"I can't keep this thread up when I'm asleep" edition.
What is the World Ends With You? It's a strikingly original Square Enix action RPG from 2008 for the Nintendo DS about trust, collective consciousness, desperation, imagination and fabulous outfits. Characters are swept into the Underground, a parallel dimension linked to major urban centers, where they run through a 7-day gauntlet of tasks and trials by higher-plane beings called Reapers. Band together and win the Reapers' Game and you have a shot at returning to the Real World. Fail, and you face erasure.
>What is this? This is a Veeky Forums Homebrew RPG based on the above game. It's designed to be fast, simple and exciting, and it adapts virtually all of the mechanics from the source game to a form optimized for a tabletop experience. Most importantly, we've striven to preserve its core themes of cooperation, psychic powers and elaborate fashions.
>What system are you using? We've adapted the core resolution mechanic from another Tabletop game Tenra Bansho Zero into our system. Roll a pool of dice based on your Stats, and count each die that's under your Skill or Psych as a success. It's fast, easy and dynamic. Characters only have four Stats based on your strength of will and mental condition, and only 9 Skills; mixing and matching Stats with Skills creates unique actions, such as rolling Protect:Rhythm to block a punch or Protect:Flow to dodge out of the way.
To flesh out your character, you come-up with free-form Tags like "The Gambler"or "Street Smarts" which describe unique elements of your character's personality and background which fills in the gaps in your Skills. Altogether, character creation takes all of five minutes.
Combat is fast and emphasizes cooperation. Players fight as a team, sharing their a common pool of HP and passing buffs to one another so that a different Player gets to the the superstar of each Round. Range is abstract, numbers are small and the action is lightning quick.
I was also thinking that the single Stat places should be the only ones to stock Rank 10 gear, with dual Stat places stocking up to Rank 8, and triple Stat places having only up to Rank 5.
Unbranded is the basic gear and has no Threads, and I think only the tin pin pins and very few other pins are unbranded, so there's no real shops that stock only Unbranded gear.
Gatito is special. As in, it's the best brand. It's boss gear and you can't really buy it from shops too easily, if at all.
Not sure if this needs to be written down somewhere or whatever, so I'll leave it up to you guys to decide.
Sebastian Cox
bump
Jayden Watson
bump
Camden Jackson
bump
Anthony Flores
How we doing this morning!
Jazzman, what would you like to get accomplished this week? I think I should be freer since I finished a big game over the weekend and have some pre-time off now.
I can start working on writing out the Reaper Sports in full, for instance.
Justin Ward
I'm gonna say this is a good idea.
Also, opinion on my suggestions with the brands? Is there anything missing or ill fitting?
Grayson Long
Should we also consider the kinds of Pins that go with each Brand as well?
For instance almost all of the Natural Puppy pins use Rhythm since they're predominantly bullet types.
Ethan Perez
I suppose by that reasoning, we should switch JotM to be the main Insight brand, but even then, they have all the shockwave pins, which are all based on Rhythm too.
I suppose we could have NP swap with DC instead, which I could definitely be on board with. It just means that the Rounds could be required to use Flow instead of Rhythm.
I'm supportive of that idea too, but that may mean that Flow gets a ton more pins, and Rhythm loses a bunch.
Although, I wouldn't mind seeing Rhythm focus on close range pins like shockwave or flurry, and flow take more of a ranged approach. It'd differentiate the Stats from a combat perspective at least.
Rhythm is fast hits, and melee.
Flow is fast hits and ranged.
Insight is big shots and ranged.
Bravery is big shots and melee.
Obviously there's going to be some bleed through with certain pins and brands, but I can see this fitting. We might want a bit more complexity towards it, but I think as a general outline, we only need a couple sentences describing how each Stat thinks in response to combat.
Jason Fisher
JotM also has several Bravery Pins like Grave Marker and Lance Lunge too; Pin-wise I don't think it actually has anything that we'd identify as Insight because it's all melee attacks.
>Although, I wouldn't mind seeing Rhythm focus on close range pins like shockwave or flurry, and flow take more of a ranged approach. It'd differentiate the Stats from a combat perspective at least. Unfortunately that would leave Rhythm completely impoverished of both Psychs and Pins. They'd basically only have Shockwave, Stellar Flurry and Vulcan Uppercut.
Remember, a key aspect to Rhythm isn't just that it's crude and direct but also uncomplicated, which I think fits Natural Puppy nicely. It's Threads aren't too flashy or fancy but they're comfortable and get the job done.
Cameron Scott
I listed JotM as Insight because it's all about the older gear, and with age comes wisdom. I have trouble listing it as Bravery/Rhythm because the brand, and the Threads and shopkeepers and everything are all relaxed and sort of like hippies.
I mean, arguably, most Brands are at least two Stats, probably even three. Problem is, if they're all doing everything, the only difference in the game is that they're going to require someone to dress up one day.
But then if we have shops only stocking certain items, we'd have to resort to just handing the players a list. Which would mean the random clothes thing is entirely pointless.
Elijah Morris
Oh, and we can also list things like lance lunge or make up some new psychs or something for Rhythm to help move around the battlefield and attack from afar.
Caleb Reed
And therein lies the problem. The style of the Threads themselves are at odds with the way the Pins work in the source material. It's not a problem in TWEWY because there's only one vector of Thread requirement, but we have four.
I thought most of the JotM gear was meant to be sort of urban and sporty though. Remember it's Neku's native style, and he definitely is short on insight until the end of the game.
Adrian Thomas
My mistake about JotM, must have been remembering the Brands wrong.
Why not have the brands and pins be separate? Not to remove the pins entirely from the brands, but we could A) rearrange the pins to fit the brands and/or B) make new pins and psyches.
I mean, I'm not infallible. As you see, I make mistakes too. If we rearrange the threads to be more closely related to the pins they represent, we can probably create them better.
Jeremiah Anderson
No worries, I've mis-remembered things too. It's been years since I played the source game and I've needed to refresh myself frequently throughout these threads.
We maaaay be getting a little ahead of ourselves as far as Brands are concerned as well because, as it stands, we don't really know what Brands do in the first place. For the most part they're just an organizational tool; the only mechanical impact they have in the source game is if you're using a Resonance Pin or if they are trending.
I'm working on some Reaper Sports right now, I'll have something to post shortly.
Oliver Murphy
I thought Trends and Resonance WERE the reason for brands.
But, you're right. We may need to step back from Brands for now. We can add those in after we're happy with everything else.
Ayden Kelly
Exactly; both elements are fairly low-profile to more important factors. You can go through the entire game without ever equipping a Resonance Pin, and except where it's require you can pretty much muscle through fights with Unfashionable Pins equipped.
Eli Carter
Updated the Reaper Sports with the rest of the Games of Movement, adding Capture the Flag and Hopscotch to the list. I started working on Games of Speech and filled in Critical Mass, since I came up with that one and wanted to jot it down before I forgot what it was about.
How should we word "memework"? It's about spreading ideas, phrases or memes through the RG.
Benjamin Young
Must admit, my characters did end up looking like rainbow pimps by the end of the game.
Parker Kelly
And I think a lot of Players will have fun with that. "Hey I found this three piece suit and a ten gallon cowboy hat that maxes out my Attack and gives me a ton of health! Can I change my character's name to Turd Ferguson?"
Camden Smith
Memework could be written like
Goal: Spread the chosen message or Trend around town!
Execution: Depending on the chosen meme, Players may have to do anything from imprinting an appropriate phrase or word into key individuals for spreading the message to wearing the appropriate Threads and Pins to influence the Trends to match the requirements. There are a number of different things to do with this sport.
Variations: As mentioned above, there's setting Trends in certain areas of the RG through wearing the selected Brand in enough battles and/or stores and other places that allow interaction with the RG, as well as imprinting ideas, words or phrases into select people so that they do or say different things.
I like to imagine a wall reaper might be having his time off from his RG job and sees his boss, so he asks the Players to imprint a word into his head to make him go away in exchange for the wall coming down. It seems silly enough to actually be a requirement for an "another day" scenario.
Ian Sullivan
For the variations, it's worth noting that the Brand one is a different game, called Fever, so for this one we'll keep it as specific catchphrases or images. Sound good?
William Brown
I can get behind that.
Xavier Scott
bump before bed
Aiden Watson
I'll add a bump too.
Ayden Brown
page 10 bump
Isaiah Hall
Mid-game halftime bump
Juan Harris
one more bump
Julian Bell
Post-game bump before bed.
Eli Brown
bump
Jordan Torres
bump
Jayden Jackson
Good morning thread!
Alright today I'm going to get majorly cracking on the rest of the Reaper Sports that we have written up. We're actually pretty close to having it filled up, which is quite nice.
Jazzman, do you happen to remember the list we came up with of new 0-X games? They included stuff like "Glass Bones" where your HP was slashed.
Bentley Rogers
From memory, it was
0-1: Exhaustion. -1 AP. 0-2: Glass Bones. -2 HP per player. 0-3: Unsure. -1 to Skills (min 1). 0-4: Hard Mode: +10 dB enemies, Bosses get harder. 0-5: Easy Mode: -10 dB enemies, Bosses are easier. 0-6: Full of Beans. +1 AP.
I think that was it.
Anthony Watson
0-4 and 0-5 are interesting because depending on the challenge they might just be straight-up worse or better for you, since not every day will have a Boss associated with it.
Alternately, rolling one of those can help make decisions for the GM, because it can tell him "You need to insert a boss somewhere in this challenge", which can help give direction to the day.
Mason Thompson
Most of the time, 0-4 is worse for the players, and most of the time 0-5 is good. That's the idea.
Camden Phillips
bump
Kayden Barnes
Beat me to it!
Wrote up Smooth Talk and Mediation. We still need two more Games of Speech but it's a good start. I'm going to move onto the Games of Struggle now, which should be easy to handle.
Aiden Johnson
I like it. I look forward to seeing what else there is when I wake up.
Ryan Ramirez
Page 10 bump
Working on the above still. Will have more to post within the hour.
Parker Cox
Games of Struggle added. I'm not sure if Search and Destroy needs to have more written about it, since as it stands it may be a bit to vague for what it calls for.
Ayden Cox
bump
Carson Mitchell
bump
Aiden Cook
just gonna give this a bump while I'm here.
Jose Clark
Evening bump
Ryan Barnes
bumpin
Joshua Thomas
bump
Benjamin Young
Do we have any other ideas for Games of Protection? Right now we only have 2- Escort (protect a dude from one location to another) and King of the Hill (defend a location from hostile encroachment).
Robert Lewis
Bump while I work on some stuff.
Henry Baker
One more bump. Busy morning unfortunately.
Benjamin Cox
Added our current Games of Protection to the document. Moving onto Games of Thought next.
Christian Miller
bumping
Jayden Long
I'll save this from page 10
Alexander Rogers
page 10 bump
Cameron Robinson
page 9 bump
Joseph Williams
New thread, nice!
Jose Nguyen
Bump
Jaxson Nguyen
Morning Bump! My goal today is to try and get Games of Thought and Sense written up.
Ryder Hill
Bump as I'm working on some stuff.
Benjamin Wood
Added Reaper Review and Password under Games of Thought. The descriptions for the game point out that some of these may require more preparation on the part of the GM to run, since they are meant to be logic puzzles and riddles.
Landon Jones
Bumping from page 10, though unfortunately I've been in meetings most of the day so I haven't been able to anything more. Frankly the lack of outside support for the project makes me think that maybe we should let it rest for a bit and bring it back up at some point in the future with clearer eyes and hopefully more interested parties.
