GURPS Anime...what should be in it?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

http://www.sjgames.com/toon/

I wouldn't call that Animation: The Roleplaying Game. I'd call that Slapstick: The Roleplaying Game. It's about a specific style of silly comedy where everybody runs around committing pratfalls, and I would say that "slapstick" is as valid and well-defined a game topic as, say, "martial arts" or "horror." Despite the game's title, the "animated" part is merely a justification for suspending the laws of physics so that animals can talk, nobody dies, and things like gravity are optional. However "super-powers" and "an age of mythology" could as easily justify those features without invoking a specific medium.

That's really my mental block with the whole idea. Animation is a tool used to represent things that can't easily be represented with live people – a tool that's less-and-less necessary as CGI blurs the lines between visual reality and visual fiction. It's a crutch to aid suspension of disbelief. But because it's purely visual, and tabletop RPGs are not, it seems odd to try to emulate it in tabletop RPGs. Tabletop RPGs have their own crutches, like "you have superpowers" and "here are rules for things that aren't possible in the real world." Most of these are implemented through words and through make-believe in the mind's eye, and don't need the conventions of visual make-believe.

I guess I'm confused by the redundancy. I don't quite see what:

"You're fantasy heroes who can do fantastic things and have remarkably odd physiques because you're in a fantasy world where the physical laws we gamers know don't apply. Here are rules for that."

gains from adding:

"This is possible because, were this a TV or film feature instead of a make-believe story, you'd be animated characters."

I can see the utility of a game supplement that details how "toons" who are animated characters subject to the laws of animated reality would interact with non-toons in a less far-out world. But that's a whole other thing. Really, it would be more of a racial splatbook for beings not unlike spirits or superheroes.