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I need a mechanic for a future Magical Girls campaign

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 9:00 am
by Tabulation
Hello, hello,
With some friends, I am planning a Magical Girl Warrior with some Bio-augmentation and Staship Troopers elements thrown in the mix. So basically, it is young girls in cute dress kicking the ass of giants insects aliens and maybe dieing in the process. Yeah, it is inspired by the PMMM's fanfic To the Stars.
So what is bothering me, is that the PCs will be overhaul young girls (teens to pre-teens). The problem is that I will have to really limit which abilities they can get and at what level.
I have a mean to hand-wave the above normal physical prowess with a Bio-Aug custom ability or whatever the name is.
But the problem is the power that the girls can get. I plan to allow them normal power like super strenght, speed, fireball or whatever, more tricky Semantic Superpower, or plain absurd Stands-like powers.
The normals ones are straightforward so simple scale advantage could work. But for semantic superpower that can encompass a lot a things (for exemple : I have come up with a character with the compression power. She can for example, compress matter to a absurd degree, compress time to make someone super slow or fast, compress space for a kind of teleportation, compress probability for...) well I don't want to limit the extend of my player's power by numbers. And for Stand powers, they are sometime so weird that Stats them maybe a headache.
THen, I would say you good bye. And bonne fĂȘtes.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:14 pm
by cassius335
...now I'm left wondering what a Magical Grills campaign would involve...

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:58 am
by Tabulation
cassius335 wrote:...now I'm left wondering what a Magical Grills campaign would involve...
Nothing unusual, really.
Cute Girls bonding with their comrade, cute girls bonding by beating the shit out of their enemies, child labors and child soldier, horrible death, political intrigue and alien conspiracy. Also teenage girls played by twenty-something bunch of guy.
Nothing unusual really.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 6:00 am
by Sabersonic
Tabulation wrote:
cassius335 wrote:...now I'm left wondering what a Magical Grills campaign would involve...
Nothing unusual, really.
Cute Girls bonding with their comrade, cute girls bonding by beating the shit out of their enemies, child labors and child soldier, horrible death, political intrigue and alien conspiracy. Also teenage girls played by twenty-something bunch of guy.
Nothing unusual really.
Why am I getting a Neon Genesis Evangelion vibe from that....?

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:03 pm
by Tabulation
Sabersonic wrote:
Tabulation wrote:
cassius335 wrote:...now I'm left wondering what a Magical Grills campaign would involve...
Nothing unusual, really.
Cute Girls bonding with their comrade, cute girls bonding by beating the shit out of their enemies, child labors and child soldier, horrible death, political intrigue and alien conspiracy. Also teenage girls played by twenty-something bunch of guy.
Nothing unusual really.
Why am I getting a Neon Genesis Evangelion vibe from that....?
Do you think so? It's a World full of rainbows and unicorns. With horde of Alien Locus.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 6:32 pm
by Chris Brady
Tabulation wrote:
cassius335 wrote:...now I'm left wondering what a Magical Grills campaign would involve...
Nothing unusual, really.
Cute Girls bonding with their comrade, cute girls bonding by beating the shit out of their enemies, child labors and child soldier, horrible death, political intrigue and alien conspiracy. Also teenage girls played by twenty-something bunch of guy.
Nothing unusual really.
You may want to check how you spelled the title of this topic.

Anecdote:

Back in my youth, when I took the bus to a summer camp and the like, there was a tunnel system crossing a highway, to keep pedestrians safe. Now like all such structures, it had rude graffiti in it. But in corner, in a typically black marker, was a "I love grils".

A couple of weeks later someone had crossed out 'grils' and up in 'girls'. I was 10-11, and I really didn't take notice.

Until a week later, someone had written in a different hand: "What wrong with us grils?"

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 3:10 am
by Sabersonic
Tabulation wrote:
Sabersonic wrote:
Tabulation wrote:Nothing unusual, really.
Cute Girls bonding with their comrade, cute girls bonding by beating the shit out of their enemies, child labors and child soldier, horrible death, political intrigue and alien conspiracy. Also teenage girls played by twenty-something bunch of guy.
Nothing unusual really.
Why am I getting a Neon Genesis Evangelion vibe from that....?
Do you think so? It's a World full of rainbows and unicorns. With horde of Alien Locus.
Yeah, not helping the image at all.

So when do the Illuminati-analogue come in?

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 5:25 am
by Tabulation
Chris Brady wrote: You may want to check how you spelled the title of this topic.

Anecdote:

Back in my youth, when I took the bus to a summer camp and the like, there was a tunnel system crossing a highway, to keep pedestrians safe. Now like all such structures, it had rude graffiti in it. But in corner, in a typically black marker, was a "I love grils".

A couple of weeks later someone had crossed out 'grils' and up in 'girls'. I was 10-11, and I really didn't take notice.

Until a week later, someone had written in a different hand: "What wrong with us grils?"
Now I want to make a robot girl NPC who have a grill function.
Sabersonic wrote: Yeah, not helping the image at all.

So when do the Illuminati-analogue come in?
They used to be at war with the aliens locus. They lost. They found a race that look like they but mate like rabbits (humanity). They began to breed super soldier (magical girls), then infiltrate every level of human society to monitor their super soldiers.
See they are benevolent. They just want to wipe the universe of those goddamn bugs.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 6:17 am
by Malancthon
To be fair, "Grils" is a common internet nomenclature for girls.

Who are we kidding, there are no girls on the internet.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:07 pm
by Chris Brady
Malancthon wrote:To be fair, "Grils" is a common internet nomenclature for girls.

Who are we kidding, there are no girls on the internet.
The internet: where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are all FBI agents.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:38 pm
by Sabersonic
Chris Brady wrote:
Malancthon wrote:To be fair, "Grils" is a common internet nomenclature for girls.

Who are we kidding, there are no girls on the internet.
The internet: where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are all FBI agents.
Ain't that the truth?

But getting back to the central topic at hand, having characters with such broad-covering abilities would be potentially game breaking if not managed correctly. Still, for the Magical Girl to have the Sematic Power of "Compression" for example, one can turn towards Magic, Arcane if only to mimic the wanted ability. For example, compressing time could be simulated via the Time Freeze while compressing space can be equally represented via the Teleport. Compress matter, however, would be a bit difficult to simulate though it can be represented as an Attack Variation in which case an appropriately high DX would be mandated to show how damaging it could be.

Unless, IDK, compressing matter is to make it easier to store, then Dimensional Pocket would be the more appropriate response.

Either way, Magic, Arcane, would be appropriate enough to represent a magical girl's own Sematic Power. However, could you enlightened the rest of us as to what this "Stand Power" is? I'm not terribly familiar with the source material being referenced.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Girls campaign

Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 6:41 am
by Tabulation
Stands are the Standard power of the characters of JoJo's bizarre Adventure front part 3 onward.
Their power are pretty absurd sometime. I will list the eight JoJo and their Stands.
Jotaro, the JoJo of part 3, is the most boring of the bunch. Star Platinium, a purple muscle man who is ultra fast, resilient and accurate.
Josuke, the JoJo of part 4, have Crazy Diamond who can repair anything as he sees fit. Healing wound, combine two object together or any other weird power. (I ink that a huge bonus in inventor
or healer can be applicable).
Giorno of part 5, have Gold Experiment. His stand can give life to inanimate objects, usually by turning them into animals or plants, or by giving life to someone to either make them lose sync with their actions. (copy-paste from tvtropes)
Jolyce, the heroine of part 6 have Stone Free as a Stand. Who can turn her body into string. She is pretty imaginative with her power.
Johnny, is the JoJo of part 7. His stand is Tusk, which allows him to fire his fingernails as bullets.(Tvtropes)
Then, we have Josuke from part 8. His Stand, Soft & Wet, can (c&p) produces "soap bubbles" which steal "something" from whatever they come in contact with. Soft & Wet has plundered objects and people of their odors, the sounds they produce, their friction, fur and hair, and moisture, as well as oxygen in the lungs and eyesight (resulting in an interesting Eye Scream). Another bubble can then release the attribute or imbue a different object with what had been stolen. The soap bubbles are also capable of concussive force, as well as being able to push and move people.
The fights from JoJo are less about the power than how to use them (with a lot of imagination) and deduce the enemies power.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Girls campaign

Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 5:14 pm
by Clay
When it comes to weird powers in OVA, it helps to think about what you want the power to do.

Sure, your character may control magnetic forces, but trying to figure out how to stat up "MAGNETS" is less important than the actual tasks it can accomplish. Do you want to crush people with it? That's Attack. Do you want to fly? That's Flight. Do you want to manipulate robots? That's Psychic with a rename and a limitation that it only works on robots.

You can still throw in a catch-all Unique Ability to cover all the random extra cases, but that should be just that, the last stop on your power-making journey, not the first.

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Grils campaign

Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2017 1:40 am
by Chris Brady
Tabulation wrote:Now I want to make a robot girl NPC who have a grill function.
That's called a 'Flamethrower'.

Attack +2
Perks
Area of Effect (Cone or a Line, 10), Continued Effect (YOU'RE ON FIRE! 10) Ranged (It THROWS flames at people, 0)

Flaws
Ammunition (As much as I hate the name, flamethrowers work on fuel, and if it's in a robot's frame, it probably doesn't hold that much, so -5, or more), Low Penetration (-5 Hard surfaces and a lot of plated armours are good defenses, although being cooked alive...), Weapon (-5 usually is)

Re: I need a mechanic for a future Magical Girls campaign

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:51 pm
by Tabulation
I think I got something.
I will have the player write down the "theme" of their characters somewhere and pick abilities according to that.
If they want to use their power for something they don't have on their sheet, they will have to spend a resource that I have yet to name. A normal character have 5 points in this resource by default. The among of point that can be spend is rated from 1 (fairly basic) to 11 (reality breaking).
So what do you think?