Don't Miss Your Deadline! (Manga Editor Quest)

To keep things simple, this quest takes place in an alternate universe during modern times. I don't know Japanese nor have I ever lived in Japan, so please bear with me if I make any mistakes.

Anime and manga are a worldwide sensation, and everyone wants to get in on that action. Unfortunately, for every smash hit spawning anime series and feature-length movies, there are a thousand other mangas which quietly wither and die off due to lack of fan interest.

As a recently hired manga editor, your job will be to not only seek out new talent, but nurture the ones you already have. You will oversee the creation of new series and help to develop ongoing ones. Through your help and support, your company may be able to produce the next big hit that everyone will love.

And most importantly, you will make sure that the damn mangakas actually submit their work before the deadline for once.

Normally, management wouldn't even consider hiring a foreigner, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all that. John comes in highly recommended, with over a decade of experience in the American comic book industry. But can he adjust to Japan's unique work culture in time to help them turn a profit?

Traits:

Eye for Talent: There are a lot of wannabe mangakas out there. So many that it can be hard to sort out the real diamonds from the dross. Luckily, you've always had a good intuition for that sort of thing. (Bonus to finding new talent)

Culture Shock: No matter how well you clean up, some people are always gonna mutter about loudmouth gaijin behind your back. While you've gotten a decent grasp of the language, many aspects of the culture still tend to go over your head. (Penalty to networking rolls)

A few years back, she was one of the rising stars in the manga industry. There was even an anime adaptation! But after the finale, things just… fizzled out. No matter how hard she tried, none of her new ideas seemed to get any attention. Instead of resigning herself to being a one hit wonder, she's decided that it's time to try something a little different...

Traits:

Industry Veteran: You've been there, you've done that, you've done the all-nighters in order to get your script completed before the deadline. You're familiar with how everything runs from the mangaka's side of the screen. (Bonus to pitching and reviewing)

Get Back To The Kitchen: Unfortunately, you're not so familiar with how editors work. As far as your bosses are concerned, you're just a little girl who's way outta her depth. While none of them will confront you openly, you're gonna have to work a lot harder in order to impress them. (Penalty to dealing with management)

This guy… probably doesn't belong here. He knows it, his coworkers know it, and his bosses sure as hell know it too. Unfortunately for them, his uncle is on the board of directors, which meant a guaranteed job offer fresh out of university regardless of how qualified he actually was. Now he just has to make sure not to embarrass the old man, and everything will be fine.

Traits:

Silver Tongue: Doesn't matter what the industry is, management is the same everywhere. Luckily, you know just how to deal with them. Some people may call you a suck up, but who really cares as long as you get what you want in the end? (Bonus to dealing with management)

Complete Newbie: Sadly, all the words in the world can't hide the fact that you have absolutely no experience with manga work. But really, how bad can it be? (Penalty to pitching and reviewing)

To be clear, I do not want people to just start sending me manga suggestions out of nowhere. For a more detailed explanation on why I won't be allowing this, you can check my post here.

It's more like:

Step one: Someone writes an omake
Step two: Omake gets approved and threadmarked
Step three: The omake writer can choose to submit a new manga suggestion* OR gain Favor OR declare first dibs on one of the future rolls**

* Once again, this is only for manga that the MC will NOT be handling themselves. So things like the top 10 list, other editor's work, etc.
** I'll @ you when it's time to do the roll and you will have 24 hours to respond. If you're too busy, you can ask someone else to roll for you instead.

As an editor, you will usually have to deal with multiple mangas at once. This is how it works:

During the Pitching phase, the mangakas will provide you with a draft of their next work. During this time, you can discuss ideas and make decisions on what direction you want to move the manga in (the difficulty of this will change based on whether it's a new story or an ongoing one).

After that, the mangaka gets to work. Once they're done, they'll submit the draft to you for Reviewing. During this phase, you can shore up any weak points, clear up any issues, or even (as a last resort) send it back and ask them to redo it.

After this is all complete, you hand in your Final Submission to your Captain, who decides whether or not it meets the company's standards. If it does, he'll pass it on and get it printed in your magazine's next issue.

Finally, once the magazine is published you will get Feedback from your readers telling you how much they liked or hated everything. Your bosses will take note of anything that's doing particularly well or poorly and 'advise' you accordingly.

In between phases, you will have a chance to take Personal Actions. These can include things like networking (with coworkers, bosses, mangaka, etc.), information gathering (reading up on the competition), searching for new talent, and so on. The number of Personal Actions you have will depend on how much work you're doing - the more time you're spending in one phase, the less free time you'll have in the next.

During the Pitching phase, the mangaka will submit a rough draft of their next chapter. During this time, you can suggest changes in order to Refine the work and give it some extra bonuses. This will require the mangaka to make a Refinement roll to see if they can actually pull it off.

The stat, DC and bonuses for the Refinement rolls will be based on three questions:

• What do you want the mangaka to change?
• How are they supposed to make this change?
• Why are they making this change?

For example, let's look at the differences between the suggestions given to the first chapters of Our Daughter is Actually a Vampire! and My Secret Ninja Sensei Needs to Stop Training Me.

-[X] (Our Daughter is Actually a Vampire) Yes, actually…
--[X] Focus on the characters and their relationships, maybe use duller colors or shading on the adults to emphasize how disappointing and drab their lives have become in comparison to their daughter.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

What do you want the mangaka to change?
In this case, it's the character's art, so this will mainly affect the Characters stat.

How are they supposed to make this change?
The suggestion here gave a specific example of how to do this (duller colors or shading). Someone also posted some pics as an example. These make it much easier for the mangaka and thus lowers the DC.

Why are they making this change?
We have an answer here: "to emphasize how disappointing and drab their lives have become in comparison to their daughter". Since you have a clear answer of what you're hoping to accomplish, it's easier for the mangaka to implement. This adds extra tiers, which means higher potential bonuses.

-[X] (Secret Ninja Sensei) Yes, actually…
--[X] Lean into the comedy/exaggerated theming of the story, allowing the entire manga to have a lighter feeling to it. A story that can laugh at itself and poke fun at the manga industry a little bit.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

What do you want the mangaka to change?
Here it seems to be focusing on the tone of the story, so this will be affecting the Story stat.

How are they supposed to make this change?
This part is unclear. You say you want to "lean into the comedy/exaggerated theming", but what exactly is the mangaka supposed to do here? Put in more puns, insert a skit, give the MC a ninja skill that lets him steal his opponent's underwear? Because the mangaka has to come up with it all by himself, this raises the base DC.

Why are they making this change?
Again, this part is a bit unclear. It's mentioned that you want "a story that can laugh at itself and poke fun at the manga industry", but how exactly is that supposed to make this particular story better? Because the mangaka isn't sure what the end goal is, the potential bonuses are reduced.

Special notes:

• Please remember that a mangaka can only make so many changes before it begins to affect the quality of the story. If you give too many suggestions, the mangaka will start accumulating penalties to the Refinement roll. Maeda won't know the exact number in-character yet, but I can tell you that the number of suggestions that a mangaka can receive will be based on their experience level. (Edit: this mechanic has been changed. Now the mangakas can do all the changes they're given, but it's the Editor who has a limited number of available of Suggestions each week)
• Very minor changes (changing some minor one-time background character's name, for example) may not require any Refinement rolls, but will also not give any mechanical bonuses. These minor changes will not be counted for the Refinement roll penalties.
• Really major changes, on the other hand, may cause some pushback from the mangaka. For example, demanding that a really gritty and serious dark fantasy suddenly change to an ecchi comedy halfway through. These kind of major changes may require Favor trading or a persuasion check of some kind to convince the mangaka to go through with it and will usually have a significant Refinement roll penalty.

Each manga you work with will have the following stats:

Writing

• Supporting Characters = Includes background and minor characters.
• Story = Self-explanatory.
• Setting = In this case, this stands for how well-executed the setting is within the story.
• Dialogue = Self-explanatory.
• Additional parts may be included depending on the comic.

Art

• Layout/Backgrounds = Self-explanatory.
• Characters = How well the characters look, yes, but also how much they look like themselves.
• Dynamic Art = The quality and fluidity of your action scenes.
• Special Effects = This includes things like colored pages, sparkle/rose effects, and other visuals meant to draw the reader's attention.
• Additional parts may be included depending on the comic.

Note that a stat of 50 is considered "average quality". A manga with any stats below 40 will not be given final approval by the Editor in Chief. You can try spending Favor to force it through anyway, but that's usually not a good idea.

Most mangakas will have their own specialties and will favor either writing or art, but don't worry - they can all grow their skills over time!

While some mangaka prefer to work by themselves, once they've become more established you can assign assistants to help them maintain their speed and quality without sacrificing their health. Be sure to check in on your mangakas regularly to make sure that they aren't overworking themselves!

The mangaka rolls up their manga stats based on their experience level, adds in all the relevant bonuses or penalties, and hands it over to the editor.

Each editor has an Editor Bonus, a pool of points that they can spend to add a flat bonus to any of the mangas that they are currently reviewing. Due to his lack of experience, Maeda starts with a relatively small Editor Bonus of 20 points.

Example:
Maeda is currently reviewing 3 manga (Manga A, Manga B, and Manga C).

With his Editor Bonus of 20, he can choose to either go all in on one aspect of one specific manga ("I add +20 to Manga A's Setting!") or spread it out among multiple scripts and stats ("I add +5 to Manga A's Setting, +5 to Manga A's Characters, +5 to Manga B's Dialogue…")

Notes:

• Your character's Editor Bonus can be improved over time as they learn and gain experience with the job
• No matter how big your Editor Bonus gets, the maximum bonus that you can give to any one stat at a time is +25. If you need to put in more than that, you might want to consider asking the mangaka to just redo it instead
• Experienced editors may develop extra bonuses linked to their own personal traits. For example, Shion Kazane's "Industry Veteran" trait lets her add a free +5 bonus to the lowest stats of any manga that she reviews

If you don't feel that that's enough, you can force a mangaka to do Crunch Time, which forces them to reroll a stat altogether. Note that doing this too often can have negative effects on the mangaka's health. Each crunch action taken will add to the mangaka's "Overwork" stat.

If Overwork reaches its max, the mangaka gains a trait called Burnout, which will apply increasing higher and higher penalties based on the number of Burnout levels they have. When a mangaka reaches Burnout level 5, they will be forced to put their work on hiatus or maybe even quit altogether due to health issues.

Overwork will naturally decrease each week as long as the mangaka doesn't take any more Crunch actions. However, the Burnout trait will require special actions to remove - this usually involves taking a vacation, which means the mangaka won't produce any work for a short time while they're recovering.

If a mangaka has any unused rerolls after doing their script rolls, they can be cashed in as "Free" Crunch Time actions which won't generate any Overwork. However, note that these free Crunch Times only apply to the same chapter as the rerolls. You can't save a Free Crunch Time for any future chapters.

You can use the Crunch Time reroll multiple times for the same stat. In this situation, only the highest result is used.

Edit: If the work quality is too low, you may also choose to Reject it. This will have the following effects:

1. You lose some Favor cause you're basically giving the Editor in Chief more work to handle. This Favor loss can be reduced if you can give him a good reason for doing so. For example, if the stats are just SUPER terrible, you can argue that it'd require taking away too much effort from other, more successful series to shore it up. Doing this too often will piss him off though. Also, if a specific series gets rejected too many times, he might decide to give that series the chop since it's obviously not performing to standard.
2. The mangaka obviously won't be happy about getting rejected, though once again this can be somewhat mitigated if you can point to an actual good reason for the rejection. So rejecting someone for turning in bad work is usually understandable, while rejecting someone just because you feel like being a dick is not. Regardless of reason, if a mangaka gets their work rejected too often they're going to get disheartened. This may cause them to ask for a new editor or even drop the series altogether.
3. On the reader's side, delaying a chapter will cause a Popularity penalty since they'll move on, forget details about the story, etc. The longer the gap between chapters, the bigger the penalty (though it only goes up to a certain point). For obvious reasons, this wouldn't apply if the rejected chapter is the very first chapter, but the other two effects (the Favor loss and mangaka unhappiness) will still apply.

Calculating Manga Popularity:
To calculate a chapter's popularity, you need to roll 2d6 + the combined stat bonuses.

Any manga that drops below 0 is automatically axed, no questions asked.

Any manga that drops below 5 is in imminent danger of being canceled.

Any manga that drops below 10 will be put under review to consider whether or not it's worth continuing. The Editor in Chief may decide to set stricter requirements in order to raise its quality (example: "I want the next chapter's Story stat to include these elements and have a minimum total of 70."), but if it continues to do poorly then it may get cancelled sooner rather than later.

A popularity of 10 is the minimum target, while 15 is considered "safe".

A manga with a popularity of at least 20 will be considered for its own publication, while a popularity of 25 will automatically push it through.

Note that while stats are the easiest way to raise a manga's popularity, there are other bonuses or penalties that could apply. For example, an arc reaching its finale can draw more readers, while a work that just repeats the same thing over and over again may repel readers who feel that it's become stale and repetitive. Events such as beach episodes, hot spring visits, festival arcs, Christmas, Valentines, etc. can also add some bonuses... as long as it's not used too often.

Aside from that, there are popular trends, advertising campaigns, and other events which can affect the popularity of certain series or genres.

As an editor, the Favor resource represents how valuable you are to the company. You can increase it by doing lots of overtime, handing in successful series, helping out your superiors, etc.

Favor is spent on just about any request to make your job easier. This can include things like extending deadlines, hiring an assistant artist for your mangaka, calling in an expert to advise on something, organizing a work retreat, etc.

Due to Maeda's "Silver Tongue" trait, he starts out with 5 Favor and has access to special Favor spending actions (for example, he's the only editor with the option to speak to the Board of Directors from the very beginning).

Note that while having too little Favor can be troublesome, having too much Favor can also be a problem as it may cause your coworkers to get jealous. Some of them may even attempt to sabotage your work, spread unsavory rumors, and other such problems in order to "put you in your place". Be sure to keep them happy by spreading some of your Favor around every once in a while!

Every mangaka you meet will have their own unique personalities and traits. However, as an editor you will need to pay special attention to their experience level. The more experience a mangaka has, the higher their stat bonuses and the more possible rerolls they get.

Note: a "hit" series is one that has grown popular enough to be published on its own rather than as part of an anthology magazine.

Novice Mangaka (0 published chapters)
No bonuses. Rolls 4d20. No rerolls.

New Mangaka (1 published chapter)
Bonus of +5 to Writing and Art. Rolls 4d20. Can reroll once per script with a -5 penalty.

Experienced Mangaka (reach at least 10 published chapters in one series)
Bonus of +10 to Writing and Art and +5 to a stat (chosen by the mangaka)*. Rolls 4d20. Can reroll once per script with no penalty.

Established Mangaka (5 published series or 1 hit series)
Bonus of +15 to Writing and Art and +10 to a stat (chosen by the mangaka)*. Rolls 5d20, drop lowest. Can reroll once per script with no penalty or twice with a -5 penalty.

Veteran Mangaka (3 hit series or 1 anime adaptation)
Bonus of +20 to Writing and Art and +10 to two stats (chosen by the mangaka)*. Rolls 6d20, drop 2 lowest. Can reroll once with a +10 bonus, twice with no bonus, or three times with a -5 penalty.

*the bonus stat is chosen upon level up and cannot be changed

Silver Tongue: Doesn't matter what the industry is, management is the same everywhere. Luckily, you know just how to deal with them. Some people may call you a suck up, but who really cares as long as you get what you want in the end? (Bonus to dealing with management)

New Editor (Post-editing Focus): While you're still painfully lacking compared to your peers, you can at the very least call yourself a professional editor now. (Editor Bonus raised to 50, Suggestions per turn raised to 5)