OVA and my plans for it

[Ravanche]

Hello all. Just borrowed (alright, outright swiped) a copy of OVA from our group's on-again-off-again GM, and just have to say.... damn. I'm impressed. Seriously impressed. I've been gaming since Chainmail and Gary Gygax was the hot young turk bastardizing wargaming by adding role-playing to it.
As the years have rolled by, I've found myself moving further and further away from rules-heavy systems, finally arriving at the conclusion that I wanted a game that would fulfill our group's Cardinal Rule of gaming; "If your character was in a movie, would you pay money to see it?"
What does that mean exactly? We wanted a game system that allowed us to be the larger-than-life characters we all loved from comics and cinima (synima? cineama? sp?!?), wihtout contantly getting bogged down by 3-hour long combats, wargame-like miniatures, and those damned hex-grid maps (Hero Games anyone?).
With OVA we have finally hit the jackpot. Thank you. Seriously.

*cough*

Now that's out of the way, we plan to use it to *gasp* NOT do anime. Don't get me wrong. We love anime. We bow towards the East in gratitude for its influence of pulling American animation out of the black hole the 80's were in.
We're super-hero gamers, born and breed, with a long-established campaign that has been sitting stagnant, waiting for the perfect system that would fit. OVA fits our little universe perfectly, from top to bottom.

Now that I've gushed that all out (and if you actually read down this far, thank you for your patience), keep up the outstanding work, and for giving this little group of gamers faith in an industry where D20 is becoming akin to the Borg.

[TheBouncyPherret]

Hello all. Just borrowed (alright, outright swiped) a copy of OVA from our group's on-again-off-again GM, and just have to say.... damn. I'm impressed. Seriously impressed. I've been gaming since Chainmail and Gary Gygax was the hot young turk bastardizing wargaming by adding role-playing to it.
As the years have rolled by, I've found myself moving further and further away from rules-heavy systems, finally arriving at the conclusion that I wanted a game that would fulfill our group's Cardinal Rule of gaming; "If your character was in a movie, would you pay money to see it?"
What does that mean exactly? We wanted a game system that allowed us to be the larger-than-life characters we all loved from comics and cinima (synima? cineama? sp?!?), wihtout contantly getting bogged down by 3-hour long combats, wargame-like miniatures, and those damned hex-grid maps (Hero Games anyone?).
With OVA we have finally hit the jackpot. Thank you. Seriously.

*cough*

Now that's out of the way, we plan to use it to *gasp* NOT do anime. Don't get me wrong. We love anime. We bow towards the East in gratitude for its influence of pulling American animation out of the black hole the 80's were in.
We're super-hero gamers, born and breed, with a long-established campaign that has been sitting stagnant, waiting for the perfect system that would fit. OVA fits our little universe perfectly, from top to bottom.

Now that I've gushed that all out (and if you actually read down this far, thank you for your patience), keep up the outstanding work, and for giving this little group of gamers faith in an industry where D20 is becoming akin to the Borg.

Ravanche, it's good to have you on board!! I hope that you find your gaming with OVA to be fun and rules-light!

On a more "serious" note (you'll find that I am about as far from serious as you can get ^_^), would it be too much to ask you to post a little bit about your super-heroes? I'd be interested in seeing how y'all (yea, I'm from the south, so what?? ~_^) do it.

As for doing a non-Anime game with OVA, no worries mate, that's exactly what the "V" stands for: Versatile. Do what you want with it, we're not gonna judge....unless you ask "When is the d20 version coming out?" Then we'd have to draw and quarter you....but you seem like a good fella (lady? you can never tell on the internet), so we're not gonna torture you.

Again, welcome to the fold, and we hope you enjoy OVA!!

TBP

[Ravanche]

Ravanche, it's good to have you on board!! I hope that you find your gaming with OVA to be fun and rules-light!

On a more "serious" note (you'll find that I am about as far from serious as you can get ^_^), would it be too much to ask you to post a little bit about your super-heroes? I'd be interested in seeing how y'all (yea, I'm from the south, so what?? ~_^) do it.

As for doing a non-Anime game with OVA, no worries mate, that's exactly what the "V" stands for: Versatile. Do what you want with it, we're not gonna judge....unless you ask "When is the d20 version coming out?" Then we'd have to draw and quarter you....but you seem like a good fella (lady? you can never tell on the internet), so we're not gonna torture you.

Again, welcome to the fold, and we hope you enjoy OVA!!

TBP

Thanks for the greet. As for posting some of our supers, we have to dig through them... ok I have to dig through them, and do some converting. Since they were all orginally written up in Hero system (one of the most rules-heavy systems I know), basically all the old game mechanics are going to be pitched, and the characters themselves boiled down to What They Are, instead of how many dice they throw. I'm currently working on our iconic heroine for the 'verse, named Vanguard. When she's done, I'll post her up here.

Pfft, the South. I was born in Missouri, 20 miles from Kentucky, Illinois, and Arkansas. Y'all is part of the lexicon.

[Clay]

Southerners Unite!

*ahem*

Towards the beginning of OVA's life as an RPG, someone posted a thread about the old dead horse "Anime as a genre" and basically dismissed OVA (and BESM and others of that bent) as dummied down supers games.

Validity of anime games aside, the guy did make a good point. OVA is basically a supers game. I see no reason why it could not be used in that fashion. ^^

Like TBP, I'd love to hear about how you guys tackle the genre with OVA. Keep us posted, okay?

[Ravanche]

So far we've been shoehorning our little (well, little to us anyhow, the campaign has made it to Alpha Centauri) universe to OVA. We've found that we've had to invent a few new powers to reflect some concepts in our world, mainly the difference between normals (mundanes, norms, or "crunchies") and supers.

Example: Invulnerability: This power is not to be confused with Armor, although it is a complimentary power. Each rank of this power comletely ignores any "normal" damage of it's rank or lower. Normal being, but not limited to, conventional 21st century weaponry (up to and including nuclear weapons at rank 5), melee, etc. If a goon has a Rank 2 handgun against a super with Rank 3 Invulnerability, the gun does zero damage, period. However if a villian shoots the hero with a rank 1 energy blast, Invulnerability is ignored. Thus the need for Armor.
If an attack is what we call Plot Level big (nukes, giant meteors, and the like), yet still "normal" damage, the character will be stunned, knocked out, but never actually harmed if their Invulnerability is high enough.

It's more mechanic than we like, but in our world there is a literal shift in reality between normals and supers.

Before 1985, Earth (and most of this arm of the galaxy) played by the laws of reality we're accustomed to. In 1985 a cosmic wave, dubbed the Enigma Wave, washed over the Earth. Ever since the world now plays by Comic Book rules... although not Comics Code Approved by any means (Example: A team of super-powered nudists named the Naked Truth.).

The powers people have are a combination of their concious dreams and desires, and their subconcious thoughts. The world went from being one consensual reality, to reality being able to be defined on a personal level. Someone gets spalshed with toxic waste, rather than dying horribly, gets power because they believe they can on a subconcious level.

This is, of course, an incredibly brief synopsis, but we still think OVA can really breathe life into our long-standing universe, making it more true to comics than we could before.

[Clay]

Example: Invulnerability: This power is not to be confused with Armor, although it is a complimentary power. Each rank of this power comletely ignores any "normal" damage of it's rank or lower. Normal being, but not limited to, conventional 21st century weaponry (up to and including nuclear weapons at rank 5), melee, etc. If a goon has a Rank 2 handgun against a super with Rank 3 Invulnerability, the gun does zero damage, period. However if a villian shoots the hero with a rank 1 energy blast, Invulnerability is ignored. Thus the need for Armor.
If an attack is what we call Plot Level big (nukes, giant meteors, and the like), yet still "normal" damage, the character will be stunned, knocked out, but never actually harmed if their Invulnerability is high enough.

Actually, this exists in the rules as "Unnatural Resistance." Just specify the resistance as "modern technology" and slap a +5 rank (invincible) on it. Might still need fine-tuning to work exactly as you like, but just letting you know the bones are there.

It's more mechanic than we like, but in our world there is a literal shift in reality between normals and supers.

Before 1985, Earth (and most of this arm of the galaxy) played by the laws of reality we're accustomed to. In 1985 a cosmic wave, dubbed the Enigma Wave, washed over the Earth. Ever since the world now plays by Comic Book rules... although not Comics Code Approved by any means (Example: A team of super-powered nudists named the Naked Truth.).

Hey, as long as you have plenty of bushes, or the team consists only of men shown conveniently from the back at all times...

The powers people have are a combination of their concious dreams and desires, and their subconcious thoughts. The world went from being one consensual reality, to reality being able to be defined on a personal level. Someone gets spalshed with toxic waste, rather than dying horribly, gets power because they believe they can on a subconcious level.

This is, of course, an incredibly brief synopsis, but we still think OVA can really breathe life into our long-standing universe, making it more true to comics than we could before.

Really sounds like a fun campaign! It kind of reminds me of Shadowrun, though instead of imbuing fantasy to everything, supers were imbued into everything.

Ah, reminds me of my last supers game...with Gary Graham, AKA Mr. Big...a star athlete until he was given super-strength after being bitten by a radioactive linebacker...

[Jandar]

Example: Invulnerability: This power is not to be confused with Armor, although it is a complimentary power. Each rank of this power comletely ignores any "normal" damage of it's rank or lower. Normal being, but not limited to, conventional 21st century weaponry (up to and including nuclear weapons at rank 5), melee, etc. If a goon has a Rank 2 handgun against a super with Rank 3 Invulnerability, the gun does zero damage, period. However if a villian shoots the hero with a rank 1 energy blast, Invulnerability is ignored. Thus the need for Armor.
If an attack is what we call Plot Level big (nukes, giant meteors, and the like), yet still "normal" damage, the character will be stunned, knocked out, but never actually harmed if their Invulnerability is high enough.

Actually, this exists in the rules as "Unnatural Resistance." Just specify the resistance as "modern technology" and slap a +5 rank (invincible) on it. Might still need fine-tuning to work exactly as you like, but just letting you know the bones are there.

Great, I have to remember this, too.

Comic-like invulnerability and resistances are things I am going to use in one of my upcoming OVA sessions. It just happens that I am a bit of an anime fan (nowhere near what is considered truly "otaku"), but I'm also a big follower of DC and Marvel Comics, and have been for most of my life. Most anime fans I've met know nothing about Western comics, so I feel I am kind of straddling the fence. (Occasionally I fall right over that fence and land in the old-school Marvel Comics territory.)

That is why I definitely plan to use OVA versions of the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk and so on. I'll also make up characters loosely based on those.

As it stands, OVA can be used for any campaign in the superhero, space opera, space adventuring, pulp novel, and "standard" action-adventure genres (police series, detective stories, James Bond, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, etc.). Some readers may not realize this at first, but the game system can handle them all without modifications. That's maybe depriving Clay of the chance to make money with separate genre books (Old West, superhero, sword and sorcery, crime stories, what-have-you), but on the other hand, to us players it's a big plus of OVA:
GURPS, Hero, the Fuzion system, D6, MasterBook, the UniSystem, and others have only claimed to handle "any" genre with equal ease, but the only system that is actually doing this with a stress on the word "ease" is OVA.

[calibur1]

As it stands, OVA can be used for any campaign in the superhero, space opera, space adventuring, pulp novel, and "standard" action-adventure genres (police series, detective stories, James Bond, Bruce Wills and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, etc.). Some readers may not realize this at first, but the game system can handle them all without modifications. That's maybe depriving Clay of the chance to make money with separate genre books (Old West, superhero, sword and sorcery, crime stories, what-have-you), but on the other hand, to us players it's a big plus of OVA:
GURPS, Hero, the Fuzion system, D6, MasterBook, the UniSystem, and others have only claimed to handle "any" genre with equal ease, but the only system that is actually doing this with a stress on the word "ease" is OVA.

I kind of know what you mean. I'm hooked now! I see so many different characters I can create using OVA. As a GM I've been trying to test the system to see what kind of game I can't run with it, but I keep coming up empty. I thought I had it stumped when I considered a hard-core horror game like Call of Cthulhu, but nope. With a little tweaking to make things more gritty, I can do that too. Of course I have to remember that I need to specifically set the mood and theme of the game, and I have to have the right kind of players (those interested in just playing and having fun and not rules lawyers and power gamers) and I'm pretty sure I can run anything.

Right now I'm kicking around ideas for a samurai game, a mecha-power suit cop game, and possibly a super-hero game.

And don't underestimate the selling point of genre books. I love that extra material that has equipment, adversaries, world and adventure building, and scenarios. That's how I ended up with all those supplements for BESM. I can't wait for the OVA Mecha and Fantasy books.

[Jandar]

I'm very happy that you enjoy it, too.

I got one OVA game going with friends this month. We're trying to go through the PDF adventure The Starstone Treasure, and the mix of characters is unbelievable. I'm running this game with four people (not counting myself), but only one of those four really knows anime well ... and played BESM before OVA, too.

I'm glad I have one game campaign, and I hope you'll get an opportunity to play all three of your ideas!

By the way, don't characters in Call of Cthulhu die a lot more easily? Or go insane? I would imagine that the Willpower stat is used a lot. And in Call of Cthulhu, player-characters don't have the benefit of Drama Dice to help them out.

I wish Clay all the best for the genre books. Right now I'm not quite clear whether he wants to release OVA Mecha first, or an entirely new edition of the OVA rulebook.

[calibur1]

By the way, don't characters in Call of Cthulhu die a lot more easily? Or go insane? I would imagine that the Willpower stat is used a lot. And in Call of Cthulhu, player-characters don't have the benefit of Drama Dice to help them out.

I wish Clay all the best for the genre books. Right now I'm not quite clear whether he wants to release OVA Mecha first, or an entirely new edition of the OVA rulebook.

Character mortality is much higher in CoC than most rpgs (except Paranoia), because they are much more weaker and vulnerable than the antagonists. This is by design, because in typical Lovecraft stories the protagonists usualy die, go insane, or disappear never to be seen again. Like I mentioned, it's hard-core horror. It takes a die-hard fan of the genre to see out a campaign that they know their character is most likely going to lose.

I never liked the insanity rules in CoC, or insanity rules in general, and I never use them. Insanity as a game mechanic feels too artificial, and more than often the player doesn't know how to act the part, and it ends up being forced or silly. I instead took the insanity out of the player's hands, and I incorporate it into my storytelling. For example: Instead of telling the player, "OK, your character now suffers from a fear of heights. Whenever he comes into a situation dealing with heights, he should act afraid and anxious." I would present the insanity in my description (or fluff text) of the circumstance. "The robed cultist climbs out of the attic window to elude you. You rush to the window, with firepoker in hand, and are suddenly hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea. You can see the wretched man getting away, cautiously making his way along the roof to a window in the other tower. You might be able to still reach him if you stretched, but the ground below seems so far away... and hard, and the anxeity is forcing you to back away." Some gamers may agree or disagree with this method, but I found it to add another level to the paranoia in the game, especially if the player doesn't know why his character is behaving in such a manner.

As far as OVA is concerned, I would set sanity DN's for monsters with Abilities and Weaknesses modifying the roll just like anything else. And yes, Willpower would be very handy. I wouldn't take away Drama Dice. I feel that they would be very mportant, and the Endurance loss is enough penalty for them not to be abused. The only thing I would really change is how damage works. It is discussed in another post on this forum, but I would probably make something like: zero Health = unconsciousness; zero Endurance = -1 penalty to all actions; zero Health & zero End = dead. This is just to retain that "my character is still mortal" feel.

Personally, I would rather see a mecha book instead of revised rules. I'm new to OVA, and although some things could use deeper explanations, I like the current rules as is.

[calibur1]

Hello all. Just borrowed (alright, outright swiped) a copy of OVA from our group's on-again-off-again GM, and just have to say.... damn. I'm impressed. Seriously impressed. I've been gaming since Chainmail and Gary Gygax was the hot young turk bastardizing wargaming by adding role-playing to it.
As the years have rolled by, I've found myself moving further and further away from rules-heavy systems, finally arriving at the conclusion that I wanted a game that would fulfill our group's Cardinal Rule of gaming; "If your character was in a movie, would you pay money to see it?"
What does that mean exactly? We wanted a game system that allowed us to be the larger-than-life characters we all loved from comics and cinima (synima? cineama? sp?!?), wihtout contantly getting bogged down by 3-hour long combats, wargame-like miniatures, and those damned hex-grid maps (Hero Games anyone?).
With OVA we have finally hit the jackpot. Thank you. Seriously.

*cough*

Now that's out of the way, we plan to use it to *gasp* NOT do anime. Don't get me wrong. We love anime. We bow towards the East in gratitude for its influence of pulling American animation out of the black hole the 80's were in.
We're super-hero gamers, born and breed, with a long-established campaign that has been sitting stagnant, waiting for the perfect system that would fit. OVA fits our little universe perfectly, from top to bottom.

Now that I've gushed that all out (and if you actually read down this far, thank you for your patience), keep up the outstanding work, and for giving this little group of gamers faith in an industry where D20 is becoming akin to the Borg.

Well, if anyone had any doubts, I can dispell any myths that OVA is too "rules-lite" to run a campaign with. I am currently running a successful sci-fantasy game right now under OVA, and we're going into our 3rd month (8th gaming session). The genre is less anime, more space opera, but the Ricochet system works just as well. In fact, it works very well. This was the first time that space combat went smooth and quick, and it wasn't completly devastating to the PCs. I can't say that about other sci-fi rpgs that I've run and played. In just our last session the heroes got to fight in some borrowed powered-suit mecha, which again worked out great. I never thought how versatile two default dice could be. As far as awarding XP goes, I've been giving out 4 points every 4th session (that's been approximately the length of a story arcs), and the power creep has been low. I guess-timate that at this rate I could go another 8 sessions before they get too powerful. So, by reevaluating my gernerosity, a long-term campaign is certainly possible. We are even discussing me running a superhero game in OVA soon.