# Tokyo NOVA tags: #game/rpg/tokyo-nova ![[Tokyo Nova (cover).jpg|600]] **Tokyo NOVA** is the rare RPG that answers "how do you roll a check?" with "you don't — play a card." [[F.E.A.R.]]'s Japanese cyber-action game throws the dice out entirely and resolves everything with a hand of playing cards and a tarot-flavored Neuro Deck, and it stages the whole thing in a gloriously doomed place: a future Earth that the **Hazards** — a pole-shift-triggered week of quakes and tsunamis — shoved into a new Ice Age, sealing most of the globe under ice. One city still blazes out of that cold: **Tokyo N◎VA**, a megaplex the book itself calls a "Neuro Age Sodom or Gomorrah," and the only chink in sealed-up Japan that the outside world is allowed through. It's cyberpunk, urban fantasy, and the full Japanese over-the-top register welded into one "cyber-action" engine, and the whole thing hums around the idea that your character's Style isn't just a class — it's a creed you're supposed to stay true to. ## Setting The **Neuro Age** is the aftermath of the Hazards: seven days of world-spanning earthquakes and tsunamis touched off by a pole shift, which dismantled most of human civilization and buried most of the habitable land beneath new glaciers. The most prosperous survivor is the titular **Tokyo N◎VA** — the **Hazard City**, described by the game as a modern-day Dejima, the single point of entry into an otherwise closed-off Japan. It's a lawless, glittering pressure-cooker of a megaplex where hundreds of millions live, and where corporations, yakuza, street gangs, and anything stranger all grind against each other under a red sky. The book's own flavor text sketches the place as openly decadent and openly lethal: the "hottest and most dangerous city in the world." The **Cast** — the player characters — are professionals: assassins, secret agents, detectives, runners, hackers, and every walk of street life, drawn from the government, the mob, a mega-corp, or even an orbital colony. The game is refreshingly allergic to forcing them into a party: cast members can have entirely separate motives, stand in each other's way, even fight each other, and that's all in keeping with their Styles. The one hard rule is that the *players* aren't enemies even when their characters are. The world beyond the city is sketched too — other surviving cities and stages across the new Ice Age world, like the Siberian Federation's spirit-city **Kamui ST☆R**, a closed, shaman-ruled settlement built over the dried-up Ishikari Bay whose own Naraku abyss has become a lair of **Ayakashi** — the game's demons, ruled by a Ministry of Demons and their twelve bloodline Lords. It's a world where the supernatural never stopped being real underneath the cyberpunk. ## Mechanics ### The Card Engine No dice, no exceptions. Each player holds a **hand of four cards** drawn from a shuffled deck (a pair of normal decks plus a **Neuro Deck** — the tarot/Major Arcana in a game-ready form). For a **Basic Check** you simply play a card of the Suit the Ruler calls for and succeed. For an **Attribute Check**, the four Attributes each map to a suit — **Reason** to Spades, **Life** to Hearts, **Passion** to Clubs, **Mundane** to Diamonds. Play a matching card, then compute the Result: **Result = Attribute Value + Card Value + Modifiers** against a **Target Number** chosen by the Ruler from a difficulty ladder that runs from **2** (super easy) up through **30** (beyond the realm of human power). On success, subtract the TN from the Result to get a **Degree of Success** that feeds certain abilities. The deck throws in its own luck: an **Ace** makes any success a **Critical**, a face card drawn **Blind** (drawing off the top when you lack the suit) is a **Fumble**, and a **Joker** is a wild card that can be whatever suit and value you need — even a critical. Cards played are discarded and your hand refills, so every check is a small gambit of what you're willing to burn and when. ### Styles & Miracles The **Style** is the game's double-duty concept: it's your character's way of life *and* their mechanical build. A character picks up to three Styles — classically a public identity, a true nature, and a hobby — from a roster of two dozen-plus archetypes (Katana, Kabuki, Exec, Vasara, Kugutsu, Kage, Legger, Inu, Neuro, and more), plus a shadow set of hidden "negative-number" Styles (Ayakashi, Hiruko, and friends) for those with stranger inheritances. Each Style grants Attribute/Control ratings and its own **Style Skills** — Special, Secret, and Ultimate tiers — and each carries a **Miracle**, a beyond-the-rules power with an XP condition for using it. Katana's *Danse Macabre* is the poster child: declare it and you can simply kill anyone, no check required. Enemies have Miracles too, and more than a few answer offense with defense. ### Combat: Cut Progression Battles play out in **Cut Progression**, a special kind of Scene. A **Cut** is a round; each side has **Action Rank** ([AR], normally 1) worth of **Main Processes** to spend, and **Combat Speed** ([CS], = (Reason + Passion + Life)/2 plus modifiers) sets initiative. Combat comes in three attack flavors — **Physical**, **Mental**, and **Social** (a full attack that tries to have society ruin you instead of a sword). Actions split into **Major** (checked), **Minor**, **Move**, **Auto**, and **Reaction** (an opposed check that defends and cancels the incoming effect entirely). The real teeth are the **Combos**: you can chain several compatible Style Skills into a single Major Action for the price of one [AR] — an ability that lets you add your Degree of Success to damage, stacked with one that turns the hit into an area attack, all at once. ### Characters & the Act A session runs as an **Act** built from **Scenes**, directed by the **Ruler** (RL), the game's GM; the Ruler plays Guests, Troops, and Extras — respectively the named antagonists, the mooks-as-one-unit, and the civilians who barely have stats. Cast creation offers **Quick Start** (picking a sample character) or full **Construction**, and **Outfits** handle the gear — weapons, armor, cyberware, vehicles, even residences — that carry the cyber half of the cyberpunk. ## Editions **Tokyo NOVA** is designed by **Tarou Suzubuki** with **F.E.A.R.**, and has run through five numbered editions: - **Tokyo NOVA** (1993) — the 1st-edition boxed game, published by **Tsukuda Hobby**. - **Tokyo NOVA The 2nd Edition** (1995). - **Tokyo NOVA The Revolution** (1998) — the 3rd edition, published by Aspect — and **The Revolution REVISED** (2002), effectively 3.5. - **Tokyo NOVA The Detonation** (2003) — the 4th edition. - **Tokyo NOVA: The Axleration** (2013) — the 5th and current edition, published by **Enterbrain / KADOKAWA**; the rebooted "Cyber-Action" ruleset (the four Attributes, the card engine, Styles & Miracles, Cut Progression) that this note's content reflects. *In the library.* ## Supplements - **Skill Dictionary** — the TNX data supplement that compiles and refines the Style Skills of the line's 27 Styles (1,500+ skills), plus extra data per Style; near-essential for building a Cast. - **The Other Side** — a TNX supplement introducing the fifth "negative-number" Style, **Kurogane**. - **Cross the Line** — a TNX supplement adding guides to cities beyond Tokyo N◎VA and the FS-check rules. - **Alternative Site** — a TNX supplement with new Styles, high-Experience Outfits, and Troop data. - **Astral Connection** (2025) — the astral-theme supplement that pushes further into the supernatural side of the setting. ## References - [Tokyo NOVA: The Axleration — official site (F.E.A.R.)](http://www.fear.co.jp/novax/) - [Tokyo NOVA — English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_NOVA) - [トーキョーN◎VA — Japanese Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%88%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A7%E3%83%BCN%E2%97%8EVA) - [Tokyo NOVA — RPGGeek](https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1479/tokyo-nova)