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Review of Zen and the Art of Mayhem
It took awhile.
There was an offering that looked as if it owed as much to first edition D&D as anything else. Not my style. There was another that wasn't quite to my liking. I don't think many of the games out there, generic or anime-specific, do justice to the setting. BESM comes the closest, but I use it for ideas and flavor more than anything else. I was looking for something new.
I found it in Zen and the Art of Mayhem.
Zen and the Art of Mayhem is available as a free pdf download from Panic Studios. It comes in 9 parts (one being a charactersheet), broken up into its component chapters, presumably to minimize download time. Further supplements are planned, but I'm not sure the company is still publishing. The only place I could find a copyright is on the art, and that's 4 years old. :o(
I have only a couple beefs with the product. Not entirely fair since it's free, but if you're going to offer it to the public in a professional format (like pdf), you should run it through a grammar check at least. Phrases such as "to decided what type," "it need to be present," and sentences with one wrong word that changes the entire meaning of the sentence. There were two "Flaws" missing that were listed on the charts, but not in the main text, so I had to use my anime knowledge to fill in the blanks. And the organization left something to be desired. A big problem I have is power balance, but I'll get to that later. The art in this game is so-so. It's meant to be evocative of manga, but I would have preferred a cleaner style.
The first download includes the intro as well as Chapter 1. This gives you an excellent introduction to the world of animes and mangas, and gives you suggestions on how to handle tone (sober, silly), atmosphere (whacked, normal), scope (troublesome, epic) and setting (fantasy, gritty future). It also tackles Elements (horror, super tech), Power Level and how to get the characters into a group and why that group exists. In each section it gives you examples of anime or manga that fit the bill. For example, Dragonball Z is "extravagantly powered," and Street Fighter II is an example of the "Normal But..." atmosphere.
Chapter 2 is Character Creation, and this is where the flaws are obvious. It could have greatly benefited from organization along the lines of "Step 1," "Step 2," etc. I felt I had to prepare reference sheets for that very purpose. But the strengths of the system outweigh the editing problems. You can be absolutely anything in this system. And instead of the 100,000th system to imitate GURPS, complete with a list of common advantages like "Night Vision" and "Combat Reflexes," Zen sticks to its genre well with a list of unique Talents such as "The Knock" (to get a piece of machinery working again), and "Ignore Physics" (run up walls and hang in the air before kicking someone. The Talents are classed as Major (5 pts) and Minor (2 pts), but most of them are scalable so you can pay anywhere from 1 to 5 points instead of the full 5, and get less of a benefit. It also has Ki Powers, Special Martial Art Maneuvers, Spells, and Psionics. The damage template is pretty basic once you get the hang of it, and new abilities may be added easily. I would have preferred more detail on how many points you get for stats in the beginning. I arrived at a couple point totals by adding up the sample character's stats.
Chapter 3 is the System, which explains how to determine success and failure. The roll of a d10 is added to a stat (like Strength) and then a skill (like Climbing) and then comparing it to a difficulty number. Stats range from 1-10, and Skills range from 1-15, so a difficulty of 35 isn't impossible. Stat rolls are done on a 1d10. You must roll equal to or under the stat to succeed. Penalties may be applied.
Chapter 4 details equipment, called Props in this game. They cover the Stone Age to the far flung future as far as tech goes, so it's reasonably complete. They also give Damage Absorption Numbers for each item, so you know how easy it is to break. This list encompasses a lot, including the Kitchen Sink ("prefect (sic} for dumping things in or hiding behind."). I'm not making this up. :o) There are even rules for building new items, to please the gadgeteers.
Chapter 5 is the Combat section. Here's where things get interesting. It's not as dense as other games, and that's the beauty. It lays out what you can do and what happens when you get hurt. The main problem lies in the Super Martial Arts. There are a couple maneuvers that multiply the damage you can do by x2 or x3. This unfortunately tends to give martial artists a massive damage advantage, where they not only can do more damage than anyone else but also kill things with a single blow. Some more thought should have gone into that, because it mars what otherwise is a simple and workable combat system. Knockback is similarly mishandled, where you could conceivably be knocked back 90 meters plus from a single strike in combat.
Chapter 6 is called Detailing the World, and it shows quite well how to generate a cast of thousands of supporting characters through archetypes and such. It also explains how to write an adventure, and gives you some detail on a campaign setting for a fantasy anime, Pangea.
Chapter 7: Notes...Tightens the focus on Talents, Skills, Spells, etc so that the GM has more of a sense of what these abilities can and cannot do. Also has a section on power balance using point totals to rank characters with labels such as "Superhero" or "Useless character." There are suggestions on how to run Zen, complete with advice on soundtracks.
Chapter 8 is full of charts and tables. The vast majority are not tables for the game proper, but for random generation of flavor in the game. There's a "lifepath" type set of tables (ala Mekton), tables to create an adventure, to randomly generate an Atmosphere (such as the "Strange Events" table), random skills, talents, and metaphysical ability tables, random encounters, and random NPC tables. Most of these are described in Zen as "Really F*%ked Up," like the "Really F*%ked Up NPC Generator."
Zen has good points and bad points. In my estimation, the good outweighs the bad, and with a few minor tweaks could be a really workable system. I play it now, adding more players all the time, and it seems to run fairly smoothly. Tweak the Martial arts a bit, and organize it better, and I think it would stand up to all those slicker games that you're paying $40 for. As it was free, it was money well-spent, I'd say. And I've never been so inspired to see what a game might stand up to (it even handles Rifts without too much fuss).
If you can stand a bit of groundwork, you're in for a treat. This game, despite its problems, is the best anime game I've seen so far. It's not pretty, it's not available in stores, and doesn't have any source material, but it's free, and well worth your time and effort.
