Appendix R: Berserk

Player Characters as Force Multipliers

I’m not much of an otaku. Anyone who knows me won’t be shocked by this statement. Even using that word makes my skin crawl because, as every good internet user knows, anyone who calls himself an otaku is just a weeaboo trying to gussy up their obsession. The fact of the matter is that I never really cottoned on to the anime I was exposed to and didn’t have much exposure in the first place. I caught some Yu-Yu-Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, and Dragon Ball on Toonami. My parents shut that down almost immediately. Similarly, the twin cultural juggernauts of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were forbidden in my house although for some reason both Zoids and Beyblade were somewhat tolerated and I watched a lot of Transformers: Armada. I don’t know why some shows passed the sniff test and others didn’t, but that’s what my parents did. As I grew up, I became exposed to other shows like Naruto and Bleach which were extremely popular with my friends when I was 12-13. Then around the age of 14, I noticed a new phenomenon. I had certain friends who began to not just enjoy anime, but build their entire personalities on the foundation of animated shows from Japan. The floodgates were opened and suddenly everything Japanese was pushed in front of me by people with no sense of my specific taste. A few of those things stuck, mostly in the video game realm. I still enjoy Devil May Cry, Metal Gear and Blazblue, even if one of my friends did adopt the style and personality of Hazama Honoka wholecloth for a solid year and a half, and I really liked Cowboy Bebop, Baccano and even Attack on Titan. Those few hits aside, I still didn’t get it. Every show and comic seemed to center around highschoolers and overly complex magic bullshit. I had little use for anime and manga, the fans were particularly annoying in a very 2013 Tumblr way, and I had resigned myself to just not liking the pop culture that came from Japan.

A solid decade later, I was married and removed enough from my teenage years to reappraise anime, specifically the more mature genres. One that was consistently recommended to me as I got older was Berserk. The art always looked cool and the premise definitely interested me, but I was consistently told that the anime adaptations were bad. They definitely are, by the way. I cannot recommend any of them to you. This left me with the manga and, after years of resistance, I was ready to dive into it. What I found was astounding to me. Of course the art was beautiful. The late Kentaro Miura’s style is incredibly detailed and visceral. It’s recognizably Japanese, but it evokes Western art as well, especially the macabre detail of Hieronymous Bosch and the intricate line work of Gustave Dore. The story centers on Guts, a hulking one-eyed swordsman wandering a pseudo-European fantasy world tearing through demons, called “Apostles,” left and right. Guts is abrasive and cruel, but we learn his history in the second chapter of the series and discover that his life up til the present has been a series of tremendous tragedy and trauma. He was born as his mother lay dying on a battlefield. His adopted father was an abusive mercenary who beat and assaulted him until the day Guts finally learned to kill him. He found friendship among The Band of the Hawk, but that peace was shattered when his best friend Griffith betrayed him in a demonic ritual that also cost Guts the love of his life, Casca. From there, Guts is bent on revenge against Griffith, now ascended to the status of a lord of Hell as a member of The God Hand, a cabal of 5 demons possessing godlike power.

Let me start by saying that Berserk is not for the faint of heart and it is definitely not for children. This is a mature series for mature readers and I don’t just mean that there’s gore, sexual content, and disturbing imagery. Those things are all present, but when I say it’s for mature readers, I mean it’s for people who can look beyond the shocking nature of what’s displayed for them and parse out the deeper implications of the imagery. The very first sequence of the first chapter shows protagonist Guts in the throws of passion, only for us to discover that the woman he’s with is an Apostle in disguise. Guts seems to be aware of the ruse though and blows a hole through the mouth of the demon before walking off into the night. At first blush this seems like an overly edgy and exploitative piece of work targeting the audience’s baser desires for sex and violence. However, as the rest of the first chapter unfolds we discover that this interaction was actually a tone-setter for our narrative and protagonist. Guts is a demon hunter walking a razor’s edge between the light and the dark and his actions and attitude show us that he’s closer to the dark than anyone should be comfortable with. The Apostles know him by name and reputation and, as things progress, we find out that he’s been marked as a sacrifice and that the denizens of Hell believe his soul belongs to them. The story of Berserk is a complex one from the standpoint of morality. Guts is a broken character, physically, mentally and emotionally, but he is the unstoppable force that shatters evil upon contact.

When it comes to roleplaying games, Berserk has a lot to offer. Firstly, its portrayal of the Apostles is terrifying. They are universally large-than-life and monstrously deformed in nigh-indescribable ways. One look at them evokes a deep sense of wrongness and terror. Even non-demonic creatures have an evocative and unique look such as the Jotunn giants. The scale of the monsters in Berserk is inspiring as well. It seems that every non-human enemy, and even a few humans too, are hulking behemoths. One of the most terrifying things a GM can do is convey the size and scale of a monster in comparison to the players. You don’t have the advantage of a Miura illustration of every creature, but you can certainly describe the way in which an Etin wields a ship’s anchor as a morning star flail. This gets into the primary strength of Berserk as a roleplaying resource; unlike any other piece of media, Berserk does a brilliant job of conveying heroes and boss monsters as battlefield force multipliers. Guts is known as “The Hundred Man Slayer” due to the fact that, while wounded and suffering from a fever, he took on a hundred armored men and won. Interestingly, when Guts first takes on an Apostle, he does so with the help of Griffith and both men, equally skilled in combat, are forced to retreat from the creature known as Nosferatu Zodd when it unleashes its full demon form. The battles in Berserk are large and bloody with warriors cutting huge swathes out of columns of troops. Guts’ weapon of choice is a two-handed war sword, more heavy than sharp, designed to slice through monsters and soldiers through shear brute weight and inertia. When you read Chainmail and wonder what it would look like to fight as 4 men, this is what it looks like.

The thing that people seem to forget about mass combat in RPGs is that there are few things as cool to players as seeing their character cut through large numbers of enemies. A Fighter wants to fight and, on the field of battle, he is unrestrained by the confines of a dungeon or castle corridor. The restraints are off and now you can unleash your whole arsenal. The introduction of a massive boss monster in the midst of this carnage? Now there’s something other than shear numbers that can threaten your PCs. This is the very essence of medieval fantasy combat. It’s combined arms with monsters taking the place of armor, artillery, air support, etc. Player characters and big monsters should always feel like force multipliers and the feeling of being that force multiplier is what combat is all about. I’ve had the experience once and it is unparalleled. You will feel incredibly powerful. Now, at the height of that power fantasy, introduce something that threatens that power. It’s hard to guarantee that a fight will be dynamic and, as the old saying goes, if you end up in a fair fight, your tactics suck. Still, in many cases, large battles will create these up-and-down moments, especially when monsters are involved.

Berserk is an incredible series, well worth your time to read even if you do not typically enjoy manga. If you’re running RPGs though, it’s essential to give you an understanding of the scale of monsters and warfare. I have never encountered another piece of media that does it as well as Berserk. It’s visceral, bloody and hard-hitting. Your fighters will enjoy embodying the role of Guts and taking down massive monsters and large mobs of enemies.