I picked this up at a game store a few weeks ago (at a 'discounted' price. The employee who put on the price tags read the Canadian price instead of the US price, so I paid $2.85 American for a product I later saw was supposed to go $1.95.
I'm not going to sweat a 90 cent overcharge, but if you're a gamer, you tend to be superstious and that overcharge could be construed as an omen.
Overall it's not a bad quick gen book. It isn't GURPS Lite, you couldn't run a very basic game using just this product. But it's far better than the three page & a character sheet that comprises CORPS Nutshell.
In principle the product is supposed to let you make a viable character if the rule book isn't at hand. You may need to consult the rules for specifics on how to build that Big Mecha you own or how much protection that suit of armor provides, but the character creation part, you have armor of some sort and a mecha this big can/should be worked out using the fast play book alone.
Problems: The first is annoying, and the reason I'm giving it a rating of sparse. It lists the various components used to build a character but doesn't include page reference for the components in the main book. This would save a good deal of aggravation and a bit of time when something needs to be examined in more detail than it's name.
The second is critical. This is why 'sparse' is really 'incomplete'. The primary elements of any BESM character are:
Stats, Attributes, Sub-Attributes, Drawbacks, Derived Values and Skills.
Fast play lists Stats, Attributes Sub-Attributes, Drawbacks and Derived Values. It doesn't say diddly about Skills.
Can you make a *viable* character from this book without having any skills? Admittedly skills were not part of the game at first and added later, but as of BESM 2e, MHO is that skills are a basic part of characters, not an ignorable option.
It can be argued that lack of space might have been a factor, so let me remove that argument here and now.
Skills in BESM are handled as follows: The GM assigns how many skill points characters start with, Attribute points can be spent to purchase more skill points.
The main book has a chart listing the skills. It is in two parts because of a page break, but it's not that big. In BESM, skill costs vary based on campaign importance. Pilot, for instance would be useful occasionally to a hard boiled private (example Joe Mannix, who did fly a plane in several episodes), but not that important, it might go for 2 or 3 skill points per level. In Space Opera, it's more important and more expensive, costing 5 per level.
The chart cross references skill name by several genres and lists it's price in skill points. A scaled back chart listing the more important/universal skills could be made that would fit into the space used for one of the pictures filling space in the book.
Easily. So Fast Play could have covered skills by finding room to state the essentials of what I typed two paragraphs up (I used a whopping 27 words to do so, and they could cut a few off of that) and by pulling one picture and placing a chart in that space.
Additional problem: BESM has 3 derived values, Combat Value, Health Points and Energy. Fast Play covers Combat Value and Health Points.
Energy is important in specific settings, ie Sailor Moon, and is certainly more expendable than skills are, but how much space does it take to say "Energy = [Mind Soul] x 5"?
Overall, these absences hurt the book unnecessarily and I have to give it a reluctant thumbs down instead of an approval.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)