TWEWY System

I like that idea. And i think, even if TWEWY didn't so much give each brand a Thing, we should.
Pavo Real did a lot of status effects, didnt it? I just remember i hated the Pavo Real floor of Pig City because Pavo has like no damage pins.

Nat Puppy's thing was bullets, J of the M had slashes. Sheep Heavenly had press commands like crackle pop barrier.

So we have:
Natural Puppy - Ranged Projectiles
J of the M - Melee strikes
Gatito - NPC Brand
Pavo Real - Status Effects

Maybe D+B is debilitation? When i think of D+B i think of the ice pillar moves that air juggled people.

D+B also has Psychokinesis, see Shiki's Piggy.

D+B had a heavy Psychokinesis theme.

Even more debilitation then, since that could throw Noise all over.

You can't move noise with it. Just objects in the environment. D+B's theme is relocation of others.

See it's been way too long since i played TWEWY, i could have sworn you could throw smaller Noise.
We should probably come up with some sort of stats or resolution system. Do we tie it into pins and brands or make it independent?

Looking at the wiki...
Mus Rattus - Elemental Cores (Creates the orb that circles neku) and a lot of variety. Has the best Supply Boost pin
Tigre Punks - Melee pins (Velocity Attack/Crash, Spear Strike, Vortex Saber)
Lapin Angelique - Force/Burst Rounds, Stellar Furry, Lightning Bolt. Seems pretty kiting-prone
Dragon Couture - Burst Rounds, Pyrokinesis, Psychokinesis, Thundercloud. Ranged-heavy
Hip Snake - Lots of status debuffs and CC (Rock Bind, Freeze, Holy Light, Ignition, Frostbite), also Thunderstorm
D+B - Piercing Pillar, Psychokinesis, Earthquake (only has one, but it's the only branded earthquake)
That's about all I have time for right now

Though, again, I think it'd be more interesting to have a system you could use to run a Reaper's Game set where you please. Admittedly it'd be a tougher task...

Actually, I've been toying around with the idea for a while, just didn't have a lot of time recently to work on it due to real-life issues.
pastebin.com/Cg2DdnR4
The one thing that stumped me was how to balance brands, while kepping them relatively themed like in TWEWY.

The system can be placed anywhere, we just keep the brands the same. It's a minor detail what the thirteen brands are called and what they look like, someone could use Gap, Armani, and Hot Topic as easily as Natural Puppy, Dragon Coture, and Tigre Punks.

Jupiter of the Monkey was heavily into slashing melee attacks.

What about unbranded pins? Where would they fit in?

unbranded would be simply that: unbranded
it can fall into any number of roles
perhaps they have the advantage/disadvantage of being unaffected by the trend system, if that ends up being incorporated

So what, everyone gets access to basic psyches but then has choices about what they have access to beyond that?

Earlier in the thread, they were discussing having certain brands off limits so it would be similar to the game. I guess some exp based system to learn how to either use different brands or evolve pins you currently have or what have you.

Well the 12 brands were each supposed to represent a zodiac animal so there was that.

Also I'd like to chime in that Sheep Heavenly should be the healing/support class.

Each player should have a single focus object (Skateboard, Doll, Cellphone, etc...) that they align to a certain brand. They should probably come up with a handful of attacks/techniques that are in theme with their brand.

In the interest of game design, it may be beneficial if pins/wildcard style techniques are also available but most players wouldn't have a particular affinity for them. Depending on how long the game goes on it may be advantageous to allow players the opportunity to get a second item with a secondary brand.

>decide if we're running TWEWY (i.e. in the game's Shibuya UG), or Reaper's Games which could be in any UG
Use the Shibuya UG as the examples since we are doing TWEWY, but mention the other reaper games as operating similar.
>similar to the game
Ingame everyone was tied to only one brand. Except Neku because he's got a cheater helping him.
Shouldn't we first figure out the resolution system and stats and such before working on pins and junk?

Lapin clothes were also THE best Crisis (start at low health, get a stat boost) items in the game.

Exactly this. Unless the game is explicitly set in Shibuya, brands should differ based on the tastes of the players, the style of the characters and the imagination of the GM.

Each player could basically come up with their own Brand as they create their character, with rules for what it does and the overall style of its powers. That sets the template that the GM uses to expand the world.

Brands shouldn't exist in a void: they are a product of the collective will of the population.

>Shouldn't we first figure out the resolution system and stats and such before working on pins and junk?

Ideally, yes. Or start with character creation and suss it out from there.

Ah, the LASS trick. Suicide was the best fighting style.

I vote for 2d10(2d6 is fine too) TN System. stats... how many do we want? What do they represent?

Would you use separate brands or separate attack types? Like, say, a person with a wooden sword might learn shockwave attacks but Mus Rattus has a shockwave pin as well as J of the M.

There are others, too, but that's the first I thought of. Any of the -rounds would also count, because I think a few brands have them even though Natural Puppy has the most.

Also, could one weapon have many techniques? Like my sword example before, could it have lance lunge skills too?

Combat stats should be pretty standard:
Strength
Agility/Dex
Constitution
Courage/Determination/Strength of Spirit (this would dictate the power of projectiles and shit. Basically the 'magic' stat).

Noncombat stats should be something like:
Intelligence/Wisdom
Charisma
Affinity

Affinity should represent your ghost powers. Players with higher affinity can more easily read minds; can sense noise more easily (everyone should be able to tell when crazy strong noise is about to manifest but high affinity characters would be able sense even weaker/wounded noise); and would be the only characters capable of imprinting ideas onto the minds of the living.

What's a TN system?

As for the stats, it depends on how complex we want it all to be. I think just mental strength, physical strength, defense, health and bravery. That's 4 plus health.

Question: do we think it is necessary to do it as Pins? On the one hand, Pins are kind of iconic to TWEWY, but on the other hand they're not necessarily something that you'd see lots of outside of Japan. They could very well be some other kind of accessory that's native to the area where the Game is being held.

Then again you could always interpret it as being something that the Reapers prefer.

>Shouldn't we first figure out the resolution system and stats and such before working on pins and junk?
I'd love to do it in One Roll Engine but it's a more obscure system that I'm sure most other players would prefer to avoid.

I don't think we should have 1:1 attack carryovers from the game. In your sword example I think that your player would choose which brand they wanted to be aligned with. If they chose JotM they would focus on agile slashes and possibly limited teleportation/flash steps. If your player chose Wild Boar they would have more strength based charges and forceful attacks rather than finesse centric techniques.

You could probably justify shocwaves/projectiles in either brand but they wouldn't be as strong as if your player was Natural Puppy or Mus Rattus (or even Pegaso) aligned. You would justify a shockwave in different brands differently. Mus Rattus users would channel their spirit into their attacks while Wild Boar/JotM users would pull off your standard 'I swing with so much force/speed that I create shockwaves'.

It's important to remember that this is a game played in duos. Similar to MtG, I would envision each player having limited utility in combat and only really excelling with a partner.

I think we can be a lot more creative than this. Players in the Reaper's Game are disembodied souls; why would their physical strength and dexterity be of any importance?

TWEWY is a game all about one's relationship to the collective consciousness of the place that they're in. You become more powerful when you dress and fight in a way that matches the mind-set of your surroundings, and likewise your actions in the UG can reflect upon the attitude of the RG.

>It's important to remember that this is a game played in duos. Similar to MtG, I would envision each player having limited utility in combat and only really excelling with a partner.

Not sure if that's strictly necessary. Combat in the DS game was done in duos because it suited the platform (single player RPG using two screens and input methods). Tabletop is a completely different platform and the rules should change to reflect that.

so, are we looking at brands like a class system, or something else?
technically irrelevant, but just wondering; if that was the case, what would you choose?

That's why I included affinity and courage, to represent the less physical aspects of the UG. The problem with what you're suggesting is that it's either basically proposing a single stat (spirit energy) that is used throughout, or it's suggesting stats like 'fashionableness' that are exclusive to the game system/stats and don't really feel like organic statistics.

As an aside, it's a game. Why wold eating hotdogs give you more maximum HP if you were a ghost? Sometimes stats have to exist in order to make a well designed/balanced game, good gameplay ought to trump flavor every time.

One of the primary themes of the reaper's game was duos. It may be possible for a tabletop system to tweak the numbers of a party but keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the reaper's game is for a group to come back to life and that there can only be one winner. If players aren't explicitly placed in groups/parties there is little reason for them to work together.
Brands would probably function similarly to classes in that they would determine the general fighting techniques (ranged, melee, telekinetic etc...) but the actual way that these styles are used could be pretty varied. A Natural Puppy (projectile/force energy) based player could be a melee brawler if they used gloves or something and then created 'bubbles' of force or something around them. I think that it's better to think of brands as schools of magic in D&D; conjuration specialist A might be very different from conjuration specialist B but they would both ultimately use the same tools to yield different effects.

Actually I agree with what you're saying, just that enforcing "duos" isn't necessarily the best idea since many tabletop experiences are with groups of more than 2 people. You could just as easily have a group of 3-5 involved in the game and still has the same basic rules (shared HP, combat synergy, combo attacks)

I'd like pin loadouts so that people can have more interesting and varied skills and combinations rather than relying on a single one, which is rather limiting. I agree about people requiring an object through which to channel.

Rather than duos, what about some sort of communal "puck"? Once you land a particularly good move, the puck travels to someone else. That gives everyone in combat a chance to sign as long as people can move in tandem. This would require some sort of synchronisation that might be difficult to achieve mechanically, but I'm sure we could figure something out.

I also disagree that people should their own individual stats. Instead, gaining experience on their pins and so on should supplant that, since the focus of TWEWY is greatly on fashion and loadouts for a reason, rather than personal stats. If they have individual stats, it should be unique, such as HP or synchronisation.

Actually what I'm thinking is building the stats from the ground up to suit the themes and style of the source material, instead of imposing standard tabletop RPG conceits onto source material that has wholey non-standard.

Something like:

Rhythm
>You have a tough, relentless mindset. You go at problems head-on, striking at them beat after beat, again and again until they crumble before you. In combat, you prefer to hit hard and fast with little fuss. Out of combat you deal with people by forcing and intimidation.

Flow
>Your mind is like a stream: problems are things to move circumnavigated, not smashed through. You yield to the inertia of existance and let yourself be carried along by its currents, ready to confront challenges as they come. In combat, you like to attack indirectly, inflicting harm with the world around you using telekinesis. Out of combat, you handle problems by fast-talking and sneakery.

Insight
>Your mind is keen like a razor. You peer through misdirection and confusion to see the heart of matters and find the one correct solution at all times. In combat, you like to attack with precise, focused blows, wasting no energy and always certain that your strategy is the correct one. Out of combat, you analyze and predict, reasoning through both problems and people.

Bravery
>You think with your heart, not your brain. You trust your passion to lead you to the correct answer, and to burn through whatever might try and stop you. In combat, you are as a wildfire, striking out in any direction to cause the greatest effect possible to the greatest number of foes. Out of combat, you try to win people over with empathy and raw charisma, bonding with them through mutual understanding.

Those are just a quick draft and there's clearly space for development and fleshing out, but that's the general idea. It's not necessarily a complete list but I think it better suits the themes and tone of TWEWY.

What I'm gathering from you guys is something like this; the stats should be kept simple. To , what would Charisma even be used for? That should be Bravery, and it works to let you wear clothes that are stronger, but also more embarrassing, such as the LASS, which requires a whopping 170 or so bravery in game to wear, meaning it was pretty much end-game gear for beating bosses.

It's basically the thing that lets you have your magical clothes to replace your other stats.

In addition, Int/Wis has no place there. If you need a knowledge stat, make it Knowledge. The real question is, in a game about running around, killing noise, what use is the knowledge stat? Everything your players learn will be new info anyway, so why would they have knowledge as a stat?

Affinity is also useless because, as far as I know, all players can sense all noise and imprint and everything as good as everyone else. It'd be better if it was based on the ability to change the fashion trends. It could be called Influence. The higher your Influence, the faster people like the brands you wear and use.

This would bring our setup to:
Strength
Speed (Agi/Dex)
Constitution (I don't like this as a stat, though I'm not sure how to change it. Split into Toughness and Health, maybe?)
Willpower

And the non-combat would be:
Bravery
Influence

And I could see Speed basically just giving yourself more actions to do things, where actions would cost so many points in a round and would give you the ability to deal some nasty attacks faster. I'm not entirely sure how to implement this though.

>why would their physical strength and dexterity be of any importance?

Need I remind you that Beat managed to brute-force his way past walls?

How would being linked up like they are in the game affect (or effect?) the gameplay? Would they all share a health total? What else would happen?

>do we have to do it as pins
I would say yes, it may not be that popular outside of Japan, but it is closely connect to twewy

But say we didn't, then what could the powers be connected to? Clothes? Different powers to different designers? Accessories? Cut out the middle man and just say that Joshua's phone and shiki's doll had the power in them?

For Beat and Shiki at least there's some kind of material (I think supplementary) that says exactly what Psyches they are using. Shiki uses one of the Psychokinesis psyches, for example, though I don't remember which one. Neku is described as being unique because he can use lots of different psyches instead of just one.

For a tabletop game you'd want to hit some kind of middle ground. Characters ability should be contained within certain parameters but not be limited to only a single kind of attack.

Sort of reminds me of some game I played on the fate system. Based on video games, whenever someone made an above average roll they started a 'combo' which could be continued by succeful rolls by their team members. With each successive roll the attacks got higher and the rewards as well. But if you failed then the combo died.

So how about something like this then
STR+Dex=Coordination(COR). Used for physical tasks of all sorts. [Physical] and [Ranged] pins attack and are defended against by this.
Durability(DUR): Controls HP pool and Status resistance. Physical checks that rely on endurance may use this instead, at the Player's choice. Increases effectiveness of [Heal] and [buff] pins.
Bravery(BRV): The [magic] attack stat, as well as governing evasion vs [magic] Pins. Also governs mental endurance and other such willpower related endeavors. This includes wearing clearly off-gender clothing.
Influence(INF): You set the trends here in |place|. Your brand gains popularity faster, and you enjoy higher stat boosts for popularity. Unfortunately, your brand's lows also hit you harder. This governs the strength of [Debuff] pins.
This assumes a standard "single action turn" of move>attack, but separating Coordination back into STR and DEX wouldn't change too much. I tried to give every stat a Pin effect tied to it and a short advertisement blurb(Some are better than others). Brackets are tags for pins.

Insignias or patches could work. Alternatively, if we are going for the more set in stone style of gameplay where characters don't really change their combat style, tattoos would be another option. Tattoos are used throughout the world.

y'know, we could just explain it by saying these brands have gained popularity in [location], along with the pins

i like the general concept that both of these are going for
fewer stats with more versatile uses

All Psychs are in pins.
Neku is the only one who can use ALL pins, barring Shiki's, Beat's, and presumably Rhyme's.

People seem to forget that HP was a communal pool in TWEWY.

You could also affect it, however. So it should be pretty mutable, the players using certain brands, random table events, and just going on a quick quest should all change it.
And there should be an obligatory quest to make the O-Parts/O-Pin the most popular thing in a few areas.

I like this, but all [ranged] pins I can think of are all magical anyway and would use the bravery stat anyway. Even psychokinesis, which would do magic damage to the physical defense.

I think Coordination could be split again, with Dex being related to movement speed and the velocity pins. Str wouldn't really govern them because it's more of a shoulder charge than a power related attack.

But I feel they should have different names. Strength and Dex are so cliche and terrible.

They could always be reflavoured as the GM see fit, and perhaps we could even showcase different

I would caution against a set in stone style of gameplay, though I wouldn't let people switch out at any given moment.

>People seem to forget that HP was a communal pool in TWEWY.

That's exactly what I mean. I don't think that PCs should have individual stats, only those dictated by their clothing and pins and influence.

This here. It's more important to figure out the exact functions of Psyches than what form they take, which one can infer would be different in the various areas where the Reaper's Game is being held.

I don't know about not having individual stats, some stats should be shared/collective for the trust theme, but not EVERYTHING.
Having everything shared will probably disconnect players from characters a bit too much.

I think that's not quite in the spirit of the source material. The core of TWEWY is that it's about individuals learning to support one another and understand each other, and figuring out their relationship with the world-at-large. Mechanics should be built around a combination of individual stat values and group resources (like HP, combat momentum, synchronicity, etc...)

>But I feel they should have different names. Strength and Dex are so cliche and terrible.
Again, something like what I posted

That's a good point, and in game you shared HP but had separate attack and defense. I'm not personally sold on a tabletop with shared hp, but it could still be interesting.

Had a thought to flip it around. Not sharing HP but having a team sync stat that could be affected and under a certain amount would be a penalty, above a certain amount would be a buff?

The idea of upgrading your equipment a la vagrant story fits totally with the game's tone.

>they should have different names
Power(POW) and Coordination(COR,CRD, whatever). Coordination works well for Dex anyway, and Power is a decent replacement for STR. Probably not the best, but respectable enough. Has a good suggestion though.
Clothes can't give stats without having a basis for what stats they give, even with no PC stats.

>That's a good point, and in game you shared HP but had separate attack and defense. I'm not personally sold on a tabletop with shared hp, but it could still be interesting.

One way you could conceivably do it without having a shared HP total is for characters to have their own HP stats, and when they're depleted they're knocked "Out of Tune" or something similarly musical where they're somehow penalized but can keep fighting, and if all characters are Tuned Out then the party wipes.

Just off the top of my head though. Might be a bad idea. The problem with pooled HP is that it means that a character being defeated in combat is meaningless-- either everyone survives or everyone dies. Which works fine for a video game but not for a tabletop game.

I like the Out of Tune idea if that's the direction we're going but I agree on the pooled HP issue. It's not a big deal that you're playing the squishy high damage ranged character and got caught by surprise, because the team has plenty of HP to spare, because that other guy all the way over there built high HP

Frankly HP in most games is all a matter of GM manipulation, since most good GMs aren't actually aiming to kill their player characters, just create the atmosphere that the scenario they are in might infact kill them in order to create tension and force players to take bigger risks. In a lot of games actually dying kind of sucks, unless the game is built with the knowledge that it's highly likely you will die (such as in games designed for one-shots).

What's significant to me in TWEWY is that HP is variable with reward. You can drop your HP to dangerously low levels to increase your payouts anytime you want. Now I'm not saying that you should necessarily be able to do that in TWEWY tabletop, but think about what that means.

Aside from the fact that you're a ghost hanging out in limbo, it's clear that HP can't just represent your physical resistance to damage, because you can change it so freely. It must therefore represent something more flexible and ephemeral. Maybe what HP represents is a pair's (or indeed party's) level of interconnection and willingness to take risks. In a spiritual world like the UG, toughness isn't necessarily linked with your actual brawn, but with your resolve to keep going. So even more than in other games, HP is an abstraction of battle readiness.

That's exactly what I mean. Keep the upgrades to equipment and so on rather than to the self.

I think it might be important to lay out the themeing of the game before we get too deep here.

Trust is the big one.
Trust your partner. You don't have to like your partner, but you have to trust them.
You have to trust that your partner won't eat through all your HP, and keep each other healed so it doesn't happen. You have to coordinate to not waste the light puck, especially against Taboo, which couldn't be hurt otherwise.
You can't backstab your partner or you'll both be helpless.
You also built up trust with shopkeepers, who would then clue you in to hidden abilities of their brand's gear.

The UG wasn't a 'real' place, it's a zone of the collective unconscious like Tartarus or the TV World in Persona.
When you fought, it wasn't in a discrete place. In the Pork City tower, you fought in an outside area despite 'physically' being on the 1-13th floor of an office building. Because of this, I'd suggest one of those things where whatever you describe (within reason) is nearby, so Psychokinesis runs on improv and won't ever be completely useless. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The game also featured some of it's abuses.
Noise fed on people's energy and good vibes, heavy feeding could make people commit suicide. Noise concentration in an area also made your cell connection worse.
You could also affect public opinion, wearing clothes and pins of a brand made that brand more popular. Doing this with the O-Pin caused everyone to fall under its control.

The brands all represented the zodiac myth, including Gatito as the cat that was left out.
Brands would be at odds with each other philosophically according to the zodiac relations. Mus Rattus is understated, Pegaso is flashy and expensive, Hip Snake is older styles. None of them like each other.
All together, this put an emphasis on the number 13.
The top three brands in an area get a boost for being on top, but the 13th gets a hefty penalty.

>Something that brings in the musical references of TWEWY (Rhythm, Flow) along with the themes of co-understanding and realization.

I like this idea. The problem is, how deep do we go into musical wording before we get incomprehensible mess? I'll give you a few examples:
Strength = Bass
The logic behind it is that when someone thinks of a bass-heavy song, it's almost like it's pounding your eardrums.

Magic = Treble
For similar reasons, magic functions as the treble in a song. Magic can be insanely fast paced and skitters and jumps and can be seemingly everywhere at once.

Durability = Boldness
Because the most bold songs will remain in your head even after you've heard hundreds of other songs, because it caught your attention. In the same way, a durable fighter, someone who can take hits and keep going, is going to remain standing even after the noise try to destroy them. Or something. It's like 4 am here and I'm going to bed after I post this.

Dexterity = Flow
Because you flow with the music, much like you flow across the battlefield.

New thought - Trance
Trance is that thing where you really fall into the groove of the music. It' effectively the sync power you have. A higher trance makes you able to use your ultimate technique faster or gives you a damage boost or something as you lose your conscious focus and let yourself unconsciously destroy the battlefield.
Trance should slowly build as the fight goes on. It should function as a reward for doing good things in combat that lets you gain bonuses that stack. Obviously it falls if you do bad things in combat, so the ability to build it up faster can be invaluable in a tough fight.

Because each soul is a song unsung. Songs that lose these aspects are no longer songs, they are merely... Noise.

I hope this makes sense when I wake up.

We could combine both the shared HP pool and the "out of tune" system. Individual characters have their own synchro stats that, if dropped, essentially remove them from that battle unless they can regain it or severely limit them (such as to autofailing all rolls but still existing in the battle), but the party only loses can only occur when the communal HP drops to 0. Maybe HP should be able to be lowered and pins/etc. switched out only at certain safe zones, which limits exploitation.

Perhaps only your partner(s) can get you back into sync and heal you up as suggested.

So currently some of the problems we're running into is:
How HP will work, either pooled or individual, and what this entails.
Whether individual character have stats or the power is all in the pins/equipment
The terminology for stats, invariable having to do with the musical theme
What effect trends and clothing brands have on the players.
How the light puck should work.

Have I missed anything?

I also want to add another question:

How should the entry fee work? Should it be something just regulated to the story, or should it be integrated into gameplay?
Reminder that Neku and Rhyme's amnesia were exceptions and not the rule when it came to the fees, most players know what the reapers game is and what they lost to enter it.

I think you need them to be universal enough to be understood intuitively by someone with no musical awareness. Bass and Trebble may be a bit too deep of a cut, and Trance I think doesn't differ heavily enough from the concept of Flow.

That's mostly my opinion though.

What I should mention is that I don't personally think that Psych power should be divided between "Strength/Melee vs Magic/Ranged".

What comes to mind is the Shockwave and Force Round psychs. One is a melee attack while the other is an energy blast, but when you use them in the game they aren't that different: you're attacking someone rapid fire until your psych depletes. As I see it, they would both be governed by Rhythm because their nature is similar.

Then you have Pyrokinesis, Psychokinesis and Thunderstorm, where you're dragging across the battlefield to channel some kind of effect. That would be governed by Flow because it's about conducting energies through space.

Most of the "drag Neku from place to place" like the Velocity psychs would be governed by Bravery, instead of Rhythm, even though it's a melee attack like Shockwave. But it's about throwing yourself headlong into your enemy instead of striking rapid fire. It's the theme that's most important.

the entry fee seems more like a backstory/rp element than an actual mechanic
i think the light puck should be the last thing we cover, since it seems like it would be complicated to implement, and could slow everything to a crawl if we put too much focus into it early on

It could be done like 13th Age's Escalation die. Each turn where something good happens for the players, you turn the die up one and it triggers certain effects based on psychs or other abilities.

>How should the entry fee work?
I almost want to say "Let the player choose at the beginning". After all,
>The Entry Fee represents the thing that the player most values
and values are extremely important to a PC. Make it background like suggested.
As for how we deal with the problems:
How stats work, though we seem to have mostly figured it out. Terminology can come later
Combat system, though again, partially
Whether characters have stats or just equipment
effect of trends
Light puck
exact Stat terminology

An idea for the HP thing; in the game you worked on both ends of a bar, with more than two players it you could start stealing from the two adjacent to you.
You could also have players pair up, or just pool with one other player at random or by seat.

Neku: memories (sense of self) then Shiki then all the other players
Beat: Rhyme's memories
Rhyme: REDACTED
Shiki isn't actually unattractive, just wearing a really ugly skirt.

I totally understand that the entry fee seems more of a rp element, but I can't help thinking it'd be pretty cool to have the players come up with their preferred character, only to be told that there's a catch.

Well, its just an option.

I think that the entry fee should be covered at least somewhat mechanically. For example, perhaps revealing the truth of your entry fee is necessary achieve higher levels of group sync, but it also gives the other player(s) some sort of mechanical advantage against you if you two ever go head to head or something of the sort.

OK. So brands can be seen as a race analogue: we've got some pre made ones for the GM to mix and match, but if someone wants to homebrew a brand up, nothing's stopping them.

Pretty much. A Brand basically needs the following:

>Name and Symbology
TWEWY used the zodiac but Brands could really follow any unified field of shared imagery, like Musical Styles or Tarot Arcana.

>Style
What the Brand generally looks like. Is it haut couture or a street-level movement? What kind of people wear it? What kind of places would you see it?

>Psych Domain
The overall style of its psychs. Are they in your face melee attacks? Healing support abilities? Rapid use or slow cooldown? What are the rules?

>Effect Domain
What kind of personal affects does the Brand grant its wearer? More attack power? More HP? More defense?

It shouldn't be too terribly hard I imagine.

So this brings up another issue, twewy revolved around trust, which was exemplified through pairs, we should come to an agreement whether we modify the mechanics to a more party themed version of trust like
or still keep the pairs and create a sort of individual syncro ratings between them.

Actually, writing that out, it's quite obvious the first option is better for this.

>or still keep the pairs and create a sort of individual syncro ratings between them.

That's actually a pretty decent idea; especially of syncro rates were kept mostly secret by the players, so that you could have two players with unequal trust between them.

It would be as simple as having a space on the character sheet with "Character Name" and "Sync Rating" or something next to it.

I think maybe we should log the sync dynamic suggestions away for now and revisit it later.

How would you determine sync points? RP? Eating ice cream like in the game?

Light Puck could determine turn order. That's the least complicated way to look at it.

Kind of blah, though.

We could do a combination of both, wherein each duo of players has their own unique sync rating with one another that then affects party dynamics. For example, if we do something like charging up the duo attacks, that would be affected by each duo's individual rates. Something like passing the puck could be similarly affected, wherein the success of passing would depend on the sync rate.

We might also choose to have expanding group attacks that depend on the sync ratio of everyone involved.

I'd say probably a combination of RP and characters actively assisting each other in and out of combat.

Other systems have tackled something like relationship ranks before. Working together well in combat and so on could award sync points. Spending time with one another outside of combat could also award them. Alternatively, we could do something such as Magical Burst, in which, following a session of RP, the players involved could roll to see whether their characters gain trust in one another. It would be a reward for good RPing as decided by the GM.

This may make it a bit easier: Ok so we have to figure out what stats we're using. We've got 2 main writeups as far as I understand:
( is an offshoot)
( is an offshoot)
setting aside the exact naming for now and just relying on the uses, Which set do we want to use?

i like the first, and it's offshoot

I put together a Strawpoll.

strawpoll.me/10476799

Naturally the specifics will be worked out but the idea is to gauge overall preference.

For the record, as the guy who wrote this , I'm not married to those exact stats, only that they should be something along those lines. So if you have problems with any of them or think there should be more/less granularity, please speak up.

I'm pretty sure most of us would want stylish stat names(that being said, we'd need to explain them, which is fine). As for specifics, I suppose we're going to want to figure out what does what. IE is Rhythm just renamed STR, or does it do more? Is Flow only magic or does it include something else?
Got answers?

I personally like it, it really lets personality come through. Especially when you start putting points into a couple.

See this post:

The Stats are more about attitude and approach than they are about what you can and can't do.

Rhythm, for instance, is about direct confrontation. It can pretty easily map to Strength in a classical stat set, as it's about dealing with things head on in a controlled, directed way.

In contrast, Bravery is about being gung-ho and having the faith that you'll be able to overcome obstacles regardless of the odds. It would map to sort of a combination of Charisma and Constitution.

Now Rhythm and Bravery have some overlap, in that they like direct action. But Rhythm is controlled and measured, as its name suggests. A street fighter with lots of Rhythm would attack skillfully, hitting hard and rapidly to try and take down his opponent. On the other hand a street fighter with lots of Bravery would be like a berserker. He never holds anything back and survives because he's too gutsy to quit.

In terms of Psychs, there's some similarities are well between the two. Rhythm Psychs like direct, rapid attacks like Shockwave and Force Rounds, and so does Bravery, but Bravery charges headlong into the enemy with Velocity Crash, for instance, or charges up and unleashes a massive blast of fire or lightning instead of lots of fast ones. Something along those lines.

Or take gunplay. You could roll Rhythm to plug away at someone's center of gravity, Flow to make a diving shot out of a John Woo flick, Insight to aim and take out someone from a far, or Bravery to unload at everyone in the room.

Maybe use the puck as initiative? Sort of like Marvel Heroic's initiative, where the person who went picks who goes next, but the person who goes last in a round can pick themselves? I've been calling that "popcorn" initiative, like that way of passing who reads in school around.

I should say that I don't want it to seem like this needs to be 100% new-agey storygame stuff, just that the mechanics should fit the tone. Rhythm still maps pretty easily to Strength and Dex, Flow to a combination of Dex and Wisdom, Insight to Int and Charisma, Bravery to Constitution and Charisma, if you want to look at things that way.

Oh and if we really wanted to go completely Japanese we could just make this a hack of Tenra Bansho Zero, which actually wouldn't work too badly.

I don't know anything about Tenra Bansho Zero, do you think it would fit? Nonetheless I quite like the implications of the stats. Only problem I see is that someone who hyperspecializes in say, "Rhythm" can easily make it apply to everything just by brute forcing everything forever.

I think that the puck should apply some sort of bonus as well as selecting initiative. Perhaps, once you pick who goes next, you roll against your respective sync rates with one another (as has been suggested earlier in the thread). If successful, then you get some sort of bonus for your move. This can chain for quite a while, though if broken will start back over at 0. This provides an element of strategy as well, since you have to think carefully about to whom to pass the puck for both chaining and the next tactical move.

Maybe the stats could be arranged in a rock-paper-scissors sort of way, so that someone who hyper-specializes might be at a disadvantage in certain situations?