Tag: Anime

Posted in: Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Trek

RPGaDAY2025 Day 25: Challenge

Written by TardisCaptain 1 Comment on RPGaDAY2025 Day 25: Challenge

For Day 25 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge how can I not talk about the topic of ‘challenge’ to hype up the movement that I’m proud of. The Character Creation Challenge.

I’ve blogged about this before in a previous RPGaDAY post. And earlier this year I almost didn’t make it through the 31 days because of a lot of real-world issues that popped up. It almost broke me. But even in darkest times I felt the love and support from both gamers and Trekkies. The hugs that I got at SaltCON. Friends supporting me at the club meetings. Those on the message board communities that cheered me over the line. Friends that donated to the financial shortfall I suddenly found myself in. Anything that was small, still helped out in a big way.

I’m energized for the next challenge in 2026. I’ve got plans in place to make sure that it won’t be so rough next year. I’ve got new games that I’ve picked up (some have been donated by the authors). I will get though this because we will get through this. Things may suck right now, but they can’t suck forever. Cyndi Lauper at her farewell tour had everyone take out their phones and turn on the flashlights in the amphitheater. She then said, “Look around at all of the people here giving a little bit of themselves and how it has made this place brighter. This is a community of light.” Everyone of you, just shining the light that you have, have made things brighter. The comments, the feedback, the laughter around the gaming table. We can overcome any challenge, gaming or real-life.

And if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to do a partial lyric dump from a recent anime movie that I watched with my geek family.

We’re shattering the silence, we’re rising, defiant
Shouting in the quiet, “You’re not alone”
We listened to the demons, we let them get between us
But none of us are out here on our own
So we were cowards, so we were liars
So we’re not heroes, we’re still survivors
The dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I’m tired
But dive in the fire, and I’ll be right here by your side

Feedback from LexTenebris on Mastodon regarding my blog post on Recent. I think the better Western example of isekai in our literature is actually A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The protagonist is pulled out of his life and dropped into a fantastic one. His personal knowledge makes a difference to the situation and changes the world elementally. Ultimately, he is returned to our world. John Carter of Mars is another fantastic isekai series before there was isekai. If your GM wasn’t making who you were important to who you are, they really weren’t running an isekai story. They were running a fantasy story with the trappings of the setup of an isekai story. That’s certainly valid, but it’s not nearly as interesting. If you’re looking for a very modern example of isekai in Western literature, check out Forgotten Ruin from Nick Cole. Great novel series, very pulp, much fun. (My note, I did pick up this last book on Kindle to read after reading this response)

Have you recently overcome a challenge? Have you participated in an online RPG challenge? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Role Playing Games

RPGaDAY2025 Day 23: Recent

Written by TardisCaptain 1 Comment on RPGaDAY2025 Day 23: Recent

Oh, ‘recent’ is the topic for Day 23 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge. I think I’ll talk about a one-shot RPG session that I participated in for a friend who wanted to try out a new game he picked up from Kickstarter.

The game is called Gates of Krystalia and it is set up in the sub-genre of fiction called “Isekai” (which for some reason I keep wanting to pronounce it as ‘ee-seak-ay-al” which is completely wrong). The word is Japanese and means “different world” and the stories involve a person or persons who are transported to/reborn/reincarnated into a parallel universe or fantasy world. It’s a fish-out-of-water set up where the characters must survive in their new-found environment. One of my kids explained to me that Alice in Wonderland is an early example of Isekai storytelling. We were all regular humans on the same bus when it crashed over the side of a ravine and died. When we woke up, we were quickly pushed into our new fantasy bodies by an over-worked angel. We didn’t play long enough to find out how our previous human lives (and knowledge) interacted with our new bodies and environment.

So, Gates of Krystalia has an interesting RPG system. Instead of using dice, we had a regular deck of 52 playing cards. I hadn’t brought my special RPG dice deck with me which would have been perfect, so I borrowed a set from one of the hosts that had neon cats on it (or Tron Cats as my kids put it). As first-level characters we only had 25 of the 52 cards face down. Any time we had to randomly generate a number, we pulled a card. Ace had a value of 1, Jack had a value of 11 and it kept rising for each face card up to 13. There were ways that the numbers could be doubled, or certain attribute adjustments made to the pull. When we were in combat, we pulled five cards and could choose which card we wanted to play in combat. There was also the possibility of having a special hand (like two of a kind, all of the same suite, etc.) that would give us bonuses in that combat round. If we were damaged in combat, we had to reduce that amount from our draw pile into the discard pile. Cards could be returned to the draw pile when the character was healed or rested.

We didn’t get very far in the one-shot, but my tactical mind was starting to click when I tried to strategize. I’m not much of an Isekai fan to know if I’d want to play in a full campaign, but I’d like to see the system in action a little bit more. I guess to keep it Isekai for me, it would have to continue to be a fish-out-of-water scenario. And I don’t know if that concept would last longer than a session or two before the character had adjusted themselves to their new world or body. Then is it Isekai anymore? I was trying to suggest to the GM that he run Gates of Krystalia as a one-shot at an upcoming SaltCON. I know that there would probably be a few interested parties who would want to check it out.

Feedback on my challenge post for ‘Enter‘ from LexTenebris on Mastodon.

What he posted was really long for me to cut and paste here, but he liked to hack at examples like getting past the door. He referenced a game that he has really enjoyed, Ironsworn (https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn). I think the key thing he stated in his post was this: “Every time you go to the dice, you take the risk of introducing complications, which may be as simple as harm to yourself in a mechanical sense, but also very well could be a complication introduced in your fictional positioning within the narrative. You’ve taken too long with the door, and guards are coming around the corner right now. You’ve shorted out the panel and set off an alarm that your character is not aware of, which is going to increase the difficulty of things going forward. Fictive positioning is just as important as mechanical tracking in this case.”

Am I missing the point on Isekai storytelling? Is there a recent gaming event that you enjoyed? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Role Playing Games

RPGaDAY2025 Day 11: Flavor

Written by TardisCaptain

I was talking with my one of my kids about Day 11 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge which has the topic of Flavor (or Flavour for those using the British spelling). I was wondering if I could do another review of a Dungeons and Dragons cook book. However I did not have one available (or read). My kid reminded me of an anime series that we watched a few years ago that screamed “RPG campaign” that would fit this topic. The anime is called Delicious in Dungeon.

The cast of the Delicious in Dungeon anime.

The storyline is about a dungeon next to a town that supplies all of the adventurers with supplies for their expeditions. One party gets attacked by a dragon who swallows a sister of one of the party members. This human fighter wants to return to the dragon’s lair and rescue his sister before she is digested. However in the unsuccessful attack against the dragon, they lost all of their supplies. The party is unable to re-supply without any money (they were teleported away at the last minute by the magic-using sister), so the decide to eat the monsters they slay to on their way down to the lower levels. This attracts the attention of a dwarf fighter who is also an excellent cook. He loves the idea of forging while adventuring. There is several discussions about party unity, RPG tactics and how the party can handle monsters that scare first-level characters. When they talk about preparing the monsters, it’s like watching a cooking film.

I found the humor in this fantasy anime was quite enjoyable. Each episode title was a food concept. The concept was unique and I’m surprised that there hasn’t been any posts about the RPG stats for each character. If you are looking for Inspiration, then check out this anime on Netflix.

Phil H on MeWe gave me some feedback on my Explore entry to the RPGaDAY challenge. He was reading the Twilight Imperium RPG and it got his mind thinking. He wasn’t impressed with the RPG system, but he converted it to a D6 based system and he really wants to run it. Please keep the feedback coming everyone.

Have you found any food inspired RPG story lines? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Collecting, Conventions, Pirates, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

SaltCON-Summer 2025 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain
Loot from SaltCON 2025 Summer.

I’m writing this the day after SaltCON-Summer 2025. Let’s just say I’m really happy that I was smart enough to take the Monday after the convention off. It gave me a chance to not only unwind from the very busy weekend, but get somethings done that I usually do on Saturday or Sunday to prep for my next week. I’m also very happy for the time I spent at the convention. Thank you to those who gave me hugs. I hope you realize how much this is helping me keep my spirits up. I also had one of my readers come up and tell me that he enjoyed my blog posts. Thank you. I know that recent posts have been rare, but I’m going to keep going. I do have plans to participate in the upcoming RPGaDAY 2025 activity this August. I also still owe you guys different reviews and first-looks at some of the KickStarter rewards that I’ve received.

As you can see from the loot photo above, I was able to pick up a few items. SaltCON has always had a good t-shirt design for each event. This year seems to be following the cyberpunk genre. I had some money to pick up both the current con shirt, but the spring shirt as well that I missed out on a few months ago. One of the nice things that SaltCON does is sell the older con shirts at a discount. When I picked up my badge, I was notified that I was one of the random winners of the game giveaway. Out of the two possible options, Chicken Time Warp sounded like fun. And since it was the size of a deck of cards, it wouldn’t take up too much room in my convention backpack. There was a dealer that had a sale on geeky pins, I picked up some that said “Dungeon Master”, “I’m not procrastinating, I’m doing side quests”, “Sarcasm +5” and “I don’t have any ducks in a row. I have squirrels and they are at a rave.” I also received a couple of thank you prizes for running games that included the RPG Attack from Space (medieval knights vs. invading aliens from outer space) and a mug that says “DnD Diplomacy, Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, FIREBALL.” I’ll be using the mug for my end-of-day sleepytime tea and I’ll be using Attack from Space as one of my entries in the 2026 Character Creation Challenge.

Posters made by the con to advertise my games.

I was scheduled to run three games at SaltCON-Summer 2025. I’m not sure if it was karma for dropping out of some games at the spring event, or if I simply waited too long to submit my events and got stuck with bad time slots—but unfortunately, no one showed up for my Basic Fantasy and Teenagers from Outerspace sessions. I did get a chance to run the TfOS game at The Queen’s Realm a few weeks ago (in preparation for the con) but I also put a lot of effort into the home-brewed Basic Fantasy adventure. So I may make another attempt with one or both games at a future convention.

The Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition game. Let’s just say that the players and I were laughing and having a very good time with the scenario. Probably one of the best one-shots that I’ve ran in quite some time. We even ended up with a “There I was…” type of story out of it. Long story short, the players were disguised on a planet with a pre-warp civilization. The Prime Directive was in full effect, but the players had found themselves in a dangerous situation where the villagers were chasing some of them. One player hid in a merchant’s shop and wanted to use his back door. The merchant, wanting to make a sale, said that he was willing to allow paying customers slip out the back door. The character had not thought to bring any of the local currency with them when they went into the village, so he accepted the offer to trade his hat, for one of the agrarian level hand tools. The moment he had made the exchange, I spent a level of threat and reminded him that the hat had been replicated with his advanced technology. While it was an imitation of the local headgear the natives wore, it wasn’t the same material. There was another PC in the store with him so he couldn’t just say he had lost it. This put the player in a panic and we ended up spending an extra amount of time over this one plot point and the hand-wringing it brought about. Was this a violation of the Prime Directive like Dr. McCoy leaving his communicator behind on Sigma Iotia II? When they rejoined the Commander leading the expedition, I did give him a chance to notice the missing headgear, which he did which lead to further awkward. When the game was over and I asked for feedback from the players, one of the first-time players said he was glad that I had used the threat in-game currency (which I had on several different times) to spice up the scenario. Some of these I only came up with on the fly during the course of play. Another first-time player stated he now needed to go out and pick up the core rulebook because of how much fun he had. Had there been a merchant at the con selling books for the games being run, they would have made a sale. Jim J, if you or any of your team are reading this, just know that the first time players picked up the system very easily and had a great time around the table playing your game.

Some of the characters I played this weekend.

For the first time ever, all of the games that I participated in as a player was completely new to me. Usually I just try to get one or two in so I can try out different systems. Two of the games were played with the actual designers who had attended to show off their works.

Shadowdark: This was an interesting game since we were playing zero-level characters in a funnel similar to the kind I experienced in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Every single one of my randomly pulled characters only had one hit point, so I went through a stack of them trying to get out. What made this D20 clone interesting is that none of the PC races had any type of infravision or dark vision. So if our light source went out, we were at a disadvantage. The timer would run in real time and to demonstrate this, an hourglass was placed on the table that would match one hour. This made for a very interesting scenario that I’m glad that I tried out. I wouldn’t turn down a Shadowdark session if an invite was extended and I’m interested in seeing the character creation rules.

Pirate Borg: Another game that I’ve been hearing a lot about and that I’m hoping I can pick up for a future Character Creation Challenge. Ran by the same GM who ran the Shadowdark game earlier. The character was higher than level 0, and thus a little bit more hardier. All of the players got into the pirate theme of the game (one even kept talking with a Jersey accent the entire time) which added to the enjoyment. One of the players ended up getting killed at the very last second of the game which showed me how weird this game could be. Again, I wouldn’t turn down a chance to play it again.

Untold: This is a fantasy game that uses D12s. A LOT of D12s. It kind of reminded me of the 2d20 system where you have target numbers based off of skills and attributes, but you had to roll over the target number. Which wasn’t easy to do sometimes. I played a barbarian so I didn’t get a chance to try the unusual magic system, but it wasn’t Vancian. It was interesting to try the game and a lot of players got into their characters. This was one of the creator run sessions.

EverReach: This is a science fiction/cyberpunkish game with the designer of the game. The system was pretty easy to follow along as it only used D6s with the ability to swap out one of the D6s rolled (by the player or GM). We played an independent crew that was hired by a corporation to perform a smash and grab. As the players, we spent the bulk of the session planning out the heist and bouncing ideas off of each other. How were we going to get past the defenses and neutralize the third-party gang hired to protect the server we were after? How were we going to extract ourselves? Because we did a bunch of planning (something I had experienced in a past Spycraft game) there wasn’t a lot of rolling until the very end. So I got a little taste of it. But I’m going to be doing a deeper dig on this game as a review in a future blog post.

The Expanse: So I had only seen the pilot episode of this hard sci-fi TV series, but it turns out the game is based off of the books (it’s a rights thing). So there was still a lot of explaining to the newbies at the table like myself. There were different factions controlling different parts of the Sol System and there was no FTL in this universe. The main reason I wanted to play this game is to try the Age System that comes up in Fantasy Age and Modern Age. The dice roll mechanics was easy to get down, but there were pages and pages of stunts that each character could pull from when they ended up with special Stunt Points. So we were continuously looking through these pages to see what fit the situation we currently found ourselves in. In the end, we completed the mission in style due to these stunt points, but I’m going to have to go back and take a deeper dive into the Age books that I own to see if I’d want to do anything further with this system. Something I don’t know if I would have noticed without getting my hands dirty with it.

So in conclusion, I had a ton of fun (again) at SaltCON. Yes, the summer event is smaller than the spring one. But there were a couple of temping RPG pickups at the swap meet and game exchange. If there is a regular RPG book seller who’s looking for a market, this convention could easily make you a lot of sales especially if you had the books for the games being run at the con. As I was writing this blog post, one of the con-organizers posted on FaceBook that this had been the highest attended SaltCON-Summer ever. Once again, a big shout-out should go to the other attendees, volunteers and organizers for putting this together. As someone who has retired from the con-chair business, I know how much effort is put into these events. It was noticed and appreciated.

SaltCON-End of Summer is coming up on August 28-31 at the Davis Convention Center in Layton, Utah. Currently I’m planning to attend and run some RPG one-shots. Let me know if you plan to go so I can meet up with you.

Do you have any questions about the convention weekend? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Conventions, Pirates, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

Prepping for SaltCON Summer 2025

Written by TardisCaptain 1 Comment on Prepping for SaltCON Summer 2025
The games I’ll be running at SaltCON-Summer 2025.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been several months since SaltCON-Spring ended. With how busy, hectic and downright painful that this year has been, I really need a geek-out break. And here comes SaltCON-Summer to deliver. I will be packing my Convention Backpack that I have documented in a previous blog post.

So I’ve signed up again to run several games so that both my wife and I can attend. But one of the things I (tried) to do differently this time around was pre-run some of the games that I plan to run. While I’ve I’ve ran Basic Fantasy 4th Edition and Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition several times before, this is the first time that I’m running Teenagers from OuterSpace. Yes, I’m running an odd-ball game again like I did with the Wendy’s Roleplaying Game in the spring. The reason I do this is to make the con memorable for someone. Sure you’ll find a bunch of the games that you can find in the big box stores at the con, but seeking out that game that you don’t normally get to play may be just as enjoyable. And for me, it’s just as enjoyable to try to run something different.

I was able to secure a table for three different nights at The Queen’s Realm, a nearby gaming/geek store and event center. My scheduled date for my Basic Fantasy test run had to be postponed because of the passing of my 95-year old grandmother. I was able to make it for Teenagers from OuterSpace and Star Trek 2e. Of those two, only Teenagers actually happened (not enough players for STA2e unfortunately as several people had to back out). I’m hoping that the test run will help me run a better scenario at the con.

So what games did I sign up to play? Well all of them are games that I’ve never played before. These include ShadowDark, Pirate Borg, Untold, EverReach (a game that I’m currently reviewing for a blog post) and The Expanse. I think this is the first time it’s been all new-to-me games. This should make for an interesting after-action report.

As mentioned before (and probably demonstrated by the lack of blog posts which has bugged me very much) I really needed a relaxing weekend. If you are coming, please walk up and say “Hi”. At the spring event several people came up and gave me hugs and greetings which really helped lift my spirits.

What should I be on the look out for? Any recommendations for the games I’m going to be playing? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

A look at the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain

So on day 27 of the 2024 Character Creation Challenge I attempted to generate a character for the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game. I had just received the hardback book from a Kickstarter campaign. I had backed it because I loved the anime and the live-action TV series and I always thought that it would be a great universe to run an RPG campaign.

The hardbound book is 270 pages long and is in full color. The ISBN is 979-12-80109-58-3 and was published by Don’t Panic Games. I love how the game company probably got this name from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I had never heard of anything that they had released previously. The game director (writer?) is Michele Paroli. The bulk of the images are pulled directly from the anime.

There is an introduction, six chapters and a glossary. The chapters are 1-Rules (how to play the game), 2- Session (three of them make an episode or single sit-down to play), 3- Characters (how to make one), 4-Hunters in the Solar System (all about the Cowboy Bebop universe), 5- On Stage (kind of a GM section that describes the bounties your players may go after, factions encountered, etc.), 6- Playing the Bebop (the characters seen in the show and episodes put into RPG form).

Here are some photos I took when I first opened up my Kickstarter package. There is a lot of good graphics in this book.

The RPG rules is pretty straight forward for a narrative game (more on that below), even if the description of the rules are not. These pages attempted to tell me the rules of the game. And I did not get them at all. I remember getting major headaches trying to put this together in my head. There is no simple “This is the basics” of the game. I’m of the opinion that I need to understand the basic concept quickly so I can try to talk my friends into playing a game. If I can’t understand the game, I can’t recruit players. I mentioned this in my “Biggest turn-off when checking out a new RPG” blog post. If the RPG is not based off of a common system (D20, GURPS, 2D6, etc.) then give me a simple explanation of the game mechanics. In Cowboy Bebop, your character has traits (a description of a character look or item) and you can try to use them in a session (named after a music style) and you get a d6 dice pool and you have to get a roll higher than 5, 10 or 15 (depending if it’s the 1st, 2nd or 3rd session in the game) and… I tossed the book aside in disgust. I even asked on the RPG.net forums if anyone else had looked in on this game, and only got one response two months later. I didn’t think this was a good sign for the game when thousands of posts are made in a day on this forum.

When I attempted to make a Cowboy Bebop RPG character in January, my goal was to do this Kickstarter review in February. After getting both frustrated and angry (I thought I had wasted my money on the book) I put the book in the “To do” pile and left it there for months. I would see the book and it would remind me that I needed to write my review, but I was still sore about how betrayed the book made me feel. A blog post that says, “Pretty graphics, lots of in-universe details, system sucks to high heaven” is a very boring review. I finally grabbed myself by the collar and said “finish this review because it’s blocking other blog posts that you want to publish”. So I sat down and gathered my photos and looked again at the book. Still feeling frustrated after another attempt to understand the system, I started searching online and came across this video review from The Final Frontiersmen. While he compared some of the game to Star Trek Adventures, he did say one thing that made a light bulb go off in my head. “The key points about this roleplaying game is it’s extremely narrative.” Too much narrative is not my cup of tea. I now understood that I had received my delivered pizza and when I opened up the box, instead of seeing piping hot cheese covering sausage and pepperoni on a layer of marinara sauce, I saw anchovies, artichoke hearts and feta cheese. If you like that type of pizza, or games that is 95%-99% narrative (practically done all by the players) then you may enjoy this game very much. I know there are players who do like these types of games. In the 90’s some of my friends were just digging the Amber diceless RPG that had come out at the time. But when I watched them play, it just seemed like group storytelling where they decided the outcome. Something that was popular in online sim groups, but had zero randomness (and in my mind, zero RPG soul). With how the Cowboy Bebop RPG was stuffed into this box, it was just barely a step above a sim.

For me, I’d prefer an RPG that has a simple system that is easy to pick up that gives the randomness of the dice. A good GM and good players can easily balance the dice of roll playing with the narrative of role playing. Star Trek Adventures and the latest Star Wars system that I experienced at the last SaltCON gave that good balance that encouraged player interaction that included a narrative with the luck of the dice. I remember my favorite Dungeons and Dragons DM describing how a dragon was defeated using combined results from the rolls we made. Other GMs have given the option of having the player describe the way the bad guy was defeated when they made the killing blow.

So now I can put this good looking book in my RPG shelf. And when I want to roleplay in the Cowboy Bebop universe, I’ll use this book for background information, but use a system like Frontier Space or Stars Without Number or a host of other science fiction based RPGs as the system.

One last thought before I close up this review. I’ve taken this as a “Lessons learned” moment when dealing with Kickstarters. The description for this game was a “d6 based system” and I assumed it was more like the Star Wars D6 game I had enjoyed in the past. I will not be making such an assumption again and I blame myself for not digging deeper. After January when I would read a gaming Kickstarter, if the system was not quickly explained to me in a sentence or two, I’ve asked the organizer for more information on the game. The last thing I want to do is open up the pizza box and see a pizza I have no desire to eat.

Have you had a chance to try the Cowboy Beebop RPG? What Kickstarter campaigns are you backing now? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Humor, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 11: Teenagers from Outer Space

Written by TardisCaptain

When I received both a physical and PDF copy of Teenagers from Outer Space from my RPG.net “Secret Satan” (a play on words for Secret Santa) I promised that I would use this game in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. And to keep that promise, I’ll be using it for my Day 11 entry. Looking through the book, it had reminded me that I hadn’t seen any comedic anime in a while so for the next several days I had been watching Project A-KO on one of the streaming services.

This core rule book was published by AnimechaniX (a division of R. Talsorian Games Inc.) that also published several other anime RPGs including Bubblegum Crisis. It is 127 pages long (Including the character sheet in the back) with the character creation rules starting on page 22. The PDF contains links to the different chapters. Thank you for having that set up as it helps out a lot.

OK first is the character going to be Human or some sort of Alien? Well duh, this is Teenagers from Outer Space so this character is going I want this character to be an alien. The types of aliens are Near-Human (perhaps just some cat ears and a tail or something minor), Not-Very Near Human (more weird stuff is on your body, but still looks kinda Human) and Real Weirdie (You got big wings or you’re just a blob). Human or not, what is your character about? So this guy is going to be an Icaanian Alien Prince who has been sent to school on Earth while his royal parents take care of business back home on Icann Prime. Are they OK, fighting to save the kingdom or already dead? He doesn’t know because his handlers are keeping him in the dark on purpose. Since he is unaware, he’s just trying to survive math and see if he can get an invite to the party on Saturday. I’m going to go with Near-Human with with green hair covering some small horns and silver eyes.

Alright, our second step is to come up with the statistics for the character. The stats used in this game is Smarts (i.e. Intelligence), Bod (Strength & Dex basically), Relationship with Parents (called RWP on the character sheet), Luck (self-explanatory), Driving (piloting anything from a car to a flying saucer), Looks (i.e. physical Charisma), Cool (i.e. mental Charisma) and Bonk (i.e. a mental or health stat like hit points). You can’t really die (this is a comedy game after all) but you’ll be shaken up and looking foolish for a turn or two if you Bonk stat drops below zero. I’m instructed to take a D6 and roll it for each stat in order. Heh, the book states if you attempt to re-roll a bad stat die that it may void the warranty of the game and may result in the self-destruction of the game book. I did not re-roll any stat generating rolls since I didn’t want to destroy my gift. Luckily the RAW states that I can then move stats around as I desire as long as no stat goes above a six or below a one. I rolled really good (three sixes) of which I kept two of them in place (Bonk and Luck) and move other points around. I wanted RWP to be low to match the concept of the character and I wanted better looks than what was rolled.

Next (it is listed Advanced Teenagers) is to pick a number of Knacks. These are basically special items that are connected to your stats but you are really good at. Roll a D6 and that tells you how many Knack points you have. I rolled a 3, so I could select three at one point each, one at three points or 2 knacks with one and two points respectively. I could come up with one of my own with the GMs approval or look over the list of suggestions. I’m going to go with Sweet Talk Guardian (he has a couple of chaperones from his parents keeping an eye on him) with one point and Dance with two points (he has to make himself look good at he party).

As an alien, he gets a Strange Alien Power (Humans have their own special table to roll against to gain some kewl stuff). There are five charts with six random powers. I can pick from three different charts and roll to see what the character receives (if any, nothing is an option). The roll results are Teleport, Monster Out (the character can transform into a 50-foot silly-looking rubber monster at will with Super Strength) and Talk to Aliens (the character can talk to anyone, animal or inanimate objects or living people). Weird, but that’s where the dice rolled. I’d probably talk with the GM to see if the Monster Out could be an involuntary thing after a certain event had happened just to make it interesting (say Bonk gets down to a score of 1). Teleport could be a defensive mechanism and Talk to Aliens could be part of his future roll as a leader and ambassador for his people.

The next step is titled “Last Minute Wrap-Ups”. They include selecting three basic traits that define the character (habits, preferences or world view). There was a suggested list, but I could come up with some of my own if so desired. For some reason when my eyes fell upon “Talk to Trees” it clicked. Perhaps there is no Trees on Icann Prime so he is fascinated by their wit and wisdom. How the trees will respond to him could vary from tree to tree, but I thought it would be silly. He is also Trusting and Forgetful. Why those two? Why not. The character gets a weekly allowance/stipend/source of income. To determine this I roll 2D6x5 which resulted in $45. Starting money comes out to rolling one more D6 and using that result to times your weekly stipend (in this case $180). On the character sheet you can see actual TFOS currency that could be cut out and used.

Also in this section is the items your character owns. You automatically get a vehicle of some sort (since most teenagers want mobility the moment they can) but it’s a piece of junk. You can use your starting money to pimp it out, but you still have other things to buy as well. I added a good stereo to the junky saucer (I figured the tunes may distract from the neon green paint job) and picked up a few items.

So Prince Zaxxod of Icann Prime has two chaperones/body guards (they have to take shifts) who try to keep him out of trouble, but he keeps trying to ditch them as third-wheels when he wants to go out on a date or go to a party. Little does he know that rebels from his home planet would love nothing more than to get a hold of him to use as ransom/bait/who knows back on the home world. Prince Zaxxod has not been told about the troubles on his home world (his father believes it would interfere with his studies) and has instructed the two body guards to keep him oblivious. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since this is a game based off of Anime, I like how they used several pages of Anime art to set up a possible story-line. And speaking of references, they used several examples from Star Trek, X-Files, ET, Alien and more through out the book. I thought this helped as well.

There are conversion guidelines to connect this to the other R. Talsorian anime systems. I like how they used the term “Bubblegum 90210” as a possible example.

The system looks pretty simplistic. Roll a D6, add a stat/equipment/trait bonus and try to beat a difficulty number between 1 and 10. (LOL, out-think Mr. Spock is a difficulty 20) I could see this being a silly game to play in a one-shot or at a gaming convention.

Additional Notes:

After the success of finding a message board participating in the challenge in my visitor’s history, I took a second look and found two more participants. Another message board, started by a reader who has posted on several message boards, thank you. An another WordPress blog. I’ve added both to the links section of Character Creation Challenge page.

If you are looking for a new game to use in the challenge, or even play. Troll Lord Games has the Amazing Adventures 5E core rulebook in PDF for 50 cents. I don’t think you can even get a cup of coffee for 50 cents any more. They had put several of their 5E products for sale at this same price. I was able to pick up a few books at a massive discount. I don’t know how long this sale will be going on for so I’d recommend grabbing them as soon as possible. I used this game in the 202x Character Creation Challenge and I’ve been eyeing it for a possible one-shot.

Coming Up Next:

The Spy Game

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Role Playing Games

The Power of Gaming 2023 Edition

Written by TardisCaptain 1 Comment on The Power of Gaming 2023 Edition
Teenagers from Outerspace by AnimechaniX/R Talsorian Games

So in 2020 and 2021 I talked about the power of gaming. Several participants on the RPG.net forums would get involved with a Secret Satan (a play on words of Secret Santa) where we would all send gifts to each other. In 2020 I was thrilled to receive Mutant Crawl Classics and in 2021 I received two 5e books for Ravenloft and The Curse of Strahd campaign. In 2022, I messed up and didn’t get in the system in time. I reached out to the coordinator and was able to help out someone who needed a pick-me up, of which I was glad to help out with.

So when it came time for the 2023 Secret Satan, I made sure to sign up the moment it was posted. I know that the gifts I sent off were received (and loved according to the post my victim made). I even let one of the makers of one of the gifts know that it was well received. She blushed.

Today, my gift from Secret Satan arrived. It was a print-on-demand of the anime comedy roleplaying game, Teenagers from Outerspace. I also received an email that there was a PDF copy waiting for me at DrivethruRPG. My RPG playing daughter and I have already flipped through the rulebook. It reminds me a lot of some of the comedic anime series that I had seen in the past such as Louie the Rune Soldier, Ranma 1/2 or Project A-Ko. This game is published by AnimechaniX, which is a sub-division of R. Talsorian Games. This is the same company that released the Bubblegum Crisis RPG that I had used in past Character Creation Challenges.

I am planning to use this game in the 2024 Character Creation Challenge. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to play it. But I wonder if I’ll be inspired to try to run a one-shot for SaltCON.

Have you played Teenagers from Outerspace? Is there a comedy anime that would be perfect for this RPG? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 28: Bubblegum Crisis

Written by TardisCaptain

The same friend who gifted me The Men-in-Black RPG also gifted me Bubblegum Crisis MegaTokyo 2033-The Roleplaying Game (thank you Robert). This is based off of the Bubblegum Crisis anime. I was hoping to watch some episodes before I created a character, but unfortunately my January schedule has been quite busy. I’ve heard of this series, but I have not had a chance to enjoy it yet. I think it may be right up my alley as I’ve enjoyed other Anime like Akira, Cowboy Bebop and The Dirty Pair. Bubblegum Crisis is a cyberpunk game set in Tokyo years after it had been destroyed in a massive earthquake. A new city has been built over the old one. This lead to a tale of two cities with different standards of living between the two. Megacorporations (who else) built robots called Boomers to help mankind that over time, went crazy and started killing people. The AD Police and a group of vigilantes, called the Knight Sabers, are trying to fight off this threat to humanity.

Since I was using this system for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge, I opened up the book and looked at the first section. There is a brief introduction to the series and your basic description for first time players. Apparently this game is based on the Fusion System combining parts of Champions and Cyberpunk rules. Luckily on page 22 there is a lifepath generation with different steps listed. So let’s get started.

First step in the lifepath is to roll a d10 to select your personality. A roll of 8 resulted in “sneaky and deceptive”. Oh I like this character already. Next d10 roll for who he values the most came up with 9, a “personal hero”. Hmm? Who? I’m not familiar enough with the characters of the show to select one of them. Now there is a second roll on a different table for what you value the most and I rolled a 2. This gave me the result of “honor”. A sneaky and deceptive person who values honor? Well we’ve seen some pretty honorable bad guys in different anime series. The worldview is the last roll in step one and a roll of 10 gives me “people are scum and should be wiped out”, um… OK.

Second step is for childhood and early development. The family status is first and a roll of 8 says that this character came from a “well to do” family. He went to good schools and wore good clothes. Now we come to the first fork in the road. Was there any childhood traumas? Rolled a 4 which came up as negative. So we skip the childhood events and proceed to step three.

The previously mentioned step three deals with the life events after childhood. Sticking with the d10 you discover your age. Rolled a 2 and added it to 16 to make the character the age of 18. For each year above the age of 16 you roll against a life event, so two rolls for this character. This roll is a d6 which came up as 3 for the first year, roll on the friends and enemies chart. Back to the d10 we rolled a 9 which came up as An old enemy is now a friend (choose which one). OK who? Perhaps this could be the personal hero I rolled above? For the second year the d6 gave us a 6, nothing happened that year. Moving on to step four.

The character’s current situation is step four and requires a d10 roll. The 8 gave us “your involved in craft-work or construction.” Well at the age of 18 he would be just starting some sort of career. Artist or builder? With his “people are scum” worldview I don’t think he’d be a builder. So perhaps he is the angsty artist. Yea, emo boy angry with the world wants to be a singer. A young anime Morrissey who hated another singer and now they work together. Were the hell is this character going? The last item in step four is to determine the current outlook on life. Oh this should be good. A roll of 6 states “I crave more romance and passion”????? Actually I probably would have begged the GM to let me select one of the other options like “my life is crazy and out of control”. Yea let’s go with that. And that finalizes the lifepath.

The next page brought us to the stat generation. The book described the range for the stats (zero or less all the way to ten and above) with titles for each level (Challenged, Competent, Exceptional, etc.) with the average joes falling in the 1-4 range and heroic type characters averaging a score of 7. You have primary stats and figured stats. The primary stats are purchased with a number of points. Afterwards the figured stats are generated using mathematical formulas. The number of starting stat points are determined by the GM by what type of game they want to run. They range from 3 points per stat for a competent (realistic) style game to godlike cosmic with 8 points per stat. Lacking a GM I asked one of the voices in my head and he said to go with Heroic style (5 points per stat). With ten primary stats this character has 50 stat points to spend. Our primary stats are Intelligence, Willpower (determination stuff), Personality (think charisma), Technique, Reflexes (response stuff), Dexterity (balance stuff), Constitution (health stuff), Strength, Body (toughness stuff) and Movement. I tried to differentiate between similar sounding stats. I spent my 50 points, generated my figured stats and moved on.

Now we have the Campaign Options. This is a number of “campaign points” that you get to apply to your character to give them skills, money and other items. This is based upon the scale listed above (realistic to godlike cosmic). Since we went with Heroic we get 50 campaign points.

With the skills the first thing the game gives you is a free set that everybody knows. Thank you. This is something that I thought should be a lot more common in games. If I live in a city, I’m going to know things to survive/function in that city. So the everyman skills start with a level of 2. I can add to the level if I desire. The general skills have to be purchased with campaign points at a 1 to 1 cost. I selected the skills I thought my character would have, but did not spend all of my campaign points as I had other items to purchase such as talents. The talents cost 3 campaign points per item. These seem to be like feats in other roleplaying games. I selected a series of talents that I thought would fit the character. There are also perks and privileges (such as membership, renown, wealth) and complications (issues with your character that earn you campaign points if I wanted to try to min/max anything.

Now it says the character is done, but I don’t have any equipment yet. So I finally tracked down the interesting equipment section. Lot’s of info about some of the equipment in the show but I don’t know if my character is a person in a suit. I know they are not driving a mech. An entertainer is listed in one of the profiles but nothing about the equipment they would have. The money thing was based on the Yen, but I’m not certain how much I started with or how my wealth score came into effect. This is probably something I would talk over with a real GM (not just one of the voices in my head) and see if we could clarify stuff. So I’m going to stop the character creation now and scan the sheet for the website.

Oh, before I do that, the character’s name is Taxun. If I could find a photo of a young Morrissey I’d use that. If this was an actual Cyberpunk game, he’d be a rockerboy.

Afterthoughts:

The use of the lifepath in this game was weird, but I liked it. It didn’t feel forced like I had experienced in other character creation systems. I could see how the creative juices had to flow to make it work all together with only one minor adjustment.

Thank you for putting each section of the character creation process with clearly numbered steps. Also a thank you to the writers for breaking down the character sheet in the character creation process. I really like it when core rules present this for new players.

Breaking down what each stat score represented helped with the character creation process. I could also see this being used when trying to homebrew something for this game.

Continuously dipping into the optional rules when they were not on the character sheet was a little distracting. The die rolls for actual play could be 1d10 or 3d6 as per the GM. I think the game should have decided on one and stuck with it.

The different styles of campaigns was also interesting. It would take a lot of thought by GM and players at/before session zero so that they are all on the same page.

This game suffers from a lack of “now equip” your character which kinda dissapointed me considering how well developed the first part of the character creation process was. I only had to use one bookmark for the game instead of multiple bookmarks and lots of page flipping.

The system seemed pretty straight forward (to complete a task, roll a die, add your stat and skill level and any modifiers and beat a target number). I wonder how the game plays at the table. While I’d like to try this game once, I don’t know anyone who is playing this or any anime style games right now. So I think my involvement will end with this character.

I am really interested in watching the series now to see if my character ideas would have changed.

Additional Notes:

The last days are upon us for the challenge. Will you be able to cross the finish line?

Coming Up Next:

Technoir

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