All the news you can use (if you have access to a time machine)!

November 6th, 2007 by Brack

More news from the pages of UK anime/manga mag Manga Mania circa August 1993.

  • Manga Video were releasing RG Veda, The Legend of Arislan (sic), Crying Freeman and Doomed Megalopolis.
  • Western Connection (remember them?) were releasing The Sensualist
  • Dark Horse Comics were releasing Adam Warren’s Bubblegum Crisis “manga”. Not coincidentally Dark Horse International were the publishers of Manga Mania at this time.
  • Trish Ledoux was recommending the Japanese release of the complete LaserDisc boxset of Ranma 1/2 while simultaneously dissing the complete Minky Momo and Mospeda boxes.
  • She also announced Viz’s release of the Ranma OAVs, Bandai’s Japanese release of the second Dominion Tank Police OAV series and the english language release of Johji Manabe’s Outlanders by Dark Image Entertainment. Manabe was definitely a visible name in US manga releases in the nineties, but seems to have dropped off the radar today. Dark Image Entertainment isn’t a name I’m familiar with, according to ANN they were part of LA Hero/US Renditions, all of which are now defunct.
  • Out in Japan around this time were (all names from the magazine):
Crimson Wolf
Free Kick Toward Tomorrow 13
Ushio and Tora OAV Vol. 8
Erotic Beast High School Vol. 4
KO Century Three Beastketeers 2 Vol. 2
Ambassador Magma Vol. 1
Sleepless Oedo!
Tale of A Narrative Fantasy Ellcia Vol. 4
Machine God Corps Vol. 4

  • And in the US:
Harmageddon (US Manga Corps)
Super Deformed Double Feature (AnimEigo)
Photon Space Sailer Starlight Odin~! (US Manga Corps)
Ambassador Magma Vol. 2 (LA Hero/Dark Image Entertainment) - was this really getting released in the US before Japan???
The Guyver Vol. 5 (LA Hero/US Renditions)
Devilman Vol. 2 (LA Hero/Dark Image Entertainment)
MADOX-01/Riding Bean (AnimEigo)
Urusei Yatsura OAV Vol. 5 (AnimEigo)
Robot Carnival LD (???)

Not quite as interesting news this time, it’s sort of settled into just being a list of release dates. The Japanese releases are quite interesting to see, as is the distinctly different landscape in the US Market.

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CIOASIISAG Part X - Conan RPG

November 5th, 2007 by Brack

And now I’m getting games I played in that first gaming group, but didn’t own. So these posts will be noticably shorter.

We played this once and all I recall was it involved the most massive dungeon map I can recall seeing, being as it was drawn on sheets of chip paper (we gamed on Sundays in the restaurant of the Fish and Chip shop my friend’s parents owned - “The Crispy Cod”). Ah the nostalgia of that chip shop smell, R-Type arcade machine, playing imported PC-engine games and chip shop buns filled with nice and spicey nik naks and/or refreshers fizzy sweets!

Posted in Cut It Open And See If It Swallowed Any Gems, Role-playing Games | Tags: , | No Comments »

THE SKULL MAN

November 4th, 2007 by Brack

And so I play catch up on 2007 TV anime series that were good.

I wrote about episode one back in May, and what I wrote there bore out well for the entire show. The Fantomas comparison fades as the story progresses, and it slowly turns into a story more typical of the genre it has it’s origins in. Jun Shibata, who I mentioned in the first article, did three episodes worth of animation direction and all supported the idea that it was a good move to get away from ufotable. The acting in episode 6 was particularly strong and the action in the climactic thirteenth episode did not disappoint. It’s probably my second favourite BONES produced show after Ouran Host Club, solid throughout in the animation stakes and a really good story.

Yes, the story composed by Yutaka Izubuchi (Rahxephon) is well constructed and is true to Ishinomori’s themes, despite being structured differently from either of the previous two interpretations of the concept. I’m sure there’s easter eggs all the way through for people more familiar with Ishinomori’s work, but the final one that ties Skull Man to Cyborg 009 is a doozy, and I wonder if they have half an idea to do a reinterpretation of that series too. I’m really thinking I should go back to Rahxephon, based on how much I like Izubuchi’s story here. The first couple of episodes turned me off the series when I came to it, however I did like the random mid series episode I caught a couple years later. Though I think I may have lucked out there and it was Mitsuo Ito’s episode that I saw.

Anyway, next on my list to catch up on is Mononoke.

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CIOASIISAG Part 9 - Marvel Super Heroes

November 3rd, 2007 by Brack

These are probably the RPGs I’ve run the most, and written the most material for a campaign for. Which is astounding considering how poor the actual rules are.

Obviously the pull of these games to me was the Marvel license. I’d liked Marvel comics as kid, starting with a Spidey/Ghost Rider UK reprint as a treat as a kid after having to go to London for various tests (the other treat being a Battle Of The Planets transfer kit). Then various second comics picked up in school fairs/jumble sales and the occasional present from my grandmother. Finally there was the UK printing of Secret Wars, Secret Wars II and Spider-Man and ZOIDS.

I kind of forgot about them when I went to secondary school, until WH Smith’s started getting US Marvel comics in. Which coincided with when I got into RPGs. So TSR’s licensed Marvel RPG was a natural draw.

Now the rules were based around this colour coded chart. You rolled percentile dice, the cross referenced the roll on the chart against the value of the statistic you were using. They used this system on various other non-D&D games that TSR released at the time. One of the Gamma World editions used it as did their Conan RPG and Star Frontiers. Possibly the Indiana Jones RPG too. I don’t think Top Secret/SI did, but I could be wrong. I’ll look it up when I get to that one.

Some people liked this system, but I found it a pain. I dislike games with unnecessary work, and cross referencing two numbers on a chart definitely count as too much work. But I still kept hacking away, trying to get a decent campaign going, because I had such Marvel love. And this really was a game for Marvel lovers.

It was essentially OHOTMU the RPG, particularly the Advanced version and it’s supplements. Most of it’s supplements were vast depositories of statistics for Marvel characters both prominent and obscure. And on top of that there were the Gamers Guide To The Marvel Universe books that at the time were arguably better than the information provided by Marvel at the time. At one point I had all but 5 products published in this line (I’ve since disposed of a lot of that material via eBay) and here’s the products I’d recommend if you were interested in playing:

Marvel Advanced Set - The core rule book. The rules aren’t particularly clear and you’ll end up winging a lot of it. Plus there’s not that much scope for character variety.
Ultimate Powers Book - An expanded character creation book. You’ll end up rewriting the character type table, as frankly it’s barking mad, but the range of powers and the rules to use them are expansive.
Realms Of Magic - This was for the Basic set, but the magic rules in the Advanced are, if anything, even worse than the Basic’s. This supplement completely replaces the magic rules and makes them workable.
The MT Modules - This was a 3 part time travel themed campaign by Ray Winninger. A great adventure with a superb meta-gaming climax.
The MX Modules - This was a 4 part campaign based on The Nightmares Of Futures Past story from the X-Men. It’s clever trick is to set the adventure in your hometown. Of course this trick works better when you are in America. I had to pretend Spalding was in Massachusetts when I ran it.
Deluxe City Campaign - This is the only supplement that actually gets around to telling you how to run your own campaign. I think TSR must have thought you were only going to play their published supplements.

Most of these can be downloaded in PDF form for free at MarvelRPG.net

It should be said a lot of my criticisms of the game are in hindsight, back when I started playing I was a lot less critical of game mechanics and more interested in settings. But I do think those flaws held me back in every getting a campaign really off the ground in my first gaming group. I’ll talk about my long-term Marvel campaign when I get around to talking about the SAGA rules Marvel RPG, but here’s some teenage brain spill about the characters we created at secondary school.

AXE-MAN - This was the first character I created using the Basic set. His power was that his hand turned into an Axe. I was 13, this seemed cool to me then. I believe he was a mutant and that his background was that he had been asked to join the X-Men but was thrown out for being too cool.
TWISTED SOULS - This was the superhero team that my players in my first group came up with they were:

MR MYSTERY - a robotic Rorschach clone, with Hank Pym powers
ACE OF SPADES - a mystic swordsman
TWISTER - a mutant with wind based powers
and there was a Captain Marvel-type whose name I forget. The twist was that he was a cat who turned into a human superhero.

THE WRESTLER - a teleporting wrestler
MEK-A-NEK - a blatent copy of the He-Man character
ALIEN SKATER - The HR Giger creation. BUT ON A SKATEBOARD!

Posted in Cut It Open And See If It Swallowed Any Gems, Role-playing Games | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

CHIMPY WEEK

November 2nd, 2007 by Brack

In case you were unawares, Chimpy Week started yesterday. To celebrate here’s a Topps Wacky Package mocking a brand I am only aware of from adverts in X-Men comics in the late 80s.

Image from http://www.wackypackages.org

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