There's a story behind it, but the short form is that after digging up my old BESM d20 book while cleaning the apartment, the question of "What would TAS have been like if it had been done as an anime?" which led to story re-imagining discussions which led to some off the cuff conversion talk, which led to me statting up Cyrano Jones as a 10th level Pet Monster Trainer with a collection of battle-trained mutant tribbles--on the run from Klingon Pet Monster Trainer bounty hunters with their own collections of hideous tribble, er, "glomming" beasties and the whole thing turned into a gritty/cartoonish/anime scenario taking place on Sherman's Planet--with Klingon Mechas (engineering "tools" allowed by treaty!) crashing around and...
Next thing you know, I have to run the damn thing!
And I'm not even a fan of Anime, especially.
sigh.
The first challenge will be dealing with what the PC's come up with and I won't know about that until after the chargen session. I have contingency plans for most of the possibilities.
Dynamic Sorcerors? Well, there are a number of funky powered aliens species lurking about that would fit the bill. What if the Metrons had been a little more sociable? Or a relatively "young" Organian observer, or a better trained Charlie-X etc.
Mechas--and God knows there will HAVE to be Mechas! I don't know why, but I'd better be prepared. I'm looking more at manned "probes" with defensive weaponry as opposed to anthropomorphic fighters--It won't be MY fault if the pilot misuses that tractor beam/deflector projector to create a "Deflector Sword" or uses a "Photon Punch" or some such atrocity. It's a Probe, for god's sake! A Galileo Class Probe....
And so on.
I think I'll have the PC's work as a sort of quasi-TOS era "Away Team" mission specialists group working for Admiral Pike, who commands Star Fleet's gigantic flagship. ("Kirk? Lt. Kirk was a promising young officer whose loss with the USS Faragut put a tragic end to a promising career. Why do you ask?")
Star Fleet tech is...a little different. Thanks to Pike's successful first contact with the Talosians--and his later brilliant solution to the Botany Bay situation. Eugenic supermen working to rebuild a dead civilization in a virtual paradise from which they have no desire to escape proved to be a successful strategy.
so. suggestions?