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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Teflon Billy" data-source="post: 2011314" data-attributes="member: 264">The Slayers is a D20 treatment of a (and I quote) “an exceptionally popular anime series that has garnered much critical acclaim from anime and role-playing fans everywhere” which certainly sounds auspicious, but as I started reading the book, I was unsure.The opening sidebar, “designers notes” set off all manner of warning bells in my head; from the comment that what sets The Slayers apart from a normal old D&D min/max, munchkin, Monty-Haul game is that the bad guys sometimes attack the players first, to references to the game being little more than a High Powered, blow-‘em-up-let-Prince-Phil(?)-sort-‘em-out type of game.It continued in the opening paragraphs of the character creation section where it is stated that basing your characters on tired clichés is desirable.The aforementioned warning bells were threatening to deafen me at this point.The short section entitled Ha Ha! How to make The Funny led me to visions of a gaming group that would make me kill myself; a table  filled with players attempting visual, slapstick humour, stupid puns, and unlikely combinations of stereotypes in an effort to “out-funny” one another. I’m shuddering still.But as I sit down at the keyboard, I realize something: none of the above—none of it—is fair comment. Every criticism levelled above comes directly out of the fact that most anime is not to my taste. But a review should not be about what I think of most anime…It should be about how well this product modelled its source material. And on this count, I think it did pretty well.Is it overpowered? Yes and no. It is very high powered compared to regular D&D, but from what I’ve read in the Episode Guide (included in the product) it would almost have to be to accurately model the source material. That is, it’s not “overpowered” for the anime it aims to represent. Most of the new races presented do not follow the standard D20 stat rules, but rather just add up positives and negatives until they balance at zero.  So a Bull Beastman with a STR bonus of +6 and a CON bonus of +2 finds this balanced by his -4 to CHA and -4 to INT. While this all evens out to Zero, the standard D&D rules take pains to point out that INT and CHA are categorically not of equivalent utility to  STR and CON (and I find it hard to accept that, in a setting that is as combat-driven as the Episode Guide would lead me to believe The Slayers is, that it would be any less the case). The magic system presented is a really interesting take. Having not seen the anime in question, I can’t say if it fairly models it’s source material, but from what I’ve seen it is very different from stock D&D magic, while still being very playable, intuitive and…”neat” for want of a better word. PC’s can launch spells as often as they like until they are too tired to continue (and the Drain mechanic presented handles this really well I think. On some level it reminds me of the Mutants and Masterminds Damage Save mechanic, which I love).Unlike stock D&D magic, the PC’s have many more defensive options to exercise, and these come across really well. Defensive Barriers which protect the creator as much as they limit his own attacks are neat. Opposites Detract and Fight Fireball with Fireball are nice, simple rulesets akin to standard counterspelling, but which allow for a lot more creativity (and is something I might implement in my own game should I ever start over fresh).The Psychological Warfare rules presented are really appropriate from what I’ve seen of anime. I’ve seen “Fear caused by Intimidation” rules before, I’ve seen “Confusion caused by Fast Talk” rules before, but I have literally never come across rules for “Fainting caused by Embarrassment” rules before. If memory serves, this is when a big Tear appears at the side of the character’s face (though my anime-fu may be weak in this instance)They certainly seem to have written up a lot of the characters from the series, which should be of great value to those more familiar with the source material than me. The “fluff” bits are very extensive, which I think is always nice.In the final analysis, I think this is a decently turned-out anime RPG from a publisher that is rightly renowned for Anime RPG’s. Are there flaws? A few, but certainly not anything that would “wreck” the game for any but the most anal-retentive rules hounds. The new magic system was cool and appropriate to the genre and what new rules were in place (particularly Psychological Warfare) were interesting.I was a little put off by the constant refrain  to “keep it shallow”, and the near-constant references to restaurants and eating were baffling to me, but again this likely has more to do with my unfamiliarity with the anime in question and the fact that I am an old grump more than any real flaw on the part of the authors.I think I might actually try and track down the Cartoons and give them a look. The book’s writing style actually dragged me in as I read it. It is written in a very “fun” style and the authors seemed to really both enjoy the source material and the actual writing of their supplement.</blockquote>

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