What is the most original or weird RPG(pnp) system you have played?

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

Tenra Bansho Zero.

It bills itself as "hyper-Asian fantasy", which is about as good a description as I can think of for it myself.

The setting/fluff can best be described as "Warhammer 40k if the Imperium was Illuminati Shinto priests/priestesses instead of Catholic spess Nazis".

The game's morality system is called karma and is basically a measure of how ruthless or fanatical your character is willing to be in pursuit of their goals. If you reach 108 (a number with multiple significances in the Dharmic religions, and in Buddhism one of these is the number of earthly temptations a soul must resist to reach Nirvana) you become something both more and less than human and become an NPC under GM control as your worldly desires have basically turned you into an obsessed, Captain Ahab-esque madman.

There's not real character "classes", there's various archetypes and you can mix and match with point buy.

Just some of the batshit insane things possible with the system:
-The aforementioned Illuminati Shinto priesthood
-An Evangelion mech full of BEES
-Being a former child pilot of said Beevangelion mech who fights those same mechs with a giant-ass magic sword because revenge/stolen childhood or some shit.
-Cut out the middleman and fill yourself with bees instead.
-Be a wooden doll who can mindfuck people (yeah I don't get it either)
-Be one of those battlesuit guys from Kerberos Panzer Kops
-Be a yokai
-Be a half-yokai
-Be an oni whose horns give them Jedi powers and form a lightsaber with your mind
-Realize that being an oni sucks because the Shinto goons want to cut out your heart and use it for a Beevangelion power source
-Bring double revolvers to an honorable samurai duel because you're too MURICAN to stoop to using a sword even though you shouldn't be here because America isn't mentioned anywhere in the default setting what am I even talking about?????
-Stop faffing about with all this gimmicky bullshit and just pray to the Amidha Buddha hard enough that you become able to punch gods in half
-Be a fucking cyborg
-Be the soul of an aforementioned Beevangelion pilot who went mad and got sucked into the soul compooter of their own mech but they reformatted the soul and put you into an android body that moves and hits like a honey badger on PCP
-Realize you're aforementioned android and choose between seeking vengeance or opening a pocky shop (or both).
-Did I mention the Shinto goons have the training to use VR headsets to pilot drones and CALL DOWN LASER SATELLITES????
-Be a samurai which in this setting means grafting magic pebbles onto yourself to get roid rage (downside: you're now sterile)
-Be a Taoist wizard like those pirate guys from Outlaw Star
-All of the above

I think that's enough of the flavorful bits, so yeah! I got hardcovers of the rule/setting books, they're damn fine.

The EN translator unfortunately underwent Trump Derangement Syndrome and lapsed into poor work ethic but I got the good shit I wanted when it was best to get it, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

 

[Silva]

Tenra Bansho is super cool. Played it once.

See also Shinobigami for another weird cool game.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

Tenra Bansho is super cool. Played it once.

See also Shinobigami for another weird cool game.

Lucky bastard! I tried convincing my group to give it a shot, they were semi-interested but seemed fixated on converting it to the system we were already playing (WOIN), which...Isn't bad and all but tosses out a goodly chunk of TBZ's marvelous idiosyncrasies just to have better tactical combat. Sigh.

I should ~~whore myself out~~ ask around at some of the smaller gaming stores around here if anyone's curious. Or the local anime shop.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Tenra Bansho Zero.

It bills itself as "hyper-Asian fantasy", which is about as good a description as I can think of for it myself.

The setting/fluff can best be described as "Warhammer 40k if the Imperium was Illuminati Shinto priests/priestesses instead of Catholic spess Nazis".

The game's morality system is called karma and is basically a measure of how ruthless or fanatical your character is willing to be in pursuit of their goals. If you reach 108 (a number with multiple significances in the Dharmic religions, and in Buddhism one of these is the number of earthly temptations a soul must resist to reach Nirvana) you become something both more and less than human and become an NPC under GM control as your worldly desires have basically turned you into an obsessed, Captain Ahab-esque madman.

There's not real character "classes", there's various archetypes and you can mix and match with point buy.

Just some of the batshit insane things possible with the system:
-The aforementioned Illuminati Shinto priesthood
-An Evangelion mech full of BEES
-Being a former child pilot of said Beevangelion mech who fights those same mechs with a giant-ass magic sword because revenge/stolen childhood or some shit.
-Cut out the middleman and fill yourself with bees instead.
-Be a wooden doll who can mindfuck people (yeah I don't get it either)
-Be one of those battlesuit guys from Kerberos Panzer Kops
-Be a yokai
-Be a half-yokai
-Be an oni whose horns give them Jedi powers and form a lightsaber with your mind
-Realize that being an oni sucks because the Shinto goons want to cut out your heart and use it for a Beevangelion power source
-Bring double revolvers to an honorable samurai duel because you're too MURICAN to stoop to using a sword even though you shouldn't be here because America isn't mentioned anywhere in the default setting what am I even talking about?????
-Stop faffing about with all this gimmicky bullshit and just pray to the Amidha Buddha hard enough that you become able to punch gods in half
-Be a fucking cyborg
-Be the soul of an aforementioned Beevangelion pilot who went mad and got sucked into the soul compooter of their own mech but they reformatted the soul and put you into an android body that moves and hits like a honey badger on PCP
-Realize you're aforementioned android and choose between seeking vengeance or opening a pocky shop (or both).
-Did I mention the Shinto goons have the training to use VR headsets to pilot drones and CALL DOWN LASER SATELLITES????
-Be a samurai which in this setting means grafting magic pebbles onto yourself to get roid rage (downside: you're now sterile)
-Be a Taoist wizard like those pirate guys from Outlaw Star
-All of the above

I think that's enough of the flavorful bits, so yeah! I got hardcovers of the rule/setting books, they're damn fine.

The EN translator unfortunately underwent Trump Derangement Syndrome and lapsed into poor work ethic but I got the good shit I wanted when it was best to get it, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

Some of this (probably the batshit kitchen sink mishmash of stuff) reminds me of Palladium Games' Rifts. What a shitshow game that is. This definitely sounds weirder though.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I've never played it, but Nechronica has always stuck with me after reading about it. The player characters are immortal, indestructible Frankenstein monsters stitched together from corpses and resurrected by a necromancer; since they're immortal, the damage the PCs take refers to mental damage, so character death refers to the death of their minds rather than their bodies, dooming them to be the mindless slave of the necromancer.

It'd be a pretty cool premise if they left it there, but the game's Japanese so of course all the PCs have to be little girls...

 

[Serus]

Tenra Bansho Zero.

It bills itself as "hyper-Asian fantasy", which is about as good a description as I can think of for it myself.

The setting/fluff can best be described as "Warhammer 40k if the Imperium was Illuminati Shinto priests/priestesses instead of Catholic spess Nazis".

The game's morality system is called karma and is basically a measure of how ruthless or fanatical your character is willing to be in pursuit of their goals. If you reach 108 (a number with multiple significances in the Dharmic religions, and in Buddhism one of these is the number of earthly temptations a soul must resist to reach Nirvana) you become something both more and less than human and become an NPC under GM control as your worldly desires have basically turned you into an obsessed, Captain Ahab-esque madman.

There's not real character "classes", there's various archetypes and you can mix and match with point buy.

Just some of the batshit insane things possible with the system:
-The aforementioned Illuminati Shinto priesthood
-An Evangelion mech full of BEES
-Being a former child pilot of said Beevangelion mech who fights those same mechs with a giant-ass magic sword because revenge/stolen childhood or some shit.
-Cut out the middleman and fill yourself with bees instead.
-Be a wooden doll who can mindfuck people (yeah I don't get it either)
-Be one of those battlesuit guys from Kerberos Panzer Kops
-Be a yokai
-Be a half-yokai
-Be an oni whose horns give them Jedi powers and form a lightsaber with your mind
-Realize that being an oni sucks because the Shinto goons want to cut out your heart and use it for a Beevangelion power source
-Bring double revolvers to an honorable samurai duel because you're too MURICAN to stoop to using a sword even though you shouldn't be here because America isn't mentioned anywhere in the default setting what am I even talking about?????
-Stop faffing about with all this gimmicky bullshit and just pray to the Amidha Buddha hard enough that you become able to punch gods in half
-Be a fucking cyborg
-Be the soul of an aforementioned Beevangelion pilot who went mad and got sucked into the soul compooter of their own mech but they reformatted the soul and put you into an android body that moves and hits like a honey badger on PCP
-Realize you're aforementioned android and choose between seeking vengeance or opening a pocky shop (or both).
-Did I mention the Shinto goons have the training to use VR headsets to pilot drones and CALL DOWN LASER SATELLITES????
-Be a samurai which in this setting means grafting magic pebbles onto yourself to get roid rage (downside: you're now sterile)
-Be a Taoist wizard like those pirate guys from Outlaw Star
-All of the above

I think that's enough of the flavorful bits, so yeah! I got hardcovers of the rule/setting books, they're damn fine.

The EN translator unfortunately underwent Trump Derangement Syndrome and lapsed into poor work ethic but I got the good shit I wanted when it was best to get it, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

Some of this (probably the batshit kitchen sink mishmash of stuff) reminds me of Palladium Games' Rifts. What a shitshow game that is. This definitely sounds weirder though.

I thought you can play Rifts basically the way you want. Mish-mashing everything and the kitchen sink or play more focused without characters and stuff jumping and mixing from one reality/world or whatever to another. At least within a scenario. But i never played, just read the core manual a bit iirc so i might be wrong.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I thought you can play Rifts basically the way you want. Mish-mashing everything and the kitchen sink or play more focused without characters and stuff jumping and mixing from one reality/world or whatever to another. At least within a scenario. But i never played, just read the core manual a bit iirc so i might be wrong.

You can play anything you want anyway you want, really. But you're right (also I've never played Rifts either, just owned the books and talked with people who played it). I think it'd be hard to run a coherent campaign with dragons and glitterboys doing MDC and then have someone else playing a hobo with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Anyway, Palladium Games' system is a rules shit show.