The Anima Rpg, If it isn't a Heartbreaker how come it's breaking mine?

[b_bankhead]

(before you click on the url below, you should know the little glowing jewel thingy operates the controls to turn off the sound)

http://www.animarpg.com/

I know this one isn't really a fantasy heartbreaker. I mean the people setting up the Anima rpg have too much money behind them.
But the Anima rpg breaks my heart. It reperesents a much greater loss of an opportunity.

I mean I really wanted to like this one, I'm an artist and a wannabee illustrator and I'm a sucker for lush visuals, and I was collecting manga when you could't get it in english. The Anima rpg looks like a real beaut, as pretty as the Metabarons game.
But I take the beauty in my arms and kiss her and horrors she is nothing but another rpg corpse tarted up with japanese art; a shambling Frankenstein stitched together from the leavings of somebody's rpg morgue.

"Anima: Beyond Fantasy offers players an original and innovative system that lends itself to players looking for non-stop action and those who are interested in interpreting a character and developing a story".

Lordy LORDY! How many time have I read prose like this on mimeographed efforts printed n somebody's basement? And here it is right on the website of a project that obviously has a lot of money behind it.
(And by 'lot' I mean by the standards of rpg publishing....)
"an original and innovative system", yeah right and I'm a goddamn Dutchman. Let's take a look at the character sheet the website offers:

   http://www.edgeent.com/anima/en/pdf/anima_character_sheet.pdf

  Oh my god.  This makes the character sheet from Aftermath look sparse.
This turkey looks like the character sheet from every ultimate mishmash fantasy game that everybody I knew was trying to write back in the eighties. It looks like somebody took Rolemaster and D20 and half a dozen other lesser known high 'crunch' fantasy games dumped them in a blender and hit 'frappe', them sluiced the result into Quark Express or whatever.

I mean I'm sure everybody on the Forge realizes the vital importance of having four different modifiers for every skill roll to 'interpreting a character" and the vital need for every type of armor to have no less than seven different types of damage modifier to 'developing a story'...Story! oh there's that WORD again! Just wave that magic word around and your rpg from the grave is transformed into a slick new wave, new age 'innovative system'.

I really feel sorry for the people behind this project. I mean I bet the 'designer' of this melange got a pretty penny for producing a system that 90% of the ranters on rpg.net could have produced in a weekend taking a razor blade to mouldering fantasy games sitting in the back of their collection,glueing the result into a scrapbook and mailing it to the bedazzled publishers of the Anima rpg.

And the worst part of it is, for probably a fraction of what they paid to 'develop' this turkey they could have bought the rights to the whole lot of Diana jones short list games. They could have married this level of art direction with a truly innovative game. 
So Ron, if it isn't a Fantasy heartbreaker how come it's breaking MY heart?





 

[Andy Kitkowski]

Er, did you mean to post this in Connections?  Looks like it belongs in RPG Theory or something.

Yeah, I'd hate to start the Forge Hate Machine on another hu-hum release, so I'm going to try to reserve judgment until the thing is released.  Even though I'm 95% sure that judgement will be: "Crap".

I hate to blow my own horn, but check the link in my sig.  Tenra Bansho Zero has some typical RPG trappings (Awareness rolls, etc), but it's so off the beaten path that it makes most indie look mainstream.  Also, this was written originally back in 97 (and revised in 2000).  I'm currently doing the translation of this beast, which will be the first ever Japanese tabletop RPG to be translated into English.

Unfortunately, I don't have a character sheet currently available. Luckily, I will within about a week or two.

But basically, the core of the thing is this. The author had two goals:
1) I want to write an RPG that people new to RPGs could pick up, understand, and run.
2) I want to make an RPG that, in play, closely resembles Kabuki theatre.

IMO, he really nails both while still keeping traditional RPG trappings.

BTW, he does specifically say "Kabuki", but honestly you can swap "Western action-drama theatre" for "Kabuki" without much slip.

Anyway, looks like you feel strongly about the issue: VERY anime-influenced game, with all the baggage (skandhas) of traditional obtuse roleplay crap, completely free of self-examination, stating and following goals, etc. TBZ might be more your thing, when it comes out (hopefully next year).

If you have questions about it, please feel free to PM me or take it to the TBZ Yahoo Group.

-Andy

[greyorm]

Bryan,

I'm confused, why is it NOT a heartbreaker? If it is just D20 with more charts and tables than Rolemaster, what makes it not a Heartbreaker? Loads of money dumped into the project? I wasn't aware that made or did not make it a heartbreaker.

[Andy Kitkowski]

BTW, I just noticed that I need to revise the TBZ site a little.  It still puts on airs that I'm not too big on.  The really cool stuff is in the Rules and FAQ section, but still, there's more to it than what's there, as I'm finding out the more I dig into it.

-Andy