"It is a place that dwells in the memory of those who still dream of it's ancient glory; a world renowned for its beauty, mystery and danger; on a planet of endless adventure, such a land is known as El Hazard."
With these words, Pioneer's El-Hazard: The Magnificent World OVA series begins. It is the story of ordinary high school student Makoto Mizuhara, who finds himself transported into the magical Magnificent World along with his teacher Masamichi Fujisawa and his arch rival of sorts, the incomparable Katsuhiko Jinnai. El-Hazard is the creation of Hiroki Hayashi and Ryoe Tsukimura, the same team responsible for Tenchi Muyo! Much like Tenchi Muyo!, El-Hazard is a mix of comic fantasy and romantic drama, where our "normal" protagonist finds himself suddenly at the heart of an incredible adventure. Guardians of Order's El-Hazard: Role Playing Game and Resource Book attempts to transfer the sometimes madcap adventures of Makoto and his friends into their popular Big Eyes, Small Mouth gaming system.
Presented in the same style as Guardians of Order's previous anime RPGs, El-Hazard: Role-Playing Game and Resource Book (El-Hazard: RPG) is a full-color 192-page soft-cover volume. The cover is decorated with piece of composite art assembled from the OVA series. The book's interior is also filled with art from the series, splashed liberally about the two columns of text that make up each individual page. The images selected from the series fit nearly perfectly with the nearby text, and the bright background and artistic page borders seem to draw out some additional depth from some images. The page borders also serve a more mundane purpose, containing page numbers and a sequence of colored dots that correspond to the book's chapters.
The books first chapter is an introduction to the world of El-Hazard and also to the game itself. Chapter one opens with an overview of the sub-genre of fantasy Guardians of Order designates as "Interdimensional Exiles." In broad terms, the sub-genre includes any fantasy story that focuses on characters transported from one world to another, whether that transportation is between different times, different places or different realities. In addition to El-Hazard, the authors mention Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars and even L. Frank Baum's Oz books. In anime, they cite Battler Dunbine, Mystic Knights Rayearth and Visions of Escaflowne as other examples of the genre. While it had not occurred to me prior to purchasing this book, I believe it would be easy enough to use the rules presented in El-Hazard with a few modifications to run a game based in any of these worlds. Chapter one also covers a basic overview of the El-Hazard franchise, giving a basic overview of the plot and a brief mention to spin-offs such as El Hazard: Wanderers and El Hazard 2. There is no mention in this chapter, or anywhere else in the book to the El-Hazard: The Alternative World OVA. Following this basic plot treatment is a more detailed breakdown of each of the seven episodes of the Magnificent World OVA; spoilers for the series abound in this section, although I would imagine people who have not seen El-Hazard would have little interest in the book. The information here could be valuable to players or GMs who have seen the series in the past, but not so recently that every detail remains clear. The chapter closes with the now standard "What is Role-playing?" section which seems to wiggle its way into every gaming book and supplement despite rarely being used or needed. I would question how many people ever truly had their first exposure to the concept of an RPG from a book that they purchased. Of note in the "What is Role-playing?" section is a brief treatment of the types of campaigns that the GM may choose to run in the Magnificent World, which will be dealt with in more detail in chapter six, as well as a brief blurb mentioning the upcoming release of a supplemental release covering the El-Hazard 2 OVA sometime in 2002.
Chapter Two is devoted to the creation of characters. Rather than dive directly into the mechanics of character creation, El-Hazard RPG opens with a welcome change; a section recommending discussion with your GM for the purpose of weaving a coherent background for the character that fits with the tone and style of the GM's game. After determining the appropriate base number of character points (CPs) for character creation, the generation begins in earnest.
For those unfamiliar with the Tri-Stat system, a basic overview is included. As the name would indicate, there are three statistics that define a character in El-Hazard. Body, which represents strength, agility, endurance and generally all physical aspects of a given character. Mind reflects a character's wits, intelligence and learning speed. Finally Soul reflects a number of intangible elements of a character, willpower, empathy, spirit and other such traits. All task resolution in the Tri-Stat system is based off one of these three statistics, or a combination of two or more attributes. The statistics are rated from 0 (representing a character who is absolutely useless in one of these areas) to 12 (the character with this stat is the best in the universe). Each point of a statistic costs the character a single character point.
The next section of character creation covers the various attributes that bring the rough concept expressed by the Body, Mind and Soul rating into clearer focus. Normal Attributes can be possessed by anyone and include things such as Appearance, Combat Mastery, Extra Attacks and Servants. Racial Character Attributes are a new division included in the El-Hazard game but not the core BESM system; these attributes are limited to some of El-Hazard's exotic creatures and peoples. Racial Attributes include Flight, Natural Weapons and Super Strength. Superhuman Attributes are gained by humans from earth who find themselves transported to El-Hazard, and include powers such as Elasticity, Force Fields and Precognition. Finally, Relic Attributes are special powers that are normally possessed only by the powerful ancient technology of El-Hazard. There is a great deal of overlap between the various types of powers, and in general the divisions exist only to limit the way that certain pools of points gained later in creation may be spent.
There are a number of new Attributes included in the El-Hazard RPG that are not included with the core BESM system. Phantom Technique presents a number of special illusion based powers possessed by the mysterious Phantom Tribe of El-Hazard. Owns A Relic replaces the Item of Power and Owns a Big Mecha attributes from the BESM game with a single ability used for crafting anything from Miz Mishtal's magic ring to Ifurita herself. Relics are powerful items of ancient technology in the world of El-Hazard but because of their origin all relics share certain key weaknesses; a dependence on an outside source of power, usually the owners personal energy and a difficulty for even powerful owners to control the relic fully. Mimic Power, a relic-only attribute allows a character with such a relic to copy the powers of relics that are used against him. Control Ancient Technology, Recharge Mechanism and Empower Relic all counterbalance the built in disadvantages of the Owns a Relic Attribute in various ways.
A final new attribute is introduced in the El-Hazard RPG which I felt bears special mention. Called Unknown Superhuman Power, the attribute represents the initially unnoticeable superhuman powers gained by earthlings such as Makoto, Fujisawa and Nanami Jinnai upon arriving in El-Hazard. The mechanic presented for this attribute is simple; the application of said mechanic less so. A player may choose to assign any number of his character's CPs to this attribute; he gains a total number of Superhuman Attributes equal to the points spent with a 50% bonus, rounding up. These powers are assigned by the GM, and are possessed by the character upon arrival in El-Hazard, but may not be used until they are revealed through role-playing. While our group had no trouble making use of this mechanic, I am aware, vaguely, that there are gaming groups out there where the trust between players and GM is . . . shall we say not quite perfect. When a player chooses to assign points to this ability, he must be willing to accept whatever abilities the GM decides to assign to him; otherwise the game runs the risk of being bogged down in arguments and disappointment.
After assigning attributes to the character, a player may then elect to assign a number of Defects or flaws to the character. I have always considered it to be a strength of the Tri-Stat system that the Defects section was quite small, and all the character defects were for the most part limited to providing one or two additional CPs. In the El-Hazard RPG, however, I see the first signs of almost Champions-like point inflation, as the new defects Addiction and Power Block provide a character with 2, 4 or 6 character points in exchange for what is usually only a mild penalty. This is not a good thing.
The next section of character creation relates to skills. Characters gain a fixed number of skill points, modified by bonus points from the Highly Skilled attribute and penalized by the Unskilled defect. The player may select a specialization in a chosen skill if he feels it is appropriate for the created character (for example First Aid or Dentistry would be relevant specializations for the Medical skill.) this specialization provides a bonus to the characters skill check in situations where such a specialty would be useful. There is no penalty associated with selecting a specialization, and in my experience every character will have some form of specialty in any skill of note. The skills section also includes a note saying "You do not need to assign you character's skill points to a particular skill to justify a slight familiarity with this skill." This is excellent advice and quite a point saver for characters who are envisioned as having a mile wide, but three-inch deep pool of knowledge.
The next section of the book deals with Relic creation for those characters that purchased the Owns a Relic attribute earlier. Relics are created by spending the pool of Relic Points (RPs) on the attributes listed earlier and also by selecting any appropriate Relic Defects from this section of the book. For example, a character may have a relic that requires an elaborate ritual in order to activate, or a relic that drains the character's personal energy while in use. This is a short section as the rules for relic creation are spelled out clearly in the previous attribute descriptions.
Determining a character's derived values presents the most actual math that a player needs to do in order to play El-Hazard. Combat Value (CV) is a simple average of the characters three primary statistics. Defensive Combat Value (DCV) is equal to the character's base CV minus two. A character's Health points, reflecting the total amount of damage that may be sustained before unconsciousness / death are determined by adding a characters body and soul statistics and multiplying by 5. Energy is determined by adding mind and soul and multiplying by 5. Energy in El-Hazard is used to power relics, but can also be used to temporarily boost any statistic. By spending 10 energy points a player may improve any one of his characters statistics by a single point. Also, in dire circumstances a player may convert his energy points into health at ratio of 5:1.
Finally, the character generation section closes with a discussion of fleshing out your character's background and encourages the GM to provide 1-3 bonus character points as added incentive for particularly well done character backgrounds.
Chapter Three is titled Characters and provides full character write-ups and history for the cast of the El-Hazard OVA. Makoto Mizuhara is our "main character", and of course as a shy, unassuming Japanese high school student, has beautiful women hanging off of him at all times. I really feel like I went to school on the wrong side of the Pacific sometimes. The character write-ups are very complete, and to my mind reasonably accurate to what is presented in the OVA series. Each character sheet is followed by a character description and history, usually including only material from the OVA series but occasionally swerving off course into amateur psychology. (ex. describing the "subtle hints at teacher / student sexual fantasy" in the relationship between Nanami and Fujisawa.) Statistics are also provided for eight different sub-species of Bugrom, the insect warriors who are one of the OVA's chief antagonists. All the major characters from the series are given a full character write-up, but a few important minor characters; notably Queen Diva of the Bugrom and Princess Rune Venus of Roshtaria, are given history but no statistics. A minor complaint about the characters section; Ura, Makoto's living cat-armor is given stats but no rules are presented here for the manner in which she is used to protect Makoto; those rules are presented in chapter five, the section of the book dealing with the world of El-Hazard. The use of art in this section is particularly good, and the images selected give a good visual clue to the personality of each character presented.
Chapter Four contains the actual game mechanics of the Tri-Stat system. Personally I felt that this section should precede the chapter on the OVA characters but that is only a small gripe. Like all Tri-Stat games, El-Hazard RPG is very up front about its rules-lite status; in the opening section of the chapter the book recommends expanding (or contracting) the rules mechanics to suit the tastes of the gaming group. There are several optional rules in BESM 2e that my group would most likely port over to El-Hazard were we to play an extended campaign. The section discusses the various rules for stat checks, skill checks and combat actions. The Tri-Stat system uses a single 2d6 roll to resolve all tasks, as the players attempt to roll below a target number based on their statistics. There is a short discussion of when to roll dice and when to simply allow dramatic action proceed. The combat rules are presented here, and again are simple and straightforward. Each combatant begins the round, which may represent an amount of time between 1 and 10 seconds (or presumably more), by rolling a single d6 and adding his CV to determine initiative. In combat each character is allowed a single attack, which may be anything from punches and kicks and headbutts to unleashing the awesome energies of the Eye of God. 2d6 are rolled and compared to the characters CV, if the roll is successful the target is hit. Characters may defend against any number of attacks they wish per round, but each defense roll beyond the first is made with a cumulative 2 penalty. The only problem I see with the combat rules is the mechanic given for critical hits. On a critical hit (snake eyes on an attack roll), the attacking character inflicts x2, x3 or x4 damage with his strike. In the El-Hazard OVA we never see such examples of deadly strikes, and in my opinion allowing Masamichi Fujisawa the chance, however slim, to KO the Demon God with a single strike runs counter to the tone of the series. The rules for healing damage and energy round out this chapter, along with a much-simplified set of rules on vehicle creation.
Chapter Five, The World of El-Hazard presents the creatures, places and things of the Magnificent World. The chapter begins with descriptions of the sites from the OVA's brief stay in Japan including Shinonome High School and the Ancient Ruins. The next section deals with the flora and fauna of El-Hazard itself; Dolphin-Bears, Tree Fish and the royal family's Guardian Cats. A small note, the guardian cats are presented as being able to transform into living armor for their owner; while this is a fine idea and accurate to what is shown in the series, there may be a balance issue with they way they are presented for gaming. Ura, the only guardian cat we have statistics for in this book is purchased with the Servant attribute, in theory Makoto's player paid 6 points for the follower. Ura provides Makoto with level three Heavy Armor when in defensive mode that can absorb 30 points of damage in combat. The corresponding cost for Heavy Armor alone, ignoring Ura's other abilities would normally be 12 character points. This chapter also includes information Roshtaria - the nation in which much of El-Hazard is set, the Bugrom Empire, the Phantom Tribe and the other members of the Alliance. Most of these discussions are short, although to be fair little attention is paid in the OVA series to the nations of Geynos or Laide. The chapter ends with statistics for many of the vehicles seen in the El-Hazard OVA; airships, skimmers and the Bugrom carriers are all presented here.
Chapter Six is a GM's section which provides advice for running a successful El-Hazard RPG game. Campaign themes, tone, and tips on creating story arcs are included here, although in my opinion the information is likely to be of little use to an experienced GM and too sparse for a true novice. I suppose that is just one of the risks of presenting a complete game and a world setting in a smaller volume. The chapter also gives advice on integrating the game with the OVA series, concerning different ways that the GM may have his players interact with the characters and situations of the OVA. A valuable list of tips for any GM are presented here, although I would like to think most experienced GMs don't need to be told that the player characters should be the focus of the campaign and the character interaction is a good thing. Finally the chapter lists other Guardians of Order anime RPGs, although some of those which are listed are now out of print.
Chapter Seven presents twelve short campaign or adventure ideas. I will not go into detail here, as some GMs may wish to run one or more of them. They are not fleshed out, but rather presented as seeds to help a GM create his own adventures based around one of the basic plots. There is discussion of a crossover with the Tenchi Muyo! RPG universe included here, but it is again just a basic outline. At the end of this chapter, the book closes with credits for the OVA series, a few pages containing all the tables presented earlier in the game for quick reference, and an index. At the very back of the book is the boardgame Jinnai's El-Hazard Conquest Game, which there is little to say about aside from the fact that it is very much the sort of game Jinnai would create. Finally, a character sheet for the game is included and I must say it is probably the best Tri-Stat character sheet that I have seen so far, clear and concise and lacking in the background art which made the Tenchi Muyo! sheet nearly impossible to photocopy.
In my opinion, the El-Hazard game is the best series based RPG produced as yet by Guardians of Order. The game presents a number of options available for gaming in the world of El-Hazard as well as providing enough general advice for an experienced GM to take the genre conventions of the El-Hazard OVA and use them in a different world. The book presents a complete gaming system in a single small volume while also detailing a rich campaign setting. For fans of the series, I cannot recommend this book enough. If, on the other hand, you have never seen the El-Hazard series, the book would still be worth a look if only for the Tri-Stat system.
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