12 reasons Anime d20 sucks

Some time ago I went to read Anime d20 as a system that should supposedly solve some of my problems. If you wonder why I haven’t done it earlier, I can let you know I just gave up after I saw good ol’ dwarves there. Don’t let me be misunderstood, I love dwarves. They just don’t mix with anime. It’s just like trying to ride a bike while having sex: both activities can be fun if tried separetely, but together you’re just gonna fall down and injure yourself and your partner. Not to mention the broken bike and the embarrassement.

1. Dwarves. Elves too, they are kinda scarce, but dwarves… I’ve watched thousands and thousands of episodes of various anime, I’m not exaggerating. You know how many of those bearded small guys I’ve seen so far? Yes, I’m counting. One. One motherfucking dwarf! The poor lad went against Olibu in a tournament and lost before you could start counting his screentime. Guys, don’t make a standard race unless it’s a common thing, and having just one of that kind is not considered common.
2. Giant Robots and Hot Rods. I mean, what’s the deal with separating them from Mecha Pilots? The story is never about robots anyway, and even if it is, like in Giant Robo, they are still more of a thing that responce to certain feelings and requests, more of a tool than of a front row character. Robotic characters like Kikuchiyo or Al are not that different from others to separate them. Who cares if you actually drive a robot, fuel a robot or are a robot? What matters is that you solve problems with “robot-ness”.
3. Ninjas. Yes, for once, I’m against the ninjas. You gotta give ‘em some other title, like Shadow Warriors or something like that. You don’t call giant robots “dolems” or “gunmen” because you don’t want to tie it down to RahXephon or TTGL, so don’t rely on this term too. There’re lots of people who want to play a game of Naruto with your rules, please don’t say they all gotta use just this one class!
4. Pet Monster Trainers. Epic fail. They tried to base it on Pokemon, then swinged the other way to generalise trainers of different traditions, but the result just doesn’t fit anywhere anymore. And you gotta really make distinction between trainers who fight together with their ‘pets’ (Lucy, Jiraiya), who totally control them (Sasori, Squala), and who summon them and try to keep them on the leash (Rekka, Adilicia, Babidi). The details, like what happens when a ‘pet’ dies, or whether ‘pets’ are real animals, magical creatures or supernatural beings, can be written out in the setting itself.
5. Samurais. Same shit as with ninjas. “Samurai” is a cool term, but it doesn’t say anything about you. If you’re a samurai, does it mean you are all disciplined and loyal? Are you for instance able to use sword-based energy attacks or you just cut people? There are different kinds of samurais, and there are series completely devoted to samurai, so this is a double fail. How I propose to do that? Go for several types of swordsmen that you can identify: the one with a magic sword that’s almost like a ‘pet’ (Kazu, Haru, Aya, all shinigami from Bleach), the one that uses special properties of his swords for his attacks but otherwise thinks of it as a tool (Zoro, Zabuza, Kenshin), the one who is just damn awesome at cutting others (Trunks, Tama, Musashi). Note that a hell lot of swordsmen are naturally “multiclass”: think of Trunks, Hiei, Kamina, etc.
6. Sentai Member. Epic fail (again). All characters of all classes can be “team players to the core”. Or maybe not. This depends on the subgenre and on the particular game, it’s definitely not multiclassing. Think of Dragon Ball Z: they are all sentai members (at least in the beginning, until the weakest become cannon modder), yet each one of them is unique.
7. Students. It’s not a class, it’s background. Some games just state you’re all students, some others don’t. Being a student as such does not give you any special powers, and I can hardly think of any anime beside Yu Yu Hakusho that has a mixed set of students and non-students.
8. Multiclass, or the lack thereof. Given this crappy unorthogonal class system, all of the decent characters need to multiclass, and by using classic rules it’s just impossible. How do you think Naruto would look like? Adventurer(with Jiraiya)/Dynamic Sorcerer(ninjutsu)/Gun Bunny(kunai)/Martial Artist(my way of the ninja!)/Ninja(finally)/Pet Monster Trainer(frogs)/Sentai Member(team7)/Shapechanger(Naruko)/Shapechanger(Kyubi)/Student(ninja academy)? That’s 10 levels just for the starting package. Thank God he’s not a robot!
9. Attributes, feats, skills. Whereever I look, they are either too specific to a certain series, or too broad and non-specific to anime. I mean, Duplicate? The cost for duplication is totally different in Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, and it’s actually much harder and more rare in the latter despite it being way higher on a power level scale, not to mention One Piece not having any duplication at all, no matter the cost. And what’s up with Dynamic Sorcerers casting D&D spells and forging rings? Gimme a break…
10. Combat rules. While I like the idea of using a skill chosen from a set to attack and defend (D&D4 does that, btw, modulo the opposedness) and the surprisingly concise and fun rules for attacking multiple targets, most of the specific aspects of anime combat are not addressed. No talking that gives you real combar bonuses, no hostage rules, no power escalation, lousy second wind, etc.
11. Size. Let’s face it: no-one is going to read a 265 page long document just to fish out the 10% that he’d need as a basis to build his own variant to run his own game. I still believe it is possible to design a more or less universal game system suitable for any playable anime (examples of unplayable anime: FLCL, TWHE) and better and more fine-grained than BESM, but Anime d20 is too far off.
12. Lack of examples. I do realise this is an SRD I’m reading, but still the lack of examples and references ruins it too. It would look much better with 10 or 20 pages explaning the core rules, followed by example settings, say, 5 pages a piece.

At the crossroads

I hate multiclass characters, and the whole idea of multiclassing. The old AD&D dual-classing was Ok since it modelled a character that for some reason decided to abandon his or her usual way of living and adopt a new one.

What does multiclass model? What corresponds to a multiclass character in the game world? Someone who was standing at the crossroads and decided to take all ways that were shown to him. A Jack of all trades – in other words, a master of none. Who wants to play a pathetic loser? If a genre is about stereotypes (and I play mainly in two genres: fantasy and shounen, both heavily relying on stereotypes), you must belong to one to play it. One cannot just take any random character and expect it to fit the setting and to produce a decent storyline.

People tell me they want more originality for their characters. Bullshit! You want to be original – fine with me, there’s nothing I’d like more. Introduce a new uncommon twist, demonstrate how the life of your character was moved or changed by this, or go the other way and become an embodiment of a stereotype, a wizard with the longest gray beard and the funniest hat. If you are totally out of ideas, role-play that urge for originality as a character who hates to be perceived as just “one of …”.

When I use D&D rules of late editions, I still allow only single-class characters. Instead, I converted prestige classes to feat chains and give out more feats to acquire them. I also designed some full-fledged classes to cover the few really existing fighter/mage (and the like) combinations that make sense for the setting.

Something and Dragons

I don’t like dungeons. I never did. The hell, I never successfully tried GMing one or playing one, I get bored after five rooms at most.

People blog about having fun dungeon crawling, and even about some funny metaphors of dungeons, understanding it as a mythic underworld or using as a story-based resolution mechanic. I sincerely try to understand it, and I fail every time.

Don’t think I’m a sci-fi freak that just can’t see the good aspects of fantasy even if they hit him in the head – au contrair, I’m a hardcore fantasy D&D player. But I like it for the outside world, so to say, – for the setting full of exciting legends, glamorous knights, terrifying beasts and enigmatic sorcerers. For the fairy-tale-ness of it all. That’s fantasy for me, not some underground random monster generation facility.

Maybe I’m just claustrophobic.

Don’t play your rock’n’roll to me

Everybody lies. Especially gamemakers.

This post is triggered by a mismatch I spotted in one free indie Russian RPG called “Great Dragon’s World” (the lead developer in known as Godmaker). In one place he said “hobbits make wonderful thieves”, in another – “hobbits take life seriously and love honest farming labour”. Just choose one or the other already – there’s no such thing as a honest labour-loving thief!

This is not a one-time opportunity for me bashing someone’s little indie. Discrepancies like this one are extremely common in RPG corebooks and settings. One power is described as being the best choice for a class or monster while the other one is being preferred over it all the time in real gameplay. An NPC of setting-wide significance turns out to have stats that suck badly even compared to not overly optimised low-level PCs. People are being killed, mourned for and buried even if resurrection costs equals their weekly salary. You can be a fluff fan, a crunch fan or a hesitant in-betweener, but you gotta agree these two must be in synch.

Consistency of game rules set and game world descriptions is especially a tough issue when the genre is somewhat sophisticated. Even if you agree to play horror, you can’t expect the players to be afraid of a zombie if the system you use clearly states it’s a 1HD creature that can’t kill a PC even with 50 on each d20 roll. Even if you state you are playing en epic heroic game, it’s gonna be tough for the players to get into it if even the tiniest goblin takes half a dozen of swings to deal with.