Goblin Slayer first appeared as online ASCII art in 2014, and has since appeared in light novels, manga, and an anime television series. The franchise contains numerous references to role-playing games and things came full circle when the RPG was published in 2019 as a somewhat thick (3 cm) bunkobon. An English translation of the RPG is imminent.
In the RPG the playable races are 只人 (human), 鉱人 (dwarf), 森人 (elf), 蜥蜴人 (lizard man), and 圃人 (rhea), the last one having the size and other characteristics of a hobbit. Although the words for “dwarf” and “elf” are written with kanji characters and literally mean “mineral-person” and “forest-person”, the ruby text shows they are to be pronounced as in English. Similarly 小鬼 is to be read as “goblin”, though it literally means “little ogre”.
The primary abilities are stamina, soul, skill, and wisdom. The secondary abilities are concentration, patience, and reflection. All are determined by a 1d3 roll, but races have their bonuses and penalties, so the scores range from 0 to 5. Each primary ability is added to a secondary ability to get the twelve scores that are used in play. Only six-sided dice are needed to play the game, which incidentally are the dice seen being rolled in the opening credits of the anime.
The game has classes, experience points, and 10 levels. In the manga and the anime the characters wear dog tags which are color coded to indicate their level. Priestess starts out as porcelain (1st level) and Goblin Slayer is already silver (8th level). The RPG just refers to levels by number though.
There are two scenarios in the book. Both come with a picture of the bulletin board posting the party will see at the guild. The first asks the party to go into a goblin lair to rescue an infant. The second is from a young widow, who wants adventurers to eradicate the wild beasts inhabiting a mountain pass.
Japanese Tabletop RPG 