2.2 Who Determines What?

Characters

Most of the players will each take on the responsibility of creating and controlling one of the protagonists in your story. In roleplaying games, a protagonist character, also known as a player character, is usually abbreviated as PC.

PCs tend to group up. Examples of grouped PCs in other media are Yuna and Tidus in Final Fantasy X and Aang, Katara and Sokka in the outstanding animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. And just like Toph joined the PC group later on in Avatar, you can always invite more players and play a session about how their PCs joined in.

The players of the PCs create them with the rules in Chapter 4 and then play them during the game. This means that each player tells the other players what her PC does, says, looks like, and so on. Some of the things that happen to a PC will be determined by other means (such as using the conflict rules to see if the PC gets hurt by an attack during a fight), but even then, what that specifically looks like in your story is still up to the player of that PC.

The previous section introduced you to Syjika and Egere, two of the example PCs that I created for purposes of showing how the game works. As you saw in that dialogue, Zoe described everything that Syjika did, and Alan described everything that Egere did. In addition, they both added some details to the scene that they just made up, which is perfectly fine (see Details below).

One of the players will be the Game Moderator, or GM. The GM sets up the backdrop of the story and controls all of the other characters in the story that oppose or assist the PCs. These other characters are traditionally called non-player characters or NPCs.

Examples of NPCs are Seymour, fiends, and everyone else not in Tidus’ group in Final Fantasy X, and the vast array of firebenders, outlaws, earthbending wrestlers, and others in Avatar. Notice how these NPCs don’t show up in every episode, unlike PCs, and their involvement is always in relation to the PCs.

Details

In many other roleplaying games, the players have to ask for permission from the GM for every detail that they want to see in the story. “Is there a ___ here?” is a frequent player question in those games. That’s not the case with Anima Prime.

As long as something is reasonable, the players can describe it as existing in the story. If they’re in a forest, they can introduce sticks, stones, animals, and so on into the scene. If they are in a city, they can describe cracks in the street, ladders at the side of a building, and anything else that could be found in such a place, even if it’s unlikely. Notice that the standard is reasonable, not probable. As long as it’s possible and its introduction doesn’t ruin other players’ fun, it should stand.

The players can even describe their effects on some NPCs to varying degrees; the details on that are included in the section on maneuvers in the conflict chapter.

Example

The following is an example of two players and the GM (Maura) playing together.

Alan: So… Egere is heading for the city guards.

Maura: Alright. There are a dozen of them, fully armored in steam-powered battle suits. You can see their faces through bowl-shaped armored glass helmets criss-crossed with metal reinforcement bars. One of them has a higher rank, judging by the red insignia on his chest. They are armed and look quite unfriendly.

Alan: Great, and we only had one character scene to freshen up after the last fight. Alright, is there a carriage anywhere near?

Maura: That’s up to you. You’re in the middle of the city, so that sounds possible.

Alan: Oh yeah. I jump up on a carriage and spread my arms. I yell out: “The city guard! The protectors of all that is good and right! I’m so glad you’re here.”

Maura: The leader steps forward and eyes you carefully while the other guards aim their weapons at you. He says: “You’re under arrest. Give in peacefully and no one gets hurt.”

Alan: I guess it’s not been a minute yet, huh?

Zoe: Hah, yeah, Syjika is still sitting up on that steambot, fixing her thing. Are there any soldiers near her?

Maura: No, they’re all with Egere.

Zoe: I’ll just keep on doing my thing then. He can take care of them.

Alan: Okay, so… what’s the weather like?

Maura: I think we said earlier that it’s sunny and bright. A nice spring afternoon.

Alan: Perfect. I hit them with Darkness.

As you might have noticed, sometimes the players refer to their characters as “I” or “we.” That’s a habit you can adopt or not, as you feel like it. Most of the time, it’s just a useful shorthand for saying “my character” or “all of the PCs.”

There are things that neither the players nor the GM directly determine, such as the outcome of conflicts (like the clash with the city guards that’s now coming up in our example), and those are handled by the mechanics.