Correspondents' Eye on Tokyo:
The Tabletop Role-Playing Game Community in Tokyo

From Two Weeks to Seven Years

Like many who come to Tokyo for the first time, Tanner Kirk's story is one of love at first sight for the city.

Working at a Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, his boss decided Kirk should visit Japan to learn about the culture behind the cuisine. He initially intended to stay in Japan for two weeks but ended up remaining for the entirety of his three-month tourist visa.

Feeling that creativity and cooking are intertwined, Kirk returned to Japan and applied for a writing and journalism degree at the country's Temple University campus to follow other creative pursuits. Now, he has been in Japan for a total of seven years, writing for publications such as The Japan Times, Japan Cheapo, and Tokyo Weekender in addition to being Head of Content for Globis Insights, an online information platform for private business education company, Globis.

But it is not just article and content writing that allows Kirk to express his creative side.

Rolling the Dice

The other outlet for Kirk's creativity is in the character and world-building of TRPGs, or Tabletop Role-Playing Games. These are games that you play with a group using only a piece of paper, a pencil, a set of dice, and your imagination. Scenarios are planned, but the dice determine what happens to your characters along the way.

With a pre-existing interest in gaming and fantasy, Kirk says that the move to Tokyo helped jump-start his obsession with TRPGs. Reflecting on his time at Temple University, he says, "We were having a beer together and my friend casually mentioned that they wanted to try Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). My eyes lit up and I said 'Let's do it!'"

After becoming involved in one game as a regular player, Kirk found his calling as a Dungeon Master. Dungeon Masters create the scenarios or worlds for players and oversee the game and its outcomes. He found that this role brought out his creative side, and later came to realize that D&D had impacted his fantasy experiences in the past, too. He believes that Western and Japanese fantasy games and cultures influence each other, with a lot of games like Final Fantasy being based on classic D&D, and vice versa.

The TRPG Community in Tokyo

When speaking about the TRPG community in Tokyo, Kirk had an overwhelmingly positive outlook: "Everyone is very open and accepting because, at the end of the day, we're all here to have fun and play games. It's a healthy way to explore different aspects of yourself, too."

Kirk points out that the unique atmosphere of Tokyo's TRPG community has led to some interesting trends, such as the culture of "replays," where a game is turned into a narrative on YouTube or even written up as a book. This allows shyer members of the community to passively experience a game if they are not ready to actively participate themselves.

Kirk suggests that anyone can give TRPGs a go and he has found them to be a great way to connect with others. Especially in Tokyo, there are a lot of non-Japanese residents who may be looking for a community, which they can easily find in the world of TRPGs. "If you're looking for a community that is going to stick together, you can't do any better than TRPGs. You can't play the games without other people!" He recommends breaking into the community by visiting events like the D&D comedy show Roles for Initiative, held regularly in Shibuya.

The Crossover between Work and Play

Kirk also finds that there is a lot of crossovers between this favorite pastime, his paid work, and his future aspirations, too. Namely, creativity and a link to Tokyo.

When it comes to writing, he attributes a lot of his initial interest in Japan to Tokyo (or former Tokyo)-based writers like Jake Adelstein (author of "Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan"), Brian Ashcroft (author and managing editor, formerly Kotaku and Wired), and Tim Rogers（American video game journalist）. But he also still finds himself thinking of Tokyo in terms of the magical realism of Haruki Murakami at times, too.

Now, after years of writing his own campaigns and running his own YouTube channel—"Paladin Prose"—about the games, he is working on a large-scale project to be announced in summer 2024: "I want to go all in on becoming an arbiter for the TRPG community here in Tokyo. To anyone reading this, I would recommend checking out the channel and reaching out to me if you're interested."

W. Tanner Kirk

Tanner Kirk is the Head of Content for Globis Insights and a freelance writer for various publications such as The Japan Times and Tokyo Weekender. Since moving to Japan in 2017, he has become an enthusiastic advocate for the TRPG community in Tokyo, with his own YouTube channel on the subject, Paladin Prose.