Big Eyes, Small Mouth: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''In retrospect, men appreciate that it was a colourful apocalypse.''|''Uresia: The Grave of Heaven'', S. John Ross}}

''[[Big Eyes, Small Mouth]]'' (aka ''BESM'') is a multi-genre roleplaying game created by the now-defunct [[Guardians of Order.]] Conceived as a system to allow people to play out games in the style of anime series, it was first released at [[Gen Con]] in 1997. The name comes from a common generalization of the typical anime and manga character designs, which have proportionately large eyes and small mouths.

There arewere two other kinds of supplements produced by Guardians of Order. Stand-alone game worlds such as ''Uresia: The Grave of Heaven'' and ''Centauri Knights'', and licensed supplements based on various anime series, such as ''[[Slayers]]'', ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' and ''[[Sailor Moon]]''. Licensed supplements that were mostly or completely background information about the show's world were released with the misleading title of "Ultimate Fan Guide".

''BESM'' uses ''Guardians of Order's'' Tri-Stat system, and was their flagship product for that system. Characters are defined by three statistics: Body, Mind and Soul, as well as a number of Attributes and Defects. Tri-stat is a [[Point Buy System]]. A [[D20 System]] version of the game has also been released. [[Guardians Of Order]] had a third edition of ''BESM'' ready when it collapsed. The rights were sold to the game company White Wolf, which published it (for a short while anyway; the now discontinued third edition book sells for over $100 on the Internet, but you can buy .pdfs) and now provides what support remains for the Tri-Stat system.

See also ''[[Silver Age Sentinels]]'', GOO's superhero RPG that used a similar rules system.