Need rules explanations/hints, newbie inside

[evilclone]

Hi everyone, I'm new to OVA, but not to the rpg world in general. I've been playing D&D for about 7 years as a player and I'm running a BESM campaign since February as a GM.
I'm feeling like the BESM system is not what I was looking for an anime based campaign, so I've looked around... Too bad I've discovered OVA only now >_<

However for my next campaign I want to use the OVA system, but I have a few questions.
The first one regards the movement. How can I estimate how many meters per round a character can do? I know that a PC can get in melee without paying attention to movement, but what about in a situation like:
GM: You see Kotaro standing on the roof of the school, it seems he is going to engage a sword fight with Alicia.
PC: I want to reach them
GM: You start to run through the stairs of the building, you think that you'll be there in... uhm... about 15 seconds, 3 rounds in game term... maybe... don't know

These are the situation where movement matter.
And what about Superspeed? I can run. Run fast. Ok, but for me fast can be 30 meters per round, for someone else can be 1 kilometer per round ^_^'


The other problem: there are some rules that my players enjoy to use sometimes. I'm talking about grapple, disarm, sunder weapons.
I can say "if you want to grapple take a Power Move with entangle" and can work quite good, but what about the other 2 actions?


Ok, you can say: "Why are you so fussy about these things?"
Well, because my players are
I'm the one who have introduced for the first time something which is not D&D and they are rules addicted players ^_^

[The Eternal GM]

If they're really stuck on rules for everything, I get the feeling OVA may not be for them...

You could certainly house rule stuff for grappling, disarming, sundering and tripping... But that's not a kind of minor detail OVA's core rules usually deal with.

As for movement... Just give things a movement rate and use squares or hexes as you are used to. Personally I hate measured movement, even in D&D, but do know the value of it in big skirmishes.
Your rooftop fight example is a good one, but the answer would very too much I think. if the heroes are 'normal' humans, they'd take the stairs and probably a few rounds. But if they're superheroes or ninjas, they'll just jump up there and start hitting folks.

[evilclone]

Eh eh, I had an hard time with besm, but they are eventually getting out of the "I can move 5 squares and have to pay attention to attack of opportunities, let me check the rules" thing ^_^

In fact I've no intention to use miniatures, maybe only for having a clear situation of who are the players attacking right now, but no use of movement.

Maybe a penalty on the number of dice rolled is enough to perform these special action, maybe instead it will become too cheese like that.

However regarding the movement I'm fine with your thoughts, the cool thing about OVA is that you can pull out cool actions.
With the previous example:

PC: I want to bounce between walls
GM: ok, i set a difficult of 8
*roll succeded*
PC: Before landing on the roof with my last jump I gather my energy and use my Ki Blast against Kotaro

That's ok with me, it's cool ^_^

[Clay]

Hey evilclone! Welcome to the board.

For most of these specific situations, simply set a Difficulty Number and leave it at that.

Instead of thinking "How far can character A get in one round?" think "How HARD is it for character A to make it there in one round?" Character rolls any dice that apply to speed and you base the result on that. Succeeds? he gets there in one round? Fails a little? 2 rounds. rolls all ones? Trips, falls on his face, and enters a state of near-delerium for 5 rounds. LOL

That's how OVA works in general. If you train yourself to think about how difficult things are, as opposed to trying to find hard-coded numbers and fact charts, it'll serve you well.

Same deal for your other examples. There's actually a case of disarming an NPC in the opening text. But generally, you can use Submission Attack for the same purpose, and that tends to do better in certain cirdumstances, like PC v. PC.

In the case of grappling, I think it's fair to assume anyone with the Martial Arts Ability can perform an attack as if they had the entangle perk, but with the added restriction they can't do anything else while the opponent is entangled.

Sunder! A term only an English scholar or a D&D 3e player would use. *laughs* Again, a DN would do you well. I'd discourage much weapon breaking though. Unlike D&D, weapons tend to be as much a part of anime characters as their hair.

[evilclone]

Ahahah!! Sorry for using "sunder", I was going to write "break", but I thought : if in d&d they're using sunder, maybe it's the better term
As you can see from my messages I'm not a native English speaker ^_^

However, thanks for giving me that point of view, it helped me a lot!!
Ruling everything by "How much hard can this be" is the way to go ^_^

I saw the example for disarming a person, but that was not in battle, that's why I asked this