The Inside Scoop on Gaming

When you have a generic system like BESM, how do you make use of its generic nature?

Do you adapt it to fit a setting or genre you like, and then keep it in reserve knowing you can adapt it again if you feel like playing in a new setting - perhaps playing fantasy now, but knowing that if you ever feel like sci-fi, you have the resources? Or do you use its nature to fit multiple settings and genres into a single campaign, and have medieval knights fighting alongside techno warriors?

An awful lot about the BESM GM's screen, especially the included adventure, seems to lean distinctly towards the latter of these two, which may be problematic if you don't use it this way.

Let's start with the screen itself. It's well made, strong cardboard, and bears a well-drawn and colourful anime-style illustration. Everything's fine there - the only difficulty is that the illustration is very clearly of a fantasy setting; although some of the characters and scenery pictured are generic, most of it is strongly fantasy - magical bolts, swords, a dragon, etc. There is what may well be a spaceship or aeroplane parked in one part of the picture, but given the overall tone it just seems discongruous rather than contributing to the idea of a universal setting.

The inside of the screen, as usual, filled with tables and charts. Some of these are very useful; for example, the standard modifiers to attack and defence rolls, a combat flowchart, and a weapon damage table. But some of them just seem redundant. For example, in BESM, if a character has levels in a Skill, they get to subtract the number of levels they have from their skill rolls (low numbers are good in BESM), and if they have a specialty appropriate to the action they're taking they can take an extra -1 off. This could have been explained in two lines on a table of modifiers ("-1 per level of Skill, -1 for appropriate Speciality"), but instead, it has an entire table devoted to it with entries for every skill level ("Skill level 1 - The character is awarded a -1 bonus on the Skill check dice roll if he or she does not possess the relevant speciality or a -2 bonus if the character does possess the relevant speciality. Skill level 2 - The character is awarded a -2 bonus...") - yes, the same text is repeated six times, once for every skill level. Now while I can understand this might be useful for a novice in learning the game, is it the kind of thing you might need to refer to quickly during play? I'd think you'd want to have understood that before you started running the game. The same thing applies to a chart showing that applying a +4 modifier makes a task more difficult than applying a +2 modifier.

So, so far so good-ish.. on to the sample adventure, So, we have.. an obelisk?. The big difficulty with this adventure is not that it's particularly bad in itself, but that it's only really appropriate for one occurance - the very start of a campaign based on the characters hopping between worlds and dimensions. I will confess to a personal bias against this type of campaign since the usual result is that each world is a colossal planet-sized railroad. One thing: I'm not going to give away the major secrets of the adventure, but you still might not want to read too much further if you're going to be playing it anytime.

Obelisk confirms my fears for dimension-hopping campaigns at the very beginning. The very first occurance is that all of the PCs have their homeworlds destroyed! An obelisk appears on each one, and then everything goes away. The text suggests giving the players an involved role in these sequences, but it's not clear how or why because there's no way they can prevent it from happening; they also encourage "emphasising the destruction of everything the PCs hold dear" - but did your players involve thinking up backgrounds involving things they hold dear only to have them all blown into dust? Personally, I'd just tell the players in advance of character generation to include this occurance in their backgrounds and leave it at that.

After the destruction of their worlds, the PCs all are summoned together to a new one, after a short period in an in-between space in which they become aware of the other party members and intrinsically feel familiarity and recognition of them.. why? Because (by stipulation of character generation) they are all defenders of justice and law - in fact, they are.. Guardians of Order! GROAN. It's a shame to say that, because it isn't in fact a bad name or a bad idea, but it's still risking getting cringes. After all, a D&D campaign in which you all happened to be playing wizards, who happened to come from the coast, would be entirely reasonable, but wouldn't YOU spot it?

Fortunately, things get better. The world on which the PCs have arrived is called Naru (and the authors get some good points for using Japanese names that don't cause laughter if you know Japanese), and is almost entirely in ruins, as it has its own obelisk which is gradually destroying it. Groups of peasants have built a village around the Obelisk, and some have begun to worship it, under the guidance of a leader called Teacher. The peasants believe that the PCs are "spirits" who have arrived via the obelisk and will save them. Although the setting on this world is small, there are a number of interesting things that can be found out; there are good and reasonable (if perhaps a little predictable) explanations for how the PCs arrived there and what happened to the world. There are a good number of secrets to be found out, as well, and run carefully the investigation could easily be amusing - although if the group is more combat-oriented, you might need to make some changes, as there are no combat hostiles at all presented in the setting until the ending.

The one downer about this adventure is that the characters can't do a great deal to change the ending; in fact, the adventure is basically presented as "the characters wander around and investigate, and then when you're ready to wrap up, this happens". Saving the world involves a battle with some demons and some goons in powersuits, and then dealing with the obelisk in a suitable fashion. But even if the players discover the secrets they need to prevent the destruction of the world far in advance of the ending sequence, they cannot apply them then - because the near-activation of the obelisk in the ending sequence is necessary for them to progress to the next part of the adventure. Furthermore, if the characters do not find those secrets, the ending sequence is strongly forcing enough that the PCs have a fair chance of succeeding regardless.

The second part of the adventure finds the PCs transported to a world owned by the corporation responsible for the obelisks. Again, there are a number of interesting things to explore here, including the real reason for the obelisks and why they act like they do, and lots of background on the corporation themselves. Unfortunately, problems here are twofold. The first is that the adventure consists of little more than the characters being shown around the corporation and then asked to join. The second is the nature of the PC's calling - "guardians of *order*" - and how that interacts with the world-hopping campaign idea. Are the PCs enforcing the order of the world they are on, or their own personal idea of order? If the latter, they cannot make anywhere near as much of a moral standing as otherwise. If the former, they will have a problem here, for although the corporation is performing evil acts, it is not purely evil, and it is certainly highly ordered and lawful.

The ending of the adventure is very open, and presents the PCs with a number of interesting choices. The difficulty is that some of these choices are so great in their effect that you would not want to end the adventure shortly afterwards (hence most suitable for the start of a campaign), whereas others effectively remove much of the possibility for adventuring from the world (hence most suitable for a one-shot adventure).

Obelisk isn't a bad adventure, and it could probably be extremely enjoyable with the right group of players, but it isn't too good as a quick one-shot and it might well require a fairly experienced GM if it isn't going to appear as being railroaded and awkward.

Perhaps I've just been spoiled by the quality of previous GOO releases, but I found the GM screen pack a little disappointing for the price. Others may well find it an extremely useful resource, especially those running cross-genre games, but you may want to ask for a look before you buy. Mark Green

Big Eyes, Small Mouth Gamemaster Screen
Item type: RPG Product Name: Big Eyes, Small Mouth Gamemaster Screen Author: Jesse Scoble Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order Line: BESM SKU: 02-102 Cost: UKP8.95 Page count: 48 + screen ISBN: 1-894525-12-4 Genres: Ratings: Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 3 (Average) Review type: Capsule Review Genre tags:	When you have a generic system like BESM, how do you make use of its generic nature? Do you adapt it to fit a setting or genre you like, and then keep it in reserve knowing you can adapt it again if you feel like playing in a new setting - perhaps playing fantasy now, but knowing that if you ever feel like sci-fi, you have the resources? Or do you use its nature to fit multiple settings and genres into a single campaign, and have medieval knights fighting alongside techno warriors? An awful lot about the BESM GM's screen, especially the included adventure, seems to lean distinctly towards the latter of these two, which may be problematic if you don't use it this way. Let's start with the screen itself. It's well made, strong cardboard, and bears a well-drawn and colourful anime-style illustration. Everything's fine there - the only difficulty is that the illustration is very clearly of a fantasy setting; although some of the characters and scenery pictured are generic, most of it is strongly fantasy - magical bolts, swords, a dragon, etc. There is what may well be a spaceship or aeroplane parked in one part of the picture, but given the overall tone it just seems discongruous rather than contributing to the idea of a universal setting. The inside of the screen, as usual, filled with tables and charts. Some of these are very useful; for example, the standard modifiers to attack and defence rolls, a combat flowchart, and a weapon damage table. But some of them just seem redundant. For example, in BESM, if a character has levels in a Skill, they get to subtract the number of levels they have from their skill rolls (low numbers are good in BESM), and if they have a specialty appropriate to the action they're taking they can take an extra -1 off. This could have been explained in two lines on a table of modifiers ("-1 per level of Skill, -1 for appropriate Speciality"), but instead, it has an entire table devoted to it with entries for every skill level ("Skill level 1 - The character is awarded a -1 bonus on the Skill check dice roll if he or she does not possess the relevant speciality or a -2 bonus if the character does possess the relevant speciality. Skill level 2 - The character is awarded a -2 bonus...") - yes, the same text is repeated six times, once for every skill level. Now while I can understand this might be useful for a novice in learning the game, is it the kind of thing you might need to refer to quickly during play? I'd think you'd want to have understood that before you started running the game. The same thing applies to a chart showing that applying a +4 modifier makes a task more difficult than applying a +2 modifier. So, so far so good-ish.. on to the sample adventure, So, we have.. an obelisk?. The big difficulty with this adventure is not that it's particularly bad in itself, but that it's only really appropriate for one occurance - the very start of a campaign based on the characters hopping between worlds and dimensions. I will confess to a personal bias against this type of campaign since the usual result is that each world is a colossal planet-sized railroad. One thing: I'm not going to give away the major secrets of the adventure, but you still might not want to read too much further if you're going to be playing it anytime. Obelisk confirms my fears for dimension-hopping campaigns at the very beginning. The very first occurance is that all of the PCs have their homeworlds destroyed! An obelisk appears on each one, and then everything goes away. The text suggests giving the players an involved role in these sequences, but it's not clear how or why because there's no way they can prevent it from happening; they also encourage "emphasising the destruction of everything the PCs hold dear" - but did your players involve thinking up backgrounds involving things they hold dear only to have them all blown into dust? Personally, I'd just tell the players in advance of character generation to include this occurance in their backgrounds and leave it at that. After the destruction of their worlds, the PCs all are summoned together to a new one, after a short period in an in-between space in which they become aware of the other party members and intrinsically feel familiarity and recognition of them.. why? Because (by stipulation of character generation) they are all defenders of justice and law - in fact, they are.. Guardians of Order! GROAN. It's a shame to say that, because it isn't in fact a bad name or a bad idea, but it's still risking getting cringes. After all, a D&D campaign in which you all happened to be playing wizards, who happened to come from the coast, would be entirely reasonable, but wouldn't YOU spot it? Fortunately, things get better. The world on which the PCs have arrived is called Naru (and the authors get some good points for using Japanese names that don't cause laughter if you know Japanese), and is almost entirely in ruins, as it has its own obelisk which is gradually destroying it. Groups of peasants have built a village around the Obelisk, and some have begun to worship it, under the guidance of a leader called Teacher. The peasants believe that the PCs are "spirits" who have arrived via the obelisk and will save them. Although the setting on this world is small, there are a number of interesting things that can be found out; there are good and reasonable (if perhaps a little predictable) explanations for how the PCs arrived there and what happened to the world. There are a good number of secrets to be found out, as well, and run carefully the investigation could easily be amusing - although if the group is more combat-oriented, you might need to make some changes, as there are no combat hostiles at all presented in the setting until the ending. The one downer about this adventure is that the characters can't do a great deal to change the ending; in fact, the adventure is basically presented as "the characters wander around and investigate, and then when you're ready to wrap up, this happens". Saving the world involves a battle with some demons and some goons in powersuits, and then dealing with the obelisk in a suitable fashion. But even if the players discover the secrets they need to prevent the destruction of the world far in advance of the ending sequence, they cannot apply them then - because the near-activation of the obelisk in the ending sequence is necessary for them to progress to the next part of the adventure. Furthermore, if the characters do not find those secrets, the ending sequence is strongly forcing enough that the PCs have a fair chance of succeeding regardless. The second part of the adventure finds the PCs transported to a world owned by the corporation responsible for the obelisks. Again, there are a number of interesting things to explore here, including the real reason for the obelisks and why they act like they do, and lots of background on the corporation themselves. Unfortunately, problems here are twofold. The first is that the adventure consists of little more than the characters being shown around the corporation and then asked to join. The second is the nature of the PC's calling - "guardians of order" - and how that interacts with the world-hopping campaign idea. Are the PCs enforcing the order of the world they are on, or their own personal idea of order? If the latter, they cannot make anywhere near as much of a moral standing as otherwise. If the former, they will have a problem here, for although the corporation is performing evil acts, it is not purely evil, and it is certainly highly ordered and lawful. The ending of the adventure is very open, and presents the PCs with a number of interesting choices. The difficulty is that some of these choices are so great in their effect that you would not want to end the adventure shortly afterwards (hence most suitable for the start of a campaign), whereas others effectively remove much of the possibility for adventuring from the world (hence most suitable for a one-shot adventure). Obelisk isn't a bad adventure, and it could probably be extremely enjoyable with the right group of players, but it isn't too good as a quick one-shot and it might well require a fairly experienced GM if it isn't going to appear as being railroaded and awkward. Perhaps I've just been spoiled by the quality of previous GOO releases, but I found the GM screen pack a little disappointing for the price. Others may well find it an extremely useful resource, especially those running cross-genre games, but you may want to ask for a look before you buy. Mark Green

Big Eyes, Small Mouth Gamemaster Screen