New release: Jesus Christ RPG Trilogy

Posted in October 23, 2013 ¬ 12:22 pmh.Craig SternNo Comments »

We have reached a new milestone in indie RPGs. Up until last week, Jesus Christ had one role and one role only in jRPGs: to have his name muttered angrily under one’s breath after running into the 15th random battle in a row. No longer! As of October 15, 2013, Jesus Christ has his very own jRPG. Three of them, in fact: Baby Jesus Christ RPG, Jesus Christ RPG, and Rise Jesus Christ RPG.

The premise:

you can play as Jesus Christ and his friends and also his parents and the three wise kings.

So, you know, there’s that. Given the proliferation of god-killing plotlines that we commonly find in jRPGs, the decision to use this particular genre as a vehicle for telling the story of Jesus seems almost subversive (if not a little cheeky). I had to know: why a Jesus Christ jRPG? The author, Felipe, responded:

Before deciding on Jesus Christ, I was looking into adapting any story into an RPG. It occurred to me that I would love to play a game about Jesus that was neither too reverent (thus off-putting) nor disrespectful. As a player, I would like just a fun game that kept some basic principles intact.

This decision helped in shaping the gameplay:

– I would not write any of Jesus’ words, which were all quoted straight from the bible. His words and other bible quotes in this trilogy are between quotation marks.

– Jesus, for instance, cannot attack and he’s also immune to any status effects. Why? because status effects are cured by miracles and Jesus never performed a miracle on himself.

On top of that, I also tipped my hat to the Final Fantasy series (which explains why I wrote an arpeggiated theme song) and Dragon Quest (with the curved logo).

Summing up, just tried to do something amusing and non-preachy, while respecting the characters.

Given that Jesus cannot attack, I can only assume that he’s portrayed as a character in the healer mold. Here’s a trailer showing a bit of what you’ll be in for: