It was no secret when I designed OVA, I wanted to make the game accessible to anime fans. Not just gamers who happen to like anime, but the kind of fan whose only experience role-playing was on a free-form message board. There are tons of anime otaku out there who are keenly interested in telling their stories, but have never heard of this kind of gaming, or have been frightened off by RPGdom's more complicated inhabitants. (I mean you, Dungeons and Dragons. I still haven't forgotten THAC0!) OVA focuses less on lots of funny dice, experience levels, and pages of battle tactics in favor of making it easy to be exactly the character you want to be, and I think that's a clear step in the right direction.
But, having spoken with many, many players of the game over the past years, by and large the people who play OVA are the same gamers who play most other pen & paper RPGs: 20–40-something males. That's not to say my faithful readers aren't great people, as I'm very lucky to have such devoted, creative, and wonderful fans, but it certainly goes to show I didn't quite succeed at my goal.
The rules are even more streamlined now, which is a plus, but I think the key is getting the book where the anime/manga fans are. These days, that's the bookstore. Sprawled in the aisles, blocking all the new releases, you know who you are! With OVA next to Naruto and Fruits Basket, I think a curious manga fan will be more likely to come across it.
Of course, getting a book on the shelf is easier said than done. Book store distributors are notably unfriendly with companies with small catalogs, which essentially requires me to team up with another, larger company. We'll just have to see if that pans out.
But there's more to this goal of expanding readership than that. I know countless people out there are already role-playing, using Internet chatrooms and messageboards as a vehicle for their creative impulses. How does one show them the magic of gaming? Maybe more creative marketing is in order. Any suggestions out there?
Fukiko exemplifies a possible demographic. Then again, when a magical locket lets you transform into Lovely Savior Myu Myu and fight crime just like the comics, who needs a role-playing game?
