mroberon1972
First Post
Review / first look at the book BESM d20.
First, let me say that I do not “review” d20 products very often, if ever. The reasons for this are multiple, but all stem from the fact that if someone took months of their life to create something, and then paid to publish it, tearing it apart would be the emotional equivalent of rubbing salt in the wound. I just can’t stand to kick a dog when he’s down. Another good reason is that in almost every case, you can look through the book before buying it. Why review something everyone can preview for free in any gaming shop?
That being said, I can now tell you this is not a review. A review takes play-testing, complete reading of every page of the book, and the understanding (or lack thereof) of the material presented (or lack thereof, again). This is more of a first impression / preview.
I’m going to separate this into three groups: Crunchy bits, Artwork, and Style / Feel.
Crunchy:
Lets be honest here, this book is 90% crunch, if not more. It would be easier to talk about what isn’t crunch. The overall basis of the rules supplied is to create a point based system for character creation that still matches the d20 system faithfully. While there has been NO play-testing done by myself (see above), I must say everything seems terribly clear and well thought out. It covers its own rules for the creation of characters, covering ability scores, races, classes (mecha pilot, anyone?), special abilities (called attributes), skills, feats (including saying which ones DO NOT fit in BESM), and defects (better known as “fun ways to screw over your players in exchange for those extra few points they need”). It also has modified rules for combat (streamlined it seems) that better fit the overall “anime” genre. They even had room to include a basic (about 10 pages) equipment guide.
They also cover all of the player’s handbook basic races and classes, breaking them down for the point based system and explaining how and why they came up with their figures. Nearly any d20 published monster or item can be used with it, and don’t need any real changes to do so. It would also seem that characters created with BESM “should” be compatible with normal d20 systems (Don’t you dare misquote me on that later! I said SHOULD!).
I won’t go into this any further right now, since you will get to see the full rule set on July 10th anyway. They are releasing it all on their website as OGL documents. Want it sooner? Buy the book…
Artwork:
Remember when I said it would be easier to talk about the parts that were not crunch? That would be the art. First, let me say that the art is anime based (Please tell me that you guessed this already…), and ranges from good to excellent quality. I should also mention that there is WHOLE BLINKIN’ LOT of it in the book. I found it hard to crack the book anywhere that didn’t have some poor anime artists lifeblood spilt all over the page. Nuff said…
Overall the style of the artwork covered the anime spectrum (Yes, there is more than one style of anime art…), from hard lines to soft cell (that’s a joke, son…). I didn’t see any ultra cute “kawaii” art, although some came close... I have to say that there just was not too much to complain about. On a side note, I think I now know why the book was $30 US: The artwork must have cost a bleedin’ fortune!
Style / Feel:
What can I say? The book is better laid out than most of the hardbacks on my shelf. I could find no errors in spelling or grammar, nor any text that trails off into oblivion. None of the art was damaged. No smudges. Heck, I was looking for flaws and couldn’t find them. I’m not saying there are none, but my eye didn’t see it.
The font was easy to read, and sized as small as they dared. Charts were in nicely shaded blocks, as were examples and notes added in for edification.
It had an index of every term I could think of in the back. It was crunched into three pages of the smallest font they could find, but it had EVERYTHING! Other publishers should take a page from these guys (and probably will, with their OGL…).
While this book may not be everyone’s cup-o-tea, I have to say that it was refreshingly worth the price just to finally see a quality product hit the shelf without three blue-jillion errors listed throughout it (I’m gonna eat these words… I can just FEEL it…). It should also be observed that this is not an ANIME game, it’s a point based system for d20 that can be USED for anime!
Final opinion: Glad I bought it.
Later,
Mr. Oberon
First, let me say that I do not “review” d20 products very often, if ever. The reasons for this are multiple, but all stem from the fact that if someone took months of their life to create something, and then paid to publish it, tearing it apart would be the emotional equivalent of rubbing salt in the wound. I just can’t stand to kick a dog when he’s down. Another good reason is that in almost every case, you can look through the book before buying it. Why review something everyone can preview for free in any gaming shop?
That being said, I can now tell you this is not a review. A review takes play-testing, complete reading of every page of the book, and the understanding (or lack thereof) of the material presented (or lack thereof, again). This is more of a first impression / preview.
I’m going to separate this into three groups: Crunchy bits, Artwork, and Style / Feel.
Crunchy:
Lets be honest here, this book is 90% crunch, if not more. It would be easier to talk about what isn’t crunch. The overall basis of the rules supplied is to create a point based system for character creation that still matches the d20 system faithfully. While there has been NO play-testing done by myself (see above), I must say everything seems terribly clear and well thought out. It covers its own rules for the creation of characters, covering ability scores, races, classes (mecha pilot, anyone?), special abilities (called attributes), skills, feats (including saying which ones DO NOT fit in BESM), and defects (better known as “fun ways to screw over your players in exchange for those extra few points they need”). It also has modified rules for combat (streamlined it seems) that better fit the overall “anime” genre. They even had room to include a basic (about 10 pages) equipment guide.
They also cover all of the player’s handbook basic races and classes, breaking them down for the point based system and explaining how and why they came up with their figures. Nearly any d20 published monster or item can be used with it, and don’t need any real changes to do so. It would also seem that characters created with BESM “should” be compatible with normal d20 systems (Don’t you dare misquote me on that later! I said SHOULD!).
I won’t go into this any further right now, since you will get to see the full rule set on July 10th anyway. They are releasing it all on their website as OGL documents. Want it sooner? Buy the book…
Artwork:
Remember when I said it would be easier to talk about the parts that were not crunch? That would be the art. First, let me say that the art is anime based (Please tell me that you guessed this already…), and ranges from good to excellent quality. I should also mention that there is WHOLE BLINKIN’ LOT of it in the book. I found it hard to crack the book anywhere that didn’t have some poor anime artists lifeblood spilt all over the page. Nuff said…
Overall the style of the artwork covered the anime spectrum (Yes, there is more than one style of anime art…), from hard lines to soft cell (that’s a joke, son…). I didn’t see any ultra cute “kawaii” art, although some came close... I have to say that there just was not too much to complain about. On a side note, I think I now know why the book was $30 US: The artwork must have cost a bleedin’ fortune!
Style / Feel:
What can I say? The book is better laid out than most of the hardbacks on my shelf. I could find no errors in spelling or grammar, nor any text that trails off into oblivion. None of the art was damaged. No smudges. Heck, I was looking for flaws and couldn’t find them. I’m not saying there are none, but my eye didn’t see it.
The font was easy to read, and sized as small as they dared. Charts were in nicely shaded blocks, as were examples and notes added in for edification.
It had an index of every term I could think of in the back. It was crunched into three pages of the smallest font they could find, but it had EVERYTHING! Other publishers should take a page from these guys (and probably will, with their OGL…).
While this book may not be everyone’s cup-o-tea, I have to say that it was refreshingly worth the price just to finally see a quality product hit the shelf without three blue-jillion errors listed throughout it (I’m gonna eat these words… I can just FEEL it…). It should also be observed that this is not an ANIME game, it’s a point based system for d20 that can be USED for anime!
Final opinion: Glad I bought it.
Later,
Mr. Oberon
