KonoSuba

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KonoSuba, a shortened form of Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku O! (lit Blessing This Wonderful World!) is a series of light novels turned anime & manga that have managed to become /tg/-approved despite their isekai basis due to their comedic slant and lampooning of the very isekai tropes they utilise. Almost like a Slayers of the late 2010s. And, like the Slayers, the fact that they have achieved their very own tabletop RPG adaptation means the series deserves a place on this wiki, alongside other anime like Hellsing, Robotech and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

The Story

The story of KonoSuba begins when lazy, perverted videogame addict Kazuma Satou leaves his apartment in Japan after a three-day gaming marathon, only to see a girl apparently in the path of a speeding truck. Impulsively, he tries to push her to safety, only to be hit himself and die. He then finds himself standing before a blue-haired girl called Aqua, who claims to be a goddess.

Aqua mocks Kazuma for his death, claiming it was both senseless (the girl was already aware of the "danger" and ready to move) and humiliating (the "speeding truck" was a slow-moving market tractor, and Kazuma died of a heart-attack induced by shock, sleep deprivation and too many stimulants over his gaming binge). She then offers him a choice; go on to a "boring" afterlife, reincarnate on Earth and try again, or be sent to a fantastical world as a mighty adventurer to battle the dread Demon King who threatens the world's safety.

Being an avid gamer, Kazuma naturally picks option #3... and then Aqua screws him over by giving him a pathetic Ability Score array and saddling him with the generic Adventurer class, a Skill Monkey class widely regarded in-universe as the weakest of all classes. Enraged, Kazuma then wastes his "divine boon" by spending it on a vengeful wish that traps Aqua on the nameless world with him as his adventuring partner. Which is a huge waste, because Aqua is arrogant, lazy, easily distracted, a huge attention whore, and generally incompetent at facing anything other than undead and demons.

The two are soon joined by two of the most inept adventurers around; Megumin is a flamboyantly eccentric wizard who is obsessed with the most powerful attack spells, to the point she has literally built her entire character sheet around casting the spell "Explosion" with unprecedented power... at the expense of only being able to cast it once per day, because she only has enough mana to fuel one casting and literally doesn't know any other spells. (Somewhere, Lina Inverse is nursing a migraine.) Darkness, on the other hand, is a noble-hearted lady-knight... who is literally only of use as a meatshield, because she's such a raging masochist she's specced her defensive skills out the wazoo and left herself utterly incapable of attacking.

Kazuma must now wrangle these three bumblefucks to keep a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and maybe, someday, somehow, defeat the Demon King.

The World

KonoSuba takes place in an unnamed world that is based on your Standard Fantasy Setting; Isekai Edition. The world is currently being threatened by a powerful Demon King and his legions of monsters, with the world being divided into various zones based on how close they are to the Demon King's palace; the closer you get, the higher his influence and the more powerful the resident monsters become.

Both the story and the RPG revolve around the town of Axel, the Town of Beginnings; a fortified frontier state in the furthest reaches of the land, where the Demon King's influence is weakest. There's an Adventurer's Guild trying to manage the various would-be warriors and witches running around, and yadda, yadda, yadda, you know all this stuff.

For a JRPG, the setting is very humanocentric, with the only known demihumans being a couple of "half beast girls", though the TRPG book assures readers that the typical demihumans like elves and dwarves exist.

The dominant religions are of the goddesses Aqua (goddess of water) and Eris (goddess of fortune), with a number of other deities mentioned in passing.

While the first book sets up the almost parodic levels of fantasy genericness of the setting, it very soon apparent that despite the pastel-colored and comedic slant of the books, that the world is not a pleasant place to live in. There's a reason people call it "Isekai Australia", and not just because of the gigantic killer frogs that lurk outside the beginner town that have been apparently known to regularly eat children. In fact, Kazuma is by no means the first person to get Isekai'd here, and many of them just end up creating problems for everyone else in the world. One person in particular, a super-nerd who happened to have a talent for inventing magic tech, causes many of the problems that the party has to deal with by inventing all manner of ridiculous deathtraps, including a giant doomsday weapon with no off-switch. Par for the course for the idiot Goddess, I suppose.

Characters

Kazuma Satou

Our protagonist. On Earth, he was a shut video game nerd who literally nobody cared about because all he ever focused on was playing video games while not giving others anything in return, to the point where his parents laughed at his undignified death. In the fantasy world, he's a greedy selfish prick who was hoping for a fun adventure and instead finds himself struggling to make ends meet, especially with the idiots in his party holding him back.

Despite his rough exterior, Kazuma does have a nice side to him. He frequently complains about the idiots he's stuck with, but while he doesn't like to admit he does care about them, even Aqua. As greedy as he is, he also refuses any monetary rewards when his party fixes a problem they started in the first place.

On paper his poor stats (barring Luck, which canonically is in the 600-range despite the fact that the stats of many of the high-end adventurers like Aqua top up at double-digits) give the feeling Kazuma would still be a loser. However, his gamer skills do come in handy when he's in a world that operates on RPG mechanics as he's smart enough to pick and chose a number of useful abilities. On top of that, his cunning allows him to prevail over much stronger enemies despite his party members, or in some cases because of them since he's smart enough to find ways to utilize the useful traits they do have.

Aqua

The unlucky goddess of water who Kazuma dragged as his cheat item. How unlucky is she? Nobody believes she's a goddess, including her own worshipers, and despite having some very strong abilities she keeps running into enemies who are immune to them. She is an egotistical imbecile as well, between that and her bad luck she causes almost as many problems as she solves. Not helping is that she radiates a divine aura which means she is a literal monster magnet. Between spending skill points on useless party tricks, to wasting money on alcohol, to her spoiled brat personality, there's a reason why some people outright hate Aqua.

That said despite her idiocy (her INT stat is stuck at single-digits and will NEVER improve because, being a deity, she's unable to spend skill points on stat buffs), Aqua being a goddess does give her some broken abilities and every now and again she pulls out a useful new one. Among other things, she can revive the dead as long as there is a corpse left, which for better and for worse has happened to Kazuma multiple times. If she weren't so stupid she would likely be able to solo the entire adventure. Sadly, the majority of her abilities are still useless either because they are massive overkill (summoning town-flooding deluges when trying to put out a fire, or purifying a hot spring and removing its beneficial properties in the process), or because they are super-specific. She may have abilities that can insta-fuck demons and the undead, but there ain't many of those monster types running around, certainly not when they're starting out.

Like Kazuma, she isn't heartless. Despite her vendetta with the undead she is capable of being nice to the odd good undead she comes across. While she doesn't admit she does actually like Kazuma.

Megumin

A young and extremely powerful wizard who comes from a sub-race of humans known for being adept at magic, and also hamming up the scenery in whatever ways they can. If Megumin focused on having a good spell selection she would be the greatest wizard of her generation. Unfortunately for Kazuma, she's only interested in casting the Explosion spell, the strongest spell in the world, and is also regarded by almost everyone else as impractical due to its high mana cost and combining the two worst aspects of old-school Fireball and Disintegrate; the explosion can kill allies both directly and indirectly (say, caving in the roof on top of you), and anything it kills doesn't drop any loot. On top of this, she specs her stats into creating the biggest explosion possible, so using the spell leaves her too exhausted to even move after using it - and then, for the icing on the cake, she's basically addicted to the erotic sensation of doing this, so she wants to use Explosion at every available opportunity. Megumin also shares her race's cultural propensity for being as Chuni as possible, usually monologuing some edgelord shit when introducing herself... or doing magic... or explaining why she wears an eyepatch when she doesn't actually need to.

Thanks her reliance on an impractical spell, Megumin couldn't get anybody besides Kazuma to accept her into party, and even then she had to basically force him. Despite his annoyance with her, the two do care about each other deep down and eventually become a couple.

One thing to note is that, unlike Aqua, Megumin does realize that her problems are largely self-inflicted, and at one point, she actually gives her skill card to Kazuma so that he can level her up, because she wants to be a better mage for him but she can't muster the will to purchase a non-Explosion-related spell on her own. That Kazuma chooses to instead level up Explosion for her instead of buying the other magic skills, which he does because he cares about her feelings and wants her to be happy, is either heartwarming or rage-inspiring depending on how you feel about their relationship and/or Megumin herself.

Darkness

The tank of the party. She is a hot and extremely powerful knight, who sadly can't hit the broad side of a barn because her masochism means she is more interested in other things hitting her. As a result, insulting her actually turns her on. It's implied a few times that she might have romantic feelings for Kazuma but he's too turned off by her masochism. As a running gag her desire to be harmed or violated even creeps out the villains. Underneath her masochist exterior, Darkness is actually the kindest and most selfless of the protagonists. Darkness also takes her duty to protect others very seriously; when she forgets her masochism, you know some shit's going down.

On the rare accession when Darkness does actually hit things she proves almost unstoppable, which fits as her sheer resilience means she rarely takes any real damage.

The RPG

KonoSuba: The RPG is a tabletop RPG using a custom-brewed D6 system that was actually created by the author of the original light novels. It debuted in Japan in 2019, and crept into the Western sphere in 2022.

Gameplay is quite simple, given it's based on the system of mechanics already seen in the original light novels and their adaptations. It revolves around the seven Ability Scores of Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Agility (AGI), Intelligence (INT), Perception (PER), Mind (MND) and Luck (LCK), and skills, which are divided into racial skills, class skills, and generic skills.

There are also, of course, secondary stats; Health Points, Mana Points, Action Points, Movement, and Blessings.

Health Points, obviously, are how much health you have, and are determined by a character's Base Strength score + their Class Modifiers + any relevant Skill modifiers.

Mana Points are how much energy you can use to fuel certain skills that function as spells. Maximum value here is determined by your Base Mind Score, + Class and Skill modifiers.

Action Points determine initiative; when you can act in a combat round, stuff like that. Agility + Perception + Equipment Modifiers + Skill Modifiers.

Movement is how many meters you can move in a given turn in a combat situation. Strength + 5 + Equipment Modifiers + Skill Modifiers.

Blessings are basically what other games would deem "fortune points". They can be invoked either to add a boost to any kind of roll (damage, save, skill check, etc) at a rate of +1d6 per Blessing spent, or be used to reroll a check one time. A character has either 5 Blessings or Blessings equal to their Luck score, depending on where you look in the book - nice editing job, guys.

There's also the optional Cheat mechanic, where you can have one super-special power that comes with both a Merit and a Demerit. Merits are either passive or can be actively invoked once per scenario, whilst Demerits are permanent. One of the sample cheats is Intoxicated by Pain (aka, Darkness' cheat); you can negate all damage from an attack once per scenario, but you suffer a permanent penalty to all Attack and Dodge rolls (roll a d6 and subtract the result whenever you make an Attack or Dodge check).

Races

Races in the KonoSuba TRPG determine your starting Ability Score values. Each also comes with a list of special racial skills, of which you get to pick one.

The Reincarnated Person is, of course, the standard isekai guy (or gal, we won't judge); somebody from regular Earth who died and was then revived in the world of KonoSuba. Their racial skill choices are Boon: Armor (start play with a piece of armor that has +2 Physical Defense and +1 Magical Defense), Boon: Weapon (start play with a weapon that does +2 attack power), Power of Fate (+1 Blessing) and Flash of Reincarnation (once per scenario, add +3 to the result of a check). Their stat array is STR 8, DEX 9, AGI 8, INT 9, PER 8, MND 7, LCK 8.

The Native Inhabitant is the obligatory "actually born in this crazy world" choice. Their racial skill choices are Combat Arts (+2 to final hit checks), Snap Decision (+3 Action Points), Stalwart (+3 Physical Defense) and Versatility (+1 to 3 base ability scores of your choice). Their stat array is STR 9, DEX 8, AGI 8, INT 8, PER 8, MND 8, LCK 6.

The Crimson Magic Clan represents a member of a distinct human subspecies native to this world, characterized by their crimson irises, pronounced aptitude for magic, and racial proclivity towards insanity. Every Crimson Mage is at best quirky and eccentric, and at worst at outright babbling imbecile. Their racial skill choices are Ability Specialization (boost one ability score by +4, penalize a second by -1), Godsent Child of Destruction (+3 damage with all magical attacks), Great Magic Power (+5 maximum MP) and Magical Talent (+1 to all magic check results). Their stat array is STR 7, DEX 8, AGI 8, INT 10, PER 7, MND 10, LCK 7.

You may be asking; what if I don't want to play a human? What if I want to play a demihuman or a redeemed monster? Well, officially, the book just says "use the Native Inhabitant race". If it strikes you as odd that, say, a centaur or an elf is mechanically identical to a human, you'll have to put the work in to coming up with your own distinct racial ability score layout and unique racial skills.

Classes

Classes are the most unusual aspect of the KonoSuba TRPG. Each class gives stat modifiers, determines your starting HP and MP, and gives specific amounts of maximum HP and MP upon gaining a level in it. However, multiclassing is a thing, and is kind of a weird bastard lovechild of the 2e and 3e Dungeons & Dragons version.

Every time you gain a level, you can choose to either increase your current class's level, or switch to a new class. If you change a class, you replace your former class's ability score modifiers with those of your new class, with the attendant adjustments to secondary ability scores. You keep any skills you learned in your previous class, but can learn any and all of the skills of your new class.

There are 5 "base classes", 7 "specialist classes", and four "advanced classes" in KonoSuba TRPG.

The base classes are the Warrior, Priest, Wizard, Thief and Adventurer. These are the simplest, most easy to grasp classes of all. You can probably grasp what all of these do, except maybe the Adventurer, who is the unique class of the five.

The Adventurer is the Skill Monkey class. It has the lousiest stats of all the classes - +1 to all ability scores, starting HP and MP of 23, +10 HP and MP on a level up. Also, it can't evolve into an advanced class. But it does have some perks. Firstly, you get +1 Blessing, a trait you lose if you change to any other class, but regain if you change back. Secondly, you can learn the skills from all of the four base classes and the seven specialist classes. Plus, at the DM's discretion, it can even learn advanced class skills and even monster skills. So whilst it lacks in raw power, it can become an incredibly versatile class that compensates with breadth of tools - the Jack of All Trades.

The "specialist classes" are the Archer, Elemental Master, Creator (a wizard specialized in applying debuffs through attacks and arcane traps), Swordfighter, Knight, Lancer and Rune Knight. Despite what you might think, these can be taken straight away from 1st level, just like a base class. The distinction is that specialist classes have more unique skill sets, but they can't evolve into advanced classes.

The "advanced classes" are the most powerful of classes; you can't take an advanced class until you've reached Character Level 10, minimum. However, you also can't multiclass into an advanced class unless you are currently using its attendant base class as your character class. This is the price you pay for the power they grant; you need to master the basics. The advanced classes are the Crusader (advanced Warrior), Arch-Priest (advanced Priest), Arch-Wizard (advanced Wizard) and Assassin (advanced Thief).