Has anyone run a campaign based on an anime?

[randomhero00]

I like animes a lot, and a few have some pretty cool story lines and neat "artifacts" I guess you'd call them. Has anyone successfully run one? Or do they end up abusing their powers too much? Or deviate too much?

I'm mostly thinking DnD, but really any game.

[Urpriest]

A friend of mine ran a game of Devil's in the Details (rules-light indie horror game) in the Code Geass-verse. Said it worked out pretty well.

[Mastikator]

Exalted is pretty "anime", I've played that.
Not an entire campaign though.

[SurlySeraph]

There have been/ are a few campaigns using homebrew systems for Bleach and Naruto on these boards.

[Kylarra]

SlayersD20 is pretty interesting. Obviously breaks in a few areas as it is based on the D20 chassis, but still interesting.

[TurtleKing]

A campaign I played in once had Slayers d20 as part of the content. We didn't delve too much into it, but my Factotum did end up getting Dragon Slave. That colossal sized shark didn't trouble us after that spell was used.
An WotC version of that spell would probably be Channeled Pyroblast in the PHBII. It may not pack the same amount punch as Dragon Slave, but can be used a lot more in campaigns since it is in the PHBII.

[SuperFish]

Record of Lodoss War

...Wait, no.

[DisgruntledDM]

I used to play in these weird campaigns that combined DBZ with D&D. They never really went anywhere but there were some interesting moments.

Also, there's a relatively new system out called Anima: Beyond Fantasy that is set in an anime inspired world. Never tried it, though.

[senrath]

I've played in a game of BESM, which is based on anime. I was a Magical Girl. 'twas fun.

[Reynard]

Record of Lodoss War

...Wait, no.

+1 Internet.

That is all.


Although, I would kill and/or maim for a P&P game set in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist.

[GoatBoy]

Some friends of mine once tried to start a Mutants & Masterminds game which was basically in an Earth where all possible continuities and possibilities had merged, so you could walk from Gurren Lagann straight into Naruto, and into another hundred shows beyond that. The entire of Australia was a terrible, forbidding wasteland now known as "4chan Island."

I played Generic Japanese Teenager from Generic Japanese Robot Show (it was great, I had the entire series summarized, right down to the most common animation errors, translation flubs, and which character was voiced by Dave Coulier) but when I introduced my character, I played his "theme song," which everyone else suddenly decided to do as well resulting in a cacophony of noise, and I realized the game was really just one big immature joke so I decided not to bother with it anymore. It ended after one session anyway because no one was taking it seriously, and we just went back to default D&D.

So, IMHO, anime-based games only work if everyone takes it seriously. And if you hang out with that many people who take anime seriously, god help you.

It's not that I hate anime, I just can't do anything but goof around when asked to make a character based on it. Which is too bad, because I was rather pleased with my character, Gouzen Toshiwakano, and his little mecha, Akumu Kaijuu. He would do his special attack, and shout "NIGHTMAAAARRRRE BEEEEEEAAAM ARUPHAAAAAAA!!!!!!! DARK BROOD VURCAN CREEEEEAAAAAVE!!"

That's "Nightmare Beam Alpha" and "Dark Blood Vulcan Cleave."

I kind of miss it, now.

[SuperFish]

...In all seriousness, though, I've played Adeptus Evangelion a few times. AKA You Got Your Dark Heresy In My Neon Genesis Evangelion

Very fun game

[Comet]

Anime is about stories. Roleplaying is about stories. Sometimes these roleplaying stories can be similar to anime stories.

I'm sort of confused here, is all. Of course someone has played a game based on anime in general or even a specific anime. Just like someone has played a game based on a book or a game based on Kung Fu action flicks.

Just saying 'anime' isn't really helpful, since it contains such a mindboggling variety of themes and moods.
But yeah, sometimes my games have had elements from various anime in them. It was pretty cool.

On a more helpful note: For D&D 3.5, there is Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. It's a brilliant book and offers quite a lot of possibilities for playing larger than life martial heroes like those you see in hotblooded anime, shounen or otherwise.

Iron Heart Suuuuuurge!

[randomhero00]

Sorry, what I mean is, literally take an anime story and play through it, with only small deviations. Like Death Note. What if your party found that book? What would they do with it?

Another one might be Elfen Lied. What if they had those telekinetic apendages that could rip bodies apart like tissue paper?

etc.

Is that more clear?

Basically play a game centered around a central theme of an anime. The game itself doesn't need to feel anime.

There have been/ are a few campaigns using homebrew systems for Bleach

I love bleach (well not the fillers) but so far all the adaptions I've seen have been horrible.

[Sipex]

If you want Anime mechanics BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) is the best system for you. Otherwise any system works, you just apply anime and go.

Suddenly you're shouting your attacks or maybe you have a transformation sequence.

Who knows? Really depends on the flavour you're going for.

[alchemyprime]

I was a DM in an anime club. We had the "throw it in" mentality of the original Dragonball, and we tried (hard) to have the sorts of campaigns that seemed very Animeish.

We had...
Daiku, an emulator (class I made) who by the end had become so monstrous he had gained four tentacles (the black slimy kind, arranged like Doc Ock's), wings, horns, claws and flame breath. Fun class, though around rogue level power.

Raim, a fighter we built to be like a samurai, he ended up taking levels in Pyrokineticist (subbed Electricity for Fire).

Darven, a psychic warrior and brother to Raim. He ended up dipping into Elocater.

Harrack, a Red Wizard of Thay (well, not Thay in our campaign, but close enough) focused on, of all things, evocation. Ended up taking 3 levels in Archmage.

Moses, a Southerner (read: American cowboy) with another class I made, the Marksman (cowboy old west ranger with a ranged weapon focus. Probably didn't need it, but it was fun to play.) He had gained in his treasure 30 sentient bullets. He only used them when we NEEDED the extra damage, because firing them woke up the bullet so it could see it's death.

It was a fun group, and they ended up playing a lot like the group from Saiyuki, but Raim felt more like he belonged in DBZ, and Moses was almost a cross between Jin from Samurai Champloo and Jonah Hex.

[Tengu_temp]

All the games I've been running for the past few years, and almost all the ones I've been playing, can be described as anime-style. Most of the time I use original settings, although one of them actually takes place in the same world as Nanoha - it's been running for over two years and is close to its end (well, it's temporarily on hiatus right now, but that will change). The system I'm mostly using is M&M 2e, thanks to its versatility and fast-paced gameplay well fitting for PbP games, but for one game I'm using DND 4e rules (though not the setting - the game takes place in a world very far away from typical fantasy).

Directly basing a game on the plot of an anime, though? Meh, not my kind of DMing. I prefer to be a bit more subtle with my inspirations.

[AnswersQuestion]

I like animes a lot, and a few have some pretty cool story lines and neat "artifacts" I guess you'd call them. Has anyone successfully run one? Or do they end up abusing their powers too much? Or deviate too much?

I'm mostly thinking DnD, but really any game.

Ghost in the Shell meets Evangelion(actually, Shinji&Warhammer40k) meets Highschool of the Dead.
Been running it for half a year now, 1/3 of the big cities were nuked and giant robots hold off giant chaosspawn and orks while the puny earthlings fight against the never-ending zombie threat.


It's awesome. We're using the Dæmon system for it.

[Dralnu]

This is pretty obscure, but I once ran a short campaign based on Guardian Heroes, one of the best 2D beat em ups, which was released on the Sega Saturn. It's very much anime.

Campaign ended up being one of my best.

[J.Gellert]

I've DMed a Naruto game.

Mutants & Masterminds was perfect for it, even before the Mecha & Manga splatbook. And it was my group's first encounter with the system; so I did the heavy work and mostly gave them pre-made Jutsu "powers", then letting them choose which ones they'll know.

M&M in general plays in a very "cinematic" way so it's great for games based on comic books, anime, films, TV series, and so on, and not just supers.

[Comet]

Sorry, what I mean is, literally take an anime story and play through it, with only small deviations. Like Death Note. What if your party found that book? What would they do with it?

Another one might be Elfen Lied. What if they had those telekinetic apendages that could rip bodies apart like tissue paper?

etc.

Is that more clear?

Basically play a game centered around a central theme of an anime. The game itself doesn't need to feel anime.



I love bleach (well not the fillers) but so far all the adaptions I've seen have been horrible.

Oh, I see now what you mean. I haven't personally done anything like that, but I do think that games like that could turn out very, very well. It's all about knowing your source material and respecting it but at the same time taking it in some new directions. Sort of like fan fiction, there is a potential for mindblowing amounts of awesome twists and turns, but on the other hand the whole thing can collapse into a pile of incoherent fanservice and messed up plotlines if you're not careful.

Incidentally, I did play in a Bleach Forum RPG once. I quickly lost interest, though. This was because I was trying to play a sort of down to eath hero who is coming to terms with there being Death Gods and Hollows in his life, like in the beginning arc of Ichigo's story, while everyone else was going on and on about flying magical samurais and arrancar and whatever. I hadn't even seen any episodes beyond the beginning of the Soul Society arc at that point, so I was not particularly invested in their tales of ridiculously overpowered bankais!

Just goes to show that sometimes people see different things about a story as being that one cool thing about it. Stuff like this can make or break a game, whether its an original plot or a retelling of an existing work of fiction.

[DeckOneBell]

Iron Heart Suuuuuurge!

Just throwing in my two cents to back up the Tome of Battle business.

Can't get more anime than that.

I'm actually fairly certain that with minor refluffing, it could get pretty close to Naruto, and maybe with some weapons editing and refluffing, it could get close to Bleach.

If you want a generic fighting anime however, you've already got it. Spellswords are "fast, agile, smart" characters, warblades are "tough, strong" characters. Make every person only choose maneuvers from one school and you're pretty much there. A desert wind spellsword is the generic fast fire guy and a iron heart warblade is your generic armored swordsman.

[Sindri]

There are a few systems specifically designed for this, like BESM.

Also, I'm currently in a 3.x game in which the main characters are a half-dragon crusader, an awakened rabbit swordsage, and an ozodrin (homebrew from this forum, sort of like FMA Brotherhood's Pride). It doesn't get much more animeish in D&D.

[~Nye~]

I am spinning a few ideas at the moment.
I am creating a d20 system for Xenogears which I'm combining with elemnts of evangalion and Cowboy Bebop. but I have played a campaign based heavily on Full Metal Alchemist. That was cool, I played a mundane soldier, but my friend had created some really awesome alchemy rules.

Deathnote like whodunnit mysetry game would be cool?

[true_shinken]

It's not exactly 'following the same story', but I GMed a game in high school and people still talk about it today, about 6 years later. Time and time again I'm asked to start another game in the same world; they really enjoyed it.

The idea is a Dragon Ball game, early into the Z phase. The thing is, one of the villains actually used a time machine to go back in time and kill Goku. The world is basically an Age of Apocalypse version of DBZ. Instead of DB's tongue-in-cheek humour, we have a dark, depressing setting where you see characters you loved face down in the dirt. The characters goal was, of course, to gather the dragon balls and wish this whole hell away. They failed.

[AslanCross]

I don't mind anime aesthetics in my games at all, as often the only real difference I see is that aesthetics designed by Japanese people are appearing in a game made by Western people.

However, I do have an issue with "playing through a story with only minor differences." The DM of the Rings webcomic addresses this, although with regard to Lord of the Rings. Won't playing through an existing story, no matter where it's from, might end up severely railroading the players or limiting their fun. A Lodoss War campaign, for example:

<Players> We want to assassinate Emperor Beld so that the war can't start.
<DM> Sorry, Ashram gets to kill him.
<Players> Bummer. Can we steal Ashram's Soul Crusher sword instead?
<DM> Nope, that's a McGuffin for the final battle.
<Players> Hey, I was able to find a way for us to kill Shooting Star early. I think we can awaken Mycen and convince her to fight the dragon.
<DM> No, you need the blessed spears to slay Shooting Star, and no, you cannot awaken Mycen.

[Salbazier]

This qualify?

I think anime-based campaign can only take general theme of anime and use it instead of playing a story directly because of reasons. Maybe that was the OP meant or maybe not. Anyway, direct port will likely be boring (... umh maybe not, perhaps there are stuffs that works that way but I can think of any)

Just throwing in my two cents to back up the Tome of Battle business.

Can't get more anime than that.

I disagree to this statement. Yes, you can get your shonen-esque fighting characters from TOB, But there is a lot more to anime than just shonen fighting.

Frankly, eventhough I still follow those mainstreams series, I have no interest to play in the setting (that's way I didn't care abotu those bleach d20 ect) the world just doesn't rich enough for me to inspire.

[randomhero00]

Oh, I see now what you mean. I haven't personally done anything like that, but I do think that games like that could turn out very, very well. It's all about knowing your source material and respecting it but at the same time taking it in some new directions. Sort of like fan fiction, there is a potential for mindblowing amounts of awesome twists and turns, but on the other hand the whole thing can collapse into a pile of incoherent fanservice and messed up plotlines if you're not careful.

Incidentally, I did play in a Bleach Forum RPG once. I quickly lost interest, though. This was because I was trying to play a sort of down to eath hero who is coming to terms with there being Death Gods and Hollows in his life, like in the beginning arc of Ichigo's story, while everyone else was going on and on about flying magical samurais and arrancar and whatever. I hadn't even seen any episodes beyond the beginning of the Soul Society arc at that point, so I was not particularly invested in their tales of ridiculously overpowered bankais!

Just goes to show that sometimes people see different things about a story as being that one cool thing about it. Stuff like this can make or break a game, whether its an original plot or a retelling of an existing work of fiction.

Giving this thread a life line since only one person got what I meant.

I meant to take a good story, really it doesn't have to be anime, and it can be in any world (faerun whatever) just take a central plot device or some such from one of those clever stories and run a campaign based around it. Has anyone done that?

[true_shinken]

Giving this thread a life line since only one person got what I meant.

I meant to take a good story, really it doesn't have to be anime, and it can be in any world (faerun whatever) just take a central plot device or some such from one of those clever stories and run a campaign based around it. Has anyone done that?

That's basically what I did with dragonball, really. Posted in this very same thread.

[WeeFreeMen]

Best anime campaign I ever ran was one for a group of 3 people. I tend to find small groups run better in anime campaigns because of all the micro manage that you have to deal with within the story.

Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann - Was this such campaign, we had 1 player make a techie (simon), 1 player make a characteristic bard (Kamina) and 1 player make a Ranger (Kimo?(sp)).

Basically, I just took them thru the series with very little change. They enjoyed experiencing the scenes they saw from the anime as well as taking place in the epic fights (Ironically, the Kamina character died in the fight he did in the series ).

In short, they are great fun and not as hard to manage as one might think since the fluff is already handled mostly. Just be careful what level of power you want the scale on. I tried one with giant robots.. that got outa hand.