Wise Turtle Publishing

Has anyone here ever tried a sword art online game? If so how was it? And can you share any ideas about how to make such a game work?

I never seen SAO. But the key is to focus on the anime aspect in your game and not the mmo aspect. If try to worry about upgrading gear or leveling constantly, you will just get frustrated. This system is for playing ANIME shows and tries to be crunch light.

sniffycrab wrote:I never seen SAO. But the key is to focus on the anime aspect in your game and not the mmo aspect. If try to worry about upgrading gear or leveling constantly, you will just get frustrated. This system is for playing ANIME shows and tries to be crunch light.

I thought about using D&D but I really did not like that idea...

This does feel like it could work though I dont care so much about the new gear thing or leveling that can all be fluff for the game and not really have a real impact you know kind of like "You get a new weapon so now you fight monsters on the next floor!" kind of thing. But overall I just like the setting is all.

You can see my thoughts on SAO and representing it in OVA over at my blog: http://blog.claygardner.com/2016/06/13/ ... t-numbers/

In general though sniffycrab has the right of it. A lot of the game mechanics are just window-dressing. If you apply game logic to your storytelling, you’ll probably find representing them EXACTLY with the RPG system itself is less necessary.

Clay wrote:You can see my thoughts on SAO and representing it in OVA over at my blog: http://blog.claygardner.com/2016/06/13/ ... t-numbers/

In general though sniffycrab has the right of it. A lot of the game mechanics are just window-dressing. If you apply game logic to your storytelling, you’ll probably find representing them EXACTLY with the RPG system itself is less necessary.

I don have to say that your blog helped a lot! I was really having hard time working about how the "switch" system would work. Thanks for the help!

Yeah, the switch mechanic is never really well-explained—and behaves entirely differently in the video game adaptations—so I made my best stab at it. I think it fits both OVA logic and the narrative tone of the show well enough!

Glad you found it useful. Now if I just had time to write some more anime reviews/OVA rules writeups...

My OVA game is actually loosely based on SAO. This group formed online and some of us had never met before, so I didn't know what anime they watched or games people liked to play. We were all new to OVA too. The premise was that VRMMOs were hugely popular, they were all based on the same game engine (kind of like the world seed from SAO), a virus starts destroying many of them, and some lucky few PCs and NPCs find themselves in a fantasy world. I told the players to make anything they wanted, which gave us a cat-boy, a cyborg special agent, and a pirate. Since any setting could've been a VRMMO that had been folded into this one, I can throw anything I want at them too. They've seen alien bug soldiers, spider-bots, dinosaurs, high school class presidents, giant boars, orcs, and a talking pony that believes that friendship is magic.

sounds like you are having fun I plan on a one on one game for my sao game and I will be changing up the lore a bit. all I need is to find the time to play lol