My group of friends have been playing Ars Magica since 2nd edition. Typically, if we want to play ANYTHING ELSE, we use the OTE rules as our platform and just play.

I'm a huge fan of OTE, the rules are incredibly simple and incredibly versitale. The rules are a great platform for introduceing people to gameing because they are so simple.

The campaign setting, while incredibly rich and wonderfull, can be intimidateing to newbies. I would love to particiapte in an 'normal' OTE game, but I suspect we will simply use the rules satisfy our fix for genre's besides Ars.

If your looking for specific examples of how OTE can be applied to other genres, sadly I can't list examples. We typically play one-shots, making up material on the fly. None of that material is logged or recorded, but if your familiar with the rules you'll realize you can have a 'skill' such as "Star Fleet Captain" or "ancient martial artist".

I think the key to such broad abilities is concensus among the players. If you have a one munchkin that wants a power such as "God of Everything" or "Reality Alteration" or "I'm Neo", you need to nip this in the bud before play begins and make the power level "fair". If your "Neo", then everybody else can be Neo including the Bad Guys. My troupe typically plays low powered games such as "Doctor" or "Marine", we can comprehend what these broad skill categories mean and it allows us to keep things in check.

I would love to see more material on OTE or Unknown Armies, perhaps your nudge will get discussion moving again.

Chuck

In the spirit of getting some discussion going I thought I'd detail my *worst* OTE experience. Running with the premise that OTE is a great platform for unconventional and what should I call it? 'Experimental' storytelling,' I came up with a simple premise.

Murder Mystery.

I set up a situation where there was a dead person and there was a series of clues.

Then I told every player they needed to develop an origin that explains why they are guilty of the murder, and an origin why they are innocent.

They would play as if they are innocent, but would secretly try to become the 'true' murderer. That is, the goal would be to be discovered as the 'real' bad guy.

The setting was locked, nobody could leave the area.

But about 7 minutes into the game it became clear nobody was interested in being the murderer. Everybody stuck to their alibies and quickly explained why they didn't do it.

One of the players was a pilot and through my own mistake I allowed them access to a plane. They flew away taking the entire cast with them. My 'roleplayers challenge' was complete destroyed and the rest of the session was the group running through one of those terrible sessions where people go to the mall and buy stuff they always wanted.

A true disaster.

But that's not OTE's fault! The game is great, my execution sucked.

Chuck

I have used OTE for several settings, few of which have been Al Amarja.

The two most successful non-standard uses I have played in were a Pulp/Noir campaign (ask me about Charlie Eastway, Private Eye, the Man with a Thing for Ming) and a Superhero campaign (easy to come up with flexible powers!).

Overall, I think the OTE system can work for almost any setting where A) not all the PCs have essentially the same skills and B) you are willing to work with flexible, generalized characters as opposed to more specifically defined, rigid characters.

It's a great system. :-)

Over the Edge rules are the bane of existence to my Feng Shui players. Sadly, as part of moving the story into a more serious theme, it was necessary to send them to Al Amarja.

As a man who had never gotten a chance to run his players through C&I, I'd like to just say that it was a pleasure. But (getting to your question), we have actually used the OTE rules in other situations in the FS campaign _besides_ Al Amarja. And again...holy cow, does it annoy the piss out of them. But if you need a moment of hyper-realism, only OvTE rules are quick, dirty, and lethal enough.

I've just started watching Gantz and your right. It's a great fit for OTE. OTE isn't a violent game persay, but it is a lethal game. It may be difficult to over come this without some liberal alteration of either armor or skills. One could I suppose, list as their primary skill, the Gantz 'armor' and make it a blanket ability capable of defending oneself as well as giving them a vast array of powers. It wouldn't accomodate the weapons of Gantz. I would suggest not making the weapons very... damage inflicting. This would seem in conflict with the show, but remember just how fragile a person is in OTE. A number of the super weapons could be normal weapons, but with the color and flash of something 'bigger'.

I point this out, because if you up the lethality of weapons inorder to accurately represent weapons in Gantz, it will be very difficult for players to survive even with power armor. Something to consider.

Good luck with the converstion.

Any other anime out there that has used OTE as a rules platform?

Chuck

To answer your question, Chuck...

"Fushigi no Umi no Nadia", perhaps better known as "Secret of Blue Water."

Oh ye of poor long term memory... :)

Steve

yeah! We used OTE to play Secret of Blue Water. I liked it, but given our long history of Ars Magica and a group of magi who are more interested with in-fighting that monster bashing, the group as a whole was having difficulty playing animish gaming.

We've never had any luck keeping an OTE game going, but I think we've had fun "failing" to start an alternate game. The real 'problem' is our troupe is simply to loyal to Ars Magica. They just don't want to play anything else!

Chuck