#im counting this as this weeks devlog

[cts-games]

Game Rundown: Anima Prime

Not to be confused with Anima: Beyond Fantasy.

Anima: Prime is an indie game by Christian Griffen, released in 2011. It also has a free Creative Commons version.

Upfront, one of the things I really like about it is that it includes a section on player discomfort and how to deal with it, which is pretty considerable when this game predates the X-card by about 2 years, well before safety tools were considered the norm.

Overall Camlaign Structure

The game makes use of what it calls 'Seeds' which are short prompts designed to keep the gameplay focused. This is similar to "Story/Dungeon Starters" that have caught on in the PbtA scene, and are mostly a way to keep the campaign focused and interesting. Session Zero (not explicitly called that by the game, but clearly what it is) involves creating both a Setting Story Seed and a Group Story Seed.

The Setting Story Seed is essentially the major current event that is happening in the world, affecting everyone. Basically, "What has changed in the world recently?" The examples given are an invading force, water from the local river has started tasting metallic, or a massive skyscraper has appeared overnight in the middle of the city. The important thing is that this is something that doesn't ONLY affect the PCs.

The Group Story Seed is entirely player chosen, without the GM, and I'd basically a way for the PCs to say 'this is what we want out of the campaign'. It's the reason their group has come together, their motivation as a group. It helps ensure all the PCs have teamwork in mind to at least SOME degree, and are on the same page, as well as giving the GM a carrot to dangle in front of the players when needed.

Character Creation

After going through the usual parts of character creation, like name and core concept, the first mechanical step of character creation is selecting a Passion. There are 9 Passions, each of which has a different mechanical trigger that allows you to Charge your dice (see below), and your Passion can be changed once per session.

Players also create 3 Traits that describe their character, which can be marked off during character scenes where that trait came into play, and then unmarked in order to reroll dice in combat.

From there, players pick 3 Skills from a list of 20 (the list presented in the game is geared for the default setting, Ghostfield, but groups are encouraged to collaborate during session 0 to create their own, more flavorful list of skills to use). These three skills are given a value of 4, 3, and 2. While a higher number is better, having low skills is also quite valuable in the system, as they can combo with other players better.

Next, players select 9 powers they meet the prerequisites for, which is, quite frankly, far too large a number of powers to start with IMO. On my experience this is the part of character creation that overwhelms people the fastest. The game does its best to alleviate this by offering sets of 'Packages' that can be mixed and matched together. 9 'Basic' packages that cover 3 powers needed to be a vague archetype, and 12 'Specialized' packages that each have 6 thematically linked powers. Personally I think the game would have had a stronger presentation by leading with the packages, and introducing classless character building as an advanced option.

After that, players create Backgrounds and Links, which is a subsystem I find quite delightful. These are pretty standard fare, and are just a list of important things from your characters backstory. The only difference between the two, are who that piece of backstory is for. By declaring something a part of their background, it becomes something players can draw on for roleplay inspiration. Things like "Oh, my long-lost brother taught me this trick, before he vanished without a trace." These are just things to flesh out your character, but not concepts you want to fully explore. Links on the other hand are fun bits of backstory for the GM to make use of to make stakes personal for your character. If that long lost brother was a Link instead of a Background, the GM might dangle a clue about his wereabouts in front of you to keep you pushing forward.

Finally, there are Character Story Seeds. These are your characters personal goal, the thing they are trying to achieve outside of the Group Story Seed, that the GM can use to draw you forward through the campaign.

Core Gameplay

The actual gameplay of Anima: Prime is split into two types of scenes: Character Scenes, and Conflict.

Character Scenes are fairly straightforward, with the game mostly disengaged. Players roleplay out their interactions with each other and the world, and once the scene ends, players gain a single benefit from a list of options. This can be healing for yourself or a summon, refilling your Action Pool, or marking one of your traits to give you rerolls next combat.

Some powers can give additional options in character scenes, but for the most part that's as much as the game engages with out of combat scenes.

Conflict

'Tacticle Gameplay' is a bit of a buzzword in the TTRPG industry. In general, its usage is just to indicate 'This game handles combat by using minis on a map'. Anima: Prime does not handle combat by using minis on a map. I would have a very VERY hard time keeping a straight face while telling someone that conflicts in Anima: Prime are not tactical.

Enemies come in 3 flavors, Individuals, Squads, and Swarms. Some powers affect them differently (AoE abilities will typically get a bonus against Swarms, for example), but this distinction mostly matters for Manuevers.

Each player gets one action per turn, typically one of the following: a manuever, a strike, an achievement, or activating an action power.

Manuevers are how you build up resources. They allow you to roll dice in your Action Pool, turning them into Charge and Strike dice, but they don't deal lasting damage. Narratively they can be used to hit members of a Squad, or take our multiple members of a Swarm, but not enough to cause lasting damage to the whole unit.

Stikes are the main way you spend those resources. These are attacks that can leave lasting Wounds on enemies, spending the dice in your Strike pool to do so. These strikes can be further modified by spending dice from the Charge pool as well, activating additional effects based on the powers you have selected.

Achievements also use Strike dice. Each conflict will typically have multiple Goals to go alongside it, which can have lasting effects on the battle. These can be things like "Damage the mechs armor plating to lower its Defense" or "Remove the soldiers gas mask to remove their Immunity from Poison"

And activating powers is just that. You typically use Charge Dice to activate your powers, and they can have a variety effects based on how you build your character.

Manuevers

Manuevers are performed by rolling your skills. You start with a number of free dice equal to your Skill level, and then 1-3 dice from your Action Pool based on the effort your character is putting in.

Dice that come up 3, 4, or 5 are added to your Strike Pool, dice that come up 6 are added to your Charge Pool, and dice that come up 1 or 2 are lost. A trait that was marked during a character scene can be unmarked to reroll all the 1's and 2's for a chance to keep them. If ALL of your dice roll 1's and 2's, you keep them in your Action Pool, unspent.

Each time you make a Manuever, you also check off the skill being used for it. If all of your skills are checked, you gain 2 bonus dice, which are sent to your Charge or Strike pools, encouraging players to make use of all of their skills instead of just whichever has the highest value.

Players can also spend their action to do a Combined Manuever, allowing them to give 1 die to another players Manuever but still checking off a skill for it, which can be a quick way to mark off a characters lower rated skills.

Strikes

Strikes are preformed by spending dice from a characters Strike pool, up to a maximum of 6. Any dice with a result of 3 or over counts as a success, and if they player rolls more successes than their target has Defense, that target takes a wound. This is multiplicative, so if an opponent has 2 Defense and you roll 4 successes, that deals 2 wounds. If you fail, the strike dice are refunded back to you. Otherwise, they all get discarded after the attack. Players can strike together, but ONLY if they have a power that let's them do so.

Achievements

Achievements and Goals are, in my opinion, the aspects of this game that really make it shine, and the entire reason I'm making this post. Mechanically, they work like a mix of a Strike and a Manuever. Players target a Goal, and grab up to 6 Strike dice, and pick a skill and get a number of bonus dice equal to its rating. Other people spend an action and mark off their skills to assist, just like with a combined manuever.

Once you roll, everything 3 or over is a success, and you compare it to the goals difficulty. If you didn't get enough successes to beat the difficulty, you refund the dice. If you did beat the difficulty, the dice are spent and the goal is completed, triggering additional effects. These can be anything from buffing or debuffing allies or opponents, to inflicting status conditions the players don't normally don't have, to entirely alternate win conditions for the Conflict.

Both players and enemies can attempt Achievements. Some Goals may be considered Player Only, some may be Enemey Only, and some may be contested between the two. In this way, Goals can VASTLY expand the utility of Conflict to be much more than just combat. A Race could be resolved by having two parallel 'chains' of Goals, one for players and one for their opponents, each trying to get to the end before the other. A tense conversation with weapons drawn, but has not escalated into full blown combat can be resolved with players trying to hit Goals to keep the other side from attacking and/or sway them over. At any time, either side can escalate the situation to combat by simply spending their dice on a Strike instead of an Achievement.

In this way, Achievments/Goals feel so much better than any other system I have seen when it comes to this type of mechanic. I've seen many games ATTEMPT to do the 'social interactions work just like combat!' thing, but Anima: Prime is the first time I've seen a game succeed at it this well, or something akin to what the Skill Challenges in DnD4e were attempting.

All of this circles back around to Manuevers. In the vast majority of games out there, the most basic action your character can take is some form of attack, with most of the game branching off of and expanding the uses for that action or how it can be applied in different ways.

Anima: Prime does not follow that standard. In Anima: Prime, your most basic fundamental action is the Manuever. The 'I do some cool anime shit while building up resources to meaningfully impact the narrative' action. From there, it branches off in two separate directions, Attacks and Achievements.

By using Manuevers as it's basic mechanic to generate resources, and having Achievements and Strikes be things you can spend those resources on, the game accomplishes a significant amount with relatively little compared to other games, and gives a lot of tactical depth to your choices for relatively low complexity.

This is why, even without miniatures and a map, I struggle to call Anima: Prime anything other than one of the most tactical games I've ever run.