I spent some quality time with OVA this weekend. I generated a few characters and it was one of the fastest character creation system I have played with in a long time. Character creation was a snap.
To start with you work from your concepts and then basically figure out how much these concepts are worth. What I liked about this game that abilities and weaknesses are roughly equal to qualities and drawbacks, so a +4 quality in Unisystem might give you a +4 ability in OVA. I would also say that they are roughly equal to abilities in BESM 3.0.
What I like about this character creation is it does focus the player on what the character is all about. Look at Kiki from "Kiki's Delivery Service", she is young, is looking for her place in world of witches, and can fly. Not a lot really to be honest, but enough to build a story and a character concept around. We know she can fly, can cook (sort of) and knows her way around the city. She has a talking cat and a push broom. OVA starts the same way.
Looking at Robin Sena we can do the same. I have detailed Robin before both for BESM and Witch Girls Adventures.
What do we know about her? Well she has secrets. Secrets about who she is ans what she is doing at STN-J. She is a witch, but rarely casts spells but instead uses something more like pyrokenisis. She knows a lot about the occult and can hunt. We also know her Japanese is not great because she didn't grow up in Japan. She also needs glasses in order to see to use her powers. She doesn't fly, but does have a Vespa scooter.
Using the rules I decide to set a power cap of 10. Nice round number.
Finding the abilities and weaknesses I come up with this:
Robin Sena
Abilities & Weaknesses
Combat Skill (fire) +3, Magic, Witchcraft* +3, Occult Knowledge +3, Pyrokinesis (altered form of TK) +3: (Area Effect, Extra Damage), Impared Sight -1, Secret -1, Haunted by Visions -1, Shy -1, Obsession (Discover the secret of her birth) -1, Code of Conduct -1.
That gives us a total of +6. Just under the 10 I set.
Health: 30 (i reduced this to refelct her age) Endurance: 40
Attack, Flame Strike +3
Defense, Magic Circle +3
I gave her "Magic, Witchcraft" instead of "Magic, Arcane" since I felt that it was better fit concept wise. Though either would have worked fine. I'll detail later the differences.
I like it.
I seems to be "missing" some crunch that I would normally like, but that could be partially my reading of the system and just the way the game is. As an Anime game I think it works great. Parts of it remind me of Cartoon Action Hour, which is cool. I'll look into OVA again when I talk about Cartoon Action Hour.
1 comment:
Sounds interesting, and not being a fan so much of "the crunch" it might be up my alley.
Of course, I have games now that I like and don't get the time to play...
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