When it comes to running a role playing game I'm a big believer in theft. I steal ideas, adventures, characters, plot, names, and settings with abandon. My current campaign is a perfect example of this behavior. With that in mind I present a number of possible campaigns all which have been heavily inspired by (or if you prefer stolen from) the anime I've been watching, and the manga I've been reading (okay truthfully there are going to be a few examples that have nothing to do with anime or manga).
First up a campaign inspired heavily by Hunter × Hunter, so inspired in fact I might just go ahead and set it in the Hunter × Hunter world. One of the features of Hunter × Hunter that I find so interesting is the different reasons the characters have for wanting to become hunters (for example Gon wants to become a hunter to track down his father who is also a hunter, while Kurapika wants to become a hunter to bring those responsible for the destruction of his tribe to justice). I would strongly encourage the players to come up with interesting reasons for their characters to wish to become a hunter. If we did a short version the campaign it would feature the player characters going through the Hunter examinations. The longer version would continue on with stories focusing on and tying into the reasons the player characters became hunters. The hunter organization and the status and benefits it confers in the Hunter × Hunter world are pretty unique, and creating my own version without just copying wholesale from the anime would be a little tricky. Which is why I'd consider just setting the campaign in the Hunter × Hunter world to begin with; the downside to that is I haven't read any of the manga, and thus far have only watched 17 episodes of the anime so I'm not really all that familiar with the world of Hunter × Hunter.
For something in a similar vein I could go with a campaign drawing inspiration from Naruto. Here the campaign would focus around a team of young ninja and their more experienced sensei (in other words just like the early Naruto). The largely endless possibilities for adventure with this set up should be pretty obvious. I'd be much more apt to go ahead and create my own world for this (even though I do find the setting in Naruto to be pretty interesting); in fact I can all but guarantee that I would create my own world and ninja organizations for this campaign.
Stripping more and more of Naruto away from the last example leaves me with a core idea of a squad of operatives. Thinking about that quickly brings Ghost in the Shell in all its incarnations to mind. Which does make me think that while I've run Shadowrun on a number of occasions, I've never run a straight up cyberpunk campaign. The obvious choice here is to run a campaign featuring criminals committing crimes for money (that is the standard set up for a Shadowrun campaign and describes the action that takes place in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer). A fine choice to be sure, but keeping Ghost in the Shell in mind I don't want to rule out creating a governmental organization like Ghost in the Shell's Section 9. All of this means I might be looking to do a covert-ops campaign as much as I'm looking to do a cyberpunk campaign.
With Shadowrun still in my thoughts I turn my attention to the other half of Shadowrun's cross-genre makeup - namely fantasy, and specifically urban fantasy. The urban fantasy most currently occupying my thoughts is The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi channel (I've also read the first two books in the series and I'd happily recommend them), although Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the works of Laurell K. Hamilton isn't far behind. Whatever the source of inspiration the first question that would need to be answered is does the world-at-large know magic and the supernatural exists. Either choice presents a fine number of options, and a number additional questions to answer (such as why hasn't the world noticed magic, or how would world history be different if magic was real and known).
Pondering magic in the modern world brings me back to anime - namely The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya which is actually a little odd, because of all the bizarre people Haruhi collects around her a magic-user isn't one of them (maybe she does in the novels, but since I don't read Japanese I've only got the anime to go by). So what would I steal from this anime to create a campaign? Well to start with the Japanese High School setting, because that would be really fun. Also this hypothetical campaign would feature a club very much in the vein of Haruhi's SOS Brigade complete with searches for aliens and time-travelers, investigations of the paranormal, the creation of bad student films, competing in the local baseball tournament, and anything else the club founder thinks is a good idea at the time.
More importantly this campaign would feature an NPC in the mold of Suzumiya Haruhi, perhaps not in personality, but certainly in ability. If you are familiar with the anime (or the novels I assume) should understand where I'm going with this, however for those not familiar with the anime I'm sure some explanation is required. To put this in terms my current players would understand Suzumiya Haruhi has the GURPS disadvantage Weirdness Magnet except increase its potency about threefold. Even that doesn't really begin to cover it, because Haruhi has the power to alter reality to suit her whims. However she doesn't have a clue that she possesses such a power, and thus uses it only subconsciously and only when she's bored. Enter the SOS Brigade composed almost entirely of the people Haruhi is searching for (namely aliens, espers, and time-travelers), and possibly owning their very existence to her reality warping powers, they strive to keep an eye on her, and above all keep her from becoming bored.I think that is a good plenty for part two of this exercise. I certainly have more, but you'll have to come back for that in a later post. I leave you with this: I find it comforting to know that no matter what campaign I end up running the only thing able to compete with its awesomeness is the following picture.
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