So how do you play a game on a tabletop when the main characters are powerful enough to blow up moons? R. Talsorian games gave it a go with their RPG rules for Dragonball Z, but considering that the game and its singular supplement are now long out of print, you may have a hard time finding out for yourself. But should you even bother?
Personally, I probably wasn't as big of a fan as I needed to be to fully appreciate the RPG when I bought it. The vastly disparate power levels, to someone who was used to "balanced" games like Champions and GURPS, made me wonder exactly how to balance things. However, one element that stuck with me was that the publishers acknowledged the large number of DBZ toys and action figures that were on the market, and included a couple of pages on how to use them in your game and how to modify existing ones to look like your characters. It was a nice touch.
And when I say "large number", believe me. Reissues of Japanese figures with articulation at the neck and shoulders (action-tastic!), 2" PVC figures, new sculpts with detailed paint and accessories, and now, Real Action Heroes super-articulated 1/6 scale figures. Fortunately for my need for blog content, they even did a series of 1" tall figures. So how do they work with the spokesminis?
If you like Goku, you have a number of options.
No, really. A whole bunch of options.
Majin Buu also gets a fair amount of representation.
Perhaps a more than fair amount.
The series includes a number of less-important characters...
As well as some just plain smaller ones. (these DBZ figures are mounted on 20mm rounds, for the curious)
With 96 (!) figures in the series, they manage to cover a broad spectrum of the characters, and it's nice to see multiple poses for characters that actually have different iterations (like the Seiyan and Super Seiyan stages... if you don't understand, don't worry about it. You're probably better off.)
What else is interesting about the 1" figures is that a number of them were simple half-size versions of the 2" figures, which allows for some figures to have "regular" and "giant-size" versions. I think Supersystem and WarEngine are the only systems that might make use of such a mechanic, but since they're high on my list, they work for me.
I should mention that the paint on these figures does *not* take acrylics, in the event that you're hoping to give them touch-ups. I don't know about the unpainted pink plastic.
How do I know this? Check out monster Broly up there. The nasty brown spots were my attempt at shading with an ink. I think it was a GW Flesh Wash. It may be possible to hit them with a matte sealer and then paint over that, but I haven't tried it yet.
This is an example of what the back of one of the larger figures looks like. There's serious casting bubbles from the molding process, but the copyright information is just printed on the back.
On the smaller figures, they just carve it in.
Not even the smallest figures are safe. Poor guys! The point is that if you got really gung-ho and wanted to clean up these figures for anything resembling an award level paint job, you have a fair amount of filling to do.
It is worth noting that only recently, Jakks Pacific released giant Shenron dragon figures that do well to tower over these figures. How much do they tower? That base is a 5" CD.
Poor Skunk. No respect. No respect at all.
So you've seen them, and decided that you absolutely need them. How do you find them?
The only thing I can say is good luck. DBZ figures continue to be made, but the more recent iterations are much larger, 2-3 inches tall or taller, and these figures are small enough that they don't exactly rate individual auctions. I can tell you that these figures were released in the US by Irwin toys, and there were 8 blister cards with 12 figures apiece. Past that, you're on your own.
So what do I think of them? Unless you're a DBZ fan, it probably isn't worth your time to track these down. I'm glad I picked them up when I did, as they keep my rebased Heroclix figures company. There is also the benefit that these are recognizable characters, so if you're running a demo of some ruleset, the figures alone can be something to draw people in.
As far as being DBZ toys goes, I don't think they're that bad. The sculpting does a decent job at letting them represent anime characters. Colors are bright, and they occasionally have a surprising level of detail. As I mentioned above, they cover a wide variety of characters, though I am curious as to why they didn't do any of Krillin or Piccolo, two mainstays of the saga.
Happy hunting!
