Ova VS besm

Champions/hero
I tried OVA. I found it infuriating when I couldn't build my concepts. I don't remember what they were. But I remember finding it very difficult to build power sets to spec, and tossed it in the "nope" pile.

I mean the last version I saw was basically HERO system lite. So yeah.
True but that's by design. It's essentially a generic system slanted toward tropes derived from anime and all generic systems require you to set a campaign power levels so they can cover a broader range of settings.

Depends on what you're looking for. When people imagine an "anime"/"manga" RPG (besides it being a generic RPG), they tend to imagine something that's both fast/flowing and flexible (because anime is a medium and not a genre and you want to conceivably be able to create anything from a normal schoolkid for some kind of romantic comedy themed game to a gritty cop for a police thriller).

BESM is definitely the more flexible and versatile one. It's got a point-buy character creation system reminiscent of GURPS with a metric shitload of options and tailor made special abilities like in the Hero System. OVA, by comparison, forces you to utilize a smaller shopping list of qualities to build a character and in far more limited ways.

On the OTHER hand, BESM is also far more cumbersome. It takes way longer to create a character, make a roll, or run a round of combat. It's not a rules lite system.

So it really all comes down to what you want.

The more I go on on my DM "career" the more I tend to go for lite systems not because I hate heavy systems but because I'm so fucking lazy

OVA it is, then.

I think BESM is rules light, its just that the book is pretty nebulous/raises questions. Also, it feels pretty unbalanced.

I still dig it though. Would recommend.

Strike!, MAID, Magical Burst, Ryuutama, Nechronica, Tenra Bansho Zero etc. - literally anything is better than the two abortions of game design that are OVA and BESM.

t.weeb

D20 sucks.period.

Neither.
They're both painfully generic garbage whose only claim to being "anime" is their vaguely animesque art and throwaway references to Japanese (pop) culture.

Try Japanese systems whose creators actually understand what they're aiming for with their games.

>They're both painfully generic garbage whose only claim to being "anime" is their vaguely animesque art and throwaway references to Japanese (pop) culture.
Fucking THIS.

Anything that bills itself as a generic "anime RPG" is guaranteed shit.

The only "anime" based games that manage to not be either "otherwise unremarkable generic systems with bad anime art" or just complete failures are genre or series specific games.

I'm gonna be completely honest with you.

Fate Accelerated is a better anime RPG than either of those games could ever hope to be.

Where do I find Japanese systems for anime?
Preferably rules-light.
Preferably generic.
I know only two Japanese systems: Maid and Golden Sky Stories. The latter one sounds like a good one to play as kawaii shapeshifter. There was some system I remember that allows you to play in a very specific setting where humans with advanced technology struggle against psionic oni, but I didn't like it.

Japs don't make "generic" anime games. Everything they produce is specific to a genre, style, or series.

>Preferably rules-light.
>Preferably generic.

Besides Maid and other joke system? You don't. Part of the big argument about anime RPGs and whether it's possible to make one comes down to the fact that because anime is so broad (i.e. a medium by itself) it's impossible to "emulate" with anything other than a generic system, but by that point it makes no difference anyway and you might as well use GURPS. Japanese "anime" games actually tend to be hyperfocused on one setting with one set of rules, and they feel like anime because the setting was made by Japanese people who tend to have similar thought processes and ideas to the people who make authentic anime. You could use them to play in that particular setting which has a particular sort of feeling, but not an anime style game you made up (but if you're already going in that direction, you really got to ask yourself what an "anime style game" even means. Tabletop roleplaying happens all in your head: is it really that hard to just imagine anything in an animesque drawing style with everyone speaking Japanese?)

>systems for anime
>Preferably generic.

There are no systems for anime, just like there are no systems for live-action TV or for music videos.
And if you want a generic system, you might as well play OVA, BESM or even GURPS with pictures of SAO slapped on for all the difference it makes.

You need to start by defining what it is that you want. And no, "anime" is not a sufficient definition.

Unlike the west, in Japan "anime" is just a shorthand for the katakana-ization of the word "animation" and encompasses literally EVERYTHING animated, from all over the world, and not just Japanese animation.

Thus, as said, there are no Japanese-made "generic anime RPGs."

That's the one saving grace of The Anime Hack. It's a shitty little book that was barely worth half the 8 dollars I paid for it but it DID have the unusual decency to honestly say all this. It's got stats for magical girls and catgirls and mecha and stuff but it flat out tells you that trying to use them all together would at best give you a caricature of anime, not allow you to simulate any particular one. Because anime has the same variety of genres as any other medium, you'd be better served by just using a game that does whatever genre you're aiming at, and ADD whatever additional "iconic" anime elements from the book you feel like.

Between the two of those I've always liked OVA better, but that's because I like lighter systems. And I agree with everyone here saying that ultimately an "anime" system is just a generic system with the right style of art and maybe a chapter about life in Japan.

ALTHOUGH I would say in favor of Clay Gardner (the guy behind OVA) that I like how clear his passion for the medium really is, and he's made some pretty clever attempts at pushing the boundaries of the system in all sorts of interesting directions to show it, mostly on his blog. The best example I can think of is that after watching Your Lie in April, he created a whole mechanic for building those dramatic musical performance scenes you see in the show (modeling them as combat against a character's inner demons with their emotions as weapons). It's not perfect, but it's charming in its own way.

On the other hand, he takes eternity and a half to release a book. People who paid for the OVA kickstarter back in 2013 are literally still waiting for two setting guides he's promised.

You want to run a real Weeb game?

Get Shadowfist 2e.

>Have a sizable collection of BESM PDFs
>Don't have any OVA PDFs

Time to scour the PDF share thread, and failing that google.

Not exactly, like anything else generic systems have strengths and weaknesses. For example GURPS falls apart at high power levels and high powered combat quickly gets ridiculous, it suits more simulationist low combat skill driven games. HERO is designed for high powered play at low power levels everything is kind of samey, and it's vehicle rules are a bit janky.

They're all equally appropriate to "anime" is what I'm saying.

The key to making an "anime" RPG isn't in the mechanics, it's in the setting, characters and plot. Other than ensuring they aren't completely incompatible (i.e. I probably wouldn't pick a game with no combat mechanics to run a combat heavy "series"), it matters next to nothing. It's all in your mind's eye, making it "anime" is as simple as showing people a lot of Japanese artwork before the game starts and playing J-pop in the background so they imagine things in Japanese style. What would really make the "difference" is writing a story that feels like the story of the anime genre you're looking to emulate, with characters that feel like they were written for it, etc. because while it's true that anime covers almost every western genre and then some, it also has some distinctive elements (in terms of how people behave or what the plot tends to be, etc.).