One thing I sometimes like to joke and self mock is being a not-so-closeted weaboo, albeit one who generally tries to keep his anime tastes separate from the general fantasy focus of the blog. However Gundobad Games wrote a pretty amusing post on some unholy setting/games mashup. This got me thinking about my own tables for unholy mashups. Some of these are random tables, some are observations and most of it is quite incoherent since 'anime' is not a genre, its a medium. Albeit one steeped in a variety of its own unique twist on certain genres and others mostly unique to it.
I know posting this one on the OSR MeWe will give people cancer. I'm sorry. Except not really.
Of course, making things anime-like requires more than just genre-blending. At a face value, if described in their simplest terms quite a few anime appear to be much more basic than they really are. The truth, in my opinion at least, is that what makes anime as amazing (and as reviled) is how so many of them have such utterly corny or balls to the walls insane presentation that floors people. Sometimes, that presentation isn't always obvious and just how insane, corny, bizarre or flat out trashy/raunchy can vary immensely from show to show. Some can be legitimately amazing works of fiction deserving of praise, others are utterly terrible and corny. Most exist somewhere in the middle and just become weirder from there. Take the classic shonen fighting manga and grandfather to the genre's entire modern formula, Dragon Ball. It's simply, at least initially, a retelling of Journey to the West but somehow its in a world which is bizarre and anachronistic, where advanced technology coexist with humble farmlands. Where the King of the World is a dog-man and talking, shapeshifting pig-men exist. And then it spirals into wuxia and space opera territory. Anime and manga often laughs at the idea of genre conventions.
Option A: Isekai
The cancerous genre which overtook anime and is only just slowly, maybe, ever so slightly dying down. Now as a concept, what is labelled as Isekai is a perfectly valid concept for a fantasy game and has roots in older works such as Alice In Wonderland, the John Carter novels or even Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. However, the modern 'Isekai' genre which is total ass cancer was born of the boom in popularity of Light Novels. They are cheap, the barrier to entry is low and the lowly trash of this world will eat up that garbage like I eat a box of Cheez-It when depressed. Isekai is simply, overall as a genre, the transposition of someone from one world to another, generally our world to a generic fantasy land. As a result here are some settings one could use for Isekai. The second table, called 'Set Up or Modification' combines one or more Isekai trend and/or quirk of its (more often than not crappy) writing to spice up the setting and add a level of anime-ness, for better or for ill.
1d8 | Setting/Game | Set Up or Modification |
1 | D&D Setting: Could be Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk or even Athas. | Chosen Hero: The characters (or just one of its a solo game) have been chosen to become great heroes and given powers/tools to help defeat a great evil of said setting. The PC are either really powerful by setting standard or more easily eased into/instantly raised to the higher tiers or levels. |
2 | Exalted |
3 | Wolves of God | The Overlord: Like the above, except instead of being heroes the player characters are cast into the role of a great evil which must destroy that world for one reason or another. Alternatively they are just overpowered assholes. |
4 | Tekumel |
5 | Talislanta | Bringer of Modernity: For whatever reason, the player characters are allowed and/or encouraged to bring in their knowledge or technology and somehow apply it or they have means to use advanced technology in the setting. |
6 | Pendragon |
7 | Legend of the Five Rings | The Waifubait: For some reason, a sizable portion of the cast are now cute girls and lovely women (more of the latter if you don't want jail time), including possibly a few major NPC now gender bent. They are both as cute/sexy as it gets yet somehow retain any badassery and skill of their canon counterpart no matter how implausible their age or gender may be within the setting rules. Reroll on this column and combine. If you rolled Exalted for this one, just increase the amount of waifus instead. |
8 | Go to your book/PDF dump and start looking for something you'd never expect to run! |
Option B: The 'Legally Distinct Dungeon Fantasy' Mashup
This one is more directly in line with Gundobad's post. I call it the 'Legally Distinct Dungeon Fantasy' as a joke but what I really and, obviously, mean is Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, OSR and any and all games which are at least partially derived from the original games designed by Gygax and Arneson, which generally involve the Fighter/Mage/Thief archetypes, a group or 'party', monsters, dungeons, traps (not the anime kind, hopefully! Then again...) and generally a lot of fighting if or when things go sour.
Imagine D&D, but with elements of... |
1d8 | Genre A | Genre B |
1 | Fighting Shonen: If you are even vaguely familiar with anime you know this genre all too well as it's one of the most famous. These are your Dragon Ball, One Piece or Naruto. If you’re a bit older, it's Fist of the North star. People fight. A lot. They get stronger to fight more and fight more to get stronger. | Idols |
2 | Mecha |
3 | Monster-Hunting Organization: Also a fighting genre, but it generally involves humanity under threat from a specific type/category of monsters, a special organization which fights them and usually a ton of grim secrets. This genre can range in style/genre combination from Neon Genesis Evangelion to God Eater or even, arguably, Attack on Titan. | Slice of Life |
4 | Magical Girls |
5 | Death Game: There is a big event, tournament or whatever where the characters are involved (by choice or not) where different individuals or teams of individuals fight each other to the death for a prize. Technically Highlander would count in this category. | Urban Fantasy |
6 | Pseudo-Historical |
7 | Magical School: Okay, I honestly HATE this genre but it's so damn common it needs to be put in here. While the word ‘magical’ may imply fantastical elements, technically there are plenty of these which overlap into scifi, cyberpunk and even superheroes. Oh and don't forget to add some harems in there to be as cancerously anime as possible. | Cyberpunk |
8 | Reroll on this column and combine, ignoring this result. Alternatively reroll on Genre A too, I don't know? |
The Result: Magical Dragon Idols & Cybermagical Dungeons
So I made those half-assed tables and tried to see what abominations I could come up with. By themselves many of these results aren't that weird, so keep in mind it required me to stretch the premise by taking time to develop what sort of anime insanity and awful/amazing nonsense could exist under said premise, possibly even character concepts.
In the end, I settled on a single concept. Its stupid.
"Imagine D&D...but with elements of Monster-Hunter Organizations, Idols and Cyberpunk"
Okay this one is kind of easy, but still a bit weird. The thing which immediately just to mind, at least to me, is the
Symphogear franchise. In a world combining fantasy and dystopia future, the player characters belong to an organization which hunt down a specific threat to mankind. Now, perhaps the best way for this to go is to go down the darker path that Idols are very
corporate and make them an Idol group which is back by a mega corporation or some shady organization with ulterior motives.
In a grim, gray and neon-lit far future world where mankind learned to tap into higher/lower dimensions for near infinite power and technological advancement, bubbly and nice idols exist as a ray of sunshine which bring hope and joy to those living in this gray and gloomy world. Yet under the surface, things go run much deeper. Reality is shattered by the multiple cataclysm which mankind endured and self-inflicted. Thaumaturgic Technology was once so advanced as to functionally make humanity's overlords nearly gods but mankind's greed and despair grew too much and many cataclysm endured. Humanity in the current age is still trying to advance but the government and medias keep a tight lid on the true historical origins of why cities were built upon layers and layers of ruins, why the the few non-arcology forests are cancerous masses of living trees and why dimensional wastelands exist. Beyond the grey and neon-lit cities, the world is a techno-magical wasteland.
The monsters from beyond the veil are drawn to despair and negative emotions, which are naturally plentiful in such a depressing world filled with salarymen with little to live for. And so young girls trained as idols are given the ability to tap into supernatural powers. In between their bubbly antics and idol shows, they repel the darkness just as much as they dive into the cybermagical ruins to recover artifacts so mankind is able to sustain itself and, hopefully rebuild.
Some random thoughts about all this:
- Do the fantasy races exist and, if so how do they fit into the setting? One option is they are similar to the Meta-Humans of Shadowrun and born of human tampering into Thaumaturgic Technology over the centuries.
- Perhaps the fantasy races, being mutants or reincarnation of beings from the 'other side' are the only ones with innate magic of some kind? Perhaps they exist outside the human arcologies. In that case, the idols may in fact be recruited from these changed people and given a new chance at life and luxury (at a price) inside the much safer arcologies in exchange for their services. Its possible some races may exist and be integrated into human society, possibly as elites or in secret. Elves come to mind.
- Perhaps the Magical Girls can hide their true race somehow, if needed? And if such an angle is pursued then each race is suitably redesigned to be more anime-like and this is where the so-called 'bad' races of modern D&D can come in handy. Tiefling are just cute anime people with little Oni horns which tend to produce delinquent idols. Halflings are stuck looking small and cute their entire life, be it as looking underaged or alternatively being shortstacks. Same and more so with Dwarves. If one is degenerate as shit this could easily escalate into monstergirl territory.
- Is there an Idol class everyone must take levels/be a hybrid of? Is it more like a Bard. That doesn't seem all that great when one think about it. Instead perhaps the Idol class is more like a form of singing-focused Paladin, complete with some Idol Code about always being bright, shiny, happy and all that?
- I'm going to hell for writing all this.
