What system would best fit something akin to the Persona series?

The system where every time you want to play someone tells you to go to bed and you don't get to play after all

atomic robo fate

>finally, I can make some lockpicks

Russian roulette.

The trash. Alternately, anything "video gamey" like modern D&D where all character classes have magic skills.

This question is coming up a lot recently, and I've had some success running a Persona-style game (read: not strictly Persona, but heavily inspired by) using FATE, wherein character Aspects are based on the Persona-user, and Stunts are based on the Persona - which basically just winds up meaning that the Stunts are only available whilst the Persona is actually active.

>and
but... how do you play them all at once? One PC per game?

People used to suggest Geist in these threads.

No, a singular person playing them all using a quasi-mind state technique achievable only through Eastern Meditation while you're on Adderall and a combination of coffee and vodka(the exact ratio is specific to your metabolism)

I'd imagine a party of D&D 3.5 Binders might be quite close, especially if you modified some of the vestiges

Dungeon-crawling teens with magic powers could easily be done in any general system like Fate or Savage Worlds.

But if you're looking for a mechanical representation of the time management and relationship aspects and are willing to put in serious homebrew time, I think an Apocalypse World hack would actually be great for it. Hx could be adapted for use as social links and countdown clocks are already an established part of the game.

The East Texas University setting for Savage Worlds is about college students juggling their studies with monster fighting. Your choice of academic major and archetype has a lot of influence. Might be worth reading up on.

PbtA for relationships and out of combat.

Something gamey/tactical for in-combat, preferably with special powers and type advantages, if you want to represent that as well.

Persona series has actually more to do with old school dungeon crawls than you might immediately realize.

The Shin Megumi Tensei series, which Persona is a spin-off of is baed on old school western RPGs like Wizardry which is basically just D&D.

Now, old school dungeon crawls work like this:

Group of adventurers delve into the dungeon, go as far as they day and return with their loot and experience and spend a few days to recuperate before exploring further with their improved gear and levels. Between dungeon delves the PCs can rest, train to increase levels (back when AD&D required money and training to level up) and build up their own strongholds with their newfound cash.

Persona simply flips the setting around into a modern setting with fantastical elements centered around japanese pop-culture. Instead of training to increase your strength score, you're socializing to increase your charm score. Instead of managing your rations and coins like in pool of radiance, you're managing your character's high school education while balancing yourself saving the world between Hastur and Philemon's pissing matches.

SMT focuses on collectable monsters, but in Persona they treat them as your class with the protag being able to swap out classes on the fly.

Here is what you do.

Take 5e. Make firearms common weapons you can buy and set it in a modern setting.

Take modern conventions and apply them to fantasy logic. Haunted houses, abandoned building, storm drains and maybe even gates to parallel world where your characters do battle with monstrous creatures and you're done.

Play some Acid Jazz and Deltron 3030 and you're set.

Three issues:

1. It's Shin Megami Tensei.
2. Before Persona 3, everyone could equip different Personas.
3. 5e is entirely unsuitable.

Yep it's this.
Kids who have powerful imaginary creatures fueled by their emotions and angst and relationships. It has a great customization system for the monsters (Personas) that makes sure everyone feels unique but isn't unwieldy, and it uses social elements exactly like how a Persona tabletop should.

That's a pretty good way to do it, but how would you balance spell lists so that each element has equal representation? And building on that, how would you then power up 5e's physical attack abilities to reach the same power level as magic?

You wouldn't, you would at the very least use 4e instead, if you must stick with D&D.

Correct answer. Not only can it be done but it has been done; the Drunk and Ugly did a really good actual play series with that exact premise.

The JoJo RPG

I've been experimenting doing it with this myself. I've just allowed players to take a free Core trait as their Arcana, and then have them make their characters normally while I gen Persona based on their traits and Arcana.

Right now it's just one dude running a Persona in a proper JoJo campaign, with a few other persona users he's tied to, but I plan on running a full on Persona campaign with it should the mechanics work well.

There are like 6 of those

Pretty sure he means the d100 homebrew or it's d10 hack that gets posted every /sss/ on the blue moon those actually appear.

I tried designing my own once and it fit pretty well, the problem was I wanted to include social links and no one wanted to waste time on those.

A lot of the combat took more from P1/2 than later games. Players had multiple slots to store personas, which they created by fusing tarot cards or their own personas. You could switch between personas but had to lock in your choice before entering the dungeon, so people could have party variety but still have composition matter. They also had arcana affinity to differentiate between players.

The skill system tried to balance combat and noncombat skills. If you wanted your character to know martial arts or to be good with a weapon, you would have to give up social skills. Personas could also give you certain skills as well, mostly tied to combat. For example, if you equip Artemis for your trip into the dungeon, you'll magically gain the knowledge to use a bow well for the duration of the trip.

I think you could get people to more readily engage in the social aspects if you didn't make them sacrifice combat skills for social skills. If they have to choose between a skill that can save their life and a skill that can make a friend, most people would choose the first. Making that choice subtly discourages social actions.

If you keep them in two separate pools so that everybody can have a combat focus and a social focus without sacrificing one for the other, I think you could get more people to spend time out of the dungeon.

Obviously, some players will still just want to bash demons, but at least they'll be the Smart or Charming demon basher.

I have both, do you want them, or either posted?

Isn't it weird how that is literally the only point in the story where she can't use the fucking evoker?

May as well throw them out there, mang

Isn't the evoker meant to instill the fear of death in order to summon a persona, and she couldn't induce the proper mindset?

Wasn't there a persona homebrew floating somewhere here? Isn't there also a World of Darkness fansplat?

This.

I'm reading this and while the theme is close, I'm just not a fan of dice buckets, especially for contests. I also haven't finished but I feel like it just doesn't encourage a Persona style game, even if it's got the "personal monsters+bonds" thing down.

This would be ideal, but needs more brewing.

Color me interested.

This is the d100 one

And this is the d10 one.

Based PDFanon

I feel like D&D 4e actually would fit here. Each class can just be refluffed as summoning a different kind of Persona and your powers are theirs.

Do dungeon crawls and social interaction heavily and when people level up the new powers they choose from can be refluffed as their Persona changing from fusions.

>I feel like D&D 4e actually would fit here. Each class can just be refluffed as summoning a different kind of Persona and your powers are theirs.

How about fucking no, with a side of 'what the fuck are you smoking' and an obligatory 'have you tried not playing D&D' and a parting 'this is bad and you should feel bad'

GURPS

I agree the game has issues and isn't my cup of tea. If you want to convert a turn-based video game into a tabletop then I see no reason not to use "Turn-Based Video Game the Tabletop" though.

Here's the homebrew, it's dead though

1. 4e is a videogame is a meme
2. Not all turn-based videogames are the same
3. Seriously I don't know if you're trolling or what but this is an extremely stupid fucking idea, hell I would have taken you seriously if you said 'just use monsters as personas' but personas as D&D classes is so pants-on-head retarded I'm amazed anyone would say it even as some 6-levels of irony trollpost, let alone a serious suggestion

A shame too, since there's a huuuge amount of work that went into this, especially the Arcana list. A lot of it feels...maybe misguided since the complexity of it is kind of insane but I'm really impressed by the sheer dedication of the author.

(Wanna summon King Solomon as my Persona)

Do you have the character sheet for this?

just go into the archive and look for a jojo thread.
it's the same fucking shit.

with persona's theres little difference.
I guess just all make warlocks and make your summons warforged and give them shit that makes them stand out.

who cares anything that's fun is okay, you don't have to ask for approval.

and if you genuinly need to ask people on the internet how to run a game maybe it's too early for you to do crazy shit like a persona camapgin.

Here
drive.google.com/file/d/0B6vNgrbqwp55MEthdEthdnRtR0E/view?usp=sharing

Is there anywhere to find good art for Personas?

Why so mad user? Can we not have a friendly discussion about this?

Also, I run a group every week, for about 10 players at a given session.

I've have been recently playing P5 and I like it. Trying to fit an already established thing into a tabletop game can be a hard task.

Why not ask like minded people what their thoughts are?

Anyway, these are all real great suggestions. As with anything, you can just home-brew the shit out of it until it works.

I guess the main problem is, trying to make social matter. You can do all the combat and persona's easy enough.

How would you handle fusion mechanics? That's the part I'm dreading trying to handle if I were to run an SMT or Persona game.

You could just refluff the JoJo RPG.

...

Not that guy, but frankly if you're going to go as far as adding in fusion then I'd keep a bestiary of any demon/Persona that could be found in the game and a chart showing how the arcana or enemy types interact.

Then just assign each of them numbers to symbolize a rough power level and decide how you want to do the math on how any two numbers make the next Persona up.

Personally, I'd avoid it completely or abstract it like crazy. But if you're running a literal SMT game you could sort of use the formula they use in the video game, or make your own like said.

If you're wanting something that hits the same notes as Persona and not a system to play a Persona game in, I'm going to second Mage the Awakening. It's got the supernatural / mundane life split, it's got a Mementos / TV World analog in the Astral Realms, there's even a Legacy (The Clavicularius) that lets you summon your inner demons to fight for you. Mage also has the habit of completely jumping the shark near the end of a campaign, like any good Persona plot.

Yeah, the fusion is conveniently part of the protagonists being 'special' so you can easily side step in by just saying that Igor doesn't like you.

>There are charts for how fusion works
I'm a moron. I never even figured it would be that simple.

What would good plot hooks for a Persona game be?

Can never go wrong with a trippy as hell dream sequence when it comes to SMT

I will have a look

Fusion is kind of tricky, but you could just do away with it and instead replace it with something else.

Alternatively, if you were piggy backing from a system, you could just use the creatures and monsters in the game and go from there.

>D&D classes is so pants-on-head retarded I'm amazed anyone would say it even as some 6-levels of irony trollpost, let alone a serious suggestion

For most editions I'd agree, but 4e's role + power source setup actually jells pretty nicely with a Persona game that isn't using wildcard rules, since part member Personas tend to be physical/magic attacker + element, which could be extrapolated into 4e's classes pretty easily.

Personally I think if you use 4e when you're in spooky Persona land and 's idea of using PbtA for when you're in the real world you could have something neat.

D&D 3.5 is always the answer. It is objectivly the best, and only system.

Yeah. More than any other dungeon-centric rpg system I can think of, 4e D&D stands up the best to extreme reskinning without changing any rules.

>all people recommending D&D
>for Persona
What crazy world have I stepped into? By the time you hack up D&D into something that resembles persona, you are hardly even playing D&D anymore.
It pains me to see people try and do this. Like people trying to turn 5e into a sci-fi system. Just don't. Play Traveller, the Star Wars RPG, GURPS, or retroclones like Stars Without Numbers, hell.

You and X other kids get invited to a prestigious boarding school on a free ride scholarship that's basically supposed to guarantee you a world-class education and a high-paying job in the long term if you don't actively fuck it up. Your parents basically throw you at the opportunity for various reasons, and when you get there it looks like everything is what it's being cracked up to be. However, one thing that catches your eye is the fact that every night there's a curfew lasting from 12AM to ...12AM the same day. When you ask about it, nobody can really explain it, but the teachers discourage you from going outside your room at night anyways because 'nothing really happens' anyways.
Two weeks after you settle in, you awake to the sound of pounding on your door. When you open it, the hallways give off the appearance of a computer simulation. A young man dressed in a black suit requests you come with him and says that right now it's not safe, and offers to bring you to a safehouse - no time to explain.
You're introduced to the concept of Personas when a shadow confronts your guide, and when the whole group is brought together, Shadows begin to swarm you, preventing you from entering the safehouse. Your guide is eventually overwhelmed, but you awaken to your Personas here in response to certain death.

On a more useful note when it comes to running a Persona style game in Savage Worlds I would recommend having different setting rules for the real world and the land of shadows. Make damage gritty in the real world and make the shadow world the only place where arcane abilities can be used.

A lot of what will make the game Persona like is the story you mold around it. You need to ensure that there is a good connection between the shadow world and the real world whether you go the whole midnight channel route of P4 or the whole secret hour where Tartarus appears in P3 there needs to be a compelling reason for the PCs to brave the dangers of a strange hostile environment.

You got a link, my man?

I found this, and it looks pretty interesting.

I really wanna do a Persona Tabletop Game now, but it sounds like it'd be super difficult to pull off correctly.

For me it'd be finding the people to play/run the damn thing.

Same! This type of game would be pretty focused on roleplaying and make it difficult to find people who would put up with it instead of figuring out how to quickly become the closest thing to a god.

I've not had good experiences with my tabletop group, back when I tried it out.

The sort of ideal homebrew in my mind would be something that uses a Tarot deck for resolution and a list of Jungian archetypes models. The thematic cohesiveness and analytic psychology emphasis is what gives Persona games their feel; strip out the underlying themes and all you have is just a superhero game.

With I was sorta baiting because
>Something gamey/tactical for in-combat, preferably with special powers and type advantages, if you want to represent that as well.

Is me describing Strike!.

Strike!'s combat slots into PbtA rather nicely with the optional 2d6 rules, and it is more refluffable than 4e even.

Would still need work on the PbtA part.

I don't think the kind of tabletop system for simulating the Persona games exists yet. Maybe one day it will, but we'll never see it coming.

Was just thinking today of doing a Bait and Switch campaign with my players who love JoJo but are basically unaware of the Persona Series.

At its core idea, stands and personas are pretty similar.

Monsters and Other Childish Things. Refluff the insults/social combat rules to be magic, and you are done. The fluff is already a perfect fit, because it's literally a game designed for "bunch of kids who can see monsters that other people can't and who each have a single monster tied to them that aids them in fighting other monsters to try to save the world"

It's like... 2 minutes of refluffing work and that's it.

Candlewick manner has actual rules for using magic.

I'd rip it straight from the game.

Work out the core mechanics. I've not played P5 yet, but P4 used 1-100 scale for all stats, both persona stats and main character stats.

You stat personas as the game does, with individual xp, (much lower thresholds and gains though for ease of management).

You can the gate extra abilities and persona strengths by the stats and levels of the character. Gonna work on this a bit this evening see if I can throw something together,

What about Shin Megami Tensei TRPG Demonic City Tokyo 200X?

>I'd rip it straight from the game.
That is patently stupid.

You know why video game mechanics work in video games?
Because video games are run by computers that are built to store and process vast amounts of mathematical data.

You know why video game mechanics don't work in tabletop RPGs?
Because tabletop RPGs are run by people and people aren't computers that are built to store and process vast amounts of mathematical data.

Probably because it's OOP and has never been scanned or translated.

Would it be better to have social links as other players, or NPCs? Maybe both?

drunkandugly.com/category/monsters-and-other-childish-things/shin-megami-tensei/

I'd argue for both. Between players, develop fusion spells and bonuses for SLs and between players and NPC you can give some kind of benefit like in P5.

Definitely between PCs, and maybe with NPCs too. There's more room for links with other PCs to directly affect the dungeon crawling with special abilities or just general teamwork bonuses.

NPCs are trickier because their main function in the video games is as an XP boost on fusion. That obviously wouldn't work if you aren't using fusion. Even if you were fusing, it might be hard to represent in a balanced way. You could do what P5 does and attach some special abilities to each NPC link, but that could be a lot of work. Even if you didn't want to allow them to link with any NPC they want, you'd still have to create a set of special abilities for every arcana and many of the ones from the video game wouldn't work in a tabletop rpg.

If I were making a game for other people to use, I would probably make a set of abilities for each arcana and have the GM assign an NPC an arcana when the player decides he wants to start a social link. That way, the GM wouldn't have 22 specific characters that he'd be forced to introduce early in the game and the players could link with whoever they want.

I made a system for an SMT game once so no social links or anything. At first it was slow and kind of described but eventually the combat started moving quicker and my players started planning their strategy around exploiting weaknesses for extra turns that they could pass to teammates who had weaknesses for other enemies. I found I was able to make press turn work well by giving every player only one move as well s the ability to pass extra moves. On top of that by having multi enemy encounters of different types I forced them to pass turns to each other to optimize damage.

It works but everyone can only use one demon at a time which I guess is fine if you want it to be like Persona. The combat will be tedious to if your players refuse to negotiate to end battles quicker which my players picked up very quickly.