For questions about the fourth edition of "Big Eyes, Small Mouth", an RPG originally designed by Mark C. MacKinnon that is designed to simulate the action styles of anime and manga. MacKinnon's Dyskami Publishing Company made a licensing agreement with White Wolf Publishing to co-publish BESM 4th edition with Japanime Games. It was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2019, and officially released to the public in 2020 (in standard, deluxe, and "Naked" editions).
For questions about the fourth edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth (besm), a role-playing game originally designed by Mark C. MacKinnon that is designed to simulate the action styles of anime and manga. BESM is named for the way in which characters are typically depicted in anime/manga, with large expressive eyes and comparatively small mouths.
To create characters, players roll 2d6 + 10 and divide the sum between Mind, Body, and Soul, against which action checks are made; these are supplemented by positive or negative Attributes.
Guardians of Order, a company MacKinnon founded, had initially planned to release a third edition of BESM in 2005 and then delayed it to April 2006. However, MacKinnon announced in August 2006 that Guardians of Order was going out of business. ArtHaus Games, a subsidiary of White Wolf Publishing, announced its acquisition of the game the following month, and eventually published BESM 3rd edition in 2007.
In April 2019, Dyskami Publishing Company, another company founded by MacKinnon, announced a worldwide licensing agreement with White Wolf to produce a new edition of the game. It was written by MacKinnon, and co-published with Japanime Games.
The fourth edition of BESM was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2019, with PDFs released to backers in December of that year. BESM 4th edition was officially released to the public in 2020. It was released in standard and limited editions (the latter of which was only available to Kickstarter backers), as well as BESM Naked, a "stripped-down" standalone alternate edition marketed as a "gateway product".
(For the 3rd edition released in 2007, see the besm-3e tag.)