all far, far too much.

It was hard, of course, the way life is hard whenever there's a sudden responsibility and you're already sick or mourning, but I made it through. We did. I saw Jun to school and Nova into the sword-monastery, like they wanted. Augie, he went on his journey at seventeen, and I haven't seen him since - only letters, but he seems happy, and what else can you hope for? My dad is doing better these days. He hosts travellers when they come, and grows rows and rows of squashes, and is frankly unbeatable at chess. I did a good thing. I don't regret anything.

But I felt it, you know? Late nights, cutting up carrots for the next day's lunches: the slow roll of years, the piteous yearning for a journey that I was sure would never come. I did my crying in the bath, but the tears came nonetheless. It was a shame, my teachers said as they pressed spare textbooks into my parting grip, I had so much potential. But I also had market day, and the tinker the next week, and a houseful of family with no one else who knew how to sew a button or poach an egg.

I always saw my dad in fireflies. In summer, he'd collect them in jars to set on dressers and tabletops. "Cooler than candles," he'd say. One would always get stuck in the house when he went to let them out at night. I'd always think of him when I saw them over the flower fields, when one got stuck in my hair.

You know, it took me two years after Nova left to realize I could go, too. It took me the broken foot to force the matter, though, and about two weeks of encouragement from my other dad as I hobbled and grumbled and struggled to bake bread. I wasn't needed anymore. I had done enough. That wasn't a bad thing. They loved me; they were sorry; they were thankful; I could go.

I dawdled, of course. I was adamant that I couldn't go without a pack animal, for some reason (no regrets; Bup is a proud and formidable jellyfish). I got obsessed with noting down local Nekogoblin outposts, plotting an optimal route. But mostly, it was them: the other travellers. I saw them at the job boards, or mending boots outside the boarding houses. They were so young and loud and reckless, so keen and merry and eager. They looked nothing like me.

But my family didn't need me there, and my bones were set, and Bup was floating aimless above the summer squashes. There were fireflies in the fields and nothing else to fill my days. Now or never.

I went with a group at first, of course. I plotted a route along the Pale Roads, but they wanted to go overland and then follow the river to Windmill Town. They were older than the other travellers, but not by much, and I think they resented how slow I could be. And yet, when it was good, it was better than anything else. The grass was tufty and warm; I rarely needed anything else to sleep on. When we found a stand of sunrise rosehips, I remembered my magic and kept us in preserves for the week. When we hit the river, for the first time in my life, I saw dragons.

It wasn't without danger, of course; no journey is. When we crossed over the Sage Plains, a pack of mob beasts stalked us for the majority of the day, and that, of course, when our healer was too gummed up with hay fever to do much more than shiver. When we hit the river, we were surprised by a pack of twenty Nekogoblins, or more, and had to carefully negotiate our way out of hostilities. When the river plunged deep into a canyon, it got so dark that we could barely see outside the ring of our crystalights. We almost followed a trio of foxphoruses down a deadly cliff - and that with Windmill Town in our sights!

By the time we got there, I was three days out from a proper bath and discovering that maybe my foot hadn't healed as correctly as I assumed. Our hunter sold the fangs she had collected from the mob beasts, but then spent half the proceeds on berry mead before I could even count it. But still, Windmill Town was less than a week away from its summer festival, and with a day in bed and a good afternoon in the clouds for Bup, I was better than I had been in a while. A long while. It was good to travel, but it was good, as well, to think.

My companions didn't stay long enough to see the summer festival. They had found something on the job board regarding a big Neko-Sama King of Blades, and after a moment's thinking, I wished them the best of luck and said I'd keep their beds reserved for as long as I stayed. There was a bonfire at the summer festival, and free berry mead (take that, hunter), and candied persimmon, and a torch dance. Someone from the surrounding farms brought in a trio of sky jellyfish; Bup had a great time just hovering around. I traded maps with a pair of minstrels, who are even now probably resting at dad's place. There's a lighthouse four days travel eastward and a ruin that, they think, is the Hawk Lord's Great Library.

As I leaned out the wayhouse window and watched the bonfire die to embers, the same sun-drunk gold as the lolling fireflies, it came to me: It was going to take as long as it would take. All of it. And that was the core of it, all the nervousness and delay. I couldn't shuffle myself from step to step by mending others' rain cloaks and cooking community dinners. This was for me.

This was the first thing in a long, long time that was just for me.

I like the sound of that lighthouse. I hear that pegasi play over the water when the waves are high. There are egg crabs on the shoreline, and mantrap oysters, but people keep saying they see a treasure egg down there, too. More than that, I'd like to see the ocean. I've never been in the ocean. I wonder what the tide feels like.

I wonder what else I will want afterwards.

*****

Name: Mayhart Class: Merchant Type: Magic

STR: 4, DEX: 6, INT: 8, SPI: 6 HP: 8/8, MP: 16/16, Capacity: 7 Mastered Weapon: Light Blade (Acc: [DEX] + [INT] + 1, Dam: [INT] -1). Gold: 5

Skills: Well-spoken: Negotiation checks ([INT] + [SPI]) always gets +1. Animal owner: Can keep up to 3 animal for free without spending on food and water. Trader: When buying or selling 4 or more of the same item ([INT] + [SPI]), I can lower or raise the price (6-7: 10%, 8-9: 20%, 10-13: 40%, 14-17: 60%, 18+: 80%).

Magic Season: Fall Incantation Spells: Pure Crystalight (crystallizes a tool, causing it to emit light), Cure Touch (heals [INT] at a touch).

Items: Pack animal (Bup, a floating jellyfish you can tie bag to, 15 carrying capacity), curved brass longknife (light blade), 5 rations, travel bag, waterskin, 5 bundles of 3g trade goods (quartz-carved handicrafts).

Ryuujin: Kyoko, Ao-Ryuu Level: 1 Shapeshifted Appearance: A constellation of blue and white fireflies. Life Points: 3 Artefact: Crystal (PCs can be reduced to -20 HP, die at -21).

*****

Well, that was interesting. I set down with Ryuutama to make an entirely different character, and an entirely different story, and then this came out. And I know why.

While I was thinking about the fiction on the subway, the words "living avatar of eldest daughter syndrome" popped up. With that, plus the Fall seasonal magic, it struck me that Mayhart here was probably older than most people going out on a journey for the first time. And then, oops, I made me - coming out of a designated responsibility and experimenting with the blasphemous ideas of selfishness, of wanting something just for you, of not having to justify doing something you want with the glorifying light of utility or helpfulness.

Isn't that just what RPGs are, though? I set out, trying to make an autumn magician with a jellyfish buddy and, oops, it's me. The scythe-murder child is me. The guy grifting his way into the Cthulhu Mythos is me. There's one throughline and you're not going to be able to guess what it is.

Ryuutama, here, is gentle like that. It provides space. Sometimes too much space - I struggle to think of how to structure an actual plot for it, it seems to want to meander around in the murkier countries of theme and vibe. But as meandering around is the vibe entire, I think it can be forgiven. It pioneers like 75% of the ideas that matured into Fabula Ultima, which I don't mind - Fabula Ultima is more expansive than Ryuutama, it wants to be able to focus in on a wider breadth of inspiration. Ryuutama picks a lane, one that I genuinely haven't seen explored in the tabletop space elsewhere, and it nestles in all calm and cozy to let you picture nights out under the stars and salivate over imagined JRPG food like we all do, don't lie.

I can see Ryuutama being a tough sell, though, depending on your group. It IS hard to imagine a plotline for it; as a journey-not-destination travel RPG, it doesn't like to fit itself into the more conflict-centric molds that GMs might lean on. Some of the travel rules seem unusually process-centered, to the point that it would seem onerous to do everything by the book and, in fact, the book recommends that you don't.

But I genuinely haven't seen some of these ideas anywhere else. I love the Ryuujin, and I love that there's a limited amount of them; I love that when the GMPC dies, the entire tone and flavor of the story shifts. The same fuckaround vibe that others might clash with, I find refreshing. The entire reason I put this game at this point in the challenge is that I have very few RPGs on the list in general that aren't sharp, bitey, pathos-laden. Both the one right before it and the one right after really, really want you to be screaming, covered in blood, sword in the guts of an unnameable monstrosity.

In short, Ryuutama is healing, for the anime definition of healing. It was a pleasant, restful thing to stop here. That's worth noting, if nothing else.

Next up: In the grim darkness of the far future, there is - *krunch* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

[nyekomata]

Very rough concept. His name is Svara and he's an edgelord