OVA Tabletop RPG

[Logicalmob]

http://www.wiseturtle.com/products.html

I discovered it about a month ago, and it looks deliciously simple....maybe a bit too simple.  ??? Not sure how it'd fare in an extended campaign, but it looks good for a one-shot at least. I have a world setting I've been working on (alternate-history Earth, circa 1960, where people start manifesting psychic abilities), and I'm toying with the idea of testing them both out at Fanime.

Has anyone here had any experience with it?

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

A lot of RPGs are simple now a days.
4e D&D for example.

[Stormfalcon]

Ignoring the attempt to drag the D&D4 debate into this thread, OVA is definitely on the rules-light side of things and brings some interesting mechanics and chargen ideas to the table.  Some folks liken it to BESM 1st edition in terms of how light it is, but not quite as unbalanced.  You don't have set stats such as Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, etc. like other games.  Instead, you select your various abilities and the levels at which they're set, and balance them against various weaknesses.  How they're balanced is set by the GM at the beginning of the campaign, whether the levels have to be an exact match, or within a certain margin of each other, or having a power level ceiling set, or a few other ways.  Action resolution is determined by rolling a number of dice and taking the highest die rolled.  That number starts at two, and you add more dice if you have an appropriate ability or conditions are in your favor, and subtract when a weakness becomes involved or conditions are against you.  If you roll two or more dice with the same number (say a pair of fives or a trio of fours), then they get added together.  Compare that against the task difficulty rating set by the GM and there you have it.

[neko ewen]

Stormfalcon gave a pretty good summary. It's not really my cup of tea (my tastes now lean towards more structures RPGs), but what I always tell people is that OVA is what BESM 1e tried to be and never quite pulled off. It's very much the rules-light, "system doesn't matter" approach of BESM (so you want a group that really brings it for role-playing), but the base rules are put together a little better IMHO. I did use it for an extended campaign, but my players pretty much broke the system, and if I used it again it would be more for shorter stuff.

Incidentally, I wound up talking to Clay the other day on AIM, and he's working on a revised version of OVA, though it's taking time to get the art and such sorted out.