Heart Quest's first supplement after its main book is a campaign sourcebook for a Magical Girl's campaign that actually somehow manages to be a parody of a genre that already was in some respects self-parody (you cannot tell me that Sailor Moon's creators were being serious when they made her). The supplement itself is good despite a terrible introduction and some humor that just falls flat. It provides the full details for Yokohama, Japan's second largest city as well as dozens of NPCs along with a couple of adventures which are fairly good material for any Japan set game....but especially Heart Quest or BESM.
Unfortunately, the writer isn't funny. In fact were I to say it I would say the writer is the Tom Green of RPG supplement writers. He keeps cracking jokes throughout the book that I'm sure would be hilarious if I was actually in the man's presence but instead make me do a double take as I have to re-read a passage to make sure that it was a joke and not serious. The premise is bizarrely funny enough as it is that the author really didn't need to try to entertain me while reading it and as such my overall enjoyment factor was slightly hurt.
Nevertheless again, I highly recommend the book just develop some tolerance for deadpan surreal humor. Now let me get onto the actual review...
The premise of Musical Mistresses is that a bunch of selfish, vain, spoiled, Japanese equivalent of Valley Girls have been presented with awesome powers by a spirit guide thingamabob that give them control over the elements so long as they play their musical instruments doing so. In the world they inhabit they are routinely forced to deal with a weird magician called the Phantom Robber whom isn't so much evil as he is completely insane in the 'with omnipotent powers the best I can do is animate Big Boy statues to go after little girls whom really arn't a threat to me' and the much more serious Po'Kran which are actually a fairly likeable race that just needs to exterminate us because they need our planet, no hard feelings.
The writer is infectiously happy about describing the world this group of oddballs live in and it colors everything that he says about the world. Not a sentence goes by that you arn't sure he hasn't got a 'isn't that great?!' look on his face describing it. The Art to the book is created in a typical shoujo anime style and the characters are all cute to look upon in the Card Captor Sakura way, sorry no anime grrls to make you drool for in this book. The book it should be noted is extraordinarily cheap at $4.95 for a 62 pg. ebook with a $7.50 print version, though that is unfortunately now not presently available but may return soon depending on sales (so I've heard).
Introduction: The only part of the book I'm not sure actually isn't worth the money is the freakin BIZARRE introduction chapter. I've seen disgusting introductions (Clanbook: Baali) and I've seen weird introductions (Changeling: the Dreaming) but I've read it a dozen times and I'm STILL NOT sure what exactly happened. It seems to be like showing up at a high school reunion where everyone seems to know you and expect you to know them yet it's inhabited by the Sailor Scout's ADD overcaffeinated cousins.
Chapter One: The City of Yokohama, a short but thorough description of the city with some neat locals in a fictional neighborhood created for the game. Aside from a few jokes, it gives you a good feel for the city that is a nice alternative to Tokyo as a anime setting. Like New York for super heroes, Tokyo is somewhat overused and the city is definately interesting enough to provide a variety of alternate moods. It seems somewhat like a Japanese San Fransisco with a Chicago sized population.
Chapter Two: The Musical Mistresses creation process. The game requires Heart Quest and is perhaps alittle too thorough in describing how the author created his characters but a pretty good feel for how the Musical Mistresses magic and idealogy work. The author touches on some remarkably frank points of sex, violence, and death that migh occur in the genre and how to handle them properly.
Chapter Three: The NPC section for Yokohama and more specifically the Musical Girls, their villains, and the School they dwell in. It took me a second to realize the author was clearly inspired by "Child's Toy", an anime where the characters are clearly demented and because everyone is there is no contrast for normal behavior to judge them by it. This sections characters actually do have funny elements to them and I've already cannibalized a few of them for my other games to great effect as in small amounts my players think they are the greatest humor characters ever.
Chapter Four: The sample adventures section that I'm still trying to figure out whom wrote because it is not only GOOD...it's GREAT. While the adventures can be summed up as dealing with a psychotic cherry tree monster while trying to have a nice time at a romantic festival, an alien invasion ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a beauty pageant where the contestants will kill you to win...even among the nice ones....it doesn't summarize the poetry of sheer laugh value from humor that works.
Chapter Five: The lyrics to the theme music of the game...I'm not kidding along with a glossary that would have helped immeasurably readers BEFORE the entire book. It also contains the sample Heart Quest bibliography that is as always a wonderful guide to obscure and not so obscure animes. This one is slightly more obscure with some honorable mentions of more famous inspirations such as Ranma 1/2 and of course Sailor Moon. The author also thanks Terry Prachett, which makes him okay in my book.
All in all, an extremely silly but enjoyable work.
7/10
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