A 26 episodes campaign

Trigun, Gungrave and the enormous Evangelion. The always mentioned here: Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. From more obscure animes such as Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Gokudo the Adventurer or Utena, to modern classics such as Kill la Kill, they all have something in common: they manage to take a crew of characters through an adventure, sometimes meaning multiple arcs, in 22-26 episodes. (We can add Hellsing and Katanagatari if we split their 40 min episodes into 20 minute ones, through this might be cheating). If you are willing to sink time into watching something good anime, jump into any of those named without investigating further. Trust me.

Dropping more names in the comments is always welcome. There was a golden age during the turn of the century for 26 episode animes (let me refer to an old table to generate your own)

Recently I am trying to come up with different, "out of the box" ways to generate gameplay (as opposed to create "dungeons" procedurally or "missions" manually), and the idea of emulating an anime campaign structure... makes sense. Or does it?

The secret of blue water

 

These are some notes:

 * The campaign is played through 26 sessions, no more and no less. These are coincidentally half the weeks in a year (52) so if you play once per week, you will take half a year to complete a campaign to be remembered for ages. 6 months is a great time for a campaign to span without starting to lose focus or energy, more if you like to rotate games or GMs.

* Some episodes/sessions will be "Character Arc" episodes, those are specially dedicated to develop a given character or his/her past. Ex: Cowboy Bebop 05: Ballad of The Fallen Angels

* Some others are episodic, when there is a situation to be resolved that spans during one or maybe more episodes (depending on the players). These also serve to introduce key details of the setting into the story. Ex: Vash the Stampede dedicating one episode for each Gung Ho Gun. 

* Some are filler because the animators had to make the series last 26 episodes, but this doesn't have to mean boring in play. They can be fun to emulate too. Ex: the island episodes in Nadia.

* Some can be weird, and not fit into the tone at all, or a priori. Ex: the zombies and the baseball episodes at Samurai Champloo

* This liberates the GM when making things happen, and when they don't go as expected. But of course, without procedures and generators there is no game:

* For 4 players, each rolls 2 d20+4: this generates 2 episodes from the 5th to the 24th that are meant to be their "character arc" episodes. These can be rolled in the open or in secret by the GM, both have their points. Duplicates should be re-rolled so nobody has to share their character arc days. Starting at episode 5, this means that GMs have at least 4 days to understand the character and the player, and to think about what is a good challenge for them to be overcomed. 

* Each place on the world has a fitting (d12+ current episode number) table of "happenings". The first 12 ones are more easygoing: pastoral themes, small bosses, more slice of life (this might also form weird or filler episodes sometimes, unless the PCs do something strange). Beyond 13th onwards, there are more serious enemies, disasters, portents.... These should be rolled the previous session by the GM, so he can prepare the next week session accordingly to where the PCs are and cross the results with the PCs previous actions. A "place in the world" normally means a city or a wilderness area, maybe from a rooster of 15 different ones. But depending on your worldbuilding it can mean a new semester in high school or a new planet, or just play with 1 or 2 zones.

* What about this: the characters can't die in random episodes. A fallen PC is just down for the rest of the episode (this means be removed from play unless helped somehow), unless it's one of their Character Arc, or in the final two, in which this rule has no effect. Of course, all kinds of epic last words are permitted if the situation allows it. If a character dies, the player can keep on in the game playing an NPC but without rolling for character arc.

* This means that the GM can throw any kind of enemy to the players: they will just survive the big boss appearing at anytime to make a display of power, yet players will try to survive just to play that whole evening, unless the episode is reaching the end (climax and end of the IRL meeting)

* The exact resolution rules are not important, any can work, depending on what the show is about.

* However, mechanics that are activated by making the players make up the past of their characters are a very good way to help the GM develop a better character arc for the PC.

* Some idea for running NPC interactions: Each NPC has some traits on them (like generous, coward, ambitious, greedy, lustful, rich, nostalgic, sad, etc). Some are easy to detect, and some are kept hidden by the GM (and the NPC). The GM should roleplay the NPC's responses taking into account all its traits (both the secret and the exposed ones), and using a reaction roll only when something is uncertain. A table for traits is something I must surely work on. Some random mooks do not have to be particular traits, maybe they can share a common one. But the GM can add traits to anyone at any moment as the spot is put over a given NPC.

* It is advisable that PCs have also at least one strong trait that distinguishes them from the others, with some form of mechanical advantage if the trait is disadvantageous. For example, Thieves Can Do It Too, by Johnstone Metzger, gives +1 dice to a related roll if a trait is positive, or +1 dice to a future, unrelated roll if the PC's trait puts him at disadvantage at any point.

* The emphasis for the GM is in to build charismatic NPCs that can be talked with, and some lore to be exposed the next week. Then, after the 26 episodes have gone through, gather the players and reflect if the whole adventure could have been a true, top 10 anime of all time.