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Some people may have been thinking "Gee, what happened to
that site review that Chris Reid used to write?" Other people
may have been thinking "Hah! I knew he wouldn’t keep up
writing that darned site review!" Indeed, there might even be
another group of people, far more numerous than the first, that
have been thinking "Who is Chris Reid, an why should I care
what he’s writing?" Have no fear, intrepid reader. I will answer
all of these questions, except for the last one. Actually, I won’t
answer the other two either. Instead, I will use obfuscation and
other forms of misdirection to…uhhh…direct your attention
elsewhere.
Thus begins a temporary column called "Stuff I Write to Distract
People from the Fact that I haven’t Been Writing Stuff."
The subject of today’s Stuff column is BESM. No, I didn’t
sneeze. BESM stands for "Big Eyes, Small Mouth." It is a
roleplaying game based on anime themes, and as such, the name
is rather appropriate (it has also spawned countless humorous
other attempts to decipher its meaning). If you really do read
my column on a regular basis, you will recognize that I did a web
site review on a BESM site not too long ago. I’m not counting
on this, though, so I will go over the basics.
What can BESM handle? Yes. As long as it’s anime/manga
themed, BESM seems to be able to handle it most excellently. I
haven’t tested it out much with standard roleplaying themes, but
I’m sure it would translate over pretty easily.
BESM’s main strength is in its simplicity and smoothness. Even
more so than just about any other system I’ve seen, it remains in
the background, adding a bit of chance to the game, but never
interrupting. Character creation is rather easy, and very fun.
After the first couple of times making a character, it’s very
possible that an extremely in-depth one could be made in a few
minutes. The rules governing character creation, and in fact,
the whole game are very flexible, and can easily take into
account almost any variations a person would likely come up
with. They also have convenient guidelines for different sub-
themes in the game, such as a medieval based one, or a space
opera style.
While the ease of rules certainly lends itself to a more creative
and dialog driven story, the system does stand up to combat
pretty well. In the game that I ran, there averaged about one
combat per game session. The dice rolling was easy, very little
math to do, which let both the players and myself spend that
extra time being more creative about what the characters were
doing. The combat system is not very realistic. It’s not
supposed to be so. If you’ve watched anime or read manga,
you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t, read some and watch
some, then pick up the book.
The simplicity that I’ve been raving about, could also be
considered this game’s one downside. I personally don’t think
so, but some players like their games couched well in rules. I
prefer it to read more like a story, much like freeform roleplaying.
All in all, I rate this game an 8 out of 9. I picked it up as a joke,
but I was seriously impressed by the work they put into it, and
how well it turned out. I think you’ll find yourself feeling the
same way.
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