What do you think?
Anima: Beyond Fantasy
Explore the world of Gaia, meet some of its most famous inhabitants, and be introduced to three unique, original, and exciting games each set beyond fantasy in the world of Anima! Conceived as a combination of Japanese and Western art, myth, and styles of play, Anima is a series of games that offer innovative rules and background that incorporate the most striking elements of both styles. Several great Japanese illustrators, whose work has appeared in well-known videogames and animated series, have collaborated on the project together with European authors. The result is a refreshing visual blend that will please even the most discriminating gamer.
315 pages, Hardcover
First published September 29, 2008
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July 12, 2016
Before I read Anima: Beyond Fantasy I had heard two things about it--that the system was overly complicated and the setting is full of JRPG tropes. Both of those are absolutely true, and if that's all you need to know you can skip the specifics below. Oh, I suppose I also knew that it was originally in Spanish and had been translated, but other than some editing errors here and there and a strange insistence on capitalizing "the" in the title of organizations because that's what Spanish does with the definite article, that doesn't have as much influence as the first two tidbits.
But there's three hundred pages in here and much more than just two ideas, so here's the full breakdown.
Setting
Long ago, the messiah, called the Christ, was crucified, sold out by his renegade disciple Iscariot in exchange for thirty coins. After his death, his other disciples were able to conquer the ancient empire and divide it into sub-kingdoms, using the Church to provide a unifying factor for humanity. Despite the descendant of Iscariot's attempt to overthrow the Sacred Holy Empire of Abel founded by the messiah's disciples, the Church and its Holy Inquisition kept humanity safe from supernatural creatures and monsters that prowl in the night for centuries until the most recent emperor, whose madness compelled his overthrow. His son was ineligible for the throne after the emperor ordered his son to kill him as part of his abdication, so a young woman was placed on the throne and the empire fell into infighting. The old leader of the Church had caused a near-schism with her policies, and now the Sacred Holy Empire stands on the brink of war. Several provinces have declared open rebellion, others are considering it, and what's more, the old supernatural creatures are making their return. Events in Gaia are coming to a head, standing on a knife-point, and anything could tip the balance.
Okay, now replace "the messiah" with "the clone-child created as a way of unifying humanity against its enemies," "renegade disciple" with "secret agent contracted by the Imperium, the ancient conspiracy who rule the world from their floating sky fortress Jormungandr," and "coins" with "black metal nanocrystal storage media containing ancient secrets of science and sorcery."
The whole setting is like this. It's conspiracies and secrets all the way down. See, humanity used to share the world with many other supernatural species, leading to several wars and culminating in the War of God, when Rah, descendant of Iscariot, activated an ancient machine built with knowledge from the Imperium's black metal discs that eliminated magic over a giant area. In response, the Imperium, along with its counterparts the Technocracy, secret conspiracy of the Sylvain, and the Illuminati, secret conspiracy of the Duk'zarist, decided to divide the world into three parts. Humanity would get the magic-depleted part and the supernatural creatures would withdraw to the other worlds. And so the Sylvain, the Duk'zarist, the Damiah, the D'Anjayni, the Jayan, the dragons, the elementals, and everything else vanished from human history, with those who did not leave burned out by the Inquisition. Except for those saved by the Knights of Tol Rauko, a secret order of the Sacred Holy Empire of Abel dedicated to preserving the existence of the supernatural.
It's pretty much Xenogears, the setting. There's the Church as an instrument of control. There's ancient technology from a lost empire. There's the ancient organization ruling the world from its secret flying citadel. Also, the Imperium used to rule the world through the "auspice," a secret implant placed in all those in positions of power which allowed the Imperium to influence their actions (aka, the Limiters), calls surface-dwellers "sheep" (aka, -Lambs-), and the leader of the Imperium's secret plan is to kill God. So.
No giant robots, though. At least not in the corebook.
This does provide a lot of material for the GM to work with and an interesting built-in plot of uncovering all the secret masters behind world events, but it also means that there are secret masters behind world events that the players will basically never be powerful enough to defeat. This isn't like Vampire, where diablerie provides a route to quick and easy power at a cost. The powerful organizations in Anima have abilities that break the rules, unstoppable assassin squads, the ability to destroy cities or nations--the text flat-out says that the Imperium could conquer the world in hours if they had to--superlative information-gathering powers, and basically every other capability that would annoy players who want to have some impact on the world.
I think it performs the classic RPG flaw of trying to tell a novel-style story. There are secret conspiracies, ancient organizations, powerful wizards, betrayals, family history coming back to haunt the descendants, mysterious double-agents, hidden supernatural creatures, and star-crossed love.
What do the PCs do?
Well. Uh. Hmm.
In terms of the basic setting, it's the standard serial-numbers-filed off fantasy setting you've seen before. There's Norseland, Arabialand, Japanland, Indialand, the Vatican...all the tropes. Look at this map and you'll get a good idea. And that basic info is about all you get. How does the Holy Inquisition mesh with most of the possible player characters having supernatural powers? Who knows.
System
Anima is pretty clearly based on Rolemaster, though through a line line of revisions and changes. The basic mechanics involve attributes rated 1-10, skills rated from 0 ascending up to 100 and beyond, and rolling a d100 and adding it to the skill to in order to beat a target number or compare it to a table to determine results. Massive tables. Tables everywhere. That's one of the things that convinces me of the Rolemaster inspiration, because different attack types have tables, different powers have tables, different skills have tables...Chartmaster strikes again.
I'm serious about different powers having tables. Every single psychic power has an individual table determining its effects.
The system is class/level, with classes split into several archetypes--fighter, prowler, psychic, mystic, domine, and novel--each of which has several individual classes beneath them. Then you have 600 development points to buy attributes and skills and creation points points to buy advantages and roll for attributes and pick class or subclass and buy powers and good luck figuring this out. You'll probably need to devote several hours and a calculator to making a character, as well as have the GM check everyone's math, because with the sheer amount of points to spend and things to buy, there's plenty of opportunities to make a mistake somewhere. Especially since different classes have different costs for everything, so the players can't help each other make characters unless they all know the system.
Every class has its own subsystems, with weapon maneuvers, build-your-own summons, choosing spells from spell lists, building ki powers, picking psychic powers, or the novel archetype which is basically build-your-own-class. And each subsystem has its own rules. Ki powers are based on attributes. Magic is based on "zeon" (magic points), which require channeling and regenerate very slowly. Psychic powers are invested in psychic matrices or powers. Summons are built using their own development points, so enjoy doing all that math again.
Besides all those charts, actual gameplay requires a lot of small rules that are seemingly arbitrary. For example, finding a person in hiding requires beating their stealth roll by 80. Not just beating it, and not beating it by 50 or 100 or something. There are other rolls that have to be beaten by other numbers. The "all action penalty" is -60.
Basically, my impression is just that there are too many overcomplicated rules for what the game wants to accomplish. That's a criticism that could easily be leveled at something like Pathfinder as well, but in Pathfinder's defense, its math is easier. The human brain is better at subtracting 5 from 23 than it is subtracting 80 from 236 and then comparing it to 171 to see if the master ranger finds the master thief hiding in the woods. And of course that's why there are so many charts, to take the cognitive load off of making all of these rolls, but that just adds to the time with constantly having to check different charts to figure out the results.
I like crunchy systems, but the cognitive overlord on this system seems like too much even for me. And not to mention that despite all this detail and charts, an enormous amount of material is vague. Some powers have precise numerical limits on what they can do and other are described in general terms. Social skills are the unfortunately-standard "dunno, roll some dice and make stuff up" system. All skills not directly related to combat are called "secondary abilities," which definitely tells you where the system focus is. The GM's advice on how to apply all this, determine difficulties, and otherwise run the system is scant to nonexistent. For all its attention to detail, Anima gives the GM very little indication of what to do with it outside of lots of fighting.
And that's pretty much my major complaint. Anima: Beyond Fantasy has a lot of attention put into it and good production values, but the emphasis is put on the wrong place. The system is all wrong for a world in which characters are supposed to hide in the shadows and the power levels of starting characters are wrong if they're expected to reveal themselves and fight for what they believe in. I can't imagine how the setting as depicted derives from the rules within, and yes, that's true of a lot of games--see D&D's generic medieval world and clerics getting healing magic and the ability to create food--but it's especially egregious here. And even if I did come up with a good game that fit the world, I wouldn't want to run it using these rules. It's not actively terrible and it's drawing from a lot of the tropes I love, but that's about all I can say for it.
But there's three hundred pages in here and much more than just two ideas, so here's the full breakdown.
Setting
Long ago, the messiah, called the Christ, was crucified, sold out by his renegade disciple Iscariot in exchange for thirty coins. After his death, his other disciples were able to conquer the ancient empire and divide it into sub-kingdoms, using the Church to provide a unifying factor for humanity. Despite the descendant of Iscariot's attempt to overthrow the Sacred Holy Empire of Abel founded by the messiah's disciples, the Church and its Holy Inquisition kept humanity safe from supernatural creatures and monsters that prowl in the night for centuries until the most recent emperor, whose madness compelled his overthrow. His son was ineligible for the throne after the emperor ordered his son to kill him as part of his abdication, so a young woman was placed on the throne and the empire fell into infighting. The old leader of the Church had caused a near-schism with her policies, and now the Sacred Holy Empire stands on the brink of war. Several provinces have declared open rebellion, others are considering it, and what's more, the old supernatural creatures are making their return. Events in Gaia are coming to a head, standing on a knife-point, and anything could tip the balance.
Okay, now replace "the messiah" with "the clone-child created as a way of unifying humanity against its enemies," "renegade disciple" with "secret agent contracted by the Imperium, the ancient conspiracy who rule the world from their floating sky fortress Jormungandr," and "coins" with "black metal nanocrystal storage media containing ancient secrets of science and sorcery."
The whole setting is like this. It's conspiracies and secrets all the way down. See, humanity used to share the world with many other supernatural species, leading to several wars and culminating in the War of God, when Rah, descendant of Iscariot, activated an ancient machine built with knowledge from the Imperium's black metal discs that eliminated magic over a giant area. In response, the Imperium, along with its counterparts the Technocracy, secret conspiracy of the Sylvain, and the Illuminati, secret conspiracy of the Duk'zarist, decided to divide the world into three parts. Humanity would get the magic-depleted part and the supernatural creatures would withdraw to the other worlds. And so the Sylvain, the Duk'zarist, the Damiah, the D'Anjayni, the Jayan, the dragons, the elementals, and everything else vanished from human history, with those who did not leave burned out by the Inquisition. Except for those saved by the Knights of Tol Rauko, a secret order of the Sacred Holy Empire of Abel dedicated to preserving the existence of the supernatural.
It's pretty much Xenogears, the setting. There's the Church as an instrument of control. There's ancient technology from a lost empire. There's the ancient organization ruling the world from its secret flying citadel. Also, the Imperium used to rule the world through the "auspice," a secret implant placed in all those in positions of power which allowed the Imperium to influence their actions (aka, the Limiters), calls surface-dwellers "sheep" (aka, -Lambs-), and the leader of the Imperium's secret plan is to kill God. So.
No giant robots, though. At least not in the corebook.
This does provide a lot of material for the GM to work with and an interesting built-in plot of uncovering all the secret masters behind world events, but it also means that there are secret masters behind world events that the players will basically never be powerful enough to defeat. This isn't like Vampire, where diablerie provides a route to quick and easy power at a cost. The powerful organizations in Anima have abilities that break the rules, unstoppable assassin squads, the ability to destroy cities or nations--the text flat-out says that the Imperium could conquer the world in hours if they had to--superlative information-gathering powers, and basically every other capability that would annoy players who want to have some impact on the world.
I think it performs the classic RPG flaw of trying to tell a novel-style story. There are secret conspiracies, ancient organizations, powerful wizards, betrayals, family history coming back to haunt the descendants, mysterious double-agents, hidden supernatural creatures, and star-crossed love.
What do the PCs do?
Well. Uh. Hmm.
In terms of the basic setting, it's the standard serial-numbers-filed off fantasy setting you've seen before. There's Norseland, Arabialand, Japanland, Indialand, the Vatican...all the tropes. Look at this map and you'll get a good idea. And that basic info is about all you get. How does the Holy Inquisition mesh with most of the possible player characters having supernatural powers? Who knows.
System
Anima is pretty clearly based on Rolemaster, though through a line line of revisions and changes. The basic mechanics involve attributes rated 1-10, skills rated from 0 ascending up to 100 and beyond, and rolling a d100 and adding it to the skill to in order to beat a target number or compare it to a table to determine results. Massive tables. Tables everywhere. That's one of the things that convinces me of the Rolemaster inspiration, because different attack types have tables, different powers have tables, different skills have tables...Chartmaster strikes again.
I'm serious about different powers having tables. Every single psychic power has an individual table determining its effects.
The system is class/level, with classes split into several archetypes--fighter, prowler, psychic, mystic, domine, and novel--each of which has several individual classes beneath them. Then you have 600 development points to buy attributes and skills and creation points points to buy advantages and roll for attributes and pick class or subclass and buy powers and good luck figuring this out. You'll probably need to devote several hours and a calculator to making a character, as well as have the GM check everyone's math, because with the sheer amount of points to spend and things to buy, there's plenty of opportunities to make a mistake somewhere. Especially since different classes have different costs for everything, so the players can't help each other make characters unless they all know the system.
Every class has its own subsystems, with weapon maneuvers, build-your-own summons, choosing spells from spell lists, building ki powers, picking psychic powers, or the novel archetype which is basically build-your-own-class. And each subsystem has its own rules. Ki powers are based on attributes. Magic is based on "zeon" (magic points), which require channeling and regenerate very slowly. Psychic powers are invested in psychic matrices or powers. Summons are built using their own development points, so enjoy doing all that math again.
Besides all those charts, actual gameplay requires a lot of small rules that are seemingly arbitrary. For example, finding a person in hiding requires beating their stealth roll by 80. Not just beating it, and not beating it by 50 or 100 or something. There are other rolls that have to be beaten by other numbers. The "all action penalty" is -60.
Basically, my impression is just that there are too many overcomplicated rules for what the game wants to accomplish. That's a criticism that could easily be leveled at something like Pathfinder as well, but in Pathfinder's defense, its math is easier. The human brain is better at subtracting 5 from 23 than it is subtracting 80 from 236 and then comparing it to 171 to see if the master ranger finds the master thief hiding in the woods. And of course that's why there are so many charts, to take the cognitive load off of making all of these rolls, but that just adds to the time with constantly having to check different charts to figure out the results.
I like crunchy systems, but the cognitive overlord on this system seems like too much even for me. And not to mention that despite all this detail and charts, an enormous amount of material is vague. Some powers have precise numerical limits on what they can do and other are described in general terms. Social skills are the unfortunately-standard "dunno, roll some dice and make stuff up" system. All skills not directly related to combat are called "secondary abilities," which definitely tells you where the system focus is. The GM's advice on how to apply all this, determine difficulties, and otherwise run the system is scant to nonexistent. For all its attention to detail, Anima gives the GM very little indication of what to do with it outside of lots of fighting.
And that's pretty much my major complaint. Anima: Beyond Fantasy has a lot of attention put into it and good production values, but the emphasis is put on the wrong place. The system is all wrong for a world in which characters are supposed to hide in the shadows and the power levels of starting characters are wrong if they're expected to reveal themselves and fight for what they believe in. I can't imagine how the setting as depicted derives from the rules within, and yes, that's true of a lot of games--see D&D's generic medieval world and clerics getting healing magic and the ability to create food--but it's especially egregious here. And even if I did come up with a good game that fit the world, I wouldn't want to run it using these rules. It's not actively terrible and it's drawing from a lot of the tropes I love, but that's about all I can say for it.
January 30, 2019
Este tipo de sistemas serian interesantes en un videojuego, pero en roleplay no le veo mucha vida. Hace poco participe en un one-shot de este sistema y fue mas el tiempo revisando las tablas y calculando daño que el tiempo que gastamos en el combate. Otra cosa que no me gusto es que aca los aspectos de roleo no son muy solidos, se siente mucho como un jrpg D:
Lo unico weno que puedo decir es que el nivel de personalizacion de los personajes es increible, pero nuevamente se sienten inutiles si haces otra cosa que no sean participar en combates :/
Me cree un personaje socialmente activo y resulta que lo menos que hice fue interactuar con npc :/
Lo unico weno que puedo decir es que el nivel de personalizacion de los personajes es increible, pero nuevamente se sienten inutiles si haces otra cosa que no sean participar en combates :/
Me cree un personaje socialmente activo y resulta que lo menos que hice fue interactuar con npc :/
Read
July 30, 2011If you want a RPG with beautiful artwork that immerses your mind in to a "Final Fantasy" world without the flatscreen TV and the $300 piece of hardware, broadband modem and $80 game: this could be for you. Then again, if you want and RPG without a lot of number crunching, an simple interface and a lore that is unique: "Anima" may not exactly be right for you either. "Anima" has a feel of many platform games with real terms with jumbled meanings from real life encounters so be ready to run in to that and the character creation system is very unique. Running games is deep and makes my mind that withstands "Rolemaster" easily swims when trying to deal with "Anima". Be prepared for an experience.
Read
April 17, 2010While I do enjoy pathfinder it might be fun to do a more anime/high fantasy game.
September 17, 2015
Mejor libro de rol.
November 8, 2013
Can't wait to play or Run this.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews