Kimagure Orange Road
Kimagure Orange Road
Robosmut International
and
Present
W h i m s i c a l O r a n g e R o a d :
The Role-Playing Game
Version 3.0
Updated: March 1990
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Kimagure Orange Road is popular comic and animated TV series from Japan
written by a very talented Japanese artist named Izumi Matsumoto. The
story focuses on the Kasuga clan, an ancient family line with rare
esper powers (referred to here as "Cho-no Ryoku" powers, which
translates simply as "super natural powers"), living in Japan, and on a
love triangle between the main character, Kyosuke Kasuga, a cute but
irritating girl named Hikaru Hiyama and the beautiful and enigmatic
Madoka Ayukawa. I liked the universe, liked the way the powers were
set up, and decided to make an RPG system and try it out on my friends.
And now you can too!
NOTE: Throughout this file I've tried to notate examples of what I'm
talking about from the episodes or the mangas. Episode references will
say something like [cf. episode 22], and manga references will give the
volume and page number, as in [cf. vol. 5, pg. 100].
C r e a t i n g a c h a r a c t e r
If you are playing as existing Orange Road characters, get the stats
and other information in Background, towards the end of this file.
Because the stats listings aren't totally complete (not all possible
stats are included) you'll have to make-up some of the numers based on
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"NO FUCKING WAY" RULE: When rolling 1d10 for any number is limited to
one die, rolls of 1 or 2 should be re-rolled, the player calling out
"No Fucking Way" as he re-does the roll. A variant is the "Fuck This
Shit" Rule. These rules apply only while rolling your character and
only rolling for values with only one die in the roll
S E X : Roll 1d10 for your player's sex or, if you prefer, choose
female (you cannot choose male for your character's sex -- you must
roll it). It is not a yes or no question.
1-5 male
6-10 female
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You may now adjust your three abilities with ten additional points,
which you may place anywhere you like. An adjusted score may exceed 10
but no ability may go past 15. 15 is god in each respective category.
Remember that.
In this game, characters have various "goals" which they will try to
accomplish, depending on what kind of adventure they're playing, but
also depending on what they roll on this table; i.e., a player with the
"pervert" trait may be on a quest to get laid, in addition to whatever
else he is trying to accomplish. These individual goals should be paid
attention to by the GM, and employed in a campaign. Good players will
use these traits to improve the game.
All characters should roll three times on the table below, re-rolling
repeated traits or traits for which the player's sex is not allowed.
S P E C I A L T R A I T S /
B A C K G R O U N D S U M M A R Y T A B L E
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search of teenage girls' panties. Panty raids and sex with teenage
girls are the goals of such a person, and should be played accordingly.
NOTE: All male characters have a certain amount of "pervert" in them,
so this trait is not the only road to sexual innuendo in your game. If
a female gets this trait, she has a wish to have sex with a certain
character (and may or may not be a virgin) because of some upcoming
event (operation, etc. -- cf. episode 21).
BIKER (M/F) Character has a buff bike and wears riding leathers to
bed. Character has a good style to go with his toy. +2 to dai-suki,
and +2 to Kakko (in the "extra stuff skills") when rolled. Characters
with this trait automatically have a DRIVING (in the "special stuff
skills") of 9.
RADICAL RIGHT-WING RAMBO TYPE (M/F) Character loves guns and buck
knives and will have one or the other one his or her person all the
time. Character loves Ollie North and Ronald Reagan and is in the NRA,
and, of course, has "seen Rambo 600 times." For combat purposes,
firearms do not do damage against opponents and cannot be used for that
purpose (they will conveniently jam at the worst possible moment). In
terms of Japan, the character's conservative attitude is expressed by
his desire to see Japan re-arm.
FREAK ANIME MORON SYNDROME (M/F) In all anime shows, there is one
character who looks totally different than anyone else (cf. Dr. Slump,
Dr. Sane, Godzilla the cat from Dirty Pair, etc.). This character
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serves in this role. For some reason, no one else seems to notice how
stupid the character's face looks, so there is no DAI-SUKI adjustment.
REBELLOUS YOUTH (M/F) (cf. Madoka in the first episode, smoking behind
the school with Hikaru, or Johnny Winters from the English translation
of Megazone 23 Pt. 2.) Character smokes, insults teachers, cuts
classes, and generally needs an attitude adjustment. Doesn't get along
well with other students. Their goals are an easy life and freedom
from parents, school, etc. +1 on fighting, -1 on dai-suki.
SHADY PAST (M/F) Character has a secret shady past which may include
a) a previous lover, b) hanging out with a certain type of "warui"
(bad) crowd or c) a history of sleeping around.
COMPUTER GEEK (M/F) Character is intelligent, and can work most any
computer. Proficient at hacking, carding and phreaking. +2 on smarts.
Also, -1 on dai-suki if male.
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Roll 1d10+4 for your hit points. If your FIGHTING exceeds 8 add +1.
If it exceeds 12 add +2. If it is 15 add +3.
The number following the d% range is the "per use" cost in PPs of that
power. It takes this amount of PPs to perform one "action" (such as
picking up someone and suspending them in the air for a few minutes,
teleporting once, etc.). If the defined, specific action takes an
especially long time (i.e., is more than one "action"), more PPs should
be deducted at the GM's descretion. Note that, a player utilizing
telekinesis, for example, as a primary power, gets it at a lower cost
than someone who has a different primary power. To keep powers that
are either on or off (such as telekinesis) "on" requires concentration,
so other actions (like running or fighting) or extremely difficult (25%
of letting the esper power go per attempt) and utilizing a second esper
power while another is activated is impossible.
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All players should roll once on the primary powers table and three
times on the secondary powers table, ignoring repeats of the same power
from primary to secondary to normal to lesser.
E s p e r - P o w e r s T a b l e s
Primary Powers
Secondary Powers
TELEKINESIS: Also known as, how to keep your cat at home. This is a
common power, held by most of the espers from Orange Road. Telekinesis
gives users the following abilities: 1) a standard long-range "mental
appendage" which can lift or otherwise manipulate up to 250 lbs. (but
only things either in sight or familiar -- a 100 lb. bed from home 10
miles away could be lifted and brought, but a lock could not bee opened
because the mechanism is not in sight); 2) the ability to augment speed
on a bicycle [cf. episode 16], while running [ep. 1], etc.; 3) a slow
self-levitation under 200 feet off the ground (as well as spin-off
powers, such as floating over water); 4) the ability to stop one person
(yourself or someone else) from falling, and to lift a second person
straight up (i.e., pulling someone out of the water [cf. episode 18]);
5) a shield a few inches away from the esper's body which can stop
punches and can deflect bullets (but not Lasers, as Tetsuo knows); and
6) a kind of "effort/push blast" which uses a 6 PPs in one jolt but
which summons an enormous amount of power to be channeled through the
esper and does approx. 20 hp of damage to all people (and objects) in
the path of the blast [cf. ep. 19, blowing away the rock ledge, ep. 47,
before he saved 6-years ago Madoka from falling, and the Hawaiian
Suspense and Akane OAVs] (this kind of power is tied to
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BODY SWAP: Kazuya's famous power. When heads are bumped, bodies are
swapped. Whatever esper powers each player has are retained when the
swap is made [cf. vol. 6, pg. 12]. Thus, Kyosuke in Kazuya's body
cannot use Kazuya's telepathy but can use his own teleportation.
LESSER BODY SWAP: This is Kyosuke's version, put here only to fix an
apparent inconsistency in the show. Once, Kyosuke crashed heads with a
famous rock star, Mitsuru Hiyakawa, and flipped bodies. Another time,
Kazuya bumped a cat's head to the sleeping Kyosuke's, causing them to
change. Characters with this trait will swap bodies 50% of the time,
as opposed to always with the other version.
IDENTITY CHANGE: This is the power of Akane, who is only in the manga
and one OAV episode. To one person at a time (we are ignoring the
part, in the Akane OAV, where she affectecs both Hatta and Komatsu at
the same time, which was sloppy on the part of the animators), you can
appear as whomever you want, in whatever costume you decide, roughly
relative to the body size of the character employing the power. Others
will see you as you really are. If a character knows about your power,
he must roll make a "clue roll", rolling lower than 30+(his SMARTS
score*2) on d% or he will still be beguiled by the rouse. Characters
not knowing will automatically be caught (even if the player knows what
is happening the character will not necessarily and must be played that
way). Note that, if the character trying to change their own form is
scared or upset or sick, he or she will likely make mistakes with this
power, blink into the wrong shape, etc. (50% chance).
TIME TRAVEL: Kyosuke's grandfather has this power. You can go to any
time you wish, taking with you as many as you like [see vol. 15-16], or
you can send people without going yourself [as in episodes 47-48, the
last two episodes of the series]. In any other time other than "base"
time, esper powers will not work, save time travel (of the person who
brought you to the "new" time only). The only regular power that can
be used is the "effort-push blast" extension of telekinesis, which
causes a great out-pouring of energy and light which the player must
ride, and this is only in extreme emergencies. In the past, events
can change the present, they just tend not to. Note that you do not
move when you use the power, you stay where you were standing, and will
appear at the same point in whatever new time you go to.
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COMMUNICATE WITH NATURE: This was the power of Akemi Kasuga, the
mother of Kyosuke, Manami and Kurumi, who died (in childbirth with the
twins?). The user can communicate with all things in nature. Animals
may be persuaded (never ordered) to do the bidding of the user roughly
half the time (but never plants). Character will have a great affinity
for all things in nature and will be a member of greenpeace.
VOICE MANIPULATION: The user of this power can throw his or her voice
as if by ventroquilism and can further alter it to sound like anything
he or she wants (including another person's voice). This power is tied
to Identity Change.
P l a y i n g
In our universe there is a certain well of power that some beings may
draw on and wield for their own purposes. It is the force that powers
the galactic core, given shape on Earth and other worlds by special,
"chosen" beings. This "Cho-no Ryoku" power (it translates as simply
"super natural power") was called magic in the middle ages, and the
forces of the occult today. (Users of this power are called
"Cho-no-ryoku-sha" which I would just translate as Superman.) This
power is the energy of all things waiting to come into creation,
created by all living thigns, the true form of "potential energy" -- it
is the source of the power of Akira and Tetsuya from the movie Akira,
of the Newtypes, of Mai the Psychic girl, and also of Trelana of
Telezart. It is The Force. In Japan, in the present day, a family who
for generations has been specially attuned to the "Cho-no-ryoku" powers
lives, and that is the "Kasuga" clan (really their name is unknown, so
we use the name of Takashi Kasuga, who is Kyosuke's father and only
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Goals
All esper characters have one unifying goal: The secret of their
family's powers must never be learned by the world at large. When
others learn of their power, bad things happen, and families have to
move to different towns (this happened to Kyosuke's family several
times), or worse (capture by the CIA for use as weapons against the
Soviets?). This is the overlying rule that all esper players must
follow -- no use of powers around people who don't know the secret
where such powers can't be covered up somehow (except in special
circumstances, as in the "nuclear destruction of Japan" scenario at the
end of this file).
In addition, most characters have one or more general goals which they
are always working towards (Kyosuke's love for Ayukawa, for example).
Certain other goals will crop up during play, either for one character
assigned by the GM (a love interest, getting something from someone,
embarrassing someone, getting laid), possibly depending on what
personality traits the character has rolled, or will be discovered
during play as the main goal of the game. Goals must be worked
towards, but not always achieved immediately.
Combat
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ATTACKING: A player making an attack should roll 2d10 (not 1d20) and
consult the table on the next page. Determine the 'to hit' score based
on what kind of attack it is (bare hand, large blunt weapon, etc.).
(Note that FIGHTING in the to hit column refers to the FIGHTING ability
score of the character doing the attacking.) NOTE: When a number must
be divided by another number and a fraction is left, the fraction is
always dropped. Every successful hit, however, does at least one hit
point of damage (so 2/3 would become 1 by default).
A T T A C K M A S T E R T A B L E
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When making your attack, you want to roll less than or equal to the
number in the to hit column, adjusted for modifiers, as shown above.
So if you normally need 10 to make a "bare hands" attack (the base of
which is the attacker's FIGHTING score) on some other person and they
are drunk (+2 to the "to hit" number needed), you need to roll a 12 or
lower (10+2=12) to hit them with 2d10.
ATTACKS:
YATSU TERMS: Below are some examples of the kinds of things "tough
guy" characters say in Japanese, and their translations. You can use
them in your adventure.
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ESPER COMBAT: Esper combat works just like regular combat, rolling for
surprise, initiative, etc., but new "to hit" and damage values for the
various things you can lift, throw, spit and do with all the various
esper powers. For general use with combat among espers, hit points
should be "stretched" to keep characters from getting knocked out too
early. In other words, where a cinderblock thrown with telekinesis
would certainly put a normal human out of commission (and possibly kill
him or her), an esper should still be able to fight. When two espers
try to use the same power to gain different goals, the one with a
higher basic PP score will win out [cf. Ojiichan trying to get away
form Obaachan in episode 41].
RUNNING AWAY: If one group decides to run away, the group they're
fighting gets one free attack on them. The subsequent chase scene will
be a close one, with both groups running roughly the same speed (as in
all Orange Road chase scenes). Thus, the characters must use some
other factor to escape -- hiding or inventive use of esper abilities.
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O t h e r S t u f f
NOSEBLEED ROLLS: Male characters who are virgins will get a nosebleed
75-3*(dai-suki)% of the time of the time when put into a sexually
embarrassing situation. Examples of the situations are having a girl
come on to them, walking in on a nude woman, having Ayukawa's towel
fall off her unexpectedly, etc. Male characters who are "sort of"
virgins (a VIRGINITY of 2) get nosebleeds 25-3*(dai-suki)% of the time.
Studs and females never do [see vol. 5, pg. 168 or vol. 10, pg. 16 for
an example of nosebleeds].
"MUNE" ROLL": Also called a "notice tits" roll. If male, when "futari
de" (alone with one other person) who is female with a DAI-SUKI of 12
or higher, you should make a "mune" (pronounced mu-neh) roll by rolling
1d10. A score of 3 or lower (5 if you've got the PERVERT trait) means
you've "noticed" the female's breasts (as well as other bodily parts,
although breasts are the first things you notice). If you're caught,
you're distracted, and will probably get yelled at by the woman for
thinking perverted thoughts.
REGAINING POWER POINTS: PPs are regained at the rate of 1 per half
hour of resting, one hour of mild stress and 2 hours of excessive
stress. A full night's sleep regenerates all your PPs.
THE "GM IS GOD" RULE: In some games, the players could, because of
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KIMAGURE ORANGE BUMPER: On Sound Color 2 (?) you will find the
middle-of-the-episode song which goes to the "Jingoro stretches"
footage (track 8 I believe). Put that in the middle of your game for
added excitement (?).
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gun" from Urusei Yatsura which copies the person shot with it (and the
second person will have a black comma (,) over his head, to show the
difference). Possibly Ojiichan's parrot [from vol. 13 pg. 31] which
calls out embarrassing things frequently could go in this category --
it has to go somewhere.
CATCHING COLD: Whenever someone falls into cold water (i.e., into a
fountain or pool or lake) with his clothes on, he has a 95% chance of
catching a cold. A person out in the rain without an umbrella will
catch one 50% of the time. Note that any person with Ranma Syndrome
will never catch a cold in any of the above situations, however.
BEING SICK: Speaking of illness, when an esper power is sick (the flu,
a cold, etc., as in vol. 5, pg.), their powers will not respond
normally. Strange things can happen when powers are used despite a
sickness on the part of the character, such as random teleporting and
problems with telekinesis (or the time Kyosuke accidentally teleports
himself out of the bathtub and into an Ushiko/Umao lovescene).
PASSING NOTES: At several times during play, the GM and players should
utilize secret notes with the GM to hide what they're doing from other
players. Example: A character with Identity Change wants to change
into someone else, but they don't want to tell everyone present about
it when they inform the GM. Notes should be used here.
General Timeline
(Manga universe)
1981 Kyosuke's trip to "six years ago." He buys Ayukawa the red
straw hat which she gives him in the first episode.
1984 Start of the series. Kyosuke moves into "this
neighborhood."
1986 Ayukawa appears on the talent show [vol. 17, pg. 17].
Other stuff happens (of course).
1987 Kyosuke goes back six years [vol. 15-16]. Later, end of
the manga series (April). Madoka goes to America. Kyosuke
graduates and passes the jyu-ken, then enters college.
Madoka comes back and the triangle is resolved.
C h a r a c t e r B a c k g r o u n d
Here are stats on the people of Orange Road, who they are, what their
goals are, etc.
Ages below are for the year 1986 (manga series), as an example, and for
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Hikaru. Kazuya has a similar love triangle in his life, oddly enough
with two young girls that correspond with Hikaru and Madoka, and he
can't choose between them. His full telepathy keeps him well informed
of what people are thinking around him, so it can be hard to get the
jump on him.
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is the father of Shu-chan), or else the last name of the man who
married Madoka's mother's sister. Why do I tell you these things? I
don't know.
The following are "episodes" for your RPG to present ideas for other
adventures and actual basies for adventures if you want. They're
somewhat non-specific in their description of events; most of that is
up to the GM. If you get any wild ideas for applicable adventures in
the Orange Road RPG universe, please let me know somehow -- I'd like to
hear about them.
Leto II
Episode #1
The characters go off to see a movie (Bubblegum Criss Pt. 13?) with two
normal humans, a small precocious girl named Rikako-chan who is 10 and
likes to tag along with the "big kids," and Komatsu's older brother,
about 18 years old, who is on the surface fairly normal but actually
more of a pervert than Komatsu himself (cf. the episode where he tried
to fondle Kurumi) named Tetsuya Komatsu. Tetsuya is targeting one of
the female charcters in their group for sex. Outside, they meet up
with Kazuo Hanakuso (F12/S9/D11/HP 10/PP 10/Age 16, primary power is
telekinesis; others are hypnotize, increased senses and prophetic
dreams), a nondescript (male) cousin of the characters, who is short of
breath. He tells the group that Noriko-chan (F7/S8/D13/HP 7/PP 4/Age
14, primary power telekinesis; others sixth sense, telepathy and
phantasm projection), his younger sister, was taken by three caucasion
men in dark suits on her way home from school. The group must 1) ditch
Rikako-chan and Tetsuya (which will be very difficult because they both
don't want to be ditched and will try to stay, and will constantly show
up throughout this episode), 2) find clues as to where Noriko went, and
3) break onto Komatsu air force base (an actual American base in Japan,
as I understand it, no relation to Komatsu-san) and get her back,
destroying records about her in the process. Kazuo will help them look
for his sister. If they look, they can find, on the street where she
was taken, a pair of dark sun glasses and Noriko's favorite pencil
case, Dirty Pair. If they need a hint, they can find out that Komatsu
AFB, nearby, is the source of most "gaijin" (foreigners) in the area,
and that might well be checked out. When the characters get close to
the base, they will hear faint cries for help from her powers of
telepathy (and its ability to "communicate" with other people by
sending thoughts, known as "shining"), inside the base. She will let
them know that the CIA or some other American science group has
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kidnapped her because they know about the powers. This is bad for the
group. They must break onto the massive base, still evading Tetsuya
and Rikako, find Noriko and save her, and destroy information on her
powers. If everything goes okay, all information will be erased and
the secret of the esper powers will be safe. Their main adversary,
whom they will meet alone after they destroy the evidence of the groups
powers, is a man named General Muska, but his real name is Muska
Rip-van-Laputa. He must be dealt with before the group can escape the
base, either made to forget about the esper abilities of the group,
killed, blackmailed, hypnotised or otherwise made to see the point of
view of the espers. He will be armed with a gun.
Episode #2
In this episode, the players will combat a renegade cousin with esper
powers. His name is Shiro (F12/S10/D9/HP), and he will be an identical
twin of one of the players in the game (pick one). Shiro has broken
off with the family and run away, and has been using his powers
(primary telepathy; secondaries telekinesis, X-ray vision, invisibility
and body swap) to comit petty crimes around town. His latest was to
rob two million yen from Mitsubishi Bank and spend it on Japanese
Animation CDs and manga. No one else knows about Shiro except the
espers in the family, and they must try to bring him back into the fold
of the family before he gives away the "family secret." To make
matters worse, Shiro will be in love with one of the female characters
in the group, or else an NPC who will walk around with them, but that
love is unrequited. The characters must somehow catch Shiro, who has
set up traps for them in a deserted factory (reminscent of the last
scene in The Terminator) and convince him to stop his rampage and come
back to the "family." Individual goals to assign people might be, find
a trinket, find some money to pay back taxes with (maybe left over from
the Mitsubishi Bank robery), have sex, etc.
Episode #3
It's summer vacation, and the group is being sent by their respective
families to the "Panic in Orange Avenue" Tennis & Sports Camp, located
in mountains in the Kansai area (Osaka area I think). At the camp
there's a stuck-up instructor who will hit on one or more females in
the group (if there are any) named Yabio (F11/S9/D14/HP 10/Age 24) and
a bully who will push the group around named Yaro (F15/S6/D7/HP 15/Age
19, weapon is a tennis raquet treated as a lg. blunt weapon). While
playing a night game of tennis, the characters (near the edge of a
cliff, with no non-espers around) will all fall off the cliff, and
experience strange temporal turbulance, then the sky will turn into a
bubbling array of strange lights. The characters will then find
themselves, tennis raquets in hand, out in some woods, at the bottom of
the cliff. They have timeslipped back to 1942, during World War II!
In this time a) no powers will work (even someone who has Time Travel,
since it was a timeslip that brought them here and not Time Travel), b)
their money is no good, and c) they are in a fascist country which
suspects everyone of being subversive. They can a) try to get to
Hirohito or someone else and tell them information about World War II,
b) spend their time walking around aimlessly until they timeslip back
somehow, c) try to buy some land in Tokyo then go back to the future,
etc. Try to steal plot material from Back to the Future if you can.
If they do change the future so that Japan wins the war or something,
it can be explained away at the end as a dream by one of the
characters. When they return, Yabio and Yaro will be waiting for them
and must be dealt with before the adventure ends. (And if the future
is changed, then they can have changed too, in some funny way, as in
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Episode #4
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Episode #5
It is the future, the year 203x, right after the end of the Akira
OAV in which Neo Tokyo (the remains of the original Tokyo which got
destroyed back in 199x) is destroyed. The players will be a group of
espers living around Yokohama, who, after the explosion, will hear from
Uncle Kazuya (now 50 years old) of the story of Akira's birth to his
"Kyosuke-oniichan" and "Ayukawa-Oneesan) back in 1990. They had the
baby and everything seemed okay for three or four years or so. Then
little Akira demonstrated enormous powers, far more than even Kyosuke,
who was the most powerful esper of his generation. Akira kept giving
his vast powers away to others, facilitating Ayukwa and Kyosuke to move
around all the time. One day, agents from a powerful agency of the
Japanese government managed to capture Akira on the street on his way
to school (although it cost them three military helicopters and the
lives of 12 agents) and took him to a secret hospital for study, where
they tried to duplicate his powers in other children (the other
children in the movie). Kyosuke and Ayukawa searched nearly a year for
their son until the pressure on him to give up the search or expose the
entire family's secret got too great, so they eventually gave up and
went to America to live in Los Angeles. Kyosuke only returned once,
using his teleportation powers, to attend the funeral of his father
when he died in 2009, and even that time he was almost caught by the
government agents.
The group will go to the wet remains of Neo Tokyo right after its
destruction at the end of the movie, which is under military control so
they'll have to sneak in. They'll discover that each of them sense
that the power which destroyed Neo Tokyo is still there, lying beneath
the surface. It could explode again, they realize, unless the power
that is Akira can be someone made to leave the vicinity of the Earth.
Kazuya, who has come with the group, knows what the youths must do
-- go to America and find Kyosuke and Madoka and get them to come back
to Japan. It will be dangerous -- they are still sought for capture by
the military government -- and besides, Kazuya doesn't even know where
exactly they are. The goal of the espers, therefore, is to go to
America and search Los Angeles and vicinity, using any powers or
resouces they can to find Madoka and Kyosuke. (Madoka knows all about
the Cho-no-ryok powers by now, incidentally).
While in America (they will fly there by plane), the characters
will probably visit anime shops in Little Tokyo and see themselves on
an Orange Road movie poster or something silly like that. Note that
America, 40 years into the future, is a hell of a lot less safe, and
danger lurks everywhere in Los Angeles from street gangs and other
thugs. Also note that, here in America, the espers will have to use
English to communicate most of the time.
After locating Kyosuke and Ayukawa, living in Orange County in a
nice big home, they will convince them to come back to Japan to try to
dispell the power that was and still their son Akira so that he will
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not one day destroy Japan. It turns out that Madoka and Kyosuke,
alarmed at what they've been seeing on TV about new religeons
worshipping someone named Akira, have been considering returning to
their home already. They had heard rumors of the destruction of
Neo-Tokyo, but most of the information was restricted. When they
arrive in Japan, they must all escape an ambush by military police (led
by the bald colonel from the Akira OAV) and make it Kazuya's house in
Yokohama. Nearby they will inadvertantly run into Hikaru-chan and
Yusaku, now living together happily with several children (Kyosuke and
Hikaru will conveniently use quotes from Karate Kid II like "I never
marry Sato" and "Out of respect...for husband" and "No, for your
silence.").
After more reunions, the gang, with Madoka and Kyosuke, will
journey by train and foot into the ruins of Neo Tokyo, evading military
patrols. There they will meet with the bodyless spirit of Akira, who
will cry "Mother! Father!" and will ask why they didn't come and rescue
him from the military bad guys. In the end, Kyosuke and Ayukawa will
ask Akira to leave the Earth forever, and the power that Akira wielded
will no longer endanger the Earth.
Episode #6
The players are fishing in the sea of Japan a few miles out of
Hiroshima on their Uncle Eijiro's boat, eager to escape the news in the
city about increased tensions between the superpowers in Europe and
relax. Eijiro (F8/S10/D8/HP 10/PP 8/Age 45, primary power is
telekinesis, others are hypnotize and invisibility) is a cousin of
Akemi (Kyosuke's mother) and a nephew of Kyosuke's grandfather. If any
character has sixth sense he will feel a tinge of danger. Nearby, an
American submarine will surfce with a giant hole in it. One man will
escape before the sub sinks again, its back broken by an enemy torpedo.
The man, Seaman Third Class Chris Thompson, will swim to the boat.
(Note: Charcters will need English ability to talk to this guy.) He
will tell of how a Soviet sub torpedoed them and he alone escaped
before she sunk. Suddenly, the fishing boat will be under attack by
the Russian sub, which will surface and try to blow the fishing boat
from the water! The players will need to find a way to overcome this
attack, either by escaping or destroying the sub, then return home to
the city. World War III has started, and Russian bombers will be
flying over Japan soon, attacking American and Japanese military and
civil targets. Akemi Kasuga, the dead mother of Kyosuke and the twins
and a matriarch of sorts for the family as a whole, will appear to the
characters and tell them this, and that they must defend Japan. The
players can either 1) try to defend Japan against the bombers,
including a possible ballistic missile which will try to fall on the
Tokyo/Yokohama area (shield over the city?), 2) try to strike harder
against the Soviet Union, by teleporting/travelling to Moscow to
destroy the heads of state there or something, or 3) try some other
factor at the discretion of the players (the choice and even thinking
of the ideas of what to do should be up to them, although the GM can
prod them). Note that other espers in other cities can all band
together to defend Japan, even linking their powers in groups if they
want to knock down Russian bombers. The choice is up to them. In the
end, however, they will probably not be able to defend Japan from a
major bombardment.
Episode #7
This is part two of the previous episode. It has been a month since
World War III began. In Europe and North America, conventional
conflicts are still raging, but the war is over in Asia, with the
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O t h e r I d e a s f o r G M s
There is a lot of room in the Orange Road universe for new ideas that
don't exactly fit into the Japanese animation/manga list of required
cliches, many of which would fit quite well in the context of this
game. Ultimately, Izumi Matsumoto has made a basic super-power system
that is nearly as flexible as the "mutants" explaination of Marval's
super-hero world. A lot can be done with it.
How about characters who aren't good, who use their powers to rob banks
and get into mischief? For the socially unprogressive, how about a
group of esper super-perverts or even sex-offenders who use their
powers to, well, you know. The Kasuga-clan (and the other lines of the
family, of which there must be many) being the beginnings of the
"Newtypes" of the Gundam universe? A-ko as a relative of the Kasugas?
And of course, there's the idea of the esper powers being the source of
Akira's power from Akira, and the destruction of Tokyo and events of
the movie being the ultimate destiny of the Orange Road universe.
There's lots to do in the universe, if you care and if you have players
who care. If you have any experience with RPGs, you should do okay,
and if not, you can't do any worse than me.
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- 27 -
The
K I M A G U R E O R A N G E R O A D
r o l e p l a y i n g g a m e
DAI-SUKI: ____________
_____________________
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_____________________
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