Blast From The Past: Sailor Moon RPG

In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!

That's right, we're doing this...

A while back, I wrote about Big Eyes,Small Mouth. In that article, I mentioned the Sailor Moon RPG and Resource Book. Before you give me any crap, I'm a fan of the show. If you want to know why, it's not just the girls in school girl outfits and magic powers. Way back in the day, there wasn't a lot of anime on broadcast TV. Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z were your only options back in those days and they were on the same channel. While my fellow males were fans of DBZ, I never got into it. Instead, I started watching Sailor Moon. And I found it was better than I expected. So, when I found the Sailor Moon RPG and Resource Book, I bought it. For an old friend. I ended up buying my own copy a few years later.

The Sailor Moon RPG and Resource Book is one of the first licensed products released by Guardians of Order, the creators of Big Eyes, Small Mouth and the Tri-Stat system. As it was the first one, it was released using their original Tri-Stat rules, which means no skills and somewhat limited mechanics. However, I do think that it fits the setting and characters. Also, since this was put together between 1998 and 2000, it only includes information for the first two seasons of the Sailor Moon series, the only part released in North America at the time. If you know anything about the show, you know DIC did some butchering of that show. I might get into the whole “kissing cousins” thing later. Depends on my mood.

Can you tell what season this outfit is from? Because I can...

Let's take some time to discuss the rules and creating characters. While there are stats for the Inner Senshi and Tuxedo Mask, they give you the option to design your own. Which, you know, is the point of role playing games. Players can create Senshi or Knights. Senshi are, of course, female and Knights are male. There's not too much of a difference between them mechanically; they can both transform, do magical attacks, and so on. The only real difference between the two is that Senshi get Elemental Control (water, air, fire, wood, and metal as seen in the series) and Knights get Emotional Control (reflecting Tuxedo Mask's ability to inspire hope in Sailor Moon and the others). While basic, there are enough rules and abilities to cover most everything seen in the series.

While not intend for use for players, there are rules for making “Servants of the Negaverse” like Queen Beryl and so on. These powers are similar to the ones that Senshi and Knights get, but some have a bit of darker twist. As a brief aside, writing this has given me an idea for having players be a group of Negaverse servants fighting the Senshi... I might have to flesh that out...

Anyway. One of the last things is the rules for creating Youma/Yoma, the monsters of the week and servants of the Big Bad Evil Guys of the season. They do have some of them in the core book, as well as compendiums of them they released later, but unless you just want to play through the series, you'd want to create your own.

Best Senshi reporting in. I will fight you if you disagree.

Now, let's talk about what you could do with this thing. As I mentioned above, you can create your own Senshi and Knights for other celestial bodies. Such as the moons of the various planets, comets, and even asteroids. Of course, you could just let people play their favorite Senshi and do some “lost episodes,” an alternate universe, or even a continuation of the series. Personally, I prefer the first option. I'd rather have people have their own stories and their own chances to be heroes. Plus, I find people are more attached to characters they've created on their own. But, it's up to you. Both options are explored in the book and offer suggestions.

Of course, if you really wanted to, you could have the players be normal people in the Sailor Moon universe, but it might not be as fun. To each their own, I suppose.

Second best Senshi right here

Since this is a “resource book,” it includes that list of episodes. It's not just a list, it's a summary of each episode, even the ones DIC skipped. It also have brief description of the Outer Senshi, who hadn't yet been featured in the episodes aired in North America. Mostly because of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who were quite clearly lesbians. When DIC (finally) translated and localized the next season, they were included. As very close cousins. This makes me laugh. There's also the Sailor Stars, who are male Sailor Scouts. That means that they're men in their normal form and women in their Senshi forms. While I had known about this beforehand, I'm sure that surprised some fans. Sadly, they didn't include stats for any of these, but at least you have the information you'd need to make them. I'm honestly curious about why they didn't include stats for them. Maybe they were worried about taking away page space from something that was seen as more important for their target audience?

For those of you who are fans of the series, I'd suggest picking this up. In addition to the little facts (such as the blood type, birthdays, and favorite foods) about the characters, there's wonderful full color magazine glossy pages with images from the series, as well as a wealth of other black and white pictures. From the copies I've had a chance to handle, the books are very well put together. There's also some expansions, mostly the Youma/Yoma books, but also little “character diaries” you could use to record your character's stats and blank pages to record what your character has been going through. These were popular for a lot of games back in those days. I don't know if they still are today, as they're basically selling you a blank notebook, but they are fun.

Did you know that her element is wood? No, I'm not kidding!

As a brief note, I'm thinking about doing some exploration of some the games I've reviewed. I'd be looking at the source books I own, experiences I've had, and just more about how the game works. If you're interested, leave a comment below letting me what you think of the idea, and if you're in favor of it, what games you'd like to see me take an in-depth look at.

Cousins. Right. Uh huh. Sure. We believe you...