The Deflection of Exception

A goal of the Revised Edition is to remove any unnecessary permutations of the basic way things work. OVA is already a simple game, but these little speedbumps, rules that, due to their uniqueness, force reference to the book for this chart or that quick note, rarely add something that can't be handled another way.

Armor is one of these. Before, this Ability would subtract a value from all Damage taken. On the surface this makes sense, but in practice it adds another step to combat. Nowhere else does anything add or subtract from Damage, and the Armor chart itself is not similar to any other Ability's progression.

So how is this fixed? Instead of subtracting from the final Damage dealt, Armor now subtracts from the attacker's Damage Multiplier by an amount equal to Armor's Level. If the attack has a DM of 4, and Armor is Level 2, then the attacker's DM is 2. It's very simple, very quick, and doesn't involve subtracting numbers from an ever changing amount of Damage.

The major effect of this change is that Armor is now a little stronger at low Levels and arguably weaker at high Levels. But considering Level 1 Armor used to subtract a pointless 2 Damage, it's not a bad change.

But what happens when the DM is reduced below 1? You may remember the Weak Weakness and the Unnatural Resistance Ability gave rules for fractional Damage Multipliers, with such nonsense as "one Damage for every three dealt." All that is gone. Instead, if your DM is ever reduced below one for any reason, treat it as 1/2. Or, if you find it simpler, treat it as normal and then half the final Damage. No complicated fractions, and your Damage output is still satisfyingly weakened.

Shadowman here is easily the most heavily armored character in OVA. His ebon shell is not only his protection and his source of power, but also the very thing that keeps him alive.

Happy Birthday, America!

I hope you all had a happy and safe 4th of July. The blog is taking the week two weeks off in celebration of hot dogs, hamburgers, and other American icons with roots squarely not in America. See you next Monday on July 20th!

A Book By Its Cover

So readers, I'm asking for your input once again, but this time on a more specific issue. As detailed in a previous post I've changed OVA's size from the traditional RPG standby 6" x 9" to the A5 format more common to various Japanese oriented publications. I'm wondering how far I should take this...

Essentially, I'm considering a dust jacket. If you do any amount of importing Japanese books or, at least, have seen a copy of such translated volumes as "How to Draw Manga," you've probably noticed a Japanese penchant for printing even paperback books with a dust jacket. The dust jacket features full color art, but underneath the actual cover is usually printed in a monochrome color. Sometimes this "hidden" cover features small comic strips, secret artwork, or other nifty things. So my question to you all is this: Would such a thing be a clever nod to OVA's roots in Japanese media? Or would it just be an obnoxious addition that's difficult to deal with at the table?

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Besides new rules, the Revised book also rounds out the cast of sample characters with a few new faces. This guy here is one of them, and he's for all of you monster battling fans out there. (You know who you are). Yuu's write-up is true to form: He can give his monster companion commands, but the more powerful ones can only performed after he has built up his Level in a unique Ability: Trust.

If that's not fit for Saturday Morning romps, then I don't know what is! But Yuu's quest has more serious tones. Not only is his chronically ill sister missing, no one seems to remember she ever existed. He only hopes that with his newfound friend, he can uncover the mystery surrounding her disappearance.

Stand and Deliver!

One of the most intrinsic parts of many characters is how they make things go boom. Anime is nothing if not rife with powerful heroes wielding magnificent weaponry, displaying fantastic martial arts, or otherwise decimating the landscape. The original OVA represented this through three completely separate Abilities – Weapon, Martial Arts, and Power Move – and none of these are handled in the same way. Weapon applies the game's perks in a manner completely different from Power Move, and Martial Arts forbids them entirely. To make things worse, I still see people from time to time using Power Move in completely oddball fashions. OVA Revised fixes this pretty simply.

By getting rid of all of them.

Yes, you heard right. In their place is the new Attack Ability. Attack is delightfully simple. Give it a Level, add that level to your Damage, and you're done. You don't have to do anything further. In the game, you can describe this in any number of ways. Energy blasts, roundhouse kicks, thrown furniture, it doesn't really matter. Damage is always the same.

This works great for quickly created goons and other badguys, or with newbie players, but leaves a little to be desired for most of us. If you want more detail, the Perks and Flaws are still here, and this time around, they always work the same way. Define a suite of specifically defined attacks, and then add Perks and Flaws. Perks always add to the Endurance cost, and Flaws always reduce it. It's sort of like Power Move used to work, only now there's not that pesky minimum Endurance Cost or the confusing Damage progression table.

The sheer versatility this allows is extensive. Instead of simply giving a character Martial Arts, he can now have a plethora of moves that achieve different things. A character can have a saber, a chi-strike, and a fireball attack without having to go through the drudgery of buying three separate Abilities and learning three different ways to handle Perks and Flaws.

And that's the basics of it. Something I still wrestle with is the name, though. I just know people are going to try to add Attack to their Attack Roll, which should never be done. But yet, try as I might, no other word is as all-encompassing as "Attack." It works for everything from guns to rapiers to waves of fire. Feel free to comment with your thoughts!

Shou here is all about attacking. He'll start a conflict for no reason other than it seemed like great fun at the time. And to him, it is.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Anime Gaming

One of OVA's greatest strengths is the diverse ways in which rules can be applied. With this diversity, however, comes the price of ambiguity. It's good and well that a given rule can be applied in many ways, but that fails to help if you cannot figure out how to represent a particular idea with it. To guide you on the way, the text is now sprinkled with new Expanded Notes boxes. Instead of explicitly clarifying rules or giving examples of the rules in action, they supply specific ways of how the rules could be used. Next to Scale, an expanded notes box gives tips on how to apply Scale to a mecha campaign. Transformation gives several wildly divergent applications of the Ability to cover everything from henshin transformations to power armors. And an extended description of the Attack Ability describes exactly how to create offensive techniques ranging martial arts, firearms, and energy blasts.

Wait, Attack Ability? What's that you say? You'll have to find out next week!

Reader Roundtable

We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you The Reader Roundtable!

Essentially, I'm asking for you, dear readers, to post comments to this entry. What kind of comments? Whatever is on your mind! Thought of something you'd like to see in a revised OVA game? Or maybe you thought of something you would not ? Or did you just want to stop by, say you like everything so far, but have nothing to contribute? This is your chance to help shape the new edition of OVA, and all comments are welcome.

Still here? Having trouble thinking of something? Well, take a gander at this short collection of quandaries and see if any of them match something buried in your subconscious.

1) Was there anything in OVA you had difficulty understanding or wished there were more examples of?
2) Did you ever make a character and couldn't find an Ability or Weakness you needed? How about a rule to handle a certain situation?
3) Any of the sample characters you found particularly entertaining...or boring?
4) Do you have a favorite anime you wish were better represented? If so, what?

Look forward to hearing from all of you! Those of you more content to lurk can expect a new update next Monday.

An Entry to Endure

As hinted at in the previous post, Endurance has a significant new use; it now represents a character's ability to endure. This seems self-evident, but it can't hurt to have some explicit rules on the matter!

Before I can fully explain, I have to clarify what constitutes a round. In the Revised Game, a round is a nonspecific period of time, one that can be represent the seconds between a furious exchange of blows or minutes of lengthy expository dialogue as heroic adversaries size each other up. All a round is, then, is time enough for everyone to perform an action, and it is no longer a chronological division limited to combat alone.

Whenever a character is attempting to do something strenuous over an extended period of time, they spend Endurance to do so. How much depends on the task, and specific Endurance costs are further explained in the actual book. The effort is split up into rounds.

A classic example is the party's resident muscle-head holding up a collapsing building as others attempt to escape. Each round everyone takes results in the strong character losing 10 Endurance. So what happens if everyone takes too long and Muscle-head runs out of Endurance? He may simply give up, allowing the building to collapse and trap others inside as he steps to safety. But that isn't very heroic, is it? Instead, he may choose to press on, and begins to lose Health instead. If Health is exhausted, the character immediately falls unconscious and has no option of saving himself. The building collapses with him inside. Can he still be rescued? Well...I guess you'll have to see in your game.

Endurance also covers actions like holding your breath, resisting dangerous gasses, and other tests of stamina. No need to keep in mind hard to remember formulas or having to account for minutes in an otherwise abstract representation of time. It's all very simple.

Acacia here is certainly capable of conjuring all kinds of obstacles to test the Player Character's Endurance. Her devious witchcraft can cripple even the most stalwart of heroes, but her unrequited love for her partner Saspar could prove to be her undoing.

World Turtle Day

Wise Turtle would have my hide if I failed to mention that today is World Turtle Day. Take the time to be kind to our ancient reptillian friends. If you fail to find a friendly specimen to appreciate, at least google a terrapin or two. You might just learn something new!

A Little Something for Nothing

Even though it's a change you may not notice right off, many of the Abilities have been reworked in one significant way: They're Endurance free!

That's right, no Ability has a built-in Endurance cost anymore – Well, except for Magic, but we'll get to that. While it worked okay in the original book, the way some Abilities cost Endurance and others did not begged an obvious question. "Why this one and not that one?" While there were a few cases that an argument could be made, for the most part there simply wasn't a good reason. Worse, in cases like Barrier and Heal, the exchange of Health for Endurance made them questionably useful. So problems like these have been eliminated.

This segways into another change observant readers may have already noticed, and that's the adjusted role of Perks and Flaws. Originally, these could only be applied to a select few Abilities, and mainly the Power Move Ability. The rename from "Power Perks and Flaws" to "Ability Perks and Flaws" carries with it the capacity to apply many of these to any Ability in the game. Of course, logic and common sense rule, but it's a change that allows much more versatility and a little less shoe-horning. That's not to say it's a free ticket, as some of the previous Abilities have been weakened a little to compensate. How do you get them back up to par? With Perks and Flaws, of course.

Magic still has a built-in Endurance cost due to its powerful nature. But it's an exception that seems to make sense. Magic is always tiring, after all. And the power to mimick every other Ability – or in the case of witchcraft, Weakness – is a power that needs some drawback.

Endurance also has some other new roles, but that's a topic for another day. For now, I leave you under the watchful eyes of Captain Jiro and Dr. Tomori. Between Jiro's compuslive work ethic and Tomori's network omnipresence, can you ever really be sure you're alone?

The Look of the Thing

Much of the reason to do a Revised Edition was a chance to make the rules faster, clearer, and better than ever, but it was also an opportunity to improve the book's actual look. While many readers have complimented OVA on "looking great for an indie game," I felt like OVA should look good without the stipulation at the end. The original book was done on a shoe-string budget, and in many ways it showed. While I never felt any of the art was bad, the book was a mish-mash affair of many artists, most of whom had no real stylistic congruency with anyone else. This time I felt a measure of consistency was key.

But it's not just the art that's changing. While the text itself was clear enough, I felt like I could do much better now with a few years of experience under my belt. As such, I'm completely redoing the book's layout. But the change you'll notice as soon as you get your hands on it is that OVA is now in the A5 format. For those of you not into paper-speak, this is an international standard that's a tad shorter than the original book. Why you ask? I always felt the original 6"x9" had an overwhelmingly tall aspect ratio to it, somehow confining and cramped in its slender page-width. A5 feels much more open and, on top of that, is one of the standard sizes you'll see over-sized manga published in. So OVA will now sit nicely next to all the rest of your Japanese-inclined books. Not to mention it frees up that much more valuable table space during a game.

Someone else that's seeing quite a few changes is Ai. Yes, that's her. Quite a new look isn't it? I wanted to make sure that all the characters were visually interesting and looked like a lot of fun to play. A handful in the original book just seemed to be drab and overshadowed by the technicolor awesomeness of the flashier sample characters. Ai's design also incorporates another change: She can somewhat dampen her powers through heavy gloves. But she can never fully escape her psychic awareness...or the empty hole of her past.

The Question of Man Versus Mecha

One of the recurring questions I see about the original OVA was "how well does it handle mecha?" Surely, giant robots are an integral part of anime, so it's a logical concern. But I've never honestly understood why mecha automatically follow a different subset of rules than any other character in the game. I have seen other RPGs devote entire new chapters for mecha, but at the end of the day, the only difference is one part of the book refers to an advantage as "speedy" and in another as "enhanced engines." It's unnecessary. Mecha are characters too, just a little bit bigger and with a pilot for a brain.

That said, there has been a glaring omission that makes running mecha games more problematic, and that's the question of scale. In OVA, everything is relative. The idea of an Ability ranked at +3 being excellent is compared to what would be average for that character. And what is average for a human being has very different implications than what is average for, say, an automobile. Even a slow, rattletrap truck is considerably faster than a marathon-running athlete.

To resolve this, there is now something called the Scale Advantage. Whenever these is a conflict of scale, the Game Master rules that one side or the other has a Scale Advantage. That side gets a +5 bonus to their roll. To use our previous example, a truck with -1 Slow would roll one pitiful die in a test of speed, while our marathon runner with Quick +3 would get 5 dice. But with the Scale Advantage, the truck can now muster 6 dice. A more fair comparison, surely.

However, in OVA, scale is a dynamic consideration. It's not possible to simply create a mecha scale, a starship scale, and a Death Star scale. If we revisit our example again, imagine our truck and runner both trying to navigate an alley way riddled with tight turns, heavy dumpsters, and obstructing buildings. Clearly the marathon runner is much more nimble than the hulking hooptie. The truck would have no Scale Advantage. In fact, if the surroundings are especially difficult to traverse, the Game Master may give the Scale Advantage to the runner! It's a quick, easy calculation, and requires no conversions, complex math, or other game-bogging considerations.

The idea of Scale Advantage being on a case-by-case basis, instead of a permanent part of a character, also allows different cinematic treatment of mecha. In Evangelion, Gundam, and other typical giant robot shows, mecha would have Scale Advantages for everything from Quick to Armored. On the other hand, these mecha can be torn to pieces by human combatants in shows like Project A-ko, and should receive few, if any, of these things.

Someone else familiar with scale is the mischievous kitsune Nazo. While perhaps not on quite the same level as towering mecha, Nazo's ability to alter her appearance and size makes her a dangerous adversary indeed.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

It was a conscious decision to not refer to the new book as a Second Edition. While there are a handful of significant changes, you're not looking at the sort of wide-swept revision seen between 2nd and 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons (or 1st and 2nd or 3rd and 4th for that matter). By and large, a person with a copy of the 1st Edition of OVA and the new Revised Edition can carry on a conversation and even play a game together without confusing each other too much. While new rules and rule changes will be discussed in later posts, I am going to address the substantial number of name changes. Certain Abilities and terms in the original game were a bit unclear, ambiguous, or simply a little inconsistent, and I'm using the Revised Edition to repair some of that. Hopefully the following list will prepare you all at least a bit, though it fails to mention new, removed, or otherwise drastically altered Abilities and Weaknesses. The Original Edition version appears first, followed by the Revised Edition term in bold. Any notes on changes will appear in italics.

Damage Total · Damage Multiplier Damage Total was always misleading, as it was not really a total of anything. Damage Multiplier conveys its actual purpose much better.

Acrobatics · Acrobatic This will be one of many changes for more "description" oriented names for Abilities. I wanted, whenever possible, for character sheets to read like a description of the character. Oddball nouns like Acrobatics or Invention fail to do that well.
Armor · Armored
Charisma · Charismatic
Intimidation · Intimidating
Invention · Inventor
Occult Knowledge · Spirit Medium
Servant · Companion
Unnatural Resistance · Resistance

Airhead · Clueless
Strange Personal Habit · Strange Habit
Unnatural Weakness · Vulnerability

Power Perks and Flaws · Ability Perks and Flaws

Extra Knockback · Mighty Blow
No Attack Gesture · No Gesture
No Knockback · Feather Blow
Slow · Delayed Changed to prevent confusion between the Slow Weakness and the Slow Flaw

On the art front, everyone's favorite robo-girl Miho and her hapless savior Braun make their revised debut. The designs should be familiar to old readers, but there are quite a few new details.

What is to Come

So here we are. It's been over four years since the original OVA Role-Playing Game was released as a PDF in February of 2005. OVA has grown a lot since then, both its dedicated fanbase and the game itself. But with time, hopefully we all grow a little wiser and a little better at what we do. And while OVA accomplished much more than I ever anticipated, it felt like time to revisit this little game and make it the best little game it can be. Enter: OVA Revised Edition!

So what should you expect to see here? This blog is your inside scoop on everything new with the OVA RPG. It's still the same game fans worldwide know and love, just a little bit better in every way. You'll see new rules, and simplification and improvement of old ones. You'll also get a preview of OVA's entirely new look, like the illustration of Raine seen to the right, penned by fan-favorite Niko Geyer. Eventually you may even get a release date - exciting! So check back every Monday and find out more about the new OVA Revised Edition!