This series of articles is an introduction to the upcoming Dynamic D100 roleplaying game, which Alephtar Games and Kaizoku Press are about to release. In a pinch, we want to clarify some concepts when the game is not out yet, and to give a pre-emptive answer to some questions that will probably arise.
The first point, for our friends who are anime fans but not gamers (or not roleplayers) is: "What is a roleplaying game"? We will provide a short answer here. If you already know what an RPG is, please skip to paragraph "What is the goal of Dynamic D100".
What is a Roleplaying Game?
An RPG (Role Playing Game) is a form of entertainment where a group of people take the roles of remarkable characters and describe their adventures in a fictional world –in our case, the Nagai-verse. In most RPGs there is one special player who is in charge of describing the world and determining the behaviour of all its denizens who are not among the protagonists. This player is designated as the Game Master or Narrator, and in our case is the one who impersonates all the bad guys and the support cast of scientists who help the super robots from their scientific bases. All of the other players impersonate one of the main heroes of the story – the pilots.
As you may have guessed, the game involves a lot of recitation and speaking as if you were your character – something you do not usually do when playing a card or board game. Dynamic D100 emphasizes this part more than other RPGs, as it rewards players for shouting the typical battlecries of super robot pilots ("Kooshiryooku something" or "Getter something else") during battles. However, it is not all about acting: there are parts of the game that resemble classic tabletop games, leveraging fortune and tactical cunning to make your experience more anime-like. Whenever your hero attempts something, particularly if it involves his or her robot, one or more rolls of the dice determine whether the plan succeeds or backfires.
Another peculiarity of RPGs is that there is no "winner" among the players at the end of a session. All players either win together or lose together by thwarting the machinations of evil, and if the players "lose" the Narrator does not win. Winning in an RPG is simply the fact of "having had a good time".
What is the goal of Dynamic D100?
There are literally thousands of Roleplaying Games available, each with its peculiarities that make it stand out (or not) in an immense sea of cooperative fun. Even attempting a simple classification is difficult, as there are many schools of thought locked in endless debates about the true nature of the roleplaying experience. In this series of articles we will try to avoid technicalities and focus instead on the kind of entertaining experience that Dynamic D100 makes its player enjoy, and how it does so.
To make it simple, the players of a Dynamic D100 game become the protagonists of a robotic adventure "like Go Nagai would write". It is not just a matter of having giant moveable battle machines – you have them in Star Wars, too – but how the adventures evolve, and how the giant robots, the co-protagonists of the story, are treated. If you are a robotic anime fan, you already know that there is a big difference between a robotic story by Go Nagai and one written by, for instance, Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of "real robots". The only point in common is that the protagonists fight enclosed in fearsome mechanical giants, the rest is different.
Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Getter Robot G, UFO Robot Grendizer and Kootetsu Jeeg are © Go Nagai / Dynamic Planning. Their likeness is used under license. Artwork by Kazuhiro Ochi.
