Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;607415Does Anima have mascots?

Not as such, if you don't count Celia's boobs. But Arcana Exxet indroduced the Incarnation, which are sort of summoning a supernatural entity into your own body, and one of those allows you to turn into a large plush cat with a pink ribbon, or a crocodile in a top hat.

(it's an Incarnation of a famous puppet master, Lolly Anne)

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;607405Offtopic:

Spoiler

I once made this mock-up to give Settembrini seizures...

I'd buy that in a heartbeat if only to have a slightly more anime esque take on scifi that i could use to convince a couple of my "anime obsessed" but not very into rpg's at the moment(due to a lack of anime like imagery or something) to play a game again, they used to be big into d&d way back when but got into mmorpg's and anime between the death of tsr and 3rd edition.

Anima: Beyond Fantasy is an awesome art book if you like that style.  However,I couldn't get past the needlessly complex character creation system and different martial arts and magic systems in the game.

I really wanted to like it, but I am well past the point in my gaming career where I have the time to learn all that from scratch.

Wow, I am sounding like a grog!

One of my "if I hit the lottery" plans is to get a license to make AD&D products - strictly core-book, DMG, MM, PHB only.  Dungeon crawls, treasure hunts, dragon slaying, Town Encounter Table type stuff but hire Masamune Shirow to do all the art.

Make my fellow grogs' heads explode

Quote from: Opaopajr;607271Edit: Oh and those Japanese words floating above are just katakana of the same below, in general. It's just an aesthetic thing to make it more, "Japanesque," I guess. You see more (grammatically incorrect) Japanese in L5R.

Quote from: vytzka;607273Oh and katakana above the title says "Fiat Lux". Latin. In Japanese script.

It sort of sums up the whole game I think

Funnily, vytzka is right, it's not Japanese, it's Latin. Latin written in katakana, but Latin nonetheless.

I can't say much about Anima, I had a look at the corebook and the style was not for me, too Final Fantasy-ish. The rules are obviously inspired by Rolemaster, though.

The game sounds intriguing I am a total sucker for different and varied magic in the same game. So 2 questions, first is it runnable/playable with just the corebook?  Second how many if at all, splatbooks are there?

Very playable with the core. I consider a couple of things from the supplements near autoincludes now that I have them but they're not mandatory in any way and the game doesn't assume you will use them.

(example: Basic Martial Arts have only one level of skill in the core book, Dominus Exxet splits them into Novice/Advanced/Master or some such, but it's made in such a way that costs and benefits of Advanced level correspond exactly to the corebook style)

The supplements are the following:

Gaia, Vol. 1: the setting book. REALLY well done, lots of info, plot hooks, art, you name it. Few additional rules.

GM Toolkit: GM Screen (decently made) and a booklet with premade 20 characters, a sample adventure and a few extra rules, mostly background related.

Dominus Exxet: martial artist/fighter book, expands the ki powers, martial arts and advanced fighting styles. If you only get one supplement, get this one.

Arcana Exxet: sort of like the above but for magic/psychic powers/summoning, though not as revolutionary as Dominus Exxet I think but nice nonetheless.

Those Who Walked Amongst Us: monster book. Now Anima is not exactly D&D and most antagonists are going to be humans/other supernatural races but a monster book is still useful, especially for summoner characters, and has decent amounts of art and background info. Also expands monster creation rules in the corebook somewhat, adds a bare bones mass combat system and a few extra PC species (among them the living vampires are probably the most popular ones).

Finally, Anima Tactics book is not directly useful for the RPG but it works as a sort of NPC compendium as it has art, background, general capabilities (including class and level) but not direct stats for a lot of characters in the setting (some of them later got full RPG write ups in a free web supplement).

Also, you can see 95% of the character art here so you can see for yourself it's going to be a turn-off or a turn-on for you

Quote from: thedungeondelver;607927One of my "if I hit the lottery" plans is to get a license to make AD&D products - strictly core-book, DMG, MM, PHB only.  Dungeon crawls, treasure hunts, dragon slaying, Town Encounter Table type stuff but hire Masamune Shirow to do all the art.

Make my fellow grogs' heads explode

NO IT'S NOT WHAT I CAME IN WITH DAMNED WEEABOO NONSENSE HOW DARE YOU <>

Wow, I really like that image!

Speaking of which, I'd love to see Wen-M do a remake of some classical D&D picture with Anima characters.

The way Exalted did it.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;608106NO IT'S NOT WHAT I CAME IN WITH DAMNED WEEABOO NONSENSE HOW DARE YOU <>

Wow, I really like that image!

What can I say?  I like what I like, and until I do hit the lottery and can buy a truck big enough* to carry the cash it would take to get Dave Trampier working on AD&D art again, it'll do.

Oh also I'd commission stuff by Aidan Hughes (Brute! - seriously, look his stuff up).

Don't get me wrong - rules wise I'm all about AD&D 1e; don't care for Exalted etc., but that + art from Shirow?  Mmm...



Ah, ToD.  Shadow Over Mystara, too!  Also, the games were "written" by a TSR employee; the adventures and basic plots came from his home campaign.

...

*=such a vehicle has yet to be built.

A couple of notes about Anima that I found important:

1. The combat chart can be reduced to a single equation.  One thing about the combat that is nifty is that if you roll poorly enough, the opponent actually gets a free -counter- attack.  
2. The magic section will probably require about 30 readthroughs to fully 'get'.  It should be noted that mages are INCREDIBLY weak without lengthy casting preparations/times.  At the beginning, you won't even get off a spell in a single round unless you heavily min/max your character.  Furthermore, unless you literally acquire the power of a superbeing (which, unless it was errata'd, is not even possibly by the core book alone), you are likewise INCREDIBLY restricted in the total amount of magic you can know, ever.  If you choose your school-equivalent poorly enough, you can end up starting the game with every spell you'll ever be allowed to know.  
3. The ki powers are incredibly overpowered.  Incredibly.  I mean, to the point that you can't describe JUST how overpowered they are.  
4. Levels do -not- work like levels in any other game.  They're more...exponential.  A level 3-4 Anima character is pretty much on par with a level 9 or so D&D character.
5. Psionics are...quite interesting.  It's the heavy-hitter, and with a little bit of preparation they can be outright devastating.  They can also be cheesed very easily, and that's not good.  The system pretty much requires the game master to keep a close eye out for powergamers.

All of these are observations from the core book only, and the first printing of it.  Some of them may have changed over printings.  As a whole, I don't like it.  As a source to tinker with to create a usable system, it is amazingly good.  YMMV. =)

Quote from: CerilianSeeming;6083422. The magic section will probably require about 30 readthroughs to fully 'get'.  It should be noted that mages are INCREDIBLY weak without lengthy casting preparations/times.  At the beginning, you won't even get off a spell in a single round unless you heavily min/max your character.  Furthermore, unless you literally acquire the power of a superbeing (which, unless it was errata'd, is not even possibly by the core book alone), you are likewise INCREDIBLY restricted in the total amount of magic you can know, ever.  If you choose your school-equivalent poorly enough, you can end up starting the game with every spell you'll ever be allowed to know.

I can't quite parse what you're trying to say but I disagree with most of this.

"At the beginning, you won't even get off a spell in a single round unless you heavily min/max your character." That doesn't mean anything because spells cost a varying amount of zeon (magical power). If you have bad MA may be useless in combat (at first level!) but you'll be able to cast utility spells at least. And know a lot more of them than a 1st level D&D wizard. And heavy minmaxing in this case means spending development points on magic accumulation or taking advantages that increase it in your favorite paths. Woo. Minmaxing.

I mean yeah, you can make a character that will be useless in combat in Anima, or even useless in their implied role (it's possible to have a wizard that can't cast spells - although they can learn to do that later and some people appreciate this kind of stories over here I am sure). But requirements for contributing are not particularly hidden.

By the way, Anima has a decent way for more combat capable characters to protect weaker ones in combat so even having one or two characters that can't fight doesn't make it auto-death for them in the first encounters.

"Furthermore, unless you literally acquire the power of a superbeing (which, unless it was errata'd, is not even possibly by the core book alone), you are likewise INCREDIBLY restricted in the total amount of magic you can know, ever."

Again, I'm not sure what you mean exactly but I'm pretty sure it's wrong anyway. Top 20% of spell lists are only available to semi-divine and divine beings, that is true (but there are ways for PCs to reach High Magic and thus up to the 90th percentile). However, spell levels available to a character as well as maximum power of a spell being cast depends on intelligence, and you can increase one stat every other level. And unlike with physical stats you don't need Inhumanity to use high Intelligence. So there.

"If you choose your school-equivalent poorly enough, you can end up starting the game with every spell you'll ever be allowed to know."

Yeah I have no idea what this means but I hope it's related to issues above.

If I missed something, let me know.

Quote3. The ki powers are incredibly overpowered.  Incredibly.  I mean, to the point that you can't describe JUST how overpowered they are.

The whole point of ki is to make fighters stand on equal footing with wizards (that you seem to be a fan of). People called Bo9S overpowered too. I think you're overreacting, although there are a couple effects you might want to ban.

Quote4. Levels do -not- work like levels in any other game.  They're more...exponential.  A level 3-4 Anima character is pretty much on par with a level 9 or so D&D character.

Not sure how you get this with a linear amount of development points available every level but YMMV. But characters are higher in power than they would be in D&D at that level, I'd say by a factor of 2 maybe.