MAID: The Role-Playing Game

The storytelling game of getting Senpai to notice you.

This game...

I really don't know.

Maybe this needs some context, so I'll give it as clearly as I can– once upon a time in Japan, an author named Ryo Kamiya got really, really drunk and wondered "Hey, what would happen if I made an RPG book about a weird otaku fetish that no one could ever possibly take seriously?" Then a bunch of people in Japan started playing it, looked to each other and went, "Dude, this is really freaking weird."

Later on, a guy named Ewen Cluney got bored one day and started translating this game, and lo and behold, we now have MAID: The RPG in English to enjoy. Yay?

Why yes, prodding voice from the future that only I can hear, I actually played a session of this game. I try to make it a point to play every RPG I potentially review (usually by GMing it). I'll get to that at the end of the review. 

Part of me really wants to hate this game, with all the really creepy lines crossed throughout the whole thing. I've heard it's rather infamous in Japan, and I can see why. I'm frightened at what this thing has to offer, but not because this is a horror game, but because of what's supposed to be charming or bemusing.

On the other hand, there's a lot to like about it, like the mechanics and the consideration of the possibility that this is really a brilliant satire of an otaku fetish. It may be that this game is supposed to make me feel uncomfortable, to disturb me with what it dismisses as bemusing or charming. 

However, to modify an adage a friend of mine likes to use, the fact that it's supposed to be disturbing doesn't make it any less disturbing. At the same time, I can't ignore that being able to do exactly what's intended is the mark of a good artist, so... Let's give this thing a look.

Mechanics

The mechanics are the one aspect about this game that I have very few ambiguous feelings about. The game is run almost entirely by the roll of 1-3 six-sided dice (D6). This is one of those RPGs that has a goal, too, in this case, you try to gain as much favor from the master as possible– different actions may gain you favor (like preparing a good breakfast) and others may lose you favor (like breaking the house's windows). If you thought my "The storytelling game of getting Senpai to notice you" gag was just me being facetious because this is an anime kind of game, I was being totally serious. This IS "Senpai Notice Me: The Game."

That aside, the D6 system makes this game incredibly accessible and easy to just set up at a moment's notice. As long as you've got the book/PDF with you, you can get a game going in a matter of minutes since, once again, virtually everything in the game can be generated by dice rolls, and there are tables for almost everything. The mansion? There's D6s for that. The master? You can roll D6s in a similar fashion to the maid character creation. In-game events? D6 tables for that. Hell, players can even spend favor points to have the GM make a random event if they want to for which they'd roll 2 D6 and refer to the chart to see what event would come up.

This game is pretty good for one-shots and for when you feel like role-playing but don't want to do anything particularly deep or involved, and if the time constraints only allow for something thrown together at the last minute to work: almost every game of MAID looks thrown together at the last minute. The translator made a lot of jokes about how the tables are confusing, but honestly, I thought the system was rather straightforward. Just have the tables around for reference and throw a bunch of D6 around. If you want accessible and easy to follow, yet completely ridiculous, this is your game.

Mechanics: 8/10

Setting

Not a whole lot to say about setting, the game offers a lot of potential settings... So long as they involve maids. And yes, even in the most ridiculous places do they involve maids. There can be Space Maids, Cyberpunk Maids, Post-Apocalyptic Maids! Name an anime setting and apparently there are Maids there. The setting is, once again, one of those things that can be generated by a dice roll. You can even generate what sort of tone the game is going to have, again, with a dice roll. This is a game that basically provides you with everything you need if you've got a writer's block and can't come up with everything. Just roll D6s and see what comes up. Believe me, nothing you do will make this any less ridiculous.

Setting: 7/10

Character Creation

Yeah... I've been putting this one off. Here comes the part of this game that makes for the really confusing, uncomfortable feelings. Now, the character creation, for the most part, works about like everything else– roll bunches of D6s and you get your character. The only things that are completely left to the player's discretion are the name and age. Where things get creepy is what's available in the character creation.

We've got the colors of the Maid's outfit, her eyes and her hair, the set of attributes she has, a Maid Power, background, roots and a few other optional systems, including, if desired, a perversion of some sort, which include exhibitionism and nymphomania, equipment which includes bondage clothing and a gimp that follows you around. No, seriously.

Now, normally a lot of these traits may just be able to illustrate some of the questionable aspects of certain characters, such as their sexual appetites or having really weird, fetishy clothes and equipment, but if these were adults, as is normally the case with a lot of RPGs that would occasionally feature this kind of thing, this would be fine.

The problem comes with one of the maid types that you can potentially roll– Lolita.

For those of you who don't know what a Lolita is, Lolita is a fashion trend in Japan that centers around Victorian-style dress, and, for reasons I can't even begin to fathom, when it comes to a lot of Lolita art, these tend to look like little kids.

Yes. Kids.

As in, minors.

As in, people who should not be included in your bizarre maid-driven sexual fantasies.

And if you think for even a second that maybe this was meant to be just the gothic Lolita part of the fashion, or that maybe the characters just look like little kids but aren't actually, my response to you is: HOW I WISH THAT WERE SO.

Maids are already a pretty Victorian fashion statement, and every single character is going to wear the maid uniform in various colors, so it can only really be assumed that the aspect of Lolita they meant was the little kid part. This could've been omitted or replaced with something else, but no, they HAD to go with the little kid angle. Hell, here's the piece of the Maid Type table that includes Lolita.

And if you still might think that childish and... Young... May not necessitate that a Lolita character is intended to be a child, I've got some fresh new horror for you. These are samples taken from the book itself from one of the Replays, the book's depictions of how a game of MAID could potentially go (and recommendations on how to play). Included in these are character profiles for the particular game of MAID, and, well... Just look at this. I've included captions that showed my reactions to this as I looked through it.

 

What?

 WHAT?

WHAT?! 

THERE ARE TWO ASPECTS OF THIS GAME THAT ARE EXPRESSLY NOT RANDOMLY GENERATED: NAME AND AGE. WHAT I CAN ONLY ASSUME HAPPENED IS THAT EITHER THEY CHOSE THE NAME AND AGE BEFORE MAKING THE ROLLS AND DECIDED TO JUST GO WITH IT, OR THEY HAVE DELIBERATELY MADE THIS CHARACTER A TEN-YEAR-OLD AFTER FINDING OUT THEY'D BE IN SEE-THROUGH TIGHTS AND A COLLAR.

Okay... Now that I've had that time to really get angry at this, I've got a few questions to ask– What's a 10-year-old kid doing working as a maid? Isn't that kind of child labor? Is she being paid? Is she being paid enough to be harassed and dressed in a transparent set of tights? Forget the really creepy sexual overtones for a second (as if I could forget it), this has layers upon layers of serious ethical problems. I'd also like to remind you that none of these ethical problems, sexual or otherwise, is ever addressed within the book. Hell, even when the Reliquary book  the World of Darkness line released included a supernatural artifact that took the form of a Little Black Book that can force any woman to have sexual desires for the man who writes her name and phone number in it (kind of like a sex Death Note), they took time to include a side note to remind people that rape is not okay.

 

The excerpt reminding us that rape is not okay.

The closest this game gets is making feeble (and ineffective) attempts to censor out some of the more overtly sexual aspects of the game, and having the book kind of become self-aware and giving the author the business for creating a book of such heavy debauchery, but honestly, I get the feeling it was more about some of the other sexual images that would have been fine if this game were entirely about adults, except kids can get stuck in the mix of this dreck.

And nobody dare try to tell me "Well, Japan has different standards for sexuality, your attitude is archaic and puritan and you just don't appreciate their culture."

1. Up yours.

2. Evidently, the Japanese public has attributed infamy to MAID: The RPG. They likely found this stuff about as creepy as I did, so don't give me your moral relativistic BS.

3. I don't even want to think about the kinds of people that would be okay with this.

Hayao Miyazaki may have really had a point about anime culture, that the people in it, even the professionals, don't really understand how human beings interact. 

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go on a social justice rant, but that's what this game does to me. It really crosses the line and doesn't even recognize what lines it crossed. Yeah, the random generation does make the characters really easy to make, but the fact that this... THIS... Is something that can conceivably happen, that it's something that's expected to happen, is a serious black mark against this game. You can house rule this so that you can't get Lolita as a choice, but the fact that it is... Yeah, I'm not letting it slide. I already gave this game plenty of leeway with its mechanics. This is no longer a mechanical issue. Sorry guys, this is too messed up to ignore.

Character Creation: 4/10

Storytelling

At this point, what else is there to say? This game has two notes to it– random generation and really creepy sexual overtones. As for the storytelling...

Well... This game is certainly memorable. The story itself will be balls to the walls crazy, and you can talk about it with friends and it'd be a great conversation piece...

As a horror story.

Still, credit where credit is due. Random number generation makes the storytelling easy to do and makes it interesting.

Storytelling: 7/10

Total Grade: 65% D

This game has so much about it that really works well, but it's like a tightly-packed city that runs entirely on car transportation with little regulation– sure, it's really convenient and it makes it easy to get around to wherever you want to go, but then there's this massive cloud of smog overhead that chokes everything around it. There's this fact that every good thing in this book is tainted by the one thing that just looms over it like a 10-year-old shroud.

That having been said, if this seems like something interesting enough for you to use to kill some time, go for it... Though to save yourself some trauma, I urge you to omit Lolita from the pool. My game was just a bunch of maids helping out Tony Stark after all of his Iron Man suits got trashed. It involved no children, and it was still ridiculously hilarious. The point is, pedophilia need not come up in your game. If you roll a 1 during the Maid Types, just roll again. Please.

Until next time, Timere Defectum. I'm going to rethink this grading system and my life, and probably try to shower this game off of my soul.

MAID: The Roleplaying Game is the property of Star Line Publishing. Reliquary and World of Darkness are property of White Wolf Publishing. Iron Man and Tony Stark are property of Marvel and Disney.