A Good Experience

[Erinak]

I would like to tell a story…

I’m part of close gaming group of friends located across the country, literally. We have people on the west coast, east coast, the south and the Midwest and we play several different systems like Storyteller, d20, and Shadowrun using OpenRPG to run games online. While the role-play was enjoyable, over time I noticed whenever it came time for combat using those systems, it resulted in things just grinding to a halt. I would measure this by the time it took for my attention to wander off waiting for my next turn in combat. I eventually associated it with the fact that because we use an online text client for our games, even minor delays like looking up rules or referencing the right modifiers for an attack, added up and in a setting where have to wait for the player to text their actions it added up quickly.

So, I started searching the Net and I ran across OVA a few months ago. It got my interest with not using ability scores like strength and intelligence. I know that portion wasn’t ground breaking, but the ease of creating characters (sometimes I felt I spent more time in those other systems making characters over actually playing them) and the system appealed to me. I decided to GM a one shot using the OVA rules.

It was the best gaming experience I had in a long time and rekindled my motivation in being a GM.

Character creation was easy yet detailed enough for any character. One of the players commented they enjoyed making characters without having the research through a dozen books. As a GM, this carried over to NPCs which were quick to create using OVA. In many other systems making good NPC stats was a painful task at best for me.

The Ricochet system besides being easy to work with had a pleasant side effect. Along with drama dice it actually made the act of rolling the dice exciting hoping for those number matches. The speed of combat allowed more opportunity for what we gamed for in the first place, role-playing; yet there was enough detail take it seriously as a system.

I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this system and giving it a very professional presentation (I don’t have a print copy, but we just use .pdf over books anyway). Looking at these forums there were hints of a revised rules in the works over a long time now judging by the post dates; the forums seem low on activity, but not dead. I hope you continue to support this system, I know I will.

P.S. That one shot turned into a full blown campaign, going strong on episode 4 now.

-Erin

[Joe_Mello]

If you don't mind me asking, what's the idea of your now-campaign?

I personally think OVA is one of the most narrative-friendly systems out there because, if for no other reason, it's inherently setting-free.

[Clay]

Thanks for posting Erin. It always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I see OVA succeeding in exactly the way I wanted it to. Simple to create characters, fast to play, and simply conducing to a good story. (Well, that, and it's nice to see someone eccentric enough to enjoy the dice mechanic in exactly the way I hoped. LOL)

I hope you continue to have many great adventures, and aren't put off by the less than lively nature of these forums for the time being. They heat up now and again.