[Guest]

Another awesome movie like Battle Royale would be "Versus."

Hilarious.

Almost forgot, "Samurai Fiction," too.

I've always called "Versus" the closest thing out there to "Devil May Cry: The Movie". It's no surprise they got Ryuhei Kitamura (the director of Versus) to script the cutscenes of DMC3. Another fine film by him is Godzilla: Final War which features gun katas, matrix fu, Godzillia kicking the crap out of the silly american version, and the living embodiment of Mayor Mike Haggar, Don Frye.

Has anyone here seen Sukiyaki Western yet?

Yeah, I don't think so. Characters like Kiriyama really ruined the novel, I felt he was better in the movie, because he comes off less like a character created by a 12-year-old or something, and more like a weird sociopath, which is far more realistic than how he's portrayed in the novel. You can understand why they just omitted his backstory completely when they made the movie -- because it's stupid as hell. The movie is better because it omits all the stupid and poorly written backstories.The graphic novels were also pretty bad, but there's nudity, so I guess that's enough incentive for some bother with it. Wasn't enough for me, though. I'd recommend everyone just read the Running Man, the Long Walk, and Lord of the Flies [all of which undoubtedly inspired Battle Royale], and skip over the awful novel and graphic novel.

I agree that the second movie was terrible, though. Jesus Christ. It made zero sense.

I seriously disagree. Kiriyama being turned into "generic terminator kid" was one of the worst things that was done for the film, right along side "former teacher is the one running the program and Shinji deserved to be killed in the beginning"". He was much more frightening after I learned that he was incredibly smart, was in the class (instead of some hired gun) and really didn't care about picking off his fellow classmates after flipping a coin. He thought ahead and took out each kid coldly and efficiently in a realistic manner, unlike the movie's "RWAR! I CAN WITHSTAND BULLETS AND EXPLOSIONS JUS CUZ!" guy

A good deal of the kids just hunt themselves for cheap plot convenience and the silliest of deaths in the film (two kids jump off a cliff) actually became rather tragic in the comic.

I wasn't watching the movie for snuff film antics, I just wanted some hard core drama. I didn't get alot of that there, but both the book and comic worked really well for me (the fact that the comic got really graphic in its depictions didn't hurt either) and both had the luxury of time so we could get to know the kids, and the twisted world they lived in.

This isn't exactly anime, but it looked pretty heavily inspired by it. If you haven't seen the movie Battle Royale, go and watch it on youtube NOW (if you can stand blood and a little bit of gore). That movie is freaking awesome. Basic summary: In Japan a new law was passed for some reason (I didn't get that part...) but it required every year some randomly selected Japanese class to participate in Battle Royale. Their teacher kidnaps the students and puts them on a deserted island. They have 3 days, to kill the rest of the students. Each student has an explosive collar on them, and if they are located within a certain zone, or theres more than 1 person alive by the end of the time limit, the collars detonate. It's a really F-ed up movie, but REALLY good as long as you aren't one of those sensitive types who get choked up every time someone mentions Columbine (not saying thats bad...I understand if thats how it is). Theres a 2nd movie but I haven't seen it yet. Both are located on youtube.

The second movie is pure garbage, and the novel (which is translated) is far better than the first film. The manga of Battle Royale was written by the novelist in protest over how he wasn't satisfied with the movie, and has a slightly different ending than the book. So if you can, go read the comics. Tokyopop has the series in cheap, collected omnibuses.

The player characters can already see (most of) the monsters, it's just the average person who can't see them and/or won't acknowledge their existence.
I suppose what I'm getting at is: What are good tactics or methods that can be employed by the monsters to keep the providers of their food (the spirits of normal people) docile and ignorant until it's too late?

I have a question that maybe you guys can answer: In my game I'm working on, the monsters that players fight are usually invisible to the average person, until they attack. Can any of you think how the monster attacks, and the fights against player characters, are conducted in a way where it does NOT become common knowledge? (I.E. "Coming up on the 6 o'clock news, a giant monster summoned by young man destroyed the bay bridge after blob attack.")

I used to get stuck in the role of being the game master, but another guy (the same one who gave me the idea to do this RPG project) in our group now is running our current campaign of OVA (open versatile anime) RPG.
Recently, I've been reading and playing more indie level RPGs, so that might part of the reason why I'm taking the project in this method. I can recommend a few games that more focus on the storylines rather than min/max your character:

Inspectres: It's ghostbusters as a internet start up company! Die rolling on stats allows players to dictate the action. The better you roll, the more control you get. Also I like their "confession" mechanic: A player can do a interview segment like from a Reality TV series and things have to go the way of the confession. Really awesome since a GM doesn't need any prep time.

Bliss Stage: While I haven't really played it yet outside of a short demo by the author, the game is best described as "Evangellion: The RPG". In the future, Only kids and a few messed up adults are left to defend the world from the "Bliss" and the strange aliens that created it with giant robots. It's unique because of its "round robin" style. Players frequently shift roles from their main characters to others, depending on the scene, even the GM's position changes due to actions in game.

Panty Explosion: The title is a little more exploitive than the game itself (the author has a history of making very controversial names for his games- he got a lot of heat releasing "Classroom Deathmatch" around the same time as the Virgina Tech shootings.) players play Japanese Schoolgirls who may or may not have psychic powers and try to survive the Japanese high school system and monsters that prey on the young. I like their "Best Friend/Rival" mechanic, which gives another player the power to tell what the character did- if you did good, your best friend tells what happened and your rival explains any failures.

I'm a big fan of P&P games myself, I've tried creating a few as well but they're lost do dust and such =P

Anyways, what I always found hard to accomplish was creating a sufficient level of depth in character creation which also allows a new player to come along and understand it from the start.

It's really cool to hear someone's making something like this though.  I've given it some thought myself plenty of times.

Thank you for the kind words. One goal I set out with this project was to make a game ANYONE can pick up and play. Easier said than done, but I removed a good deal of conventional "tropes" in these types of games to make the game offer enough depth to the player to make the character he wants while not bogging it down in "rule flipping" (I.E. "let me borrow the book for a second, I need to see what's the difference between Boxing and Martial Arts") so the story can begin as quickly as possible.

Any time. All these acronyms gets really confusing at times. I am however making great progress with the story and game elements with the project though.

Hey, if you liked Planetes, the director of that show (Goro Tanaguchi) did an awesome and under-rated action show called GunSword, which I love alot as well. It was unfairly avoided because it looks like a "Western-targeted program" (Yet people have no problem with more "slice o life school girl" shows and "yet another whiny punk kid in a giant robot" videos.)

For a show that could easily fall under cheap action cliches and one dimensional character traps, GunSword really surprised me with making the characters more than silly jokes or easy excuses for action sequences.

Sounds like Devil May Cry was just written for the Yaoi crowd, like what happened with GunGrave:
For a bad ass game about shooting up crazy monsters in cool ways, the anime had incredibly lame fights and even weaker monsters (especially when they could have easily borrowed designs from the already released game) in the second half. It loses extra points by turning the sweet girl in the game into an obnoxious little tramp (another sure Shonen-Ai sign: they kill off any friendly girl who interacts with the hero and for the ones they don't kill off, are written in ways you wish they died. Kinda funny when you think about it.) The story should have ended in the past and allowed the game to tell the rest of it. I digress.

Dante's quiet again? Don't they know the reason most people like him is because he's a hotshot jerk who can't shut the hell up?

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. This is the new version you speak of, due in the middle of this year.

Supposedly the next version of Dungeons and Dragons will include a pc counterpart. I'm not sure how extensive the system will be, but it certainly opens the possibilites for you to mod the pc software to your needs. It would be pretty cool if there was a D20 Tensei that could be played online.

From what I understand, you can make an official character online with a portrait designer then play the game with a gaming group that's all over the world. Outside of a few of the more fancy things you can do with this add on (which is a monthly subscription for the service and their online magazine) there's enough free software material you can use already for ANY tabletop RPG to play online.
The product looks also to be very client-server side, so I doubt you can really modify the 4e supplement software.

I've never been a fan of D20 and D&D but 4e looks neat for what it seems to offer, even if the total price tag is tough to swallow for a full game IMHO.

There's always room for spin-offs later on. It's worked for Deadlands, Cthulhu and Anima.

I still play the pen and paper games with my pals, but they're so boring.   Some advice I would give when creating a tabletop game, more specifically a Tensei one, would be to build the game around the worlds twisted themes. I'm the DM amongst my friends, but I've never really been with the rules and regulations. So my campaigns are usually pretty story heavy, and the Tensei games have quite a bit of good material to work from. Since you didn't want to worry about the magic system to much, a focus on narrative could be your best bet.

Oh yeah, one thing was I made it so Character Creation only takes no more than 5 minutes once you have an idea for him.

[is]

[citation needed]

I can't give you exact estimates but the fact is that in the US, RPGs ("analog", non-computer based ones) have a reasonable hobby market share. There are plenty of companies still releasing games, a healthy indie market that sell much different games than the big companies (think of them as Atlus or Mastiff compared to Squenix or EA) and professional websites that allow you to purchase cheaper PDFs of the games or get a PDF/Book combo, no different than Lulu.com.

The largest convention for the hobby (for which there are many all over the country), GenCon has hit it's 40th anny last year with 27,000 people in attendance, far more than the largest anime conventions and RPG.net, a independent website dedicated to the hobby on all sides has 46,606 forum members, and I'm gonna ctrl-c how many are browsing the forums right now:
781 (279 members and 502 guests)

The hobby is there... but I'm not really concerned about that. What matters to me is that I enjoy it as much as I do video games, it's a great way to hang out with good friends for a few hours with little equipment set up and the graphics are always fantastic (Just can't beat the Mk.1 Imagination! :) )

I came here to ask you guys, fellow fans of this unique game series, what you might like to see in a RPG that shared similar elements, not if you'd buy it or play it when it is released. All I'd like is in the end once it's finished, if one of you happen to just read it you can think "Yeah, It has set ups so you can work in that part where Lupo lost control" or "They got that mechanic worked into this".
It's will be its own beast and I'm doing a few things that SMT and its spin-offs aren't using just yet. It's "inspired by" and not going to be "the RPG"- as I said, there's an official SMT (and very large) pen n paper RPG in Japan already, where the hobby is far more smaller there than it is here in the US.

If there's any more questions you have about traditional RPGs, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability and if you also happen to have a few suggestions for my project, that's fine too. ;)

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but my suggestion is this: a disco.

Maybe I can be a little more clear... the project is a Pen and Paper Role Playing Game like Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire, except there will be a few elements in the game that you might find familiar in the console SMT games. I'd like to know if there's any elements from the different game series I should consider adding to the game.