[OSSR]Dominions Tank Police Roleplaying Game & Resource Book

[Ancient History]

Background
I grew up with anime when it was Big Eyes and Big Hair. It was the late 80s and early 90s, American animation was in a ghetto, Saturday morning cartoons were dying, and at the local Blockbusters you fretted between renting a Sega Genesis game or renting a Japanese cartoon that might contain a tit shot. I won't say that there wasn't more to appreciate in Japanse anime than that - the art, the storytelling, the insight into a foreign culture - but this was back in the day when I had a very limited allowance and translations of Japanese manga were just beginning to eek through to American consciousness. This was back when Dark Horse was known for its manga translations, and Marvel's Epic line was publishing Akira, and every fucking character Masamune Shirow drew looked like an 80s pop star with the body of an aerobics model that had a fetish for heavy weaponry.


Not even exaggerating.

To appeal to gamers interested in roleplaying in these worlds, onto the scene came Guardians of Order (GoO). Today, GoO is dead, and their properties are locked away in the black abyss of whatever Scandinavian entity holds the keys to White Wolf's toy chest, but back in the 90s they were a fairly reliable and reputable third-tier game company. They had a weak universal system called Tri-Stat (because it was based on three stats), which eventually morphed into the relatively popular Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM).


Those are are fairly large, but the mouth can vary enormously.

Tri-Stat reminds me very much of Nexus: the Infinite City; both are essentially a highly simplified hack on GURPS, the kind of incredibly loose skeleton on which you can hang pretty much any game, if unique subsystems and utter lack of cohesive design philosophy aren't any sort of roadblocks to you. Originally, GoO produced books like, well, this: it's a completely self-contained RPG based on Tri-Stat but tweaked and specialized explicitly for the Dominions property. Eventually GoO would take all these special rules and content and try to reverse-engineer them into a core game - BESM - but that's an OSSR for another time.

Dominions itself is the brainchild of Masume Shirow, creator of Ghost in the Shell, Black Magic 66, Orion, and many other properties that involve various combinations of fetishism, cyberpunk, sexy women, post-apocalyptic states, adult storylines, military fantasies, and these days blatant and lovingly-crafted pornography. It's the essence of old school high-end Japanese anime, basically, before people became obsessed with tentacle porn and long-running series like Bleach, One Piece, Dragonball, etc.


Google "Greaseberry" if you dare.

I'll use the back cover copy to give the gist of the setting:

In the year 2010 A.D., the Earth is a very unfriendly place - the atmosphere is a poisonous bacterial soup, vicious underworld organizations have run of the cities, and the governments are virtually helpless. Leading the attack on society are the sexy but ruthless cat sisters, Annapuna and Unipuma, and their grotesque half-cyborg leader, Buaku. The last line of defense against utter chaos is Newport City's Tank Police: a team of trigger-happy police officers with an affinity for demolition and disaster.

There's a lot to go into here...okay, the military thing: the Japanese lost WWII, so the idea of getting a quasi-military organization became something of a hard-on for the post-WWII generation, and they absorbed a lot of American culture, especially Bladerunner, and for a time were enjoying a massive tech boom. Hence the mecha - which continue to be popular today!


Case in point: Old City Blues, a Greek cyberpunk comics with a strong GitS influence.

GoO, as part of their licensing deal, got to forego the usually horrible 90s art of RPGs like Eurosource by including stills and promotional artwork from the Dominions franchise, which basically means nearly every single page has a block of black-and-white stills taken from a late-80s/early-90s anime on it, and there's a whole block of glossy color stills.


I'll get tired of posting catgirls at some point.

This art, combined with a respectable if no-frills layout scheme highly reminiscent of GURPS, makes the Dominions RPG a fairly solid third-tier gaming product by 1999 standards. It doesn't have the atmosphere or creativity of a World of Darkness or Shadowrun product, but it's only a few glossy pages away from being comparable to the Hellboy RPG. At 165 pages (plus ads), with an index and table of content, it is respectably meaty for its $19.95 price tag, and it has a remarkably small creative team: David L. Pulver, with GoO team Mark C. MacKinnon and Karen A. McLarney doing graphic production, editing, and layout - and there are almost two dozen play testers named. You just don't see that kind of dedication to a product anymore.

And I mean dedication. Read this excerpt from the Foreword:

When is the last time that you sat down with some friends and watched the entire Dominions series from start to finish? It is has been a while, treat yourself to the three-hour experience by borrowing, renting, or purchasing the series (if you don't already own it) and inviting a group of your friends. Dominion Tank Police is one of those rare shows that only gets better after repeated viewing. Every time you watch the series, you will see something different and learn something new. During the development of this book we watched the series, in whole or in part, dozens of times. During the last viewing, we laughed more loudly and more often than during any other, and we still caught nuances that we missed when we watched it earlier. To its credit, both the subtitle and dubbed editions are equally enjoyable, for their own reasons. My personal favourite from the series is the dubbing of Britain's voice in English - Sean Barrell was simply perfect.

I should mention at this point that GoO is a proud product of Canada, and uses British English.

So basically, this is one of the archetypical instances of the fans running the asylum. These people were all anime nerds, back before anime was huge and manga was everywhere. And these nerds got the official license from Japan to write sourcebooks for their favorite anime properties. That seems insane and awesome at the same time, and it is! You don't see that today. People writing Dungeons & Dragons or Shadowrun are either people that grew up playing D&D and Shadowrun, or their amoral mercenaries that will write anything for money, quality be damned. You don't see a lot of people that are interested in pure game design that then build their own setting - well, I guess you do on DriveThruRPG, but they're facing an uphill battle for any fraction of market share. This is very much a splinter GURPS spinoff of obscenely dedicated fans, the ones that today would be starting and maintaining entire wikia communities. But back then, they got together and made an RPG.


Look, all I'm saying is that this catalyzed a lot of inherent catgirl fetishes.

Next up is Chapter 1: Introduction

[codeGlaze]

[...]and at the local Blockbusters you fretted between renting a Sega Genesis game or renting a Japanese cartoon that might contain a tit shot. I won't say that there wasn't more to appreciate in Japanse anime than that - [...]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 1: Introduction
This is 9 pages. It starts with a 1-page italicized script taken from the first act in Dominion Tank Police, in lieu of introductory fiction involving characters we don't know or care about. It includes such memorable lines as:

When tanks perform the surgery, society dies on the table!

The rest of the chapter is a brief explanation of the mecha genre, and then summaries of the entire Dominion: Tank Police series, just in case you haven't watched it yet and were seduced into picking up this book based on the cat girls on the cover.


Getting people to pick up your product is half the battle.

The brave nerds behind this show their work, namechecking that they verified some of their extrapolations with series creator Masamune Shirow's essays in the back of Intron Depot.


Wait, so I can buy manga and we can write it off on our taxes? Fuck, where's the company credit card and how much doujinshi can we import?

Then we get a rather long "What is Role-Playing section, which starts out badly.

For many people a role-playing game (RPG) is the "mature" or "Advanced" version of the games we used to play as children such as "House", "Cops and Robbers" and "Super Heroes".

"We've gotten older, but not more mature."

Normally, games like to focus on players assuming a given role - Shadowrun expects player characters to be shadowrunners, Vampire expects player characters to be vampires, D&D expects player characters to be adventures. Not Dominion! Nope, in this game you can be:

* A Tank Police officer from the series (e.g. Leona Ozaki, Al, Britain)
* A super-criminal from the series (e.g. Buaku, Annapuna)
* A super-mercenary from the series (e.g. a Red Commando)
* A completely original character

Basically, they're providing a setting in which to play a game related to Dominion Tank Police; whether you want to be the eponymous Tank Police or not is entirely between you and the Game Master. There's really no guidelines for which is preferable, and there's a blanket assumption that you're probably going to want to play one of the main characters from the series.



The chapter finishes off with a full-page example of play, where the PCs are literally the main characters from Dominion.

GM: OK, you see Buaku's van parked outside the old Shimozawa Street subway station. The place has been closed for the last five years, after the old electric subway was replaced by the new magnetic levitation bio-trains.

Ellen: (as Leona) Let's check the van for clues.

Peter: (as Al) Wait! They may have booby-trapped it. I'll use the tank's scanner and scan for explosives.

Ellen: Huh? I'm the boss here. Al, check for traps!

GM: Peter, make a Mind Stat check. You get a -1 modifier for Bonaparte's Level 1 Sensors.

Peter: (rolls two dice) Al gets a 5. That's a 4 with the modifier, well under my Mind stat.

GM: The explosive scan is positive! He's left a little something for you: plastic explosives, probably rigged into the van door.

Ellen: Grrr. Wait 'til we catch him! Okay, we'll leave the van. I'd better radio headquarters to report the bomb.

GM: (as police dispatcher): Yes, ma'am?

Ellen: Get me Britain.

GM: (as police dispatcher): Yes, ma;am. I think he's interrogating some street criminals. (changes voice, as Britain) Hey, woman, you found those scum yet? I'm busy!

And so on in that vein.



For those not familiar with Tri-Stat, the basics are that you have three stats: Mind, Body, and Soul. You roll two dice (the type changes with the power level, hence the reason it's called the "dX" system), and try to roll under your target stat, with whatever modifiers. They don't explain this anywhere in the book, you're supposed to have a copy of the Tri-Stat system. The default for Dominion: Tank Police RPG is 2d6.

Next up, Chapter 2: Character Creation

[Ancient History]

Chapter 2: Character Creation

At 64 pages, this is the single largest chapter in the book. It involves 8 steps, a couple optional methods, some dice rolls, divvying up roughly 50 points, and calculating derived attributes. It is, in a nutshell, the meat of the book. The setting is insane, but you can get that from the anime. This is where you knuckle down and roll up a character, and they seem to have based it mostly on GURPS as a template.



Step 1 is "GM Discussion." You don't see this very much, because it's not an individual step. It suggests that those playing sit down with the GM and hash out the duration of the game, when and how it's going to be played, the details of the setting, and the "Thematic Intensity Level":

Are you looking for straight comedy, intense drama, or the comedy-drama mixture presented in the television show?

I have to admit, I rarely hash out that kind of stuff with players - though maybe I should - in that I prefer sandboxes where the players set the tone and I play to what they want.

Step 2 is "Character Outline" - today we might call this the "Character Concept." Police or Criminal. Android, human, mutant. They don't actually have any hard options like that, they're just suggestions. Several of the suggestions are for playing specific characters from the anime, like you were doing an amateur theatrical production of a fanfic. But the options available are may.

Tank Girl: Criminal

Or this. This is good.

Assign Stats - This is Tri-Stat, and you have three stats: Body, Mind, and Soul. They present two options for generating stats. In Method A, the GM assigns a certain number of points (12 for average, 15 for above average, 18 for significantly above average, 21 for powerful, and 24 for extremely powerful) and you divvy them up between the three stats; in Method B, you roll xd6 and add a variable number to get your points. So for example, you might roll 1d6 + 10 (average) or 1d6 + 20 (powerful), or 2d6 + 6 (average) to 2d6 +16 (powerful). Stats can't be lower than 1 or higher than 12.

Additionally, your character can only evre have one Stat at Level 12. If he or she ever becomes unequaled (Level 12) in more than one Stat, your character becomes One With the Universe, retires from all duties, and is removed from play!

That's their nomenclature, by the way. Keep in mind that most of this system's tests involves rolling 2d6 and adding a negative modifier to your result, trying to roll under your associated stat, so 12 is pretty much an automatic win. If this all seems pretty simplistic and undetermined with few guidelines...well, you're not wrong!

Let's take an example: the 2d6 + 6 roll is supposedly "average," and gives a range of 8-18 points, which means your stats will (on average) be 3/3/2 or 6/6/6.



On 2d6, you roll 6 or under 41.67% of the time. That's...not great. But it's still a big step up from the poor asshole trying to roll a 3 or less on 2d6. The point I'm trying to get across is that the average characters are, based on their stats alone, decidedly below average for anything they have to roll...unless they get some modifiers.

Step 4 is Character Attributes; this is GURPS-ish in execution, but like Shadowrun or World of Darkness they're parceling out the points. So what it is is that you are given 10 (low-powered game) to 30 (high powered game) points and told to go buy attributes, which are typically 1 point/level, which more combat-relevant abilities like Combat Mastery, Cybernetic Body, and Massive Damage as 2/level, and Own Big Mecha is 4/level. Attributes go up to 6, and if you need more points you can take on Defects.

The attributes are...not what GURPS people would have chosen. They're anime-ish attributes, like "Aura of Comand" and "Damn Healthy!" alongside basic mechanical stuff like "Divine Relationship" (the ability to re-roll <Level> number of dice per session) and "Energy Bonus" (+ Level x 10 Energy Points). It's very much an oddball mix, and at this point in the book you have no idea what any of this shit even does. Own a Big Mecha (OBM) for example, gives you a mecha and Level x 20 Mecha points to play with. You don't know what Mecha points are just yet, but obviously more is better.


Bring back Clarkson!

There are two attributes I want to single out. The first is "Strong Soul," which is 1/level and you can get six levels of it, and each level increases the character's Soul Stat by 1. This basically allows the rare feat of building a character that becomes One With the Universe before play begins, which is a neat trick, but ultimately counterproductive. It essentially means that if you want to maximize your chances of doing shit successfully in the game, you treat Soul as your dump stat in Step 3 and buy up Strong Soul in Step 4.

The other one is "Unique Character Attribute," which is a ball-less catch-all for any character ability you can think of that doesn't fall into any of the others listed, with a complete suck-the-GM's cost price and level requirement. A grand total of one example is given for this attribute:

Crolis Grenpeace's ability to filter the bacterial cloud and survive on sunlight and water (without requiring solid food) is a moderate advantage (Level 2). The GM may decide that this Unique Character Attribute requires 2 points/Level, for a total of 4 points at Level 2.

...the sky is the limit, but the sky is hanging awfully low these days.

Step 5 is Character Defects. These are basically flaws, negative qualities, or disadvantages by any other name; each one comes in two levels, worth 1 BP or 2 BP (which stands for "Bonus Points"). These range from stat-dumping (you can subtract 1-2 points from any Stat for extra BP) to "Physically Unappealing" to "Phobia" to my personal favorite, "Owned By A Megacorp."

1 BP Megacorp has partial ownership of the character.
2 BP Megacorp has near total ownership of the character.

Accept no reboots, citizen.

It's recommended you don't take more than 5 defects, and there's a fair bit of overlap with the Attributes, including a catch-all "Unique Character Defect" with examples including amnesia, terrible allergies, one eye, and Reduced Immunity to the Bacterial Cloud.


Can't go out today, chief. Pollen warning.

Step 6 is "Skills." Starting characters get 20 Skill Points, plus 10 more for each level of the Highly Skilled Attribute they took. Skills are level based, go up to Level 6 like attributes, have variable costs, (Driving and Heavy Weapons are 5/level for example), and are organized alphabetically. If these things had a Stat-default tree I'd almost say they were cribbing more off Shadowrun than GURPS, but nary a tree is in sight. Some of these Skills have specific effects or fluff values. For example, in the Law skill description it says: "GMs may assume that anyone with Level 3 or more has a license to practice law."


Forged in the name of God: Ye Not Guilty.
"Objection, your honor! Giant Mecha pronouncements are not admissible as evidence!"

Given your ultimately shitty number of skill points - you're unlikely to have more than 3 ranks in anything, and there's 42 skills - this might be a bit overkill.

Step 7 is calculating derived stats. Your Attack Combat Value (this really does remind me of Nexus) is the average of your stats; your Defense Combat Value is your CV-2. Your Health Points are (Body + Soul) x 5, and your Energy Points are (Mind + Soul) x 5. There's some funky mechanics as far as damage and how you spend Energy points and stuff, but I'm not going into the details of it. If this were Dragonball Z, the whole collaboration between Stats, Health Points, and Energy Points would be interesting, maybe even relevant...at low levels. Here, it just seems overcomplicated for a game where you're trying to pilot a spider-tank.


Spider-tank, spider-tank, does whatever a spider-tank does...

Step 8 is "Background Points." This basically means you create an interesting backstory for your character, and if the GM approves they award you 1-3 Background Points to improve your attributes. It's like a book report or a blowjob, basically.

Part of the reason this chapter is so fucking long is that it has full character profiles for all the major and several of the minor Dominion characters, under the assumption you're probably going to skip the last 25 pages and just pick one to play. I'm not even fucking joking. It also has full-page spreads devote to a bunch of tanks from the series, so you can get a feel for where your mecha-points are going, and you still don't know what the fuck those are spent on yet.


Mini-Tank Bonaparte is 60 mecha points.

Bonaparte (like the other bio-tanks) is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

We also get a list of basic vehicles, which reveals a motorcycle is 4 mechapoints, a civilian car is 8 Mecha Points, a Police Car 10 Mecha Points, and a Limousine and SWAT Van are 12 Mecha Points each.

The last chunk of this chapter are a dozen pages of glossy color screenshots of major and minor characters.

Next up, Chapter 3: Game Mechanics. Fucking hell, finally.

[Shrapnel]

That last image looks like a tank from Metal Slug.

[hyzmarca]

We also get a list of basic vehicles, which reveals a motorcycle is 4 mechapoints, a civilian car is 8 Mecha Points, a Police Car 10 Mecha Points, and a Limousine and SWAT Van are 12 Mecha Points each.

That's attention to detail, there.

If it were me, I'd probably skip point costs for basic vehicles, because this is Tank Police. If you aren't ridding around in a main battle tank causing absurd amounts of property damage, why are you playing it?

That last image looks like a tank from Metal Slug.

Tank Police predates Metal Slug by about 8 years. So Bonaparte was probably an inspiration.

I'll get tired of posting catgirls at some point.

Notably, the Puma Sisters aren't actually catgirls, but are mass-market sex robots who gained free will and decided that robbing banks with giant guns and high explosives was preferable to screwing people who had catgirl fetishes.

I suspect that the guys who decided that their mass-market sexbots needed human-level AIs with independent personalities and superhuman strength sufficient to wield a minigun one-handed got fired.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 3: Game Mechanics

IMPORTANT! Do not hesitate to go beyond the rules if you are the Game Master. If you dislike a rule presented in The Dominion Tank Police RPG, you are encouraged to modify it to suit your needs and the needs of he players. Do not let your own vision of Dominion be ignored by anything you read in this book. These pages are filled with guidelines and suggestions, but certainly do not reflect the "One True Way" to role-playing success. Use what you like, discard what you do not, and fill in the blanks with your own ideas.

When we talk about "rules light" systems, we often mean two completely different things. On the one hand, you have systems which literally have fewer rules in them, and typically fewer and more ambiguous character sheets - you might compare, for example, Dogs in the Vineyard to Shadowrun. The smaller amount of rules material doesn't necessarily make a game harder or easier to rules-lawyer, but it greatly speeds up understanding of the system, familiarity with the rules, and offer fewer opportunities for the kind of hacks you see in bloated systems like D&D3.x

On the other hand, you have systems which are not actually less complicated - like Basic Role-Playing - which are nevertheless seen as rules-lite because of the attitude displayed to the rules, which normally encourages, as here, gamemasters to use their own instincts to ignore, apply, or come up with new rules on the spot - the Zak S. method, more or less. So for these kinds of systems, they're not rules-lite in the sense that the rules don't exist, but they are implicitly not enforced. All the systems in the game essentially become optional, to be discarded when they become cumbersome or inconvenient.

There is a middle way, which is rule simplification or consolidation. You see this in the transition from AD&D 2nd. Ed. to the d20 system, or Shadowrun from 3rd edition to 4th - the adoption of a simplified mechanic or resolution system can greatly ease the understanding of a ruleset and serve as an excuse to simplify, clarify, or eliminate clunky subsystems.

Anyway, this chapter...uh...well, it's a bit middle-of-the-road for a '90s game. The combat/initiative system looks like Shadowrun - there's a 3/4 page flowchart involving initiative orders, hold action, attack rolls, defense rolls, etc. The core mechanic, as mentioned, is 2d6-roll-under-TN; there are separate tables for "Degrees of Success" and "Dice Roll Modifications" (which change the TN from -4 to +6) numbered like they were in the DMG, and there are separate checks for skills vs. stats.

Note: Because this is roll under, we're in the strange position where the actual terminology for bonuses is negative. So for example, at Skill Level 1:

A character is awarded a -1 bonus on the Skill check dice roll if he or she does not possess a relevant specialty, or a -2 bonus if he character does possess the relevant specialty.

That said, a +6 to TN on an RNG that varies between 2 and 12 might seem insane, but it's not that bad, at least for skill checks, because skills can go up to level 6 and if you have the right specialty, you can get up to a -7 bonus. So it can even out to your character having a better-than-average chance of doing the impossible, at high levels of Skill anyway.


Disguise check: critical success!

[size=Large]When To Roll Dice[/size]
It is important for the GM to realize that not all actions require Stat checks, Skill checks, or Combat dice rolls. Obviously mundane character activities, such as driving a tank down the road, smearing a coating of anti-bacterial wax on a vehicle, or eating a bowl of ramen noodles, should never need dice rolls unless there are exceptional circumstances surrounding the character's actions. The following is a list of suggestions when the dice should and should not be rolled. If a dice roll is unnecessary, the character should gain an automatic success for the action.

Roll dice when...

• [li] the unpredictability of dice adds to the excitement of the game.
  [li] the action is foreign to the character.
  [li] the action has been a weakness for the character in the past.
  [li] the character is distracted or cannot concentrate.
  [li] another character or NPC is working directly against the character.
  [li] only pure luck is involved (requiring a Soul Stat check).
  [li] the action is not of trivial difficulty.
  [li] outside forces influence the actions.
  [li] the player wants to roll the dice.
  [/list
  
  Do not roll dice when...
  • [li] a roll would reduce the enjoyment of the game.
    [li] the action is routine for the character.
    [li] the action requires a trivial amount of talent compared to the character's Stats or Skill Level.

These are not bad lists, for any game.


Niar id rgw ewar id rgw xgr=or...sorry, most of the rest of this chapter is devoted to combat, and as mentioned it has a lot of the familiar details of 90 RPGs ike attack modifiers, range modifiers, firing personal weapons from within the Mecha...okay, maybe not that last one.



...along with movement, mecha action and damage, "flying, jumping, and diving," crashing and falling, ramming, destroying buildings...

I googled "tank porn" and was not disappointed.

...most of these are more or less familiar to us all. The part that isn't is the section called "Recovering Lost Points."

Even after being brought to the brink of unconsciousness or death through energy loss or injury, characters from the Dominion Tank Police[/i[ series are often up and running within a day. Their wounds heal quickly with few complications, while their spirit returns their internal energy just as quickly. As a result, both Health Points and Energy Points are restored rapidly to the characters. Point Restoration can only bring characters back up to their original starting points.

That last bit is good, because otherwise we'd have Bastion of Broken Souls situation where the PCs have to keep cutting to avoid exploding from within by sheer force of positive energy. Hell, I'd watch that anime.



Next up, Chapter 4: The World of Dominion.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 4: The World of Dominion

Environmental pollution and deforestation were predicted to cause many problems, including the decline of the ozone layer, extinction of many plant and animal species, global warming, and the increase of deserts. What environmentalists did not predict - until it was too late - was the bacterial cloud. The first signs of the bacterial cloud appeared early in the 21st century. It grew rapidly, and in 2010 it covers most of planet Earth.

Today we're in the strange position where the "futuristic" world of Dominion Tank Police is 20 minutes in the past. Like Shadowrun and Blade Runner, the future was predicted to be a high-tech, low-life future ruled be megacorps, a dystopia marked by corruption, the loss of humanity to AI and cybernetics, and the destruction of the environment. Unlike Shadowrun or Cybperunk 2020, you can't blame the silliness or short-sightedness of it all on the authors; they're basing this on an already-existing anime. So this is all on Shirow Masamune.



The text isn't in-character; it's all exposition. So that means they give not a fuck about including rules like TN modifiers for Bacterial Level effects right in the middle of the text. This is sort of like a Smog Warning for Beijing.

The nominal setting is Newport City, built on an artificial island and built out of "artificial bio-construction materials." That's not quite as insane as it sounds, as Japan has a history of building artificial islands.

The anime famously promised "A Crime Every 36 Seconds" in Newport City, so the paramilitary tank police are a bit overwhelmed. The authors extrapolated from the series and their hard-won nerd-knowledge of Japan to expand on the setting, but in their own words "aside from the bacterial cloud, and the increased risk of crime, life in 2010 is not that much different than life in 1999."

Really? Full AI, cat-girl sexdroids, tank police, and cybernetics, and shit's just like it was in 1999? Not even an iPod?

In the 20th century, amphetamines were the main drug problem in Japan, this has now been joined by highly addictive Crack cocaine.

Meth had not yet hit Japan, apparently.

Table 4-2 is labeled "Newport City Buildings," that "lists the names that appear on buildings at least once during the Dominion Tank Police OAV series." some of which include "Metal," "Porn," and "Tomato Juice." They helpfully note "Some entries may actually be descriptive signs rather than proper names, but they are included for completion." Well thanks for that.

Despite the fact that the writers are trying to extrapolate, they're not extrapolating very far - you're probably better off just watching the whole series again. For example, here's on clear example of their hard work:

The Tank Police Banner - Britain's patrol tank sports a banner with the kanji characters for fu (wind), rin (forest), ka (fire), zan (mountain), meaning "Swift as wind, silent as forest, deadly as fire, unshakable as a mountain". These same characters appear on screen during the samurai-like duel between Bonaparte and the two Class-A battle tanks in Act II. The symbols have a mythic resonance to the Japanese: the fu-rin-ka-zan banner was used in the ancient Warring States period of Japanese history (1467-1568) by the army of samurai commander Takeda Shingen. For Britain, they also illustrate one of his favorite sayings - "the Tank Police must be like a mountain against crime". (for more on the history of fu-rin-ka-zan, see Gilles Poitras' The Anime Companion, Stonebride Press, 1999).

Which is lovely - but that singe paragraph on an inconsequential flag takes up more space than is devoted to most major monuments and buildings. The fact is that you pretty much can't play this game without watching the OVA series, and if you've already watched the OVA series you don't really need this book to describe the world to you.

The chapter ends with five points of "Advice for the Player," which ends up taking half a fucking page. CHopping out the bullshit, these actually aren't bad:

1. Watch the Dominion Tank Police OAV series.

2. Your purpose is not to create a "perfect" character, but a character that is fun to play.

3. Do not create a character who prefers to be alone.

4. Do not obsess about the rules.

5. Give the GM constant feedback - both positive and negative.

Which are fairly solid. In fact, it might be the most solid player advice I've ever seen in a game. Stopped clocks, aye?

Next up is Chapter 5, The Game Master's Section.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 5: The Game Master's Section
Okay, at this point in this incredibly lackluster OSSR, we're on page 113 of about 166. It's chapter 5, and there are two more chapters and three appendices after this, which should tell you that those are mostly short and bullshit. I don't know why I started to review this OSSR, it's not a popular game and I can't work up the rage or enthusiasm to either really trash or praise it. In fact, I can't really work up the juice to feel anything these days. I'm in that place where everything I write is shit and yet I'm not producing enough of it...and I've had this really stupid, porn-y idea for a game of Lovecraftian horror in the back of my head that I know is terrible but which won't go away. I'd say I hate my job but the truth is I'm just fucking bored there, which is worse, because I don't really like anyone or have any friends within a thousand miles to alleviate the ennui.

Anyway, enough kvetching and back to the OSSR no-one is reading. I think we can sum up most of the GM advice in this chapter succinctly:

You will be the director, producer, script editor, ciematographer and set designer of a new Dominion Tank Police series...starring the player characters.

This is pretty much what the chapter boils down to; it goes on about themes and mini-campaigns versus one-shots and reuses an image of the naked people from the last chapter... this is about 75% of the reason young me watched this series... It's not bad advice, but it is focused very much on the events of the series rather than the world of the series; it throws out a fair number of "What ifs?" as possible scenario/campaign ideas, but it doesn't really explore the world at all, and it basically assumes that one way or another you're dealing with the Tank Police. That's not...bad. I mean, it's what it says on the tin. But it's only what it says on the tin; a GURPS product would have suggested tie-ins. The closest they get to doing that here is to suggest some other GoO products you might use with this game...but not how to use them.

Still, I do like their advice for the GM, once boiled down to its essentials:

1. Watch the Dominion Tank Police series several times.

2. Encourage innovative thinking during character creation.

3. Make every character a main focus of the game, and give equal attention to all players.

4. When combat does erupt during the adventure, make it fast, exciting, and fun for all players.

5. If a dice roll is not necessary or does not constructively add to the game, do not make the roll. You should feel comfortable making decisions about the direction of events during a session without the use of dice.

6. Use Character Defects to the benefit of the game.

7. If an NPC is not a major character in the adventure, he or she should not outclass the player characters.

8. Before introducing enemy mecha, carefully compare its Sub-Attributes and other values with those of the tanks or other vehicles the PCs are using. [Translation: do not lock PCs into combat with closet trolls]

9. Encourage your players to interact in-character even if you are busy role-playing with another player.

19. Make each role-playing session relaxed and entertaining, but try to maintain a focus on the game.

Hell, some of those are just design points.



Okay, I'm gonna do two chapters next post, and maybe the appendices too. Gonna play this by ear.

[Lurky Lurkpants]

Even though it hasn't sparked much discussion I'd imagine there are still plenty of people like me reading it. As much as I like some righteous indignation I'm enjoying the exploration of mid-90s licensed mediocrity. And I'm pretty sure that is because of the writing and not just the entirely relevant cat girls.

[Red_Rob]

reuses an image of the naked people from the last chapter... this is about 75% of the reason young me watched this series...

I love how that scene seems totally reasonable when you watch it as a hormonal teenager (Of course the SWAT team would be distracted by a sexy catgirl dance!!) but as an adult you just get the vibe the Tokyo police is staffed by slack-jawed manchildren that can't keep their mind on the job for two minutes when someone flashes them a pair of tits. Seriously, who would trust these guys with automatic weapons?

When we talk about "rules light" systems, we often mean two completely different things....

On the other hand, you have systems which are not actually less complicated - like Basic Role-Playing - which are nevertheless seen as rules-lite because of the attitude displayed to the rules...

there's a 3/4 page flowchart involving initiative orders, hold action, attack rolls, defense rolls, etc.

Why do games that purport to be "rules light" and "fast and zany" always end up getting bogged down with overly complicated combat rules? A 3 page flowchart is not going to be fast or exciting for anyone.

[Ancient History]

3/4 page. 75%. Initiative, action, attack roll, defense roll, damage. It's one of those things you can boil down to about five lines if you want to - the question is, why don't they?

[Mask_De_H]

Every writer thinks what they write is shit at a certain point. Some of them never stop. Stop being a bitch and keep writing, AH. That's the only way you'll improve.

When we talk about "rules light" systems, we often mean two completely different things....

On the other hand, you have systems which are not actually less complicated - like Basic Role-Playing - which are nevertheless seen as rules-lite because of the attitude displayed to the rules...

there's a 3/4 page flowchart involving initiative orders, hold action, attack rolls, defense rolls, etc.

Why do games that purport to be "rules light" and "fast and zany" always end up getting bogged down with overly complicated combat rules? A 3 page flowchart is not going to be fast or exciting for anyone.

Because, since a lot of games are influenced by D&D in some way or otherwise require fights as your main form of conflict, the combat minigame gets some of the most love. But yeah, that's a slash, not a dash; so it's three fourths, not three or four.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I'm reading the review, and not just for the Shirow art (although I fully support the posting of such art). I agree though that there just isn't much to say.

[OgreBattle]

reuses an image of the naked people from the last chapter... this is about 75% of the reason young me watched this series...

I love how that scene seems totally reasonable when you watch it as a hormonal teenager (Of course the SWAT team would be distracted by a sexy catgirl dance!!) but as an adult you just get the vibe the Tokyo police is staffed by slack-jawed manchildren that can't keep their mind on the job for two minutes when someone flashes them a pair of tits. Seriously, who would trust these guys with automatic weapons?

Victory Gundam had an interesting take on that trope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTOplYC ... kpEVsF.jpg[/img]

[Ancient History]

Chapter 6: Sample Adventures
There are two "sample adventures" in this 6-page chapter, although calling them "adventures" might be a bit generous; they are more accurately some elaborate and fleshed-out adventure hooks - no NPC stats, no maps or anything like that (although they do give the stats for a "Termite" urban demolition mecha).



Crime Zone involves crack cocaine in the projects, an inexpensive vaccine for cocaine addiction, and the impact on local economies leading to civil unrest - so the Mayor orders the tank police to roll in and demolish the neighborhood. The PCs are the tank police.


Like this, except you're the guys in the tank. This went to a dark place.

That sounds pretty simple and it pretty much is, but they give samples of different scenes/events that lead up to maybe getting the order to demolish the crack houses - maybe this was Rudy Giuliani in a cameo - and some names for NPCs that might be involved.

Sky Burglars involves a gang being hired to steal a rare postage stamp from a reclusive and eccentric owner. The PCs are the gang. The catch is that the stamp and owner are on "an experimental ocean surveillance blimp" called the Hildegarde. Have fun playing sky pirates.



Chapter 7: Reference Section

I cited this in my book!

Instead of a bibliography, you get a list of the published works of Masamune Shirow, including international publishers. Just in case you want to know who published Appleseed in Thailand (Siam International). It also includes English translations of Japanese songs from the series, and the full credits for the OAV. Which may either be excessive fan-ism or a contractual requirement due to the licensing, I could go either way.

Appendix 1 are the rules for mecha design, referenced way back in the chargen section. It involves a seven-step flowchart and a minimum of four different tables, but is otherwise fairly similar to chargen, in that you make decisions (aircraft, armoured fighting vehicles, powered armour, boats, ordinary vehicles), then buy up sub-attributes with Mecha-Points up to level 6, as well as defects. The giant dick tank traps are show, too.


No, seriously, this is in the anime.

Appendix 2 covers personal gear. There's no cost given for any of this stuff, it's all covered under the Personal Gear Attribute. Which means yes, you too can create a PC riding a motorized unicycle and juggling molotov cocktails.


Also, technically you can build bishounen Wolverine.

Among the gear you can buy is "Cheesecake Armour" ("Additionally, it can decive people into thinking it is just a revealing biker outfit, and not armour.")

My favorite bit is the note on campaign economics:

In early June of 1999, one U.S. dollar was worth about 120 yen and one Canadian dollar about 80 yen. This rate may have changed substantially by 2010, since the bacterial cloud has probably played havoc with the world economy. [...] In the OAV series, money is not a major factor for the protagonists since the heroes are motivates by duty, pride, and comradeship.

Appendix 3 is reference tables...and with the index and ads, that's the book.

The thing about this book...there is very little fanon in it. The creators were incredibly faithful to the Dominion series, but absolutely allergic to dipping a toe outside the lines. That's very weird to me - I can see why they did it, and it is by no means an uncommon issue with licensed RPGs, from GURPS Hellboy to GURPS Vampire: the Masquerade, but part of the benefit (and, I would almost say, the necessity) for such books is to expand on the backstory, setting, and character options a bit. I dunno, maybe one day I'll do an OSSR of the Buffy or Firefly RPGs and see if they did it any different.


GoO never did a New Dominion Tank Police RPG, possibly because they fell into the black hole of White Wolf, from which there is no escape.

[hyzmarca]

No, seriously, this is in the anime.

I remember the balls, but not the spires.

They must have airbrushed the broadcast version.

The thing about this book...there is very little fanon in it. The creators were incredibly faithful to the Dominion series, but absolutely allergic to dipping a toe outside the lines. That's very weird to me - I can see why they did it, and it is by no means an uncommon issue with licensed RPGs, from GURPS Hellboy to GURPS Vampire: the Masquerade, but part of the benefit (and, I would almost say, the necessity) for such books is to expand on the backstory, setting, and character options a bit. I dunno, maybe one day I'll do an OSSR of the Buffy or Firefly RPGs and see if they did it any different.

It probably helps if there is communication between the RPG writers and the canon arbiter of the series in question, whomever that is, usually the creators.

One of the big pitfalls of creating a licensed RPG for an ongoing series is that the people who write that series have zero obligations to even read your game, much less incorporate it's ideas. So you can easily end up with a situation where your game is completely at odds with series canon by the end.

The Dresden Files RPG solved this by being an in-universe RPG created by someone who has incomplete knowledge of the setting, from notes by someone who has incomplete knowledge of the setting, thus any contradictions with canon can be brushed off as a mistake by the in-unverse author.


Dominion has it easier because the series isn't ongoing, but unless they communicated directly with Masamune Shirow, they're really in danger of being contradicted if he ever writes anything else in that universe, and they're probably adverse to that risk.

The only licensed games I can remember that did a lot of building upon the setting are the Stargate D20 game (which suffers from being a D20 modern derivative) and the Babylon 5 RPGs.

[codeGlaze]

Even though it hasn't sparked much discussion I'd imagine there are still plenty of people like me reading it. As much as I like some righteous indignation I'm enjoying the exploration of mid-90s licensed mediocrity. And I'm pretty sure that is because of the writing and not just the entirely relevant cat girls.

Also, there are over 900 views on the thread.

[OgreBattle]

I don't think fans writing fanon have much respect or interest in other fans writing fanon that could conflict with their fanon, so what the Dominion Tank Police RPG did with only representing what was in the series is fine with me.

[Ancient History]

I don't think fans writing fanon have much respect or interest in other fans writing fanon that could conflict with their fanon, so what the Dominion Tank Police RPG did with only representing what was in the series is fine with me.

...except that you end up with the situation where your RPG product isn't presenting anything that the fans themselves couldn't come up with just by reviewing the source material again. This is in itself the main problem with licensed property RPGs; you need to present at least as much material as the actual source material, or you're falling down on the job, but if you don't go beyond that, you're not actually providing anything new - you're just repackaging the same old shit.

[kzt]

This is in itself the main problem with licensed property RPGs; you need to present at least as much material as the actual source material, or you're falling down on the job, but if you don't go beyond that, you're not actually providing anything new - you're just repackaging the same old shit.

The few properties I've bought RPG versions for had significant involvement by the author. For example, Dresden Files - while leaving obvious holes for the on-coming plot, had the cooperation of the author and pretty much everything in there is as he visualized it. And it is one place. The mechanics of an RPG don't really matter that much to me, I'm looking for the background and details. I can make it work with pretty much any game system if I have that info.

[codeGlaze]

No, seriously, this is in the anime.

I remember the balls, but not the spires.

They must have airbrushed the broadcast version.

WTF were those even USED for?

[Ancient History]

Tank traps, basically.

[Red_Rob]

Don't you mean... the ULTIMATE deterrent!

[schpeelah]

I don't think fans writing fanon have much respect or interest in other fans writing fanon that could conflict with their fanon, so what the Dominion Tank Police RPG did with only representing what was in the series is fine with me.

My experience is that

1. People's headcanons can contradict more obscure or stupid aspects of canon.
1b. They can also take form of interpretations or imagined additional circumstances to canon events. You cannot avoid contradicting those even by sticking to canon.
2. There are certain headcanons that people hold dearly enough that they'll get pissed and leave if you contradict them. However, they'll also get pissed if you merely fail to include them in a situation the headcanon would be applicable to. This tends to overlap with 1b, especially on divisive issues in the fandom, but is otherwise a small minority of all fanon.
3. People tend to be largely permissive of alternate fanon if they can tell how its inclusion makes your work more fun. The popular fanfiction and fanart works are based on a variety of mutually contradictory headcanons and interpretations.