Judging a Book by Its (New) Cover

Those of you who have been waiting for a proper OVA update need wait no more. Here it is, the new cover! (Click to see it in its full-size glory.)

Even though this isn’t final, hopefully you all will find lots to love in the revised cover design. Like the rest of the book, the cover illustration is done by talented Niko Geyer, and you may even notice a new look for Wise Turtle Publishing itself!

The Kickstarter for OVA (previously mentioned here) is slated for late June/July, just in time for the game’s 7th anniversary. I’m still tinkering with the pledge premiums list, so if you have an opinion, be sure to let me hear about it! What sort of things would make you back at a higher level, and what would you pay for it? Gauging consumer interest will be very useful before jumping in the crowd-funding deep-end!

Keep checking by, as I will continue to post OVA updates leading up to the Kickstarter, including a look behind the curtains as I finalize the typesetting of the rules.

More than Meets the Eye

So readers, those of you who have been with us for a while may remember a rather stellar idea that I've decided to run with: Dust Jacket as GM Screen. If a dust jacket proves to be a feasible, economical addition to the book, you'll see the backside littered with extra information for budding and veteran Game Master's alike.

Of course, let's not kid ourselves. OVA is no Rolemaster, so there's not exactly a bounty of things that have to be kept within eyesight at all times. So then, what would you like to see on such a screen? I think the Difficulty Chart is a shoe-in, and I'm also considering a small multiplication table for those of us less comfortable with the Damage mechanic. But what else? Most of the oddball Ability Endurance costs would've been a nice fit, but now that such things have been done away with...Likewise, what few tables are left are pretty consistent and easy to remember. So what will it be? What do you all wish you had at hand at all times? I'd love to have more nonstandard stuff like the multiplication table, things that have no business in the book proper but nonetheless might prove convenient to gamers.

Information at Your Fingertips

In the old OVA design, the black bar on the side was originally intended to vary in length to signify the current chapter, making them easy to skip to when the book's edge is looked at askant. But once put into action, the idea didn't work at all, resulting in a bar too short to fit chapter titles in later chapters and absurdly long in early ones. It was in general odd-looking and tossed in favor of the uniform look we're all familiar with.

But I think quick thumb action is always a good thing in an RPG, and this time around there are little white markers that clearly signify the number of the chapter. Need Abilities and Weaknesses? That's chapter 3, and thus signified by three marks.

Of course, given the relative simplicity and short length of OVA, I'm not entirely sure its actually necessary. What do you guys think?

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!

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.