Wise Turtle Publishing

Hello all,

New to OVA (and pen and paper RPGs in general), and I love just how straightforward the rules seem to be. Great job, guys! I have a friend who is willing to run a character through this ruleset (he's urging me to practice being a GM), and I just had a couple of questions on it.

I'm setting this to a space opera style setting, and naturally, what's an epic without a bunch of mooks to plow through for high adventure? His character concept is that he's a pilot type, so while I want to create some standardized mooks, I also want to create the usual hordes of cheap fighters/mechas he'll have to contend with in a ship as well. Are there any suggestions for this, or do you individualize as you go? And how tough would you make them?

Also, since this is a test run and he's the only player, I plan on having NPCs to sort of act as a supporting party to help him out in and out of combat. Would you suggest placing them under his control, or some other scheme?

Thanks in advance!

The final game has an entire section dedicated to Game Mastering and generating "baddies" for your combat encounters.

But the short version is that a "Mook" (referred to as an Extra in OVA) has 10 Health, 10 Endurance, and +1 total of Character levels. (so the only way a mook would have +2 in anything is by having -1 in something else.)

You can also simplify this further by saying any hit takes out a mook, so that eliminates some bookkeeping.

The final book has rules on "Threat Value" that helps in balancing combat, but because characters can vary so widely, you may have to, at least to some degree, test yourself what makes an encounter too tough or too easy for your party. But since OVA characters are so simple to start with, it's fairly easy to make adjustments on the fly.