Have you ever played a magical girl game?

I semi rewrote the rules of Shounen final burst to run a deck building based RPG that I ended up testing with my girlfriend. Worked pretty well but I'm still trying to figure out how to work group combat into it.

The look on her face when I described "The intricate gem in a wrought gold cage" that her familiar thing described as "Something that makes its bearing far more willing to risk their physical form" was priceless. Turns out it just delivers gold coins as paychecks to magical guardians of places and not remove your soul.

*Makes it bearer

Yeah, in a manner of speaking. We used BESM 3rd edition as a base, but it was mostly houseruled. The GM ran this as a fanfiction of Brynhildr in the Darkness, which isn't quite maho shoujo, but there are shoujous and they have mahou, so I'm saying it counts.

It was alright, pretty standard grimdark weeaboo, but we somehow managed to turn it into pseudo-Shadowrun. After escaping the mad science laboratory and picking up some NPC escortrs, we briefly considered going to the president because the president could stop all the awful experiments going on, right? Yeah, we hammed up the whole "playing as 13 year olds" thing.

We needed to get some medicine in order to not die, but in that raid my character got turned into chunky salsa which flipped on everyone else's murder switch. It was all good though, because one of the NPCs could see ghosts and get possessed by them for a time, so I ended up taking over that character and haunting myself.

The game ended with us hijacking a tour helicopter, paradropping into the facility we had just escaped from a few weeks ago, fighting and murdering some armed goons, and getting to the central control room where we planned to issue the kill command to anyone equipped with a kill switch, which was everybody who had any sort of power. We ended up fighting some bullshit powerful enemy, my character had to use THAT, she got turned into an angelic super-being, and the bullshit enemy was revealed to have been her sister-who-had-died-of-leukemia.

So, everything turned out alright in the end, except another PC who also used THAT and actually died.

All told, it could have been a lot worse. We're playing Shadowrun 5th and an AdEva 3.05b with the same group now. After these games end I'm thinking of doing something a bit more light-hearted. The perpetual suffering and shittiness is getting kind of old.

>Magical Burst
>Even remotely representative of the genre

/a/non please we're trying to talk about cute girls doing cool things why do you have to be like this

A few times. Interesting, but every game out there that I've tried seems to want to emulate Madoka, when I'd much prefer an experience inspired by CCS or Sailor Moon.

Fine

Copypasting

I played a game where I made a hikki with a bad stutter who realized her newfound powers could help her become the hero she never had when she got bullied at school. Most of her character arcs were about her coming out of her shell in one way or another

One of the better arcs resulted in her learning how to try to put on some bravado, specifically so she could trick the karate loli of the group. They had to investigate a spooky carnival, but the karate loli's legal guardian, her kung fu master grandfather, hated the idea of his granddaughter wasting time doing stuff that wasn't training to become a wuxia badass. So, to make it a matter of honor, my noodle-armed glasses girl challenged karate loli to a duel at sundown that just so happened to be at the carnival they had to investigate, and with it being a matter of honor, the grandfather had to let her go

Of course, to make sure karate loli wasn't guilty of actually lying to her grandfather, hikki very much intended to duel her! So they fought. Hikki got knocked out in one critical hit and was unconscious for a few scenes of the session. After everything got resolved, the two of them headed off to hikki's house to play vidya games, and the karate loli vowed to teach hikki to fight so she could put up a better duel in the future

It was pretty cute, and remains one of my favorite games to this day, despite the fact that it was literally infested with That Guys who could not stop talking about all the underaged lesbian sex they were having with NPCs and eachother for even ten minutes

Still, the power of hnnng overcame the power of lewd many a time, so I liked it overall

Magical Girl games can be alot of fun, however I recommend against using Magical Burst for it. The mechanics get in the way of the fantasy alot of the time, and stuff that SHOULD make the game interesting, like the whole concept of "overcharge" just becomes a chore to manage or gives or completely destroy a player's character concept for no reason other than getting a bad roll on the fallout table.

That's not even mentioning how the classes are balanced about as well as Pathfinder (Priestess can do everything, Knight is useless, ect) and how pure-offence can brute-force through most encounters more efficiently than any other build.

Magical Burst is one of those games that looks really cool on paper, but falls apart in practice. It's pretty clear the creator didn't actually spend alot of time playtesting... and sadly he seems to have petered out halfway through the most recent re-write to focus on other projects.

Madoka ruined the magical girl genre, prove me wrong.
Not everything has to be edgy.

Out of the 3 magical burst games, 2 descended into lesbians. The third died before it could get there.

Madoka sucks, but it didn't ruin the genre, the same way Evangelion didn't ruin mecha. We got other annoying grimderp stuff based on it, yeah, but we also got responses to it like GaoGaiGar.

Plus, Mahou Shoujo still has Nanoha, so it's all good.

It's not mahou shoujo if it doesn't have lesbians.

I probably didn't use the best wording there. What I meant to say is that it ruined the popular perception of magical girl, much like Evangelion did that to mecha. You can't have a discussion/campaign about magical girls anymore without someone bringing up Madoka in one way or another.

Even Sailor Moon had lesbians. And lolicons.

Bumping with art of a magical girl game NPC I had commissioned for me, because it's awesome.

It is still the most recent popular magical girl anime. Eventually this will no longer be true, but the effect it has on people's perception of the genre is likely to last quite some time.

Yes, I molested an agent of the highest celestial order.

>Skip over a bunch of sailor moon hentai because it all has the Netorare tag for some reason
>It was talking about the lesbians having sex near each other

God damn it Japan, that doesn't count does it?

Ruined, no, damaged, eh maybe. Did a bit more grimderpery get made in the subsequent years - yes, but that hardly means the genre is over and good stuff can't also be made.

I mean, just because D&D is a shit game and effects a lot of people's opinions on RPGs doesn't mean it ruined RPGs.

I'm pretty sure the archtypical Magical Girl anime to this day is and probably always will be Sailor Moon. It's an inherently childish/noble bright/lewd genre.

Reboot fucking when Japan.

Are you one of the people pretending Sailor Moon Crystal doesn't exist?

No I'm just a person who isn't heavily involved in anime. So clearly I'm not the biggest connoisseur of the genre who would notice a swing in one thematic direction or the other over the years.

Thanks though.

Haughty girls with drill hair until the day I die

Fair warning, by all accounts Crystal started rough and disappointed a lot of people. It got better though.

You'd probably like the NPC in , she's a full on Ohoho~ing noblewoman.

Do you have a different/better suggestion?

Depends on the style of game you like.

The above mentioned Legends of the Wulin is fantastic for action magical girl fare.

Does it take all that much rewriting/refluffing? My players are admittedly fairly unfamiliar with the genre (one hasn't seen anything, but expressed interest; the others have seen maybe parts of one or two shows each), so I don't know how well they'll do without a lot of genre guidance.

Meant to quote

A fair amount, and it is quite a crunchy/complicated system. I love it and it works great, but I'm not sure it'd be ideal as a first exposure to that sort of thing.

Maybe you could invite your group over for a movie night or something? Films are shorter and easier to absorb than entire anime, and there are a few good examples out there. I'm biased towards Nanoha, but The Movie First and The Movie Next are both great self contained magical girl films, with a fun mix of emotional drama and great action scenes.

>madoka
>edgy

it took a few magical girl tropes but played them straight without that noblebright bullshittery.

That's not true at all.

You see, the reason why the magical girl genre - Like this whole thread here - seems a bit strange is because it's for girls. Literally young girls.

Look at Veeky Forums. They can't play magical girls, who are attracted to guys, have all the young-to-teenager problems, and so on. Everyone just wants to lez out or be Captain Punchmaster, i.e. Guy playing as magical girl.

The actual genre is perfectly fine, it's just that you're not the intended audience. It's like how My Little Pony is really for children, but the unexpected audience is horsefuckers and autistic manchildren.

>invite over for movie night

>glances at map
>"1600 miles"
I think I'll go for a streaming site. But all right, I'll look into the system and see how it works. Crunchy isn't a huge concern, I'm running GURPS for them in the nearer future.

...Except that hasn't been true for a long time?

Magical Girl shows targetted at both demographics, or targetted primarily at older audiences including men, have been a thing for a long time now. Nanoha, Madoka, Symphogear, Macross Delta to name but a few.

Sure, but Madoka and the like are aimed at an older audience. Macross isn't really a magical girl series, though.

Like, they're really more aimed at men than anything else. You can tell there's a difference in how they're written and so on. I'll go out on a limb and say, however, that some of the otaku pandering can be weird.

(I also missed the era where magical girls mainly had male love interests.)

Macross Delta, the latest one, totally is.

Delta is pretty magical girl. If there is a Magical Girl version of SRW I wouldn't be surprised to see the Delta cast in it.

I need to go back and finish that. I only got to episode 12 and was hoping the entire time that Mirage would finally get a good showing rather than playing second fiddle the entire time

Mikumo really should've been the other love interest.

I don't like Yuri but do like traditional romance. What are some good magical anime with that qualification?

Don't be a smartass and give me something with yaoi

Sailor Moon, I suppose. It's interesting to note that Tuxedo Mask gets to fuck all the villainesses, including Queen Beryl.

I can't actually remember any off my head, but curiously enough - One Precure show, the one where music was a theme, briefly suggested that one of the guys might have had powers of his own. Turned out to be a fake-out, however.

>Tuxedo Mask gets to fuck all the villainesses, including Queen Beryl.

I don't remember much of it but I don't recall the show being that lewd

He was getting brainwashed all the time, like once a season. Even his own daughter-turned-evil wanted to hop on his dick.

Remember that time Tuxedo Mask was sorta-raped by his own daughter from the future?

Remember that time Tuxedo Mask was a college student dating a 14-16 year old girl? Wait, that was the whole series.

What a life

In the game or at the table?

Now I wonder what a game with all magical guys would be like. No, not crossdressers, but if the whole party consisted of Tuxedo Mask-esque male PCs with magical girls are love interest and mysteries to be unraveled.

JQOP did this a lot, but he always overcompensated by making the PC an unstoppable badass.

Ooh, remember when Sailors Uranus and Neptune betrayed the whole universe so that they could lez out in peace? Remember the sex-changing Jonas brothers who have a special attack called Star Gentle Uterus?

They always told me lesbians would destroy the universe but I didn't believe them!

wher are her feet?

Stylization is a hell of a drug.

Play a wizard with maxed out charisma.

Razzle dazzle them.

Where does your megucas' magic come from? How'd they get it?

It's not exactly a magical girl game, but I am about to start playing a "magical girl" in an otherwise more or less ordinary fantasy campaign.

She's basically just a regular mage whose tutor brainwashed her into thinking and acting like a stereotypical magical girl, and taught her cosmetically-modified versions of spells so they're all sparkly and rainbowy magical girl style shit. Because he thought it would be amusing to mess around with this impressionable young student, and wizards have no sense of right and wrong.

Drawn by Rob Liefeld

>intended audience
They've been doing dual audience marketing on magical girl stuff since the 80s, bruh. It's an industry standard at this point. It started with the mix media marketing of pop idols and anime with shows that eventually led to projects like the Minky Momo franchise: a girl's TV show with a strong adult male following that eventually started making OVAs aimed at those men instead of girls, then resumed a second season of the TV show with a fully intended dual audience. They've been juggling target demographics more or less ever since.

Do you see any pouches there?

>what are father instincts
way more probable than pedophilia

> magical girl
That's called "a witch", user.

Magical Burst is actually a mess of a game that only looks nice on paper.

Disappointingly, what I've found is that while you can refluff any number of things to represent the combat side of magical girls well enough, there's not much in the way of systems you can use to embody the thematic elements of the genre from a mechanics standpoint.

So are we in the market for a new magical girl game?

How would you represent the thematic elements, like you said?

That, on the other hand... probably isn't.

I don't think that explains all the lezzing out

I suppose I'd put a greater focus on both the everyday lives and personal motivations of the characters. A lot of magical girl stories have undertones about exploring identity or coming of age and whatnot, so it should be important for us to see what it is a heroine wants to protect or wishes to gain from being a magical girl. Juxtaposing magical routines with daily life also helps give meaning and context to the constant battles with monsters of the week.

How exactly you'd give these things structure within the rules and mechanics is another question, but I'd probably start by cribbing elements from TBZ and maybe Saikoro Fiction games.

Had a friend who played Magical Burst. Apparently it was mostly lighthearted fun stuff until shit got real and they all just rolled with it. I think it involved them killing some batshit goddess and then his character essentially becoming a goddess and no one knowing where to go from there.

All praise pure healer daughteru goddess.

Ryuutama
As something to grab mechanics from

Quickly glancing over Ryuutama, and it looks to be something useful, especially the ryuujin itself, condition, and the different mechanically-reinforced story types. Thanks, man.

Another potentially good idea, yes.

Name of artist? I got nothing searching on my end

histerrier.tumblr.com/post/73648952224/dont-start-a-fight-with-a-magical-girl

You know, using something like Golden Sky Stories' "Connections" mechanic might be good for a magical girl game. The general concept could pretty easily be adapted even to systems where it's not fueling the primary conflict-resolution mechanic like it is in GSS. Having a stat rating the strength of your relationships and gaining bonuses of some kind based on that (perhaps use it as the basis for your fate points/bennies in the system?) seems very appropriate for magical girl stories.

I've been playing a magical girl campaign for more than a year on and off with friends actually. Since I came late to the party, I made the "sixth ranger" kinda character, being edgy as fuck, but not obnoxiously leaving the party in any actual situation because that's just annoying for the GM.

And it's pretty much my favorite campaign. We're fighting a mix of evil dream-eating ladies, magical girl hunters, while still living the daily troubles of high school life.

But, things halted as of late, since on of the players can't really make it these days, and the GM wants to go over one big threshold in the main plot (she nicknames it "Episode three" in reference to madoka's third episode, so that bodes well). So after waiting and going for other games, I proposed to take the reigns, and DM another game, to both keep the magical girl dream alive, and let the GM play. We've had the first part of the intro, where the PCs met, and in a couple days, there's gonna be some fighting as their homeroom teacher turned into an evil monster.

Never actually used or played magical burst as a system though. We use anima prime (no relation to anima beyond fantasy)

>while still living the daily troubles of high school life.
How'd you handle this side of it? Just roleplay in general, or...?

>We use anima prime
Never heard of it. Does it do magical girls well? Everything I've seen says it does combat well without having too many rules but doesn't really do social/noncombat all that well.

> How'd you handle this side of it? Just roleplay in general, or...?
We modified the system to add simple stats for roleplay. Agility, presence, spirit, etc. And skill in school topics like maths and home economics. This combined with the whole "tick your trait to invoke it and get a reroll in battle next time" is simple, but it does give a bit more of a game feel to the roleplay sessions. A lot of elements aren't even rolled with to be honest (like the inevitability of our mascots destroying everything that is good and just in the world) but the possibility's here.

> Does it do magical girls well?
It works nicely actually. Since it works by charging up through manoeuvers typical of your characters, and then unleash your manoeuvers in a small amount of attacks, it represents well the useless kicks and flips that lead to a Princess Night Arrow or whatever name your finisher has.

Within 4 sessions it turned from a serious game with story and combat into a magical girl ERP game (online).

We've been playing it intermittently ever since.

My girl has metal extrusion powers and uses them to make tentacles.

>turned into ERP
Every time

too bad I'm playing with people I know

Me too, we just can't do it in person.

I really want to play a game where that DOESN'T happen though, but I really have no idea how to keep it from happening.

The material is just too suggestive, it's like MAID, it might work for a while, but after some time the magical dildos inevitably come out.

Well, one player already got weirded out in a previous campaign when I side-ERP'd with the GM, so I know I can't let it happen this time

Clearly, the answer is to play a magical boys game.
Then the magical onaholes come out

Not necessarily. So far in my campaign things went swimmingly. Sure, in-character, one of the characters draws doujins and has a gimmick once transformed where there are panty shots EVERY. FUCKING. TIME., while another writes slashfic of anything that comes close. But the girls all have a wholesome friendly relationship with nothing more. There even was this scenario where the GM threw the "arranged marriage plot" at me (since my character comes from a rich family). And it was resolved in a wholesome way (by showing the suitor my character's disgusting lifestyle until he fled in a helicopter at once)

> tfw want to share background and adventures past for some storytime, but since the campaign follows a bit of an episodic format, the end result looks more like a bunch of disjointed plotline

Share it anyway! We'd still love to read it. I would at least.

>Golden Sky Stories' "Connections"
Relationships stat, in Magical Burst.

Let's see how to begin then, hmm... Background.
So, my character's Yumiko Nisshoku. Well that's a fake name. Because she got bullied for being the heir of a rich family, and shut in for half a year before moving from Niigata to Yokohama, to start living on her own. At least even though the move, she still had her Sanctum. A world she can mold to her liking, at least to some degree, that she reaches everytime she goes to sleep. A replacement for dreams of sorts. Of course that's not normal, and a clear sign she's gonna be magical girl'd soon, but she always assumed it was normal.

One night, she gets the visit of some sort of floppy-eared bunny that asked her to hide her. Which she did. I admit the next part is a bit blurry... But basically, that bunny's named Polenta, and is even amongst mascots a bullying target. That's because she has a tremendous aura of misfortune. More on that later, that doesn't come quite yet. Point is, Polenta's tracked, then an evil mascot named Mona comes. Then, I think she leaves... But then yumiko finds her mascot once more in real life in her new school, along with other mascots and the PCs. But during a speech by the student council president, everybody gets attacked by a disgusting monster and send to a troubled sleep... But the PCs reached inside themselves, and use the guardians deep inside their sanctums to protect their dreams, and tap in their powers to finally become magical girls... Something like that.

One thing worth mention is that once the dream princesses become magical girls, they don't just become "them, with a colored skirt!" they actually change to idealized version of themselves. The hyper girl becomes really charismatic, the tomboy becomes incredibly strong and courageous, etc. Well, Yumiko's a big jumble of social anxiety, so as Princess Hope, she shows determination. Enough to be kind of a dick. For instance, when after the fight another princess comes to save the day, instead of lusting over her benevolence, she just slaps the hand extended towards her and tell her to stop getting in her way because she had it all under control. She then jumps off into the distance, until Polenta tells her that now she's a Princess, she needs to be registered.

So she goes, with the others, to the Dream Palace. Oh, yeah, because they can travel between dreams now, and one of them is a palace filled with sand that's home to the mascott that try to recruit new princesses. There, she meets Tenshi-sama, the smiling benevolent entity, gets an exposition dump about how the dreams of everyone are threatened by the evil Succubus, and ends up signing in the big book. Which binds her to Polenta, her very first magical girl. She may not be in the same group as the three first (since their mascot is Peroto, not Polenta) but, they're basically in there together. On screen, anyway.

That's more of a social "life bar" of sorts. They don't provide much benefit per se, they're something that you burn through as more and more bad shit happens. Fitting for grimdark mahou shoujo, not at all for standard fare.

In GSS, Connections are pretty much the bread and butter of your ability to do shit. At the beginning of each scene, you gain Feelings and Wonder based on the strengths of the Connections you have with other characters in that scene. You spend Feelings (generated by the strength of your outgoing Connections toward others) to succeed at regular tasks (being a diceless system, if your stat is lower than the target needed, you have to spend Feelings equal to the difference or fail the check; basically, your feelings for others push you to strive to exceed your limits). You spend Wonder (generated by the strength of your incoming Connections of others toward you) to fuel your supernatural abilities as a hengeyokai (basically, the support of others is what fuels your magic).

Connections aren't a resource that gets burned off, but a stat that *generates* resources on a continuous basis.

Eh, fair enough. The one time I played GSS it basically went full freeform. I think I was the only one using supernatural powers.

Ah, whoops, I flipped around which direction the Feelings and Wonder come from. You get Wonder from outgoing Connections (your feelings toward others fuel your magic), while Feelings come from incoming Connections (the support of others helps you succeed).

But either way. It's not the particulars that matter so much as the general notion that having strong positive relationships gives you a replenishing pool of resources to help you do shit better.

Adventures ensue. Amongst them were an episode where the princesses became mascots and the mascots became people. The discovery of a couple new PCs like Princess Tide, the scary shut-in writer that becomes super duper cute once transformed for instance. Then there's that time where they met a dream pirate, using stolen sand from the palace to live the dream and pillage free of the burdens of actually having a mascot tell you what to do.

Regarding the more important big plot things that are still unresolved... Well, there's the fact in-universe, there is a Dream Princess Khimera manga that exists, and nobody knows who writes it. Last time we tried to follow a trail to the author, we just stumbled on a Lady attack. Oh, yeah, Lady are basically evil princesses that quit.

But it's far from the darkest elements around. There were the times we faces off with the hunters, Thanatos and Pandora. A brother and a sister that do everything in a disgustingly incestuous manner, dress like Diablo demon-hunters, and use the depleted souls of chimeras as ammo for their rifles (implying they actually eliminate magical girls to get those pearls)

There's also the fact the whole group stumbled upon a hidden room in the palace, looking abandonned, with hardly any sand in here. The room was filled with pedestals, and on a lot of them, statues of magical girls. The pedestals have names on them, including those of the PCs (which don't have statues). When Tenshi-sama was brought in the room (I had to literally drag him here) he identified each of the statues, recounted a little tale about them. But the moment he stepped out, he forgot the room's very existence. The implication is that princesses that die are statufied here, and then forgotten by everybody. This very room's existence is eerily easy to forget, and all the other PCs did it actually. Hope alone obstinately tries to keep these memories alive, looking more and more grim as she sees the others that forgot.

Playing in a magical girl game at the moment but it's a bit weird in that none of the other players even have much animu background knowledge except for a few shows that were on TV 15 years ago.

Also I'm the only magical girl, the other PCs are just have other random powers that don't really fit in the format. It's more like a standard M&M type setup that just happens to have a magical girl type situation driving the plot.

It's fun but I do kind of wish that either we would engage properly with the magical girl genre or else drop the shtick entirely.

>The implication is that princesses that die are statufied here, and then forgotten by everybody.
That's pretty grim indeed.

That means none of the other PCs died, it looks like?