How do you sell the idea of a magical girl setting to a group that's only ever tried fantasy settings?

How do you sell the idea of a magical girl setting to a group that's only ever tried fantasy settings?

How do you introduce them to it?

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Waifus

This.

Meet them halfway on it, like playing an all witches campaign with all characters being part of a small coven.

As much as the idea disgusts me, the ideal way would be to start somekind of teenage superhero campaign, and slowly work in more weeaboo influences as time goes on.

An idiot child that made a deal with an eldritch horror and doesn't understand the ramifications of losing their soul and being forced to fight in ACTUAL combat.

Looking at you, Madoka.

Hmm... well, I'd say you have a Pizza and Movie Night, get your group together, and show them something Gritty yet entertaining. I would suggest late season madoka, but I really have no clue as to what "good" magical girl shows are.

Or do this, and show them Little Witch Academia. It's decent.

Depends. Do you just want the aesthetic of frilly drills and heart-shaped lasers? Try easing them in with something like a light-hearted magical school adventure or high fantasy with child characters. If you really want everyone to play little girls, maybe have some magic accident. A school prank gone wrong or mundane people being introduced to magic in a way that forces them to cooperate on common problem.

If you want the balance between magic and mundane, try a mundane-matters urban fantasy campaign. Something like JoJo, where normal people won't notice the supernatiral because subltety, weirndness explained away easily or just because it works that way. But characters can't just power over everything mundane and completely ignore the consequences of their actions.

>"good" magical girl shows
There's no such thing, the entire genre is garbage

Words like that can get you killed on Veeky Forums

I might Argue that Kill La Kill counts, and is actually pretty fucking awesome. Absolutely ridiculous, to be sure, but... Olde Timey 40k Ridiculous. It was pretty awesome at times.

Vigilante: Magical Child Archetype

> There's no such thing, the entire genre is garbage
Panty and Stocking?
Picrelated.

Don't be so mad, user. Obviously a genre that was created to cater specifically to young Japanese girls ages 6-12 isn't going to appeal to you.

If anything you should be concerned for the grown men that find it appealing.

sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-1-cover

>If anything you should be concerned for the grown men that find it appealing.
I certainly do. Even if I love the shit out of the Nanoha designs.

Is this meme autism in its purest, officialized form? Also why the heck did they go with worse meguca?

>worse meguca?

Your waifu's an obsessive, psychopathic carpet muncher, m8. Her earlier timeline versions were better, fite meh. Actually don't fight me.

>a genre that was created to cater specifically to young Japanese girls ages 6-12
Attempts to show Mahou Shoujo Erena to a bunch of them had... interesting results.

>calls other megucas "obsessive, psychopathic carpet munchers" while posting an image of an obsessive, psychopathic carpet muncher.

Tell them that they are playing as young knights of a female only knighthood order set in modern fantasy.

If you have to sell an idea to your group, you're already doing it wrong.

>an obsessive, psychopathic carpet muncher.
Back to /u/ you go.

D&D 5e Warlocks function great as magical girls with the ability to get disguise self and mage armor at-will for transformation sequences, and they can even get familiars/patrons.

Just have everyone play cute witch girls and have it be a city based campaign. Have them trying to keep their witch powers secret while fighting more hidden creatures like doppelgangers or ghosts possessing people that can go unseen.

Heh, this actually works out great even within the rule system:
As teensy flimsy girls they all have basically 1HP. But their magical prowess or bending of reality can "force opponents' hands" and make them miss, conjure forcefields or weaken their damage. But the pool of that power of course only lasts for an [max HP] amount of time.

Yeah, running out of HP might not force you into death saves, but rather just knocks you out of magical girl form forcing you to try and flee.

Thus, having battles in public is a risky endevour, as not only will the bystanders being calling the guards about the monsters and witches, but it risks revealing your identity.

I think it could work very well in even a fantasy setting, or a more modern one with some tweaks.

>Mahou Shoujo Erena
ohshitniggawutareyoudoin.mp4

Why the fuck would you? Unless they already watch anime about cute girls doing incredible things, why not run something they're more likely to enjoy?

t. Magical Burst player

Flip Flappers is kind of magical girl, and it does a really good job of being deep without being pretentious. Hell, you wouldn't even notice the near-constant art references if you didn't know the pieces referenced.

I like the decapitated one, she was nice and had a cool haircut

>Magical Girl thread
Hey folks, this is only tangentially related, but I just thought I'd let y'all know I've got a WIP system underway here. Essentially it's an update/rework of Magical Burst. If you're interested, requests and suggestions, criticism, and other forms of feedback are entirely welcome.

docs.google.com/document/d/1TmWonJIbPfqCWwOUKN7H2RrjBSkevnyq_eoGiGIWfy8/edit

Play 3.5 D&D, but only little girls can be wizards.

Ah, very interesting.

>four ports
>three colours
I'm the maddest man on the planet.

At least it wasn't MS Isuka.

If you are unirocaly asking that question, I have a friend that did a mahou shoujo ikusei keikaku game.
He GM with google maps to move around tokyo. And had done a lot of support npc for the game (family, friends , clasmetes etc..) cos every magical girl or enemy has background. And that background its at least SUPER important for the magical girls PC.

Then you can do a togue in check clasical mahou shoujo game or take a darker turn.

And dont worry for the darker tone you dont have to be super inventive my friend told me that he killed the first mahou shoujo for transforming in a hotel. She had to kill a guy and instead of being subtle, she transformed and bitch slaped the recepcionist to know his target wereabouts and then after killing the dude, she burned the entire hotel. The magical girl's boss killed the player after his identity was revealed.
But before diying the police tracked the PC and that made the cops to go after the yakuza family of another player's magical girl. So that spawned a yakuza war cos the yakuza family was weak due to police pressure. And that started the second arc of the story.
What i mean by this shit is to simply plant seeds and be reactive with the character decisions. Always start with rainbowns and unicorns but push the players in diferent directions until you know what they are gonna enjoy.

It's a game where everyone is a sorceress.

Her death got retconned. She's now alive and gained a loli waifu: the human version of the worm that killed her

That's not really a retcon so much as a different universe kind of thing.

>unirocaly

what is this new and exciting word

>Abilities revolve around buffing your familiar and having it perform hit-and-run attacks by jumping out from the shadows to maul people.
>"Transformation Sequence" requires you to stand in front of enemies for 5 rounds, in a system where combat lasts 2-4 rounds.
>Art is a blatant ripoff of another character.
That archetype is just terrible in every way.

Nah, the Magical Transformation is now a talent any Vigilante can take, so you can have it on a better archetype like Warlock, Zealot or Cabalist. Or whatever, could be a magical wildsoul spidergirl if you wanted.

wait, what system are you talking about now?

>colorful cast
Check
>grimdark core below a surface of rainbows and sunshine
Check
>lesbians
...

You were close, though. Very very close.

Pathfinder

>hurr mah /u/
Lesbianism in magical girl stuff is cancer.

forget me, masters of language, for miss typing two letters.

You are worst that the uk brits fucks that get drunk in Ibiza while only saying "putah madreuh" and them doesnt "understand" you while in england cos you have some accent.

I bet you think the same about fighting in Dragon Ball.

She was okay, but the bulimic spear-chucker was better

I agree. It is just to please the older male audience that shouldn't even exist in the first place.

>fite meh.
Too late, it's on!

You mean the older male audience that's more likely to watch magical girl series airing at otaku o'clock?

I apologize before hand for the sheer ass whoopin' I'm about to unleash on you. I actually would more than likely lose.

The most important question is not how, but why.

Only once you've got a satisfying answer to the latter it is worth wondering about the former.

The who?

Don't know why "bulimic", though.

Probably because binge eater. Which actually is part of bulimic cycle.

She stuffs her face all the fucking time and never gains a pound, either she's bulimic or her metabolism is that of a nuclear reactor

Well, she is a magical lich.

She's obviously related to Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

It's almost like she engages in hours of harrowing and strenuous physical exertion on a regular basis.

shaggy just has the lanky white dude metabolism, which either completely shits itself by 40 or keeps him skeleton mode until he dies

>Kill la Kill
>good
Please pick one or kill yourself, faggot

Don't respond to bait.

Objectively good? No.

Campy and entertaining? Yeah. It felt a little like JoJo the way things were overblown. So stupid and ridiculous it came back around the other end that it was somewhat awesome.

>having fun
how durst thou

>So stupid and ridiculous it came back around the other end that it was somewhat awesome.
>like JoJo
Except JoJo actually has good animation quality and has a decent idea of how tension works in storytelling. And stop with that, "m-muh subjective opinions", it's fucking disgusting.

Realtalk, there are few people out there that don't enjoy lesbians. Magical girl is rife with lesbians. It shouldn't be hard to appeal to most groups.

>so these girls fly around and fight monsters
>yeah
>with lasers
>yep
>AND they kiss each other
>you got it
>sign me up senpai

Well, first you need to figure out their power levels. Maybe some of them actually watch magical girl shows. Then, do this , deciding exactly where that halfway point is based on where the group's average power level is.

Also, remember that there's more to magical girls than frilly sentai! Classic magical girl stuff included the cute witch SoL-style comedy. For a classic example, see Sally the Witch, or for a more modern example, see Kiki's Delivery Service, or for a downright recent example, see LWA or Flying Witch (pic related). Since the witch is a more recognizably western symbol, as well as one that fits neatly into a standard high fantasy setting, it'll probably be a good facilitator when you're looking for a common ground. Also remember that you can easily incorporate elements from the frilly sentai magical girls, even if you're doing a witch-themed campaign! Many sentai magical girl shows put witch hats on the main characters, and even have them flying around on brooms and using potions.

Fuck you, lesbians a shit. Keep your yuri "subtext" (aka constant teenage-level innuendos) out of my game. Girls can be friends without riding on each other's fingers and you can play a magical girl without spending an inordinate amount of time - or, on fact, any time at all - describing how embarrassed you are to have just kissed another girl.

We can skip the subtext and go full fucking Valkyrie Drive, then.

-but that's just another type of cancer.

One you can't do without. The best you can hope for is making it so subtle even the world's top oncologist will doubt himself, but it NEEDS to be there.

The alternative is much, much worse.

...

Isn't the alternative only "they're just friends"?

>they're just friends
You can indeed do a lot of stuff with this excuse and pass it right past the moral guardians.

No, I mean they're actually just friends.

...

>past the moral guardians
You're doing a horrible job, since I'm right here.

I'd start them on with Nanoha. It's got the standard frilly attire, but then adds badasstitude and giant lazers on top.

Although honestly magical girls on the carebear harmless toothless flavour aren't as popular as the memes say. Far more frequently punch the shit outta monsters rather than chant love and peace at it.

>starting with madoka
You fucker. The only way to best "get" madoka is to have knowledge of other mahou shoujo first. Do the classics. Nanoha, Cardcaptor, Sailor Moon, Precure, ect... I'm personally a huge fan of Nanoha and I think it lends itself well to a TRPG structure. That is, if you don't watch StrikerS

>I would suggest late season madoka
Madoka is a fucking horrible introduction series unless you're going to play Magical Burst.

what if i pay you to look the other way?

Make then watch Madoka.

Kyouko a best

I can see why people would use it as an introduction. It's short and written by a guy people can more easily swallow.

Still, it kind of short-changes people on the genre as a whole. Lots of Madoka fans walk away thinking its the first dark entry into a genre of a saccharine nothingness, but that's because Madoka is the only mahou shoujo anime they've literally ever watched in detail because they can't be arsed to watch those 100+ episode anime that space that stuff out.

Kind of like Evangelion and Ideon.

>Or do this, and show them Little Witch Academia. It's decent.

It's more than decent.
It is fantastic.
youtube.com/watch?v=-I9E3JakwoU

And yet Nanoha (and to a lesser extent Sailor Moon) does the same in one cour. Madoka is just more popular and edgy so people think it's better. Cardcaptor is longer, as are the sequels to Sailor Moon. Which is why I recommended Nanoha. Short, bite-sized, action-packed, but with some of the tropes of the genre.

YuYuYu also works.

YuYuYu doesn't really fit the tropes that good and leans a bit too much towards the edgy side of things. It has shittons of yuri though so I generally classify it as one of the "neo/new magical girl" anime that has come out post-madoka

Nanoha is mecha though

Maybe if you read Force. Core Nanoha (A's and S1) are pure magical girl.

It's not so much that madomagi is darker, it's that it starts being dark sooner and doesn't let up. Nanoha, to use your example, keeps a series of light and neutral moments mixed in even during Precia being a godawful mother and Fate breaking down. Madoka just cuts the wires to the light switch a third of the way in and keeps shoving it in your face right up to the ending.

>the edgy side of things
Well, it does, but besides the dark parts being darker than in Nanoha the fluffy light parts are fluffier. This makes the emotional moments have more weight than in, say, a Pretty Cure series where you know everything's going to turn out OK or Madoka where you know everything's going to get fucked up in a different way than it was before.

>It's not so much that madomagi is darker, it's that it starts being dark sooner
Literally what. Madoka has a much darker theme as well as ending. The characters are all very flawed and have very visible failures that they go through. Also the whole thing with homura and her time loop arc is something Nanoha never touches on and is much more grim.
>keeps shoving it in your face right up to the ending.
Which is why it's not a good introduction to the genre. Madoka is always shoving in your face how special it is and how it isn't like other shows in the genre and how dark everything is whereas Nanoha has that same darkness but just portrays it in a very mahou shoujo-esque way.

Reading comprehension, nigger. I never said madomagi isn't darker, I said it's way more in-your-face about its dark themes than Nanoha. Hell, I acknowledged that madomagi is darker, you're literally inverting my meaning.

Agreed that it's a godawful intro to the genre though.

for me it was having me watch the madoka magica series (show then skip to third movie) to see how Magical girls can reach from campy and silly to be dark, serious, and lethal.

it gets DARK after episode 3 but I highly recommend starting from the beginning to really gets the full effect.

This exposure to the broad forms magical girl stuff can take made the palatable and and sparked my imagination on different magical girl concepts both to build characters around and to run games based on.

Alternate between scenes of A's and scenes of Ace Combat 0.

You shouldn't need anything else.

YuYuYu was special because it, at first, wasn't even magical girl. It was like a cute school slice of life, and that's how all the advertisement was. Then it turned out to be magical, and it was a bit of a surprise. And then when it got dark, that caught everyone by surprise too.