If thou gaze long into the game, the game will also gaze into thee.
Freshly cleansed and, in the case of AnimaPrimeRPG.com and our forums, with a bit of a new look, the Berengad sites have returned. Now free of malware, and much better protected.
And once we’re all over the current nasty cold in our house, it’s back to those other things we were supposed to finish. 
Somehow all of the sites on our Dreamhost account, including this one and AnimaPrimeRPG.com, were hacked. Each PHP file had malicious code inserted. I’ve reinstalled WordPress and scrubbed other pages, but I’ve also taken most things down for now (I did all this over my Droid and will look into it more when I can sit down at my PC).
I’m probably going to leave the Anima Prime Drupal site down and just put up a very simple one-pager in its stead. That’ll be in a couple of days, when I’m releasing the pre-final text of the game.
RPGNow.com has a bundle of games and supplements (in PDF) from participating publishers worth almost $1,500 for $20! All of the proceeds go to Haiti relief efforts. The list is actually so long, the website fails at the letter C! Beast Hunters is included, as are Full Light, Full Steam, Three Sixteen:Carnage Amonst The Stars, the Serenity RPG, and many other goodies.
Fred Hicks has the complete list.
Also, you can donate $5 or$10 (because really, you’re getting way too good of a deal here) and RPGNow.com will match your donation.
If you only read one gaming blog, it should be–no, not this one, but Chris Chinn’s Deeper in the Game. Among the most insightful people who think and talk about roleplaying, I find Chris to be the one whose thoughts translate the most directly to something I (and I think other people) can use, both in design and in actual play. Chris also provides a voice for issues and people who are generally underrepresented in mainstream RPGs and RPG discussion.
He just posted two things that are really fundamental; check them out:
Some people out there already have made custom character sheets for their Anima Prime games. I know Andy and his group have one for their Transformers-inspired game. Now Tazio Bettin, who is going to do a lot of the illustrations for the game, made one for a con they just had in Italy. Where, as he said it, because the 3-hour slots were too short, they just used 3 slots in a row for their Anima Prime game. So if you’re looking for a better-looking sheet than the crappy one in the beta document, you can get it here.
I’m considering including something in Anima Prime that will allow players to play on their own or without a GM. The way to do this is to “automate” adversity. I would write up charts (lets call them Tactical Action Charts or TACs) for each opponent that’s included in the book. The TAC shows a list of priorities with conditions, and you go down the list and check if the conditions are met. If so, do the action that’s listed.
For example, here’s a simple TAC for the Steambot Dreadnought:
When it’s the adversity’s turn, the player(s) go down the list. Does the Dreadnought have at least 4 Strike and 4 Charge Dice? If so, use all Strike Dice (up to the limit, of course) on a strike and spend the Charge Dice on Force Attack. If not, the next check is: Does the Dreadnought have at least 6 Strike Dice? If so, use all of them (up to the limit) to strike. If those conditions aren’t met, do a maneuver to earn more dice.
The only thing to add to the TAC is how the Dreadnought picks targets. Either it picks randomly, or it picks the one with the lowest defense, or the least wounds, or something like that.
Now you can either write up modules where the opponents are listed, and players just go through (with a determined number of character scenes in between), or you play kind of freeform until the players agree that in the fiction, opposition arises, and what it is. The third alternative, I guess, would be to use a deck of cards, with black cards allowing character scenes and red cards indicating a certain type of enemy.
I’m not sure this will make it into the first edition of Anima Prime, but if I don’t get this figured out in time, it’ll be a free add-on once I do.
For solo play, the player would need to play at least two PCs and be open to playing them with each other, like a writer who makes up scenes between characters (or like we used to do with action figures when we were little).
