I’ve discovered this problem a few years back. When I create a character I truly love, I just can’t let it go. At all.

It all started with an NPC called Shiro. a japanese teenager in a Magical Girl game (I know, I know) that I just really loved.  A little arrogant, rude, kind of a bastard, but ultimately, a man with a good heart and a chip on his shoulder.  When the game (that I played during my classes in highschool with Ophite) died as a result of the year being over, I decided the character was awesome and was kinda sad he would be gone forever.

Thus, I decided he would return, and he did. Shiro had between 5 to 10 interpretations in different settings, different systems, he went from an agressive young fighter to a troubled hero-cop in WoD. I did not make the error of making him overpowered when he was a NPC, no, I just can’t get over him, or a few others, really.

The truth is, it became some kind of Fan Service to my long-time players. Loveable inside-jokes and such. My players remember the magical merchant Kerstan, who was also a slave to a powerful entity in an earlier game of DnD, and a possessed chemist later on. He was always a eloquent 7 foot tall, 110 pounds freak of nature that spoke only is raspy wispers and entered your personnal space, but was, in the end, a really swell guy (if scary as hell).

The fact is, I can’t get enough of my fan service, from the famous Milliarriss (ridiculously gleeful catfolk) to the “died by attack of opportunity” Morann (ridiculously gleeful sociopathic necromancer, the party loved her, she collected fingers, but they needed to be given willingly), I just can’t get over them.

Ah, confessions! I’m not one to reuse character concepts because I hate the idea that I’m a specialist type of player. But every game, a piece of me wants to come back to these awesome characters of old and play the shit out of ‘em.

Now, there were a lot of things that went wrong with yesterday’s game.

First of all, I was half-asleep and in poor condition from an evening of videogame, beer and the wierdest sushi you’ve ever heard off (homemade “MAN” sushi. Steak, shrimps, barbeque sauce and tabasco). I was definitively not at the top of my DM-shape.

Second, my planning sucked. I had a rough outline but my game was poorly prepared and it showed. I should’ve worked a bit more with the npc’s motivation and I am overall quite dissappointed in my own performance.

But the players still loved it.

Anima is a great system, albeit a slow one. It is beautiful as it encourages cleverness in way some other, nameless RPG you probably never heard about who recently reached fourth edition, never will. A clever use of an area blinding attack during an hostage situation caused the fight to last 3 rounds, with no enemy being able to counter attack at all.  It was nasty and beautiful.

The players quickly murdered every bad guys before they could even try to slit some poor peasant’s throat. It was sad and I can’t say it showed off the combat system to it’s full glory. Although we did get to see the critical hit system quite a lot.

One of my merry players, posting here as Ophite mentionned that the system was quite cinematic so that he would very easily visualize the scene. That, I find sad, because I couldn’t get into it myself. I’m totally jealous.

All in all, I know what I have to do if I want to make this a regular game.

-Deal with it in the same way I would a World of Darkness game instead of like a DnD game. Violence gets people killed and it’s dangerous. And the players should be borderline suicidal for doing the job they do. I need to work on making combat dramatic.

-Get used to the big numbers. I’ve already figured out the basic idea behind the formula for calculating damage with the margin of success (rather easy, if it’s over starting at 30, does 10% of base damage per slice of 10. So a margin of 100 would deal full base damage. Armour cuts off 10% per armor rating. So you would need over 100 in Margin of success to deal any kind of damage to a AT 10 monster.

-Make my own list of NPCs, and maybe a few house rules. I want to set up a minion system instead of making full 400 or 600 point characters, making a very generic mook crew (something like 40+20 per level of defense and attack, deals 30+5 per level with whatever weapon they have and they die after one hit) And find out what’s interesting to fight for 5 level one characters. Hit the sweet spot.

-Get familiar with the ranged weapon system and the conjuration system. Those 2 things will be the bane of my players. Ranged attacks are very hard to dodge and they hurt like hell, and that will fuck the utility wizard and add a slice of necessary defense tactics (or a “Send the guy with +125 initiative after ranged dudes, ASAP). Conjuration will add a few interesting beasties. I also need to build a generic conjuration manual, with 6 or 7 different monsters per level (4-6 elementals and 1-2 other things, things with names like Doom Hounds or Holy Vessel of the Broken Note)

Finally, since it looks like this game might last (albeit with a few, post-one-shot concept modification and some background work) I’ll need to figure out a few ideas for a complete story line, perhaps hit “Records of the Lodoss wars” and “Slayers” for inspiration, I’ve been meaning to watch both anyways.

All in all, despite the fact that I believed I kinda sucked, I like Anima, and so do my players. It’s too complex a game to be efficient as a one-shot and is obviously more geared towards awesome one on one duels than bigger fights, but as we all get used to it, it’ll get faster, give us a few weeks.

This is my intro fiction for this weekend’s Anima one-shot. The players are all members of the Golden Brigade having been sent from Ludsburg to Gharamston after the following plea was made to the Brigade’s leader

On the envelope

Highest importance - Confidential

To High Lord Gaius Brandt

In the letter

High Lord Gaius,

It pains me, as the Baron of Gharamston, no doubt the State with the most well-trained and well-equipped army of the known world, to mutilate my pride in asking the help of your motley crew of mercenaries for help.

The truth is, we have been having problem with Dissonance cultist with obvious terrorist tendencies in our fair city in the recent months, and we are ill-trained to deal with dark sorcery. They slowly creep and infect my population and I will not be at ease until men with experience are sent to root out whatever it is that keeps them organized.

I fear for my people, and obviously cannot afford them infiltrating my goverment. The situation is growing into a barely controllable chaos and I do not want to have to declare Martial Law over Gharamston.

Thus, I come to you, High Lord Brandt, with a request that you send a squad of your men to deal with the situation. I ask of you to remain discreet about the situation as I do not want the general populace to know we have had your help. Not until your mission has been proven a success, for both our reputations. I promise a hefty donation if all goes well.

Baron Eberhardt of Gharamston

Hey folks!

Like some of you might know, I’ve been working on a few character sheets for a Anima one-shot set in my Heroic Orchestra setting and I have to say I’m really enjoying the character creation. It’s complex but not at a  ”You need to be a computer to create a character sheet in under an hour”.

Here’s how it works. First, you roll up your ability scores. There are eight of them, numbered between 1 to 10 but they can theoretically go up to 20. So you roll 8d10, reroll any score between 1 and 3, and replace your worst score by 9.

The ability scores : Agility (Speed and reflex), Constitution, Dexterity (hand-eye coordination), Strenght, Intelligence, Perception, Power (mystical potential) and Willpower.

Human average being 5, the method gives birth to truly incredible individuals, which is fine by me.

After the initial sorting of one’s ability scores, the player chooses a class for his character. Interesting fact : classes do not dictate a list of abilities gained as one levels up (although there are a few set boni) but gives varying costs for available abilities. For example, anyone can use magic if they take the appropriate advantages, but magic points (called Zeon in Anima, the currency used to cast spells) will cost much less development points for a wizard than it would for a Weaponmaster.

Classes are divided in 5 archtypes:

-Fighters : People with swords, axes, and various other hurty things.

-Domine : Masters of the most illustrious inner energy known as “ki”, think about anime martial-artist yelling the name of their techniques before the actual attack and you have it right. The ki system allows players to create a bunch of player-made techniques and is, overall, very very customisable without being overwhelming. It does require some bookkeeping on the players side, though.

-Psychics: They kill you with the power of their brains. They have very little limit when it comes to the quantity of uses of their powers, but can become fatigued after missing a psychic power roll and thus cripple themselves pretty badly. Even if their unlimited power use is impressive, they lack the versatility of wizards.

-Mystics: Those are the spell slingers. There are about 500 spells divided into 9 spheres (and some as “free access spells”, including the quite hillarious “Contraceptive Protection” spell). Mystics can either buy spells by getting levels in “Paths”, granting them every spell in that path up to the level they reach in it, or cherry picking spells for a higher cost. They have a pool of Zeon that regenerates at a rate of a few points per day (the book recommends getting a regeneration rate of about a tenth of one’s max Zeon) and need to concentrate (Accumulate Zeon) to move Zeon from their general pool to create a spell casting one that can be unleashed whenever. When a Mystic unleashes his magic, there are no limits to the number of spells she may cast, as long as she as the accumulated Zeon.

Novel: There is only one class in here, the Freelancer, who can buy everything for a medium-range cost. A little bit bard, a little bit commoner, he can be anything you want him to be and can change class for cheaper.

There are a total of 20 classes, each fitting in one or two of these archtypes (for example, the warlock is a Fighter-Mystic)

The character chooses 3 character points worth of advantages and may take up to three disadvantages to gain more Character point goodness.

Each character then as  600 Development points (not as much as it seems, I assure you) to divide amongst Primary Abilities (read: Stuff to inflict pain with) and  Secondary abilities (Read: Stuff you do other stuff then violence with). There are a few limitations (you can’t put more than 50% or 60%, depending on the character’s class, on the 3 groups of Primary abilities, for example)

And finally, you choose one of your secondary abilities and add one ability score modifier to it, for free. And you are done!

I’ve made 2 character sheets yet, for an Acrobatic Warrior and a Mentalist, am working on finishing up a Technician (Ki expert) and still have a Mentalist-Wizard (exactly what it sounds like) to create, and am enjoying the system, I can’t wait to try it out.

My only complaint up until now is the complete unintuitiveness of the official character sheet. Seriously, the thing is a mess. I’ve found a decent home-made french version of the sheet on http://projet.animajdr.free.fr/, a most amazing utilities/Anima-aide website.

After a night at the tavern, and the discovery of commoner’s food by the rich Earl Von Hamilton, our most eclectic party of adventurers decide to brave the once-great city of Hathareth…

In this forsaken place, haunted by evil, moving corpses, ghosts, and much, much worse, the adventurers faced their first challenge : Finding the fabled Library of Hathareth, one of the greatest repository of knowledge of the old world.

There, they hoped to find the “Minstrel’s Prophecies”, a book supposedly holding information about the much desired “Scrolls of the Perfect Song”.

(more…)