Wise Turtle Publishing

OK, so I've been playing, on and off, OVA 1e, with a couple of people online for a few years now. Got a couple of game ideas. The first, longest running one is a Karis/Shadowman adventure that started off as a Shonen type of anime game, and we've got a time skip going...

We're thinking of turning it into a 'Seinen anime'. (For those who may not know, Seinen anime is one where the audience is 18-30. In Shonen, and Shoujo, it's primarily bright, with the heroes and villains pretty much clear cut. Seinen adds a few more shades of grey.)

OK, so the set up: it's been three years since Shadowman set up shop on Earth, looking for OVA. We (well, namely the GM) decided that because Earth was dabbling in a 'forbidden' science, namely cloning and genetic manipulation, instead of scouring and destroying the planet, he decided to make it a home base. And he decided to be unusually subtle about it.

He went to the United Nations, and instead of killing all the world leaders there, as we the players feared (I had a made character, and the other player was/is playing Karis. Who've we decided we prefer her with the Tenchi Muyo style ears over this new bug antenna look. It's too hard for her to disguise herself now.) He offered untold technology if the planet would grant him asylum. As a show of 'good faith' he gave humanity medical technology. Namely some stuff that could regenerate and repair the human body, and in doing so effectively cured cancer.

It took one week for Earth to say "OH HELL YEAH!"

Now, while he was doing this, the players were worried that he was actually going to kill all of the world leaders in one place, so we assaulted the place. And needless to say it went badly when we faced Shadowman's enhanced minions (Seriously, the dice HATED me with a passion that bordered on the unholy!) and my character (A half Japanese college kid, with some martial arts training) pretty much died.

Meanwhile, back at the GPL, they had been working for at least 15-20 years on a project, one designed to combat and contain galactic threats (of which Shadowman is just one. A big one, but just one.) However, (hey, it's ANIME!) there are few races that can handle the suits, humans being the unlikeliest and unknown of the candidates.

The suits themselves were named after birds of prey and came in three major colours. There was a Sniper/Scout unit (Halcyon Red), a Command/Communications (Hawk Green) and an Infantry/Heavy Weapons specialist unit (Falcon Blue.) However, even they were no match for the power that was Shadowman. So they came up with a merging protocol (Code named Zero Black) that combined two suits, increasing it's power and capabilities, but had a nasty side effect of burning out any non-human operator (this they didn't know, because Earth was considered beneath their notice at the time.)

Now, back on Earth, during the week that the PC's were trying to stop Shadowman's plot to 'kill' the UN and the world leaders, Karis sent a message to the GPL. Unfortunately it took them a week to arrive in force, and by that time Earth was well aware of the GPL, and rebuffed their advances to try and capture Shadowman, and secondly, after taking aboard a certain young man, found that with some genetic modifications, there was a good chance he could handle the Zero Black protocol. However, seeing as genetic manipulation was forbidden in the galaxy as a whole, they couldn't admit it. But at this point they were desperate to do something about the rising threats.

It's now been three years since then, and Earth has grown in leaps and bounds in technology, with weapons, defensive and medical technologies almost surpassing that of the rest of the Galaxy at large. And it's starting to show, with a fair amount of earth's cities becomes a mix of old and new.

Meanwhile, Zero Black Gamma is about ready to be deployed, with some minor programming to keep the secret of their project until they can spin it favourably. Karis has been more or less abandoned on Earth because of the new political situation, Arasuni has been destroyed in a last ditch effort to capture Shadowman (Although Karis came close, and for some odd reason the megalomaniac let her live, instead of butchering her into a bundt cake mix) so Karis D'Ori is now trying to figure out how to survive and do her 'job' and make her father proud.

So the first issue is: Using the 1e rules, how do you make a near planet buster power suit without going over the 0-5 point limit?

Oh, and did I mention we've been playing this particular game since 1e first came out?



Also, and TOTALLY unrelated (seriously) we're thinking of a one on one game, where the GM controls Ai, and I get to play to Daisuke. The issue for that one is: Daisuke is completely unlikeable. There is no redeeming feature. So the question is, how do we make him likeable, even a teeny bit, without changing him too much? The curse would be lifted after all, yes?

Wow, that's quite a campaign! And it's always nice to hear people making use of the sample characters in the book and making them their own.

This may not be the most satisfying answer, but my response would be "Don't do it in the 0-5 limit."

The rules state all the character limit options are optional, and even that aside, they're for creating characters. With such an extensive campaign behind you (with YEARS of game time), it's perfectly reasonable for characters to have grown and "leveled up" beyond that limitation.

Planet destroying is not the kind of thing you can really stat well, anyway. If it's not something that affects a character directly (eg. they need to block that planet destruction with their bare hands) then it's not something you really need rules for anyway.

But again, thanks for sharing!

Well, then we'll have to bump up Karis as well, if we're going to get more power to the PCs. We've been mostly sticking with 0-5 over.

I was talking with the GM and I have a couple of corrections. The Bird Suits were actually there a long time. Karis doesn't have access because she's a freelancer of the GPL, not a a GPL officer, and the suits were for GPL personnel only.

The Zero Black Protocol, that's new, though. And were being worked on for about 20 galactic standard decades (which ironically is the same length of time that is a Year on Earth! ANIME!)

And what I meant as planet buster was about the same power level as Shadowman. And likely the same type of damage. Imagine the damage done to New York from the Avenger's movie done by one man. That's how powerful we made Shadowman.

OK, maybe an easier question for ANYONE to answer.

The Bird Suits (although they don't look like birds, unless the operator wants it to look that way, they take on an 'armoured costume' look to match the operator's wishes. We have another side game with a team of three earth kids who found a set of the 'bracelets' and the suits look somewhat Sentai-ish.) have access to an arsenal dedicated to their function. So a Halcyon Red would get arm and shoulder mounted long range weapons, like rail guns, laser cannons and plasma beams. Falcon Blue would get under arm rocket launchers, rail and heavy energy weaponry. The Green class of suits (which unlike the Red and Blue, only have one version. Halcyon Scarlet is an artillery piece. And Falcon Indigo is a Stormtrooper/Melee expert.) gets mostly hand held versions of the same stuff the other two suits get. The actual weapons are called from a hidden armoury (which has been assumed to be planet sized!) and form on the suits where and when needed, as some of the races have immunities and dangerous reactions to certain types of weaponry.

ANYWAY (man I ramble) the issue is, how would you describe this teleporting arsenal? Mainly because the Zero Black units also have access to them.

I was thinking 'Human Arsenal: GPL Bird Suit gear' But I'm not sure. Not to mention we need a better name for them than 'Bird Suits'. This isn't Battle of The Planets/G-Force. XD

We have decided to put this new stage of the game on hold and wait until 2e comes out.

Hope you'll find it's worth the wait!

You're the first KS I've ever backed. That's how much I believe in it.

With a story like that to play out, I too would want to play with a game system I believe in

I'm really looking forward to the possibilities of this structure, it'll be the first real time I've ventured beyond D10-20 P&PRpgs

Actually, rereading it, I only covered the last month of game, there was a lot of stuff that happened, like Karis' arrival, her acclimation to Earth and all that.

Space reserved for Campaign restart with time skip.