BESM D20 Revised Edition Core Role-Playing Game

Rating:
Summary: Affordable, fun rules for anime gaming
Review: If you've ever wanted to turn your D&D game into something more like Vampire Hunter D or Lodoss War, this is the best way to do it.

BESM is the leading anime RPG, and the d20 edition does a good job of melding the two rulesets. This "Stingy Gamer Edition" gives you the rules themselves, and not much else. It's perfect for folks who want to add the rules to their own game, but either don't want to spend money for the full rulebook, or can't stand trying to read the BESM d20 SRD on their screen.

There are some good tips and ideas tucked in here, which don't find their way into the SRD. Things about anime cliches, setting ideas, and tips on how to run the game smoothly. Also included in the revised version (which updates the rules for D&D 3.5) are rules on using the classic D&D classes with BESM d20, as well as the d20 Modern Basic & Advance classes.

If you want to add some anime flair to your d20 games, but don't want to shell out $30 for the hardback, this Stingy Gamer Edition is right up your alley.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty fun
Review: This is all you need for BESM d20 hands down. The hardcover is an expensive luxury I can only justify for fans of GoO's merchadise and hard core GMs who love to read every take on the rules.

The whole d20 thing on this game is kind of a trojan horse. What they've really done here is present actual BESM (a point based, leveless, roll-low, tri-stat rpg) and coerced it into the d20 layout (6 stat, levels, skills, feats, hit die, AC, roll-high, etc.). The core of the system remains the Attribute/Character Point System, which practically circumvents feats and Special Class abilities (though feats are still in there).

All of the classes, instead of being unique, are just templates to progression in the Attribute system. There's even a "classless" class (if that makes any sense) which gains nothing but character points each level which the player is allowed to spend as they wish (within the confines of the GM's campaign).

Combat is an odd beast in this system, but at the same time, is a breath of fresh air to d20. The Attack of Opportunity is gone (yay!) and distances have been generalized to "melee, short, medium, and long", eliminating the need to manage combat on a grid (in fact the script more than once hints that it shouldn't be done that way). AC uses the variant "defense roll" rule from d20's DMG, so all AC values are -10 from the typical d20 values. Weapon proficiency has been nicely specialized with the addition of combat skills which add modifiers to the attack or damage rolls with different weapons and different types of defenses.

Equipment has been made joyously easy to manage. All equipment of note (weapons, vehicles, armor) is an Attribute (Personal Gear), paid for with character points. Magic Items or extremely powerful items are another Attribute (Item of Power). All mundane items are assumed to be trivial for a PC to get, (cell phones, back packs, food, etc.) unless the GM decides otherwise. I hated equipment management the most in D&D and d20 especially when creating characters above 1st level!

While I'll say that this was written with converting typical d20 players to BESM, rather than for traditional BESM fans, the system accomidates d20's magic system adequately through the Dynamic Sorcery attribute, which allows all the d20 spells to be used in an anime campaign. This is sure to make Slayers and Lodoss War RPG fans happy as the GM had to often come up with the magic system to be used in a campaign with regular BESM.

It's not without it's quirky flaws here and there however. Ultimately BESM suffers from being a little too general and parts of the system will almost always have to be cut off or dis-allowed in a campaign, in fact the text encourges this. There's also some oddities in Attribute/Class concepts. The Samurai class gains a rank in the Speed attribute at level 2. This skill helps in combat, which I can certainly understand; Samurai in Rurouni Kenshin and other anime are portrayed as having super human speed with their swords. However, the attribute is described as also allowing a character to travel at speeds up to 50 mph (!) at rank 1. Despite all his incredible speed I can't imagine Kenshin traveling at a whopping 50 mph for more than a few steps. Things like this make me wonder about what other peculiarities are lurking in the system. It's easily house ruled, the GM's the master after all, but it would have been nice to see some footnotes about this, or more discussion on how an attribute really works for a particular class.

All and all, a very fun system, that's certainly more zany than balanced, and has a heavy focus on role-play, much more so than core d20. It's not much of a supplement to a currently running d20 campaign, as the system is its own beast, who's d20 compatibility is fairly one way. Great fun though, with the right GM.