Suikoden (Japanese: 幻想水滸伝, Hepburn: Gensō Suikoden) is a role-playing video game series originally created by Yoshitaka Murayama. The game series is loosely based on the classical Chinese novel, Shui Hu Zhuan by Shi Naian. Shui Hu Zhuan is rendered as 水滸伝 in Japanese, and read phonetically as Suikoden. Each individual game in the series centers around relative themes of politics, corruption, revolution, mystical crystals known as True Runes and the "108 Stars of Destiny"—the 108 protagonists who are loosely interpreted from the source material. Though the Suikoden games follow an irregular chronological sequence of events, the entire series (except for Tierkreis and Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki) takes place within the same world among continuing and overlapping histories. In some cases, several characters appear in multiple installations.