My take on OVA
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 11:39 am
Well, I went and posted a mini-review over at RPGnow with my own thoughts and observations on OVA. Here's the main body of it for comments and feedback:
While it’s still new and relatively unknown at this time, OVA is a great rules-light generic RPG to have around, particularly if you’re looking to do an anime/manga-inspired one-shot game or campaign. While there are other generic systems aimed at anime and manga fans, OVA nicely fills the rules-light portion that has been left behind by Big Eyes Small Mouth over the years.
Generally speaking, the actual rules take up maybe a dozen pages out of the 130 in the PDF. Most of the actual content in the book deals with the abilities and weaknesses you can assign to characters instead, along with the artwork and example sidebars. Like other systems like Risus and Fudge/Fate, you don’t have any hardwired statistics into the system, like body, intelligence, and such. Instead, they’re part of the abilities/weaknesses system, and if such a statistic doesn’t figure into a character concept in either a positive or negative manner, then it can be easily ignored. There’s also an interesting mechanic that approximates things like luck die, and drama dice can be used by spending a character’s endurance. It also doesn’t get too caught up in details, such as ranges and the like. As such, it’s much more suitable for cinematic and light-hearted campaigns, but not nearly so for a gritty and/or realistic one. Due to its rules-light nature, it’s not going to appeal all that much to the numbers-crunching gamers out there, either.
It’s not perfect, mind you. If you’re looking to do a mecha campaign, it doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage other than listing a mecha as an ability that can be further modified. For something meatier in that department, you’d have to wait until the planned mecha supplement sees the light of day. There’s also a fantasy supplement planned as well, presumably to give a more detailed magic system than there is in the core book. The biggest drawback in the system would be the need for the GM to be extra vigilant when it comes to min-max’ers and munchkins, since the system is pretty vulnerable to both types of players. That’s the only real drawback I can think of, though.
In terms of the writing style, the author did a good job, particularly for a first-time effort. The writing is clean and easy to follow, with few errors. In addition, he provides plenty of examples of how to apply the rules as well as the abilities and weaknesses, and a wide variety of sample PCs and NPCs is provided to give players and GMs pointers and inspiration as to how to put their own PCs and NPCs together. The introduction and GM chapters tend to be aimed a bit more towards first-time players and GMs, but that’s no real fault in and of itself. The advice given in the latter is pretty solid (some may take issue with the nod given towards GM fudging, though).
Layout and artwork tend to be very good for the most part. The layout isn’t cluttered and the text style is easy to read. There are blank pages in the PDF intended to mark facing-page separations between chapters when its printed out, and that’s led to some confusion on the part of readers. It also had a nasty side effect when printing from Acrobat Reader 7, in that when printing out the even-sided pages (for a double-sided hardcopy version), the blank pages were skipped, causing the actual pages to be printed on the wrong pages. Perhaps a watermark logo or icon in the center of those blank pages could’ve avoided this problem and make printouts a lot easier.
Most of the artwork is very good. It uses the work of a variety of webartists that have been commissioned specifically for the book, illustrating its iconic characters in a variety of situations. To be sure, some pieces don’t measure up to the quality of other pieces, but as a whole, they’re colorful and tend to reflect the various styles of anime and manga.
For gamers looking for a quick, fun game that can be used in a wide range of cinematic settings, OVA comes with a high recommendation from me.
While it’s still new and relatively unknown at this time, OVA is a great rules-light generic RPG to have around, particularly if you’re looking to do an anime/manga-inspired one-shot game or campaign. While there are other generic systems aimed at anime and manga fans, OVA nicely fills the rules-light portion that has been left behind by Big Eyes Small Mouth over the years.
Generally speaking, the actual rules take up maybe a dozen pages out of the 130 in the PDF. Most of the actual content in the book deals with the abilities and weaknesses you can assign to characters instead, along with the artwork and example sidebars. Like other systems like Risus and Fudge/Fate, you don’t have any hardwired statistics into the system, like body, intelligence, and such. Instead, they’re part of the abilities/weaknesses system, and if such a statistic doesn’t figure into a character concept in either a positive or negative manner, then it can be easily ignored. There’s also an interesting mechanic that approximates things like luck die, and drama dice can be used by spending a character’s endurance. It also doesn’t get too caught up in details, such as ranges and the like. As such, it’s much more suitable for cinematic and light-hearted campaigns, but not nearly so for a gritty and/or realistic one. Due to its rules-light nature, it’s not going to appeal all that much to the numbers-crunching gamers out there, either.
It’s not perfect, mind you. If you’re looking to do a mecha campaign, it doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage other than listing a mecha as an ability that can be further modified. For something meatier in that department, you’d have to wait until the planned mecha supplement sees the light of day. There’s also a fantasy supplement planned as well, presumably to give a more detailed magic system than there is in the core book. The biggest drawback in the system would be the need for the GM to be extra vigilant when it comes to min-max’ers and munchkins, since the system is pretty vulnerable to both types of players. That’s the only real drawback I can think of, though.
In terms of the writing style, the author did a good job, particularly for a first-time effort. The writing is clean and easy to follow, with few errors. In addition, he provides plenty of examples of how to apply the rules as well as the abilities and weaknesses, and a wide variety of sample PCs and NPCs is provided to give players and GMs pointers and inspiration as to how to put their own PCs and NPCs together. The introduction and GM chapters tend to be aimed a bit more towards first-time players and GMs, but that’s no real fault in and of itself. The advice given in the latter is pretty solid (some may take issue with the nod given towards GM fudging, though).
Layout and artwork tend to be very good for the most part. The layout isn’t cluttered and the text style is easy to read. There are blank pages in the PDF intended to mark facing-page separations between chapters when its printed out, and that’s led to some confusion on the part of readers. It also had a nasty side effect when printing from Acrobat Reader 7, in that when printing out the even-sided pages (for a double-sided hardcopy version), the blank pages were skipped, causing the actual pages to be printed on the wrong pages. Perhaps a watermark logo or icon in the center of those blank pages could’ve avoided this problem and make printouts a lot easier.
Most of the artwork is very good. It uses the work of a variety of webartists that have been commissioned specifically for the book, illustrating its iconic characters in a variety of situations. To be sure, some pieces don’t measure up to the quality of other pieces, but as a whole, they’re colorful and tend to reflect the various styles of anime and manga.
For gamers looking for a quick, fun game that can be used in a wide range of cinematic settings, OVA comes with a high recommendation from me.