Shangri-La Frontier
We shall start this first heist with a show of honesty. Itâs important to establish trust, and I want you to like me so I can pilfer your house in return. I am in love with Shangri-La Frontier. I discovered this manga in the last moments of 2023, drawn in by the Blacksmithâs Song, and here I am a year later with all the volumes and figures of the main trio.
Shangri-La Frontier is a manga by Kata Rina, who continues writing the web novel, and drawn by Fuji Ryosuke. It is mostly about the adventures of Rakuro Hizutome or Sunraku in the eponym massive VRMMO. No this is not an isekai and this is not a Sword Art Online clone where death in the game equals death in the real world. We often have scenes in the real, somewhat futuristic, world. The game itself would be classified as some sort of Science-fantasy. It is mostly fantasy but the playersâ characters came from an ancient spacecraft a thousand years ago, so there are traces of sci-fi elements. The main goal is the challenges, mainly beating the âUnique Bossesâ, bosses that can only be beaten once for the entire player base, and no one has managed to beat one yet.
As of writing the season 2 of the anime is ongoing and the manga has reached 200 chapters. I may be a thief, but I am not a villain so I will try to keep this article as spoiler-free as possible.
And now, what can we steal from Shangri-La Frontier ?
The Monsters and Boss fights
A Mage that fused with a tree in an attempt to gain immortality and is now immune to physical attacks while wielding its staff. I really like this concept. And itâs an excellent foil to the main character, someone who can only do physical attacks. The fight became a puzzle. And narratively the monster is also interesting because it comes from the New COntinent, somewhere that the players have not reached yet. This is a taste of a high level enemy when the player is still relatively low level. (Plus it also informs us on the strength of the npc who captured this being and then killed it easily). In the first campaign I played, the GM introduced the recurring villain in the first session, while we were still level one ( and one of us dead due to taunting the fleeing goblins). Thankfully our friendly guardian angel npc saved us and, like Sunraku with Lycagon, we were itching to beat this archnemesisâ face up.
Something similar happens later with a monster that can only be hurt by physical attacks if the weapon has the holy attribute. Our protagonist does have such a weapon, but due to the durability mechanic can only attack seven times before it breaks. How do you defeat a mini boss in seven strikes ? By being smart and maximising your damage with automatic critical hits on a monsterâs weak point.
And thatâs not counting the Unique Boss fights with multiple phases that are also puzzle-like. The best warrior of the Age of Divinity. A being with a one word power but that utilises every stretch of it. Beware the one-word powers, dear readers, they are the most tricky.
There is one designer who is moving more and more towards puzzle-like combat, Spencer Campbell or GilaRPGs. Letâs take one of his latest games, Thorn. Every enemy can be killed in one hit. That is if you can hit them or actually deal damage to them. For a flying enemy, well how do you reach them ? How do you get past their heavy armor ? What do you do when they can disable your weapons ? This is a take on the 1 HP dragon that we could talk about another day.
A Railroading rant
All the cities in this mmo have a name involving a number from 1 to 15. Can you guess which order they should be visited in ? Good job, cause the protagonist doesnât follow it. He even skipped the first town entirely and with it, the tutorial (with consequences down the road). But the game allows it, because it is this super open sandbox, to a level unseen in current video games. A lot of quests are hidden in the world or in discussion with non playable characters, so much that they havenât all been discovered within one year of the gameâs existence.
With so much freedom, why did I title this part âA railroading rantâ ? because Early in the manga, and during the first season of the anime, the protagonists managed to beat one of the seven âUniqueâ Bosses. And the developper arenât happy. Because it was supposed to be the fifth one to be beaten for the world story to make sense. And that is where I want to rant about this character.
There was no hint that the Unique should be defeated in a specific order. At this time in the story, the first one in the list has not even been found yet. Donât put such a railroading story in such an open world, especially without hints saying so. I laugh at the schadenfreude of this character saying her world is not for minions that have stopped trying to beat the Unique in the first chapter and when one is finally defeated, itâs not the one she wanted. Though having to quickly change your planned narrative due to playersâ actions is something a lot of GMs have experienced. It is why I donât plan things this way. Improvisation and fiction-first for me (some of my players gave me so many curveballs I could not help but learn)
That is not to say you should not do any preparations at all. Do what is good for you and your table. For me, the world is ready while the story is written with the players.
Playing other games
Shangri-La Frontier is not the only video game to be played during the manga. On the contrary, multiple ones are shown and they never derail the main plot. One of my favorites arcs is spent in another game (and viewers should discover it during season 3). The real strength of our protagonist is in all the vr-games he has played, giving him the skills of a game tester on crack. He managed to beat a mini-boss thanks to fishing knowledge from his dad. He has a romance game trauma thanks to a trash visual novel. Characters met in other games join the main trio in SLF. And his skills are why he is chosen for a hard task despite his low-level.
This is the same for tabletop gamers. I have said this in the past and I will continue to say this: play more games! Your experiences with them will make you discover new aspects of the hobby, will make you a better player and gm. This is how to make the ttrpg scene live and thrive. And this is in part why I created this blog.
The campaign Planedawn Orphans is great for this type of play. it is system-agnostic and the way it works, you can easily play another tabletop game for each of the campaignâs objectives. There are also some podcasts and Actual Plays like Gamewoven that explore a continuous campaign with the same characters across different ttrpgs.
No PC death
The main trio is a bunch of doofus that vibe together. Your players are also doofus (affectionate, they are mine, Sir), be a doofus with them.
Anyway, a lot of their antics only work due to the absence of permadeath. It allows them to be silly. There are still penalties to death but they do not up the stakes. A lot of times players are cautious in campaign, afraid to make the wild decisions they would make in a oneshot. Give them no fear of death and they shall dazzle you with their bullshit.
Yet there are still stakes without permadeath on the line, especially with the bosses. First because well, death of character is still a thing and would make you respawn in an inn, out of the combat. When the main character has very low health and defense, it is important to stay in the fight and not miss on the xp and loot.
Second, time limits. There have been two final fights with an Unique Boss so far in the manga. The first can only be accessed once a month. If you fail this fight, you have to wait a month to retry. The second is on a timer. If you donât finish the boss during the week, you are booted out of its territory. And if the npc that gave the quest and that you have to escort diesâŚwell there is permanent death for npcs and you are locked forever out of the fight (or until a patch fixes this issue since it is a video game).
Nowadays, there are more and more games where death is not a prominent danger. The Players can choose when or if their characters die. Or sometimes the options putting a character out of play are worse (for the character, itâs great fun for the table). Give stakes to the players by putting something other than death of PCs on the line in case of failure. Engage with narrative consequences. The Boss fight part of Agon by John Harper does it well. The PCs have to split their forces between trying to gain an advantage and preventing bad things to happen like death of npc, of multiple npcs, a thief getting away, the loss of an important piece of equipment, etcâŚ
Love your theme
There are many manga and anime about video games. This one is my favorite because the author clearly loves gaming. This is someone who actually plays games. And here is the thing to steal : If you theme your game on something that you really like, it will be felt by readers and players. Passion is contagious and lovely.
Similar TTRPGs
DotDungeon by Snow
Thorn by GilaRPGs
Cloudbreaker Alliance by CJ Leung
Break!! by Reynaldo and Grey Wizard
Speedrun by FrĂŠdĂŠric Marin