This month I’ve read a whole lotta One Piece, and now I’m starting Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy,” while also playing Persona 5 Royal. All of this is pooling itself into my squishy, squishy mind, swirling and bubbling into what will become a campaign for Over Arms: the anime RPG that does a wonderful job bringing the action of Jojo, Persona, Shaman King, and the like to the realm of pen and paper roleplaying.
So far, the party consists of:
1. An artist who’s “anima,” (which is like a stand, or persona,) allows her to draw any object, be it a gun to shoot or a ramp to walk down on- the biggest drawback to this power is that she must take the time to draw the item, and it only lasts for so long before she has to draw a replacement.
2. A young man who’s anima “Helping Hands,” spawns a number of hands that can run around an area and preform various tasks on his command. His idea for the anima, was to support the party with the hands, having them run around and give everyone recovery items, and block incoming enemy blows for the whole party.
3. An aged bus driver, who believes wholly in fair-play. His anima “the Referee,” was born from this belief. It allows him to use the power “Break it up!” Which sends two combatants flying away from each other, breaking up a conflict at lightning, inhuman speed.
We will probably have two or three more players, which I suspect will be big bruiser type characters- as the other fellas we play with like to deliver a serious smack down. So far, though, what an astonishing cast! Over Arm’s character creation takes less than 10 minutes, and is incredibly freeing. When you make your anima power, you basically describe what the anima is and say “yeah it can do this,” and it is the GM’s job to enforce limitations to the power if need-be. It allows for some very creative character building, and I for one did not expect any of these characters to take the powers they did. Pretty dang fun, y’all.
The story will feature these characters waking up in a strange, distorted world called “the Mirage,” where perception, thought, and reality are all outta wack. Therein, they will have to find a way home to the bustling city they all call home, all the while facing off against deranged characters, bizarre creatures, and attempting to regain any memories of how they came to the impossible landscapes that make up the Mirage.
This is going to be a one-shot, but by Jove, is it devilishly fun to write and think about. So, after Age of Sigmar: Soulbound and Dark Heresy come to a nice end for my player groups, I’m thinking of returning to these characters and branching the story out from just a one-shot to a full on multi-part campaign. You can do a lot with this game, and I’ve already decided on a lot of the major metaphysics of the setting- which they’ll have to wait for the big campaign to hear about. I can really see this game becoming a group favorite, as requested by my party as Delta Green or Savage Worlds Supers. I highly recommend it! You can find Over Arms over at Drivethrurpg.
