I just wanted to plug a product with which I've been very impressed. I've seen other systems claim to be "Anime RPGs" (whatever that means, I know), but Anima Prime just hits all the right notes for me with a strong focus on escalating combat and inter-party character development.

There's a free PDF version at the link above. If others find their interests equally piqued, I might run something over Skype. I'd like to get used to GMing the game so that I might run it at FtC5.

Take a look. Let me know what you think of it.

I'd certainly would be game to try this out. I got hooked when it was talking about player narrative control around page 15 or so. Sounds like a great opportunity for everyone to be creative.
--
TAZ

Is this in any way connected to Fantasy Flight Games' Anima: Beyond Fantasy game? Because I've read that, and it is a enormous heap of crazy. Lovely artwork with a system so uselessly complex it frightened me off, and I'm not afraid of high-crunch systems.

It's not. Christian is an independent designer and publisher, not related to Fantasy Flight. Nice guy, too, who makes good games.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that

Thanks for the heads up Clyde. It took me a few minutes to find the free link for reasons I attribute to general retardation on my part; I only saw the Paypal link and was like "You have a strange idea of 'free' sir".

I was stoked at a similar point to the one zircher mentioned. When the author asked why one person (the GM) has to do 80% or more of the work when there are five people at the table, I was pretty sold.

Well, that and the fact that the game has two speeds: Talk and Kill. Anything else is flavor. I dig that.

Regarding Anima: Beyond Fantasy, I'll second that it's an aesthetically pleasing paperweight at this point. Completely unlike Anima Prime which seems highly playable to my reading. Actual play will determine whether or not that's true, but it looks promising.

Based off of Rolemaster, too, IIRC.

This is looking really cool, though I haven't actually given it anything more than a read through. A Skype game could be doable.

Admittedly I don't know much about Rolemaster. But any system where a 1 is really a -3, a 10 is really a 13, 03 is really -5, a 02 is really -10, 01 is really -15, and where character options consist of thirty different classes just doesn't cut it for me.

Going to try to give this better Anima system a read today. This might actually work better than Savage Worlds for that Bahamut Lagoon game I hope to run at FTC5.

Okay, after having read Anima Prime through a couple of times, I'm ready to say that this is the system of choice for my FtC5 game. Given that I'm running a game based off a Squaresoft SNES RPG, it stands to reason that a system inspired by Squaresoft RPGs would be well-suited. And I think it definitely is.

I'm trying to pass this system around as much as I can to my friends -- it's the sort of thing they'd love. Thanks for plugging it, Clydesdale.