It's the most horrible thing in the universe: TEENAGERS!
If BESM is the “rules-lite” version of anime gaming, Teenagers is the “rules fat-free” of anime gaming. Seriously. There's not a lot of rules to the game. I wrote up the character creation rules to use for my friends and it was three pages. I imagine that the rest of the rules, with the exception of “mad science,” is probably just as long. It's not big on rules. But, it is big on comedy. And references. And terrible jokes. And koalas.
Originally inspired by books like “Surfing Samurai Robots,” Teenagers (or TFOS) is about aliens coming to Earth because Earth is cool. That's your premise. The later editions switched to a more anime inspired look, with characters that are very close to famous anime of the 1970's and 1980's. Okay, there's a dash of some 1990's stuff in there. We're talking about variations on the “Magical Girl” genre of anime, stuff like Urusei Yatsura, Tenchi Muyo, and so on. This type of anime was about the stranger coming to our world, unlike Isekai anime. If this game was made today, it would probably be about a bland, boring human teenager getting set to an alien (or perhaps fantasy) school. Because Isekai is an all-consuming monster...
Ahem. Anyway. Yes. Let's talk about the game. You can create several different types of aliens, varying from almost indistinguishable from human to a bouncing purple and pink blob that wears sunglasses. Really, we’re talking everything from Spock to Jabba the Hut with a lot in between. You can also play a boring, bland human if you really want to. And someone probably should play a human, at least one, as you’ll have a “native guide” to earth and they can use the one power all humans have: the ability to convince an alien that anything they say about earth is true. But as Uncle Ben has told many a generation: With great power comes great responsibility. And if you get your alien girlfriend to believe that kissing is typical greeting on earth, well, you reap what you sow. The main difference between humans and aliens is the powers they get. Aliens have three different tables of powers they roll for, with some more useful than others. Since the game is suppose to be fun, balance doesn’t really matter. Humans, on the other hand, have one table with powers, which are humorous and not as powerful, in addition to their power I mentioned above. When it comes to stats, there’s eight, which are rolled randomly, but you can shuffle them around if you want. Beyond that, there’s Knacks, which are skills by any other name. Unlike most games, you can make up your own Knacks, but you shouldn’t make them too specific.
When you get into the mechanics, the game is ridiculously simple. Roll a d6, add stats and Knacks, and get your total. However, since the game grades on a curve, rolling too high can have dire consequences. You have been warned.
The last thing you have to worry about is equipment. There are weapons but they’re not lethal no matter what. Your character will get knocked out briefly but you really can’t die. Since the game was inspired by comedies, the gear you can get is out there as well. The infamous Boy/Girl Gun, the Duplicator Gun, Spring Shoes, and Popcorn Grenade to name a few. There’s also the Hyperdimentional Superhammer, something older anime fans might remember. You know that hammer that women in a harem anime would pull out from no where to bonk the bland protagonist over the head when he became horny? Yeah, that’s the one. There’s also vehicles, something teens in America would obsess over back in the day.
Once everyone has their characters put together and all of their gear picked out, it’s up to the Referee (DM by any other name) to give them something to do. And the basic book is actually really good for that. There’s a sample adventure you can use to get things started and give your players a sense of how the game is going to play, based on hunting down a sphere to win the hand of an alien princess. After that, there’s a whole “season” of game ideas they hand you to flesh out on your own. All of these things give the Ref a large amount of things to work with. They also give you tips on how to be funny, something I have used more than once.
In the end, this game is a lampoon of old anime and media that somehow manages to work. However, I don’t know if you can really run a whole campaign of it. I use it as a filler when someone can’t make it to the game and we don’t want to leave them out. If you do want to run a long term game of it, make sure to develop a host of odd, wacky, and weird characters to populate the world and then just let your players run amok. It’s a great game to play when you need a breath of fresh air, especially after you’ve been running something serious and dark. The game is built around the “Rule Of Cool” or “Rule Of Funny” to be more accurate. Just don’t hold your breath for the Hentai Expansion…
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