RPG Recommendations

>>55308614
Which anime is that?

The only thing I can think of right now is Costume Fairy Adventures, and I'm not sure whether that was ever completed.

Savage Worlds you can slap it in super easy.

Mutants and Masterminds you can slap it in super easy.

Hell you could do any system like this. Just make a base character who is untransformed, and then make some other characters that you swap to when you transform.

>>55308788
Pic is unrelated, but I've been watching Hina Logic. It's weeaboo trash that I don't think I would recommend to most people, but I personally have a soft spot for cute stuff. The Fate spinoff Prisma Illya has a similar function - cards can be equipped for a short term transformation, and they have varying different types of cards that are theoretically used for different situations. Don't watch Prisma Illya with ANYONE, though. Lock your doors, lights off, pretend you aren't home. It's got the highest levels of >friendship that I've ever seen.

I'm sure other magical girl anime does the same thing, but I haven't yet had the chance to go back and catch up on some of the classic ones that the genre is built on.

>>55308833
I'll take a look at those. I've heard Savage Worlds is pretty generally usable for lots of things, so that might be a good place to start.

>Hell you could do any system like this. Just make a base character who is untransformed, and then make some other characters that you swap to when you transform.

That's basically how I imagined things working. It's just that given DnD, any edition really, each class is built to specialize and ALSO be able to do a fair number of other things reasonably well. At that point, there will probably be one transformation that becomes obviously the best to stick to 90% of the time. My hope is to find something with highly specialized classes (or mod classes to be more highly specialized) to encourage swapping between forms and make that a regular part of every session.

>>55308833
Okay, reading up on Savage Worlds, and based on the way things are being explained, it seems like a really natural fit for the sort of game I'm imagining.

>>55308614
For D&D? Vestige users, aka Binders, anon. Each vestige/spirit grants a specific set of powers and potential skillsets.

>>55308614
The usual round of suggestions is going to be the common generic systems, including Savage Worlds and FATE. Something like Mutants and Masterminds or BESM would be a good fit here, since they both have built-in ways of constructing alternate forms that characters can swap in to; although there are others who disagree, I would recommend M&M.

>>55309294
Generic systems might be what I'm looking for, in this case - and it's not like I don't have twenty minutes to spare to skim through some pdfs every now and again.

I'll definitely take a look at M&M too though, cause even just based on the name it sounds like it could apply pretty easily. And I mean, I've got months to prepare for potentially running a game, so I can take my time right now picking a system I like.

>>55309273
I might take a look at this, but we are looking to move out of D&D after our current campaign. It's campaign number 6 just for this group, and we've all played in other groups doing D&D. This campaign we're doing the dual-leveling rules with some slight balance modifications in a heavily homebrewed setting that resembles Fire Emblem in flavor, all for the sake of trying to keep D&D fresh. I think the DM has rolled up something like 100 or more NPCs with dual-leveling to that end, and there's more to be done before we finish the campaign as well. We're ready to sample the other stuff that's out there, I think.

>>55309294
Now that I think about it more, take a look at Magical Burst, which is designed to run Madoka-esque mahou shoujo campaigns. It does not have form-swapping rules, but they could probably be added in without too much effort, depending on exactly what you wanted out of them. It has a fun system of taking "Overcharge" when you use abilities, which builds up into causing glitches reality and mutations if you do not burn it off in time.

Caveat about M&M: it is a flexible system that can handle a diverse and powerful set of characters, but it can be easily broken with certain combination (just have players run their builds by the GM), and it is d20, although very different than D&D and most other d20 games.

How do the cards work in Hina Logi?

>>55309507
I'll add that to my list of games to check out, cause that sounds purpose-built for what I want to do.

In Hina Logic, the girls communicate with beings from other worlds (universes, I think?) and make contracts with them. That pact is essentially written into a card that they can then activate, beginning a "trance" during which they essentially borrow power from the otherworldly being.

I just hit an episode where they make it clear that multiple contracts can be formed, and my mind basically took it from there. I have always liked the idea of a character that used different equipment depending on the situation, but D&D's combat system tends to favor just picking the optimal DPS (which is usually exactly the same for every situation) for non-spellcasters, which would make it hard to hack mechanically. Spellcasters have more flexibility, but I don't care for the D&D approach to magic, in particular how rigid spellcasting is - there are set lists of spells, and they can be used to do specific things. Creativity in spell usage can help, but ultimately you're still constrained by spells that exist, and once again, there are frequently *best spells* to use. I'm sure that I'll run into the same problem elsewhere, but with a new system it will at least be fresh.

>>55309697
You can get Magical Burst from the creator's website; the version I am most familiar with is 4th edition, but apparently there is a playable alpha version of a 5.0.

https://yarukizerogames.com/tag/magical-burst/

The combat in particular is rather abstract, but in many ways that suits a game in which characters can fly around at high speeds. It also has a fairly robust set of That sound rules for relationships - you start campaigns by mapping out friends, family, and so on, including other PCs.

That sounds pretty neat; actually, the card system reminds me just a bit of Touhou, in which one uses spell cards to go into a trance while they execute the effect.

D&D magic is forever tied to a clunky Vancian set up, so it is best to avoid it if you can.

>>55309173

Yeah, Savage Worlds is really light and really flexible. So if you decide to do the "multiple characters" angle it will let you knock out way more characters with way less headaches.

>>55309849
As I read through Magical Burst, I think I like a lot of it - the one thing I'm concerned about, though, is that it does seem VERY Madoka, which isn't quite what I'm going for, at least not at present. Is the sense of a dark, foreboding world lurking under the surface vital to the game experience, or is it pretty easy to make it a monster-of-the-week system and not worry too much about the dark background?

>>55309868
Even just from looking at the basic freebie document it definitely looks that way. One concern - it had a section about grid movement. Is that part easily ignored in favor of more abstracted fights? I know in D&D it often is pretty handwaveable, at least at lower levels, as long as the DM is keeping track of things reasonably well.

>>55310001
>>55309868
And by grid movement I mean movement by inches on the table. I don't know why I called it grid movement when it clearly isn't.

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>Hina Logi
Patrician taste anon. That show is actually /tg/ related even.

Not even baiting, but the transformation system in GURPS is exactly like that. Each form has its own stats that go on top of a PC's. Just give each Foreigner it's own powers that your players can use, set having a Gate Card
and being in Pirari Academy as transformation requirements, and you are golden.

>>55310071
I was not ready for the episode in that pic, I will be honest. I mean, I've watched Prisma Illya, so it's not like it was overly shocking, but I am just not predisposed to expect that kind of content.

GURPS has always scared me. It took me a while to get used to the crunch of D&D, so systems with similar or greater levels of crunch to them make me wary. I think I probably just need to get over it and at least give it an honest read-through, though. Is the transformation system in a base rulebook somewhere?

>>55309849
Also I'm getting the impression that even if I don't commit to the Magical Burst system wholesale, basically all the tables would be super usable for any set of mechanics I wanted to lay them over. I just got to the Youma appearance tables and it's perfect.

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Hinalogi is the fucking bee's knees yo.

I find that the best systems for emulating most magical girl media are supers systems, and that lots of people seem to just pass over them when for whatever reason. I don't know if you or anyone in your group have any experience with any supers games already, but it's a good place to start looking at least. I actually hate GURPS for almost everything, but I think >>55310071 is honestly on the right track; if there's one thing GURPS does really well, it's let you build really detailed super power sets. Alternatively, since the transformation is basically a setting quirk, you could probably sneak it in the narrative backdoor in any other supers game with a little hacking, rather than having to try to "balance" it out like you would in designing GURPS power sets that simulate transforming.

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>>55310157
It is in the GURPS Core Set. GURPS isn't any more complicated than D&D. The entire reason I play the damn game is because it actually plays faster than every version of it save D&D Basic. The downside is that you will have to prep things by making stats for the transformations, as opposed to having some system (If such as system exists) that already has a bunch of different mahou shoujo transformation options that one character can have.

So who's gonna run a mahou shoujo game on this?

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>>55308614
is that from the magical girl picture folders?

FATE would easily work like this

>>55308614
>doesn't need to be magical girl flavor or anything
>Not wanting to play a magical girl gay
OP confirmed for faggot

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>>55310419
This guy has the right idea.

>>55310376
Why is her weapon a buter knife?

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>>55310446
Pancake shoujo, I mean OPs is a fire extinguisher shoujo so why not?

>>55310272
>>55310317
GURPS is officially on the list then. I will work past my fear of it and give it a go.

>>55310392
FATE is one that I have looked through, and if I have a group someday that wants to try it, I'll put something together for it. It didn't grab me especially strongly though, at least not on just a readthrough.

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>>55310376
Hell yeah it is.

>>55310419
>>55310428
I'm in three campaigns right now. One of them I'm playing fairly normally, but I'm running a warlock that has progressively turned into a magical girl in one of them, and in the other I'm playing a literal lesbian gun bunny in the most anime campaign I've ever played in. I even got art commissioned of that character cause she's been so fun to play.

>>55310419
>>55310428
>>55310785
Although the pic I used just now is not the art I commissioned.

>>55310738
Fate is a meta rpg. You pretend there is actually a game there instead of the GM running the game on whim and freeform.

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>>55310001
If you wanted to avoid the darker aspects of Magical Burst, I would suggest pruning or replacing the Fallout effects,since many of them, especially at higher levels, can do terrible things. Swap them out for stat penalties or something like that. Other than that, it should be pretty usable if you just flavor things the way you want, which the game wants you to do anyways.

>>55310189
The tables are highly usable for other systems, yes. Some of them are pretty great.

>>55310805
I think that describes perfectly why I didn't fall in love with it in the first place. The gaming group I'm looking at trying out new systems with enjoys a sense of system mastery, and I suspect that FATE would be mastered within a month at most, from a mechanical standpoint, and possibly within the first session. I guess I'll keep it in mind for a hypothetical future group that doesn't care for rules nearly as much.

>>55310871
That's good to know, on both counts. I'm always wary of pruning bits off of something like D&D on the basis that ignoring parts of the rules can radically alter the balance of the system in ways you might not predict ahead of time. My current 5th edition campaign can be really stressful at times simply because our DM has handed us equipment that would normally be too powerful for us, and he hasn't figured out how to make combat encounters anything other than trivial or incredibly dangerous because of that imbalance. And that's just based on a few homebrew items; what if he decided that he just didn't want grappling? Or prepared spellcasting?

>>55310957
I personally think that Fate has its merits. There is nothing funnier than gaining a power to reverse GM actions. But for what your are looking for it probably shouldn't be your first consideration.

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>>55310957
Much of what Fallout does is fluff-based, so for a lot of it even stat penalties would be too much. You could probably describe what happens in less harsh terms without affecting too much. What kind of setting were you going for?

But yes, changing systems can have significant emergent properties not necessarily obvious from the outset, so you have to be careful. Of course, many games (all games) have flaws in their design inherently, and changing things can fix them, so it comes down to thinking through each change and how it combines with other mechanics.

>>55310785
Nice Neco art. Is the art you comissioned that piece, or something else?

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>>55311030
Yeah, I think FATE might be my first stop if I were getting a group of people from a theater background into tabletop gaming. It's got the right balance of rules and flexibility for a group of people who are going to run with the story naturally. I think it would feel like a step backwards for my current group though.

>>55311044
Not 100% sure on the setting, but my current thought is a fairly light and standard magical girl setup. I'd probably do a short one on one with each player to get them their first power, and then just kinda go from there. I'm torn on whether I want to do the "secret identity" style or go along the lines of Hina Logi and just put them into a school where it's all out in the open, though. Both approaches have merits, for sure.

The pic I linked was just from the magical girl picture folder that I think used to exist connected to the MAGCYOA thread. I haven't seen one of those in a while, but I also haven't been checking for it for a long time either.

THIS is the commission I got, and I'm pretty happy with it.

>>55311044
The most consistent thing in my mind though is that I really do want to do a more episodic style, monster-of-the-week. Whether that's school missions or a simply mystery to be solved about whatever it is spooking up the town, I think that an episodic style would be waaaaaay better for me as a DM.

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>>55310785
I'm actually that anon who collected those pics. You know what happened to those MGCYOA threads?

>>55311205
I followed it down a rabbit hole once and found the IRC they used at the time. I would assume they've moved on to Discord by now, but I didn't stay around. I might be able to find it again? Not sure, desu.

Also thank you for the pics! I found inspiration for a few characters that now feature in my current animu campaign, including the one that I eventually got commissioned that I shared a few posts up.

>>55311128
Miette is cute~

"Secret identity" magical girls are typically found in real world-based settings, where as magic academy ones are more likely to be in a fantastic setting. Secret identities are good if you want to have an aspect of balancing mundane concerns with fighting monsters (you could institute a Persona-esque daily/weekly downtime action system if you liked for this) and open magical girls can be used for things that take advantage of their high profile nature. For example, in the webcomic I have been posting panels from (Sleepless Domain), everyone keeps track of magical girl battles each night, and magical girls can get advertising deals due to their celebrity status.

>>55311203
You might want to take a look at some Japanese TTRPGs, if only to get a sense of how they do things. They are commonly designed to work in an episodic fashion, in which each session's plot line wraps up by the end for the most part. Examples include Nechronica, Double Cross, Maid, and Tenra Bansho Zero.

>>55311240
Thanks! I tried to make her cute, cause I figured if I was playing in an anime campaign I might as well be a cute girl. She's also smaller than the rest of the party, with the exception of the pixie, but our pixie pilots a suit of armor the size of an orc like it's a mecha. In my mind, anyway, her being smaller adds to the cuteness factor.

Part of the reason I'm not totally sure which one to do yet is that I'd want to run both ideas by my players. Either one would be interesting enough for me, I think, and my preference would probably ultimately lean towards the one I was thinking about more anyway. I know for a fact that at least one (and probably more) of my players would be all over a Persona-esque system, and I have already considered using tarot cards as physical props to represent their various cards.

I'll check out some of the TTRPGs you've linked. I think some of the other players have actually played a Maid campaign, but I'm not sure if it was a system dedicated to Maid stuff or just something they hacked together out of another system.

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>>55311230
stopped collecting those pics for a while since I wanted to do other things, but I'm thinking about starting again. Usually would post in mgcyoa threads, but that's not really here anymore.

>>55311422
I'm looking around to see if I can find where they lurk. There might be another place they congregate now, and if I can find that IRC then I could ask.

>>55311371
Skip Double Cross and read Tokyo Nova instead. It has more than Double Cross's barebones and hamfisted approach and is translated much better to boot.

>>55311451
There is a Discord. I've already left again, but you should find the link in one of the archived threads.

>>55310798
Artist? I like the art-style, might commission something too.

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>>55311371
Smallness tends to increase cuteness factor, it is known; although tall girls can be cute too, in their own way. And yes, if one is going to play in an anime campaign, one might as well be a cute girl, or at the very least a cute boy who looks like a girl.

If it was up to me, I would go with the "magical girls are common knowledge" option, if only because it is less represented in the genre; but it would be up to what everyone in the group wanted. You do not happen to have room for one more player, do you~?

>>55311456
Agreed, Double Cross is kind of boring mechanically whie Tokyo Nova has a really neat card-based system. Just throwing out some well-known JRPGs for reference.

Anyone wanna give a go to a game?

>>55311611
Artist's name is actually right in there underneath the character's name. She has changed her artist name a couple times though, so even though she's only got a couple things up on her current name, I can assure you she's got more experience than that.

>>55311619
Well, if you happen to be someone I know IRL, then perhaps. I'm in one of those mythical groups that plays all in person, and I don't know how the group would feel about transitioning to the cyberspace. I'm not necessarily against the idea of doing it online though.

All that said, this is still a ways out for me, on the order of probably months. I'm pretty busy right now in my current day to day life, and adding in DMing on top of everything else would not be healthy. If I come up with the energy and time to do a one-shot, I might return to this board with it if I think I can run it properly.

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>>55311715
Aww, oh well. You seem like a cute person, that is all~

I am glad you have an in-person group; these days all of my friends live at great distances from one another, so online is the only way to run campaigns.

>>55312074
The other groups I'm in do run at least partially online. I understand the struggle.

>>55312187
Usually Roll20 or Discord for me. I am looking in to putting together an IRL group, though.

Could I correspond with you through email, perhaps?

>>55312300
I could roll up a discord group and leave an invite here for you if you want. I don't have an email set up properly to just leave on an anonymous imageboard, desu.

That reminds me, that I am still miffed that Bushiroad canned support for the English version of Luck & Logic right after Hina Logi was announced. I actually wanted to make a cube of all the Hina Logi cards, but that company's ADHD knows no bounds.

>>55313031
That would be perfect. I use throwaway emails here, I can understand why you would not want to risk your real email.

>>55313409
Alright, here's a six hour pass:

https://discord.gg/cbfFN

Also there's a decent chance I head to bed here pretty soon, I have work early and I'm tired.

>>55309072
>I'm sure other magical girl anime does the same thing, but I haven't yet had the chance to go back and catch up on some of the classic ones that the genre is built on.

If you haven't seen nanoha and its various spin offs, you are in for a fuckin ride.