Running Jojo's Bizarre Adventure as a Tabletop RPG
Boy, this one's...this one's gonna be niche
I've spent more time than I care to admit thinking about running a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure tabletop game. It's a combination of two of my most niche interests into something that would require a group so oddly specific that I've basically resigned myself to never, ever doing this ever.
But, man, it'd be cool.
For the uninitiated, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is the story of the Joestar family, a bloodline for extremely stern people who basically constantly find themselves at the center of a great deal of trouble, from fighting vampire kings to chasing serial killers to fighting the President to fighting the time-stopping, blood-sucking uber-villain of the series, DIO.
Yes, he is named after Ronnie James Dio and, yes, you are supposed to spell his name in all-caps.
In Jojo's, a party of heroes usually ends up in encounters with enemies one at a time, in a "villain of the week" sort of format. Most characters of note in Jojo's possess what are called "Stands", which are these sort of ghostly manifestations of their inner psyche, each of which has a unique power. Some of them, like DIO's "The World", pictured above clenching his fist, have immediately useful powers like stopping time. Others have more niche abilities, such as "Highway to Hell" in Part 6, which has the ability to kill any target in range, so long as the stand's user...kills himself.
That's the joy of Jojo's, and why I think it would make an excellent tabletop setting. Jojo's is all about people with extremely specific powers trying to out-think one another, to put each other into situations where their powers will shine. The most recent season finale of the anime, finishing off the Diamond is Unbreakable arc of the manga, had two stand users basically just outwitting each other for an entire battle, as the hero, who's ability is to reconstitute anything he punches into its original form, faces off against the antagonist, who can turn anything he touches into a bomb. The battle is less of a direct fistfight and more like watching two very precisely laid-out plans weaved into one another.
So, specifically, why would Jojo's Bizarre Adventure make for a good tabletop game? Well, what I just said above has me instantly interested. Traditional RPGs can sometimes devolve into rote "I hit him, he hits me" combat, in which combatants just smack each other with weapons until one of them falls over. JJBA instead has fights which feature a distinct pattern: Meet the villain. Figure out what his power is. Concoct a ridiculous strategy to defeat it. Execute. And then punch them a lot. Actual physical combat is usually the last thing in the fight, and it usually provides a satisfying conclusion to the fight.
As a result, every time players would show up to the table, they'd have a new puzzle to solve. First they need to put their heads together to figure out what the hell the enemy is even doing, which is easier said than done. Here is a list of actual abilities that Jojo's Bizarre Adventure characters have had:
Basically, the sky's the limit for what sort of antagonist you can have. When you have that down, your players have to actually be clever and figure out specifically how they intend to use their specific abilities to beat this foe. Then, they get to enact that plan, and change it on the fly, and beat foes with the strength of their strategy, instead of just through sheer force of numbers and statistics. Then, when they finally have the enemy in a corner, it's punchin' time.
I highly encourage to let players scream wildly while they do this.
Another nice part about Jojo's, other than its resistance to getting stale and how it incentivizes creativity, is that it's episodic. Like I mentioned in my superhero game post, games featuring a "villain of the week" structure are extremely resistant to player schedules, allowing you to simply tell a story with whoever's around the table that day, without worrying about where the other characters went off to.
So, what we have is a setting where players can build characters that can do basically anything, where every fight is unique and a chance to be creative, a game that requires smart thinking on part of the players, and a game that will work with a volatile group. You know what we don't have? A game. Like, an actual system to use. Surely, I don't have something already primed and ready to go?
Behold, my face as you fell into my classic bamboozle
However, there is a system which I think is a perfect fit: Monsters and Other Childish Things, by Arc Dream. MaoCT is a system in which children have adventures alongside their own personal monsters, otherworldly things which are unique to the child and have unique and interesting powers. Find "monster", replace "Stand", and done.
MaoCT uses the One-Roll Engine, which is an extremely simple and fantastically clever dice system which I am a big fan of. The system is designed from the ground up to allow for versatile and unique powers to be represented mechanically, and the fantastically good character creation system, which ties monster abilities to parts of their body, works pretty well in Jojo's, where it is frequently the case that protagonists have to attack specific weak points of an enemy.
So, I have a system, a motivation, and an infinite wellspring of characters to create, mechanically represent, and set against my players. Now, sadly, all I need are players.