Maid RPG overview- both a review and useful general overview.

Maid RPG

Maid RPG is a game that tells the story of a master and his servants. This game will appeal to any truly nerdy anime fan.

It even gives examples of anime to watch to get in the mood for the game in the rulebook. Due to this focus on anime and roleplaying, the rules are very bare bones and do not even take up most of the rulebook. This game is just a step above free form roleplaying. It is a good game for a group of players that are new to roleplaying, but don’t want to be embarrassed by the complexity of other games. Check it out here.

But why should you be interested in Maid RPG in the first place? It’s because the game lends itself to a bizarre environment. You can have maids in mecha, fighting tentacle creatures with 3×3 eyes. You can romance a ghost or perhaps a ghost microwave. It’s the open-ended nature of this RPG that lends to the fun, in a light-hearted atmosphere. I mean, you may find yourself trying to stop a flood of popcorn or escape a haunted mansion using a vacuum cleaner.

Maid RPG Overview

Character creation is very easy. The standard way to create characters for Maid RPG is to roll everything randomly. Each maid has Maid Types which have personality traits, qualities, stats, colors, roots, stress explosions, and a maid power to roll for. Some of the things the players roll for have an a and b section to use if the game is going to be more adult oriented. This can lead to some very interesting or disturbing characters. There is also favor and spirit which come from different stats. An alternative method that is used in play by post a lot is to have the players or GM choose the things that they want in a character so that everyone is happy. The stats can also be done by point buy if that is the way you want to do it.

The qualities are not too constraining so it is easy to make an interesting background for almost any character. The game does have  a few oddballs like “secretly a guy” that can leave some people upset.

If you love Hack and Slash RPGs this is not really for you. Maid RPG is more about roleplay. Combat is made so that you can fight with any stat so long as you can justify it and the GM agrees to it. This means that most of the time people only agree to combat with their best stat since you can avoid combat by giving in to what the other person wants. Also after you lose to someone in combat once you have a disadvantage if you try to continue fighting them. If seduction rules are in play and someone is seduced they can’t even fight the person who seduced them. So epic battles do not often happen unless the GM makes special allowances for them. The game mostly allows the players to have a lot of ways to stay out of combat and keep roleplaying.

This is where Maid RPG really shines. Everything about this game is streamlined so that most of the game is centered on roleplaying your character. There are several different options for roleplay in this game. There is a daily schedule type of roleplay where you go through the events of the day like making breakfast and cleaning. Another way to play is random which is driven by whatever strikes the players fancy or random events from the table in the rulebook. Scenario-based playing is very popular since many GMs have plans for the game and the direction they would like it to go in. Favor race is the final roleplay method, in this method all the maids are trying to get favor fast to earn the end scene for their character. All methods can be fun and leave a lot of room for the players to do what they want with their character.

Maid RPG Running the game

The standard way to plan a game is to randomly roll a setting and everything about the game. Many GMs choose to pick the setting themselves though to go along with ideas they have for the game. It very easy to use the basic character creation and rules to set up a game in the setting of a specific anime or story. For instance I have seen a game where they changed the setting to go along with the Negima anime.

Instead of maids they had students and teachers instead of masters. There are some mods that give rules for stewards and other things out there if you don’t want all girls or all maids. The game is pretty easy to run in general. In a play by post game the players can mostly run combat by themselves. The GM is mostly needed to give the game a story or to help players that need help with roleplaying.

This game can be used for so many different scenarios, moods, and groups of people. The rules are simple enough for most people, but really help to give the game a good flow. It is a very well put together game.