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The first supplement for Big Eyes, Small Mouth is a lovely little set of supplementary rules for creating and using mecha and vehicles. Big Robots, Cool Starships takes the BESM aproach of modular, math-light design to the usually math-intensiove creation of mecha, spacecraft, vehicles and weapons.

As in GoO's Sailor Mon game, mecha are created from a pool of points you get when taking the correct attrribute. The more character points you spend to have a mecha the more points you get to build it. From those points you choose attributes for the mecha in four categories - structure, movement, weapons and "other". Each attribute costs points, and you can (and will) get extra points by taking defects for your mecha. This is easy and sometimes mandatory.

For example, being bigger than a man is a defect, which means you have to take it if you want to hold more than one person in your mecha. The attributes are in general rather than exact terms in the rules, and can be customized like everything else in BESM. Weapons are particularly flexible -- the type of weapon is just a specicial effect and numerous things can be done to customize your attack.

A small set of samples are included, including some mecha whose basic ideas many anime fans will recognize. They also show how the rules can be used to model jets, tanks, helicopters and your basic passenger car.

Rules are also included for mecha combat and use, including detail on crashes and injury transfer. The flexibility and simplicty of the system are emphasized throughout the book. It's easy to see people modeling things from just about everywhere to this system.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Big Robots, Cool Starships
Author: David L. Pulver Category: game Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order Line: Big Eyes, Small Mouth Cost: $15.95 Page count: 112 ISBN: 0-9682431-3-4 SKU: #02-002 Capsule Review by Michael Hopcroft on 07/25/99. Genre tags: Anime	The first supplement for Big Eyes, Small Mouth is a lovely little set of supplementary rules for creating and using mecha and vehicles. Big Robots, Cool Starships takes the BESM aproach of modular, math-light design to the usually math-intensiove creation of mecha, spacecraft, vehicles and weapons. As in GoO's Sailor Mon game, mecha are created from a pool of points you get when taking the correct attrribute. The more character points you spend to have a mecha the more points you get to build it. From those points you choose attributes for the mecha in four categories - structure, movement, weapons and "other". Each attribute costs points, and you can (and will) get extra points by taking defects for your mecha. This is easy and sometimes mandatory. For example, being bigger than a man is a defect, which means you have to take it if you want to hold more than one person in your mecha. The attributes are in general rather than exact terms in the rules, and can be customized like everything else in BESM. Weapons are particularly flexible -- the type of weapon is just a specicial effect and numerous things can be done to customize your attack. A small set of samples are included, including some mecha whose basic ideas many anime fans will recognize. They also show how the rules can be used to model jets, tanks, helicopters and your basic passenger car. Rules are also included for mecha combat and use, including detail on crashes and injury transfer. The flexibility and simplicty of the system are emphasized throughout the book. It's easy to see people modeling things from just about everywhere to this system. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)