Review of OVA - Open Versatile Anime Role-Playing Game
In Short
OVA offers a rules light take on anime roleplaying, easily allowing a player to create any sort of character they can imagine. With a straight forward skill system, a simple but fun d6 based mechanic, and only a few additional mechanics OVA can handle an action packed anime western like Tri Gun as well as it can a humorous love story like Love Hina.
With its strong anime flavor, however, OVA works best when replicating the events of mainstream anime. Unlike some past systems, such as Big Eyes Small Mouth, OVA does not lend itself as well to being a general system that could be used for a variety of games. Nevertheless, the tales that can be told within the anime genre are endless and for such a small price OVA brings a lot of fun to the table.
The Physical Thing
This black and white 128 page softcover book showcases surprisingly high production standards. The art is of good quality, the formatting is excellent, a solid index and table of contents are provided, and the pages are labeled to clearly show where sections begin and end. The book is smaller than a standard RPG, about the size of an oversized paperback novel, but this only makes it easier to work with. For the very reasonable price of $20, OVA is an example other small press games should strive to follow.
The Ideas
Anime is a broad genre and many other games have already covered this material. Big Eyes Small Mouth gave us a crazy flexible system that is a lot of fun, though requires close GM supervision. Random Anime provides an excellent overview of the genre. Tinker’s Damn, GURPS Anime, and others have covered this ground as well. So my first question upon picking up OVA is “What can you do that they can’t?”
OVA can do what those others do, but it does it with speed. Character creation takes very little time, the system flows fast, and there is little to no need to ever consult the book once a game is started. OVA provides a rules light system that expertly handles the breadth of anime.
Under the Cover
Chapter 1 Introduction 8 pages.
This chapter assumes the reader is completely unfamiliar with roleplaying and does an adequate job of explaining what it’s all about. As with the rest of this book, frequent examples really help to communicate ideas clearly to the reader. Two nice pieces of art are included here, one shows gamers around a table and another shows the characters they are portraying around a similar table. Nice job.
Those looking for an overview of types of anime will not find it here, however. The game assumes the reader is familiar with anime.
Chapter 2 Creating a Character 6 pages.
This chapter walks the reader through basic character creation, focusing more on concepts than mechanics. Remember, this book has a very novice friendly approach to it and would serve as an excellent introduction to RPGs.
There are a few different ways to build characters in OVA, and it’s up to the GM which one is used. “Zeroing” is the standard method. With this method the players build characters and try to have their total number of points come as close to zero as possible. This means they typically buy an equal number of ranks in helpful abilities and harmful weaknesses. So a character with Quick +2 might also have Arrogant -1 and Easily Distracted -1. Abilities can go up to +5 (god-like) and weaknesses as low as -3.
Other methods involve doing Zeroing but with scaling point costs(so a +5 costs a lot more than five +1s) or where the GM gives the players a number of build points and a “ceiling” they can take the characters to by choosing weaknesses. The GM might say “Build with 5 points, and a ceiling of 10” to mean the characters can take up to five points of weakness to gain five more points for positive abilities. No matter which method is chosen, it’s very simple.
Chapter 3 Sample Characters 22 pages.
This is a lengthy list of helpful sample characters, each complete with a write up and background to provide the reader with a clear understanding of what an OVA character looks like on paper. As a veteran RPG reader I found this to be helpful, as the characters were very diverse and gave the reader a strong idea of how flexible the system is. This also serves as a tool for the person new to RPGs, as they can take any of these sample characters and start playing immediately.
Chapter 4 Abilities & Weaknesses 32 pages.
This is the guts of the book, all of the abilities and weaknesses a person has to choose from. Given how simple many of these are, it would be easy to include any keyword to represent a given ability. In fact the system is really just keywords with pluses and minuses for the most part, similar to Truth & Justice, but with individual abilities providing some small alterations.
Everything a reader could want is here. Telekinesis, Flunkies, Hammerspace, Crybaby, Emotionless, and more. Most abilities and weaknesses take up about a paragraph of space, and in a few cases a short chart is provided to illustrate what different ranks do. It’s simple, identifiable, and newcomers will have no problem finding things they like. Those who are old hands at roleplaying and want a little more complexity, however, can find it here as well. Individual abilities and weaknesses can be tweaked to do different things, like penetrate armor better or exhaust the owner after use. This allows for characters that can be dirt simple or have more specific, intricate abilities based entirely on the desires of the player.
Chapter 5 Taking Action 4 pages.
It is here, in chapter 5, that the core system is explained. I think this chapter would do a lot more good earlier in the book, but I suspect it was placed here to prevent those new to RPGs from being intimidated by dice mechanics early on.
The core mechanic is roll 2d6, higher numbers are better. Additionally, whenever multiple dice come up with the same number they are added together. The exception to this rule is 1s, which never add together. So two 4s on a 2d6 roll is read as an 8. Finally, abilities and weaknesses add and subtract dice from the roll. A character swinging a katana who has Weapon +3 will roll 5d6 (2d6+3d6). If the roll comes up 5, 5, 3, 5, 4 then the player got a 15 (5+5+5) on the roll. In OVA a player is either rolling against a set difficulty number or is making an opposed roll against another character.
Since weaknesses subtract from a roll, dice pools can go negative. Say a character is trying to persuade another, but has Crybaby -3. This reduces the default 2d6 dicepool to a negative 1d6. Negative dicepools are still rolled, but multiple values do not add together. Additionally, any result of 1 will make the entire roll 1. So if a dicepool of negative 3d6 were rolled, and the results were 5, 5, and 1 the roll would count as a 1. Whenever a result comes up as a 1 a critical failure may have occurred, at the GM’s discretion. Negative dicepools are not very easy to come by, and most likely occur when multiple weaknesses or a weakness and bad circumstances come together. Circumstances may add or subtract dice.
Chapter 6 Combat 8 pages.
Typically characters get one attack action, and unlimited defense actions against incoming attacks. Multiple actions can be attempted, but for every action attempted all dice rolls (including defense rolls) suffer a dice penalty equal to the total actions attempted. Thus if a character swings a sword three times, all rolls suffer minus 3d6. This is a large decrease, and for the most part only highly skilled characters will attempt more than one action.
Range isn’t really used, it is assumed that everyone can close and attack everyone else in a given combat except in unusual circumstances (sniper on a roof a long ways away). In those cases the character will have to spend time traveling there, do a special attack of some sort, or otherwise do something that logically draws them into range for combat. I like this because I’m often uninterested in tracking range in a given game, and because in a lot of anime characters are leaping about all over the place or range is otherwise unimportant.
Typically, characters have 40 Health and 40 Endurance. Endurance is often used to power special attacks, and can be spent to automatically succeed at certain tasks and otherwise provide boosts to the character. It represents grit, drive, and internal strength. Once a character’s Health is depleted their Endurance must also be depleted before they are knocked unconscious. This represents the badly beaten characters in many anime who still manage to cling on and battle against the odds. Characters who have their Health depleted suffer a -1d6 penalty to everything.
Damage tends to be simple. For every point an attack exceeds a defense (both of which are being rolled out with d6 pools just like all other rolls) the Damage Total is dealt to Health, and then Endurance once Health is gone. Armor can absorb some of this, and some ability add ons can increase this damage or otherwise bypass armor. A Damage Total equals 1 plus values from Strength, Weapon, and other appropriate attributes for a given attack. Typically this value will not exceed 5, at least not in a starting game. For example, a character with Weapon 3 who overcomes a defense by 4 points deals a total of 12 points of damage to their enemy’s Health. Any spillover damage is applied to Endurance.
A variety of simple but fun maneuvers are included, all of which are relatively simple. Doing nothing but defending, for example, doubles all defense rolls for the round. Making an all out attack doubles the attack pool, but all defense rolls are treated as zero. Some fun anime specific maneuvers are available as well. For example, a character can turn a knock out blow into a special situation where they have their opponent at a sharp disadvantage. This represents holding back the killing blow and putting the enemy in a joint lock, holding a knife at their throat, or dangling them from a roof top. It allows characters to interrogate enemies, take hostages, and otherwise be badass instead of just dropping their opponents.
Chapter 7 Character Growth 4 pages.
1 to 3 experience points are typically awarded each session. It takes a number of xp equal to the rank an ability is being raised to to go up a level. That’s it, nice and simple. A brief discussion of character retirement, death, and other ways a character might grow is also presented.
Chapter 8 GM’s Section 12 pages.
This is a fairly typical GMing section. My only complaint here is the advice on “cheating” as a GM. Unlike some other games, OVA seems like it would be easy to have an idea of how difficult an encounter would be ahead of time. Additionally, taunting defeated characters and leaving is a common occurrence in many anime. Given that, I’m not certain a section on encouraging a GM to selectively use the rules is necessary. Whether or not the advice is good advice is very specific to individual roleplayers. Otherwise this is an adequate, if simple, presentation.
Chapter 9 Sample NPCs 12 pages.
These are basically more sample characters. I was disappointed here, as these characters don’t fit an archetype. While there is a short section on minions generally, I would have liked stats for Attack Robot, Ninja Master, Evil Sorcerer, and other similar sorts of enemies found in anime. These just don’t do that, and thus are much less useful to the purchaser. It would also have been nice if these example characters, and the earlier example characters, were presented in alphabetical order for ease of use.
My Take
This is a fantastic rules light take on anime roleplaying meant to be accessible to the new roleplayer. It can be run in a very bare bones manner, or additional rules and ability tweaks can be added to further customize the game. The art straight through is excellent, the formatting is wonderful, and I consider this to be a very easy to use product.
On the downside, the example characters take up a lot of the book. While they are useful in character creation, there are a lot of them. The general roleplay discussion, GM advice, and other such information results in a product that offers relatively little content to veteran roleplayers for the $20 price tag. It would have been nice if a general discussion of anime, perhaps with a few example settings, could have been provided instead of the extra pages of example characters. It also would have been nice if more general sorts of adversaries could have been provided to make a GM’s job easier.
On the whole, however, this is an excellent product and well worth the cost. The system is simple, fun, and offers just enough fiddly bits to make it fast while offering players a good degree of ability customization. Attention is given to various anime abilities, such as Hammer Space and Nosebleeding, which allow the system to be used to run all manner of anime games. While it could use some improvement, the presentation is on par with high budget game design companies. I hope to try out OVA in some of my future games.
