1. What type of game is RandomAnime?
RandomAnime is a universal role-playing game system that focuses on cinematic action in the style of Japanese animation and Hong-Kong action films.
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2. What does RandomAnime cost?
The RandomAnime rulebook retails for $25.00 US. This is the only book you need to play the game, though future supplements will be released to help you expand your gaming ideas and options.
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3. What are the book's physical statistics?
RandomAnime is 184 pages, soft-cover, with color cover illustrations and black and white illustrations throughout. It has an extensive, cross-referenced index for quick access to important information. The end of the book contains character and mecha sheets that may be photocopied for game use.
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4. What makes RandomAnime uniquely “anime”?
The game’s quick and simple mechanics provide for fast-paced, anime-style, cinematic action and drama, while its rich illustrations, frequent anime examples, and original fiction accentuate the anime “feel” of the game. RandomAnime characters possess giant, city-destroying robots, own magical talking pets, and can perform practically any kind of super-powered, over-the-top feat you can find in anime and manga.
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5. Where can I read a review of RandomAnime?
RandomAnime has been reviewed by various websites and discussed on numerous forums. Click here to go to our RandomAnime reviews page for direct links to reviews.
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6. How does RandomAnime character creation work?
RandomAnime character creation is point based. After coming up with a character concept and choosing a basic character template, players receive points with which to purchase their characters’ stats. Players receive a separate pool of points for each type of stat plus a pool of bonus points to spend on anything that needs improvement later on. The number of points received depends on the power level of the game, determined by the Narrator (the player running the game). There is very little min-maxing or number crunching involved in character creation, and an experienced player can typically make a complete RandomAnime character in less than 5 minutes.
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7. What types of stats do RandomAnime characters have?
Characters have eight attributes (four physical and four mental), which measure all of their innate abilities. In addition, every character has a number of skills, which reflect his learned abilities. There are 30 skills to choose from, and an average character will probably have between five and eight skills, plus four combat skills, which all characters receive automatically. Skill and attribute levels range from one to 10, with three being the average and seven being the normal human maximum.

Characters also purchase backgrounds (monetary wealth, mafia connections, giant robots, etc.), gimmicks (the ability to throw fireballs, teleport, turn invisible, etc.), a Movement Rate, Health Points, Pool Points (spent to activate gimmicks during the game) and a Luck score.
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8. How broad or specific are skills in RandomAnime?
By default, skills are fairly broad to allow for quick, simple character creation and game play. For more detailed or realistic games, RandomAnime provides optional rules for splitting up or specializing in individual skills. You can even link a normal skill with a combat skill to create a unique combat skill for things like martial arts cooking or baseball bat swordplay.
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9. Does RandomAnime have disadvantages or negative stats?
RandomAnime characters do not normally gain numerical bonuses for taking disadvantages. Because this is a game of cooperative storytelling and cinematic action, players are supposed to have fun acting out their character’s weaknesses and strengths without needing to bargain for extra points. You will not need to cripple your character in any way to make him super powerful, and your character will not “lose” the game because of any inherent flaws. Style and drama are what matter most in RandomAnime.
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10. Does RandomAnime have rules for character size, weight, and appearance?
A character’s numerical stats have no bearing on his size or appearance. In anime, looks can often be deceiving. Diminutive characters are often incredibly strong, and hulking giants are sometimes amazingly fast. Therefore, in RandomAnime you are completely free to describe your character however you want.
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11. Does RandomAnime have rules for character personality and emotions?
Much like physical appearance, a character’s personality is mostly cinematic in nature. During character creation, you pick a template, which determines your character’s archetypal role in the story, but this is only a general guideline. You can flesh out your character’s personality and motivations any way you like and make in-character decisions during game play without being restricted by unnecessary stats that determine your personality or moral alignment.
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12. How do experience and character advancement work in RandomAnime?
During game play, characters receive Style Points, which they can spend during downtime to improve their stats and purchase new abilities. Whenever a player performs a particularly impressive, hilarious, or stylish in-character action, any other player can call for a Style Point reward. If the majority of the group agrees, the character gets a Style Point. The Style Point system encourages exciting, creative role-playing and lets characters improve their abilities by performing stylish, entertaining actions.
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13. How does RandomAnime handle character power levels in long-running games?
By controlling the number of Style Points awarded and spent, the Narrator can create long-running games without fear of his player characters becoming overly powerful. Many RandomAnime playtest games have run for years without suffering from game balance problems. In super-powered or very dramatic games, you may decide to simply do away with Style Point awards altogether since the characters are already powerful enough at the beginning of the game.
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14. Does RandomAnime allow for non-human player characters?
Because your character’s appearance is entirely cinematic, you can describe him as a normal human, an elf, an android, a hideous mutant, or anything else you can imagine. All you need to do to customize your character in this way is choose abilities and gimmicks that reflect his unique nature. The upcoming Collectémon expansion rules will give you even more options for creating non-human, animal, and monster characters.
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15. Does RandomAnime have rules for mooks or extras?
RandomAnime has disposable bad guys called faceless minions. You can use these generic—and ultimately doomed—opponents to let your player characters mow through hordes of zombies, goons, androids, or ninja in true anime fashion. The upcoming Minionomicon expansion will include supplemental faceless minion rules to increase your options for minion combat.
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16. Where can I see an example RandomAnime character?
You can download a completely filled-out character sheet for Golf Fairway, one of the RandomAnime playtest characters, on the downloads page of our website (at the very bottom of the page).
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17. How are actions resolved in RandomAnime?
To perform almost any action that requires a dice roll in RandomAnime, you simply roll two six-sided dice, add the result to the appropriate skill or attribute score, and apply all appropriate positive or negative modifiers for difficulty. A final result of 10 or higher means the action is successful.

RandomAnime uses cooperative narration to allow all of the players to participate equally in telling the story. You describe your character’s actions until a roll is required. If the roll succeeds, you can continue describing the results of your successful action. If the roll fails, however, the Narrator steps in and describes what happens.
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18. How does combat work in RandomAnime?
Combat in RandomAnime is fast-paced, simple, and highly cinematic. You can describe your attacks and defensive actions in whatever stylish or over-the-top way you like. Only the type of weapon you are using and the number of enemies you are attacking have a numerical effect on your roll. Flashy gimmicks, powerful items, and giant mecha add to the flare and excitement of RandomAnime combat.

The damage inflicted by attacks is pre-determined by the weapon being used and/or the attacking character's strength. Damage is automatically reduced by the defender’s endurance and armor. The simplicity of the combat system lets you resolve attacks quickly so you can have fun describing your characters’ actions without spending hours crunching numbers.
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19. How do magic and superpowers work in RandomAnime?
Characters can choose from over 100 gimmicks, allowing them to pull off amazing feats that no ordinary human could ever perform. Players are free to describe the physical appearance of their gimmicks however they like, so you can decide whether your character’s abilities come from magical spells, bionic implants, martial arts prowess, psychic powers, or anything else you can imagine.
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20. Does RandomAnime have rules for luck?
In addition to the two six-sided dice rolled to resolve actions, players also roll a third die called the Luck Die. The result of this die is used to determine certain random factors in the game such as partial success and extra attack damage.

Characters also have a Luck score, which can be rolled for situations involving pure random chance. Characters can spend Luck Points, game points based on their Luck score, to improve their chances of success or to re-roll particularly disastrous failed actions.
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21. Does RandomAnime allow for different power and reality levels?
RandomAnime has three different power levels called Anime Realms. The Anime Realm of a game determines how many points characters get to spend on attributes, skills, and gimmicks during creation. There are seven reality levels, called Anime Levels, which determine how realistic (or cartoon-like) the game world is. Both the Anime Realm and Anime Level affect the game in a number of mechanical and cinematic ways, allowing the Narrator to fine-tune each game for just the right balance of power and realism.
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22. How does RandomAnime handle characters of different power levels in the same game?
Characters in the same game are normally all created with the same number of points and are more or less equal in power, but this is not necessarily the case. If you want weaker characters to mix in with high-powered characters, the rules will still work fine.

Not all characters have to possess flashy super powers in RandomAnime. Certain gimmicks can make a character luckier or more skilled without giving him the ability to toss around fireballs or rip buildings in half. Using these “cinematic” gimmicks, an “ordinary” character can have just as much impact on the game as a character with more obvious super powers.
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23. How easy would it be to “break” the RandomAnime game system with house rules?
RandomAnime's rules are simple and transparent enough that you probably won't break the game with house rules (unless you really want to). This is a highly cinematic game in which all the players are expected to cooperate to tell a good story. RandomAnime’s rules are balanced for fairness, but for the sake of speed and simplicity, the game does not include a lot of artificial mechanical failsafes to "protect" the rules from abuse. If players want to try to beat any game system, they'll always find a way.

RandomAnime is designed to help players do what they want to, not force them to play in any sort of "right" way. For instance, some gimmicks in RandomAnime are so incredibly powerful that they "break" the game no matter what, and we've labeled them as such. This is an anime game, after all, and sometimes anime characters really do have more power than is good for them.
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24. Does RandomAnime have rules for vehicles and giant robots?
Of course! RandomAnime gives you all the rules you need to create everything from state-of-the-art racecars to mountain-sized mechanical war machines. Mecha can be made to transform, operate and think on their own, and even combine to form larger, more powerful robots. The upcoming Project GR expansion rules will provide even more detailed and flexible rules for creating and using mecha, vehicles, giant starships, and even mecha player characters.
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25. Does RandomAnime have rules for monsters and critters?
In RandomAnime, characters can purchase the Cute Furry Pet background to gain useful and powerful animal companions. The Narrator can also use RandomAnime’s character and mecha creation rules to create everything from talking rodents that toss lightning bolts to colossal radioactive lizards hell bent on destroying Tokyo. The upcoming Collectémon expansion rules will provide even more critter creating power and flexibility.
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