My take on OVA

[Stormfalcon]

Well, I went and posted a mini-review over at RPGnow with my own thoughts and observations on OVA. Here's the main body of it for comments and feedback:

While it’s still new and relatively unknown at this time, OVA is a great rules-light generic RPG to have around, particularly if you’re looking to do an anime/manga-inspired one-shot game or campaign. While there are other generic systems aimed at anime and manga fans, OVA nicely fills the rules-light portion that has been left behind by Big Eyes Small Mouth over the years.

Generally speaking, the actual rules take up maybe a dozen pages out of the 130 in the PDF. Most of the actual content in the book deals with the abilities and weaknesses you can assign to characters instead, along with the artwork and example sidebars. Like other systems like Risus and Fudge/Fate, you don’t have any hardwired statistics into the system, like body, intelligence, and such. Instead, they’re part of the abilities/weaknesses system, and if such a statistic doesn’t figure into a character concept in either a positive or negative manner, then it can be easily ignored. There’s also an interesting mechanic that approximates things like luck die, and drama dice can be used by spending a character’s endurance. It also doesn’t get too caught up in details, such as ranges and the like. As such, it’s much more suitable for cinematic and light-hearted campaigns, but not nearly so for a gritty and/or realistic one. Due to its rules-light nature, it’s not going to appeal all that much to the numbers-crunching gamers out there, either.

It’s not perfect, mind you. If you’re looking to do a mecha campaign, it doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage other than listing a mecha as an ability that can be further modified. For something meatier in that department, you’d have to wait until the planned mecha supplement sees the light of day. There’s also a fantasy supplement planned as well, presumably to give a more detailed magic system than there is in the core book. The biggest drawback in the system would be the need for the GM to be extra vigilant when it comes to min-max’ers and munchkins, since the system is pretty vulnerable to both types of players. That’s the only real drawback I can think of, though.

In terms of the writing style, the author did a good job, particularly for a first-time effort. The writing is clean and easy to follow, with few errors. In addition, he provides plenty of examples of how to apply the rules as well as the abilities and weaknesses, and a wide variety of sample PCs and NPCs is provided to give players and GMs pointers and inspiration as to how to put their own PCs and NPCs together. The introduction and GM chapters tend to be aimed a bit more towards first-time players and GMs, but that’s no real fault in and of itself. The advice given in the latter is pretty solid (some may take issue with the nod given towards GM fudging, though).

Layout and artwork tend to be very good for the most part. The layout isn’t cluttered and the text style is easy to read. There are blank pages in the PDF intended to mark facing-page separations between chapters when its printed out, and that’s led to some confusion on the part of readers. It also had a nasty side effect when printing from Acrobat Reader 7, in that when printing out the even-sided pages (for a double-sided hardcopy version), the blank pages were skipped, causing the actual pages to be printed on the wrong pages. Perhaps a watermark logo or icon in the center of those blank pages could’ve avoided this problem and make printouts a lot easier.

Most of the artwork is very good. It uses the work of a variety of webartists that have been commissioned specifically for the book, illustrating its iconic characters in a variety of situations. To be sure, some pieces don’t measure up to the quality of other pieces, but as a whole, they’re colorful and tend to reflect the various styles of anime and manga.

For gamers looking for a quick, fun game that can be used in a wide range of cinematic settings, OVA comes with a high recommendation from me.

[The Fifth Wanderer]

Very well written, Stormfalcon. You cover the game well, highlighting its strong points without glossing over its weaknesses. A very good review I must say.

I'm curious about the problem with the blank pages. I printed my copy with Adobe Acrobat 7, and it printed correctly for me. Wierd.

[Stormfalcon]

Hmmm...were you printing single-sided or double-sided? I was trying to print double-sided, and the odd-page run went all right. It was during the even-page run where things started going awry for me. I did figure out a way of doing it in the end (doing the even pages as chapter-long batches rather than trying to do it all in one run), but it was still a bit of a hassle trying to hash it out.

[Guest]

Double-sided. Trust me, it took me hours of fussing with the laser printer at the local community college to get double-sided to come out right.

[Stormfalcon]

So you had problems as well? What kind of problems were you having, out of curiosity?

[The Fifth Wanderer]

Biggest problem I was having was with the size of the file. That's what took so long. I had to print it in sections to avoid choking the printer. T

[Clay]

Thanks for the review, Stormfalcon! It is very much appreciated, both your compliments and your criticisms.

As for your printing troubles, I apologize. I was not aware the blank pages would cause an issue in Adobe. You may want to make sure there is not a checkbox in the printing options that says "print blank pages." That is how Quark is set up, anyway.

As for the printer-killing problem...well...that was a conscious decision and I apologize. I had the option to either give a lo-res version that printed quickly or a hi-res version that printed nicely.

Obviously I chose the latter. ^_^;

But on the topic of reviews...wasn't someone planning on doing one for RPG.net? Or did I make that up? *laughs*

[Stormfalcon]

Believe me, I was searching all the option menus in Reader 7 for any such checkbox and found none. Oh well, I did manage to get it printed out in the end and enjoy it greatly. The watermark/icon/logo idea may be something to keep in mind for the next revision to the PDF, though. It might also cut down on the confusion some buyers have had in regards to the blank pages.

[Brenman]

I printed out OVA using Abode Reader version 7 and had no such problem. Maybe it was a paper saving feature of either the Printer Driver used or the Printer Firmware itself.

I had access to a double sided HP printer that had built in support for booklets, so I printed it as a A5 size booklet and it came out really well. I really appritiated the fact that you included the blank page between the cover and the credits page, and the blank pages at the end.

[Clay]

I had heard that lots of people printed out their PDFs, so I really wanted to give the option of printing it right.

It also looks pretty good if your resolution can handle Adobe's "Facing" view mode.

I'm glad you found it useful. (And wow, I'm jealous of your printer.)