Various worlds and multiverses have become connected together via the mysterious Overcity, a sprawling landscape inhabited by monsters and magical beings. Girls and boys endowed with their new supernatural powers can work together solving conflicts that arise!
This thread houses three systems: First, QuasarBlack's CYOA PDFs which may be used as writing prompts. Second, AMGC which expands on the CYOA character creation and provides rules for combat. Finally, the SCS is an alternative to AMGC with a similar purpose. IRC uses mostly AMGC and Discord uses mostly SCS.
The CYOA's Patron Module, for choosing just who your mysterious benefactor is. Of course, not all of them have your best interests in mind...
...in fact, most of them probably don't care too much about you at all.
Zachary James
This PDF is for AMGC 1.14, one of the two usable PNP systems for playing as a magical girl. It features 10 additional powers and 20 extra perks, as well as combat actions, point buy, and more. Note that this is NOT the same as the CYOA, and uses its own methods of character generation.
Additional info, links, modules, and so on can be found on the IRC linkboard: piratepad.net/MGCYOA
Or just drop into IRC for a quick Q&A.
Dominic Gray
The SCS was made as an addon to the CYOA to cover the combat side of roleplaying. It allows players to easily take characters made in the CYOA v1.5 and use them in Quests and long-running campaigns alike. Note that this system DOES require you to have a character made in the CYOA in the OP first.
This PDF covers the core rules of gameplay, as well as the methods of improvement and various spells and items magical girls use.
>Expansions to the SCS can be found in this link pastebin.com/kVJmwcj3 These expansions include >Order & Chaos; Friend & Foe (OC&FF): Details on the mechanical workings of Patrons, Dark Magical Girls, Monster Girls (both natural and corrupted), and also includes a bestiary >Worlds & Wishes (W&W): Details various GM tools and a few player tools, including the function of Mundane weapons, Alternate/Optional Rules, Various tips and tricks for GMing and Roleplaying, as well as Augments for players looking for a little extra power after CharGen. It also includes the conversion process for AMGC characters into the SCS.
Hey Drak, sorry I didn't catch your post in that other thread until now.
>I am focusing more on raw mechanics and balancing out the lists. Specifically putting a cap on the amount of spells in each list. In the most recent version that I know of, some lists had as few as 19 spells, others in excess of 40. That is a big damn variance. Whats more, many spells are simply repeats or straight rehashes of others ones within these lists. ...same. Though my specs aren't likely to have more than ~14 spells each. There'll be between 12-14 ish
>I'm focusing on given each magic their own flavor and applications, as seen in my original pitch which I'll post below. I don't care for minmaxing but all is fair in love and war. I just want an even playing field for all mahou shoujo. Currently magic is not balanced against melee or range builds. I was going for something kind of similar. I'm more concerned about achieving a situation where each spec tree is fun to play and accurately reflects the general feel of its element. That said, I'm all for balance, though I'm not going to try TOO hard to keep everything balanced since different specs have different niches and you'll never know which you'll need more. As long as none of them are obviously OP or underpowered, I think it'll be balanced enough.
>As for when I finish, at the rate I have been, I'm inclined to either give up or request assistance in completing. It'd be far easier to collaborate efforts and build something as a community. I'm a great think tank and analyst, even an awesome systems builder, but if I don't have the time to commit, I'm useless. I won't have much free time either but if we can coordinate our efforts we can totally start working on this together! I've already tested an idea for new mechanics for magic and while it's not perfect, I'm sure we could improve it or find something better if we worked together!
Should we try contacting each other through the thread or via email or something?
Lincoln Baker
Sayaka is objectively best girl Discuss
Nathaniel Parker
Literally who
Jose Butler
"Hey kid, wanna visit the stratosphere?"
Zachary Rogers
I say she's second best.
Drak, no.
Brody Barnes
I've shared what I have thus far, minus the metrics. The play testing has been beneficial when I've gotten through it. If we work together we'd need to go by e-mail. My living situation is about to dramatically change, yet once more, so yet again, again...again... this project goes from the back burner to the shelf.
Ian Powell
Drakon yes. Drakon ALWAYS yes!
Carter Green
Can you come onto the IRC for a few minutes so I can give you my email pls then? I'd rather not post it here, heh
Brandon Carter
Waiting
Hudson Foster
Well with all that resolved, what are the imoutos thoughts on a sufficiently grimdark story line being introduced?
Asher Richardson
Can I punch the grimdarkness. Can I kill the grimdarkness? Can I kill the grimdarkness by punching the grimdarkness?
Carter Gomez
I'd be interested, but I can't guarantee I'll be available frequently enough for anything long-term like that until ten weeks from now. Or potentially until December.
Colton Garcia
I'm GMing something in that vein, actually. Base concept was "Meguca Vietnam."
Also, see any of my characters for your daily dose of grimdark and then some
Does your mahou have a rival? What's their relationship like? Is it friendly competition between friends, or bitter enemies striving to exceed each other?
Jason Russell
discord link?
John Gomez
Here's a free bump from a passerthrough. Just remember, be nice to fairy pigeons.
Julian Gomez
I wasn't going to post again until powers were finished, but I may as well bump the thread.
I spent a decent amount of time wrestling with Third Eye mechanics. Some background details: 1. A character without a power is at about a 20 percentage point disadvantage in win rate. Put briefly, a power is worth 20%. 2. A flat +1 to all defenses is underpowered, +2 is somewhat overpowered. +2 to one defense is very underpowered. 3. If your power only operates against MAG characters, then you'll be at a 20% disadvantage against 3/4 of enemies, assuming they're distributed by the rolling proportions. 4. Note that a bonus to defense against MAG can also be circumvented by support and summoning magic, so the power becomes more niche. Then for this power to be viable, it has to be extremely powerful against MAG. This leads to a situation where the countered characters may as well not even try. I would prefer softer counters.
So, that led me to the current solution for Third Eye: You can anticipate and counter attacks by watching the flow of enemy magic. Whenever a foe spends mana, you gain +1 die to all defense rolls against them until they end their turn. In addition, whenever a foe attacks you with an attack that they've used against you before, you gain +1 die to your defense roll.
This is a little more complex than I would prefer, but it hits a good spot in balance testing and has interesting counterplay.
Caleb Fisher
I feel like the second effect just makes it a different flavor of Nullification, which is admittedly it's own problem.
Jose Brooks
Yeah, that's something that bothers me a little, too, but to me the mechanic fits Third Eye even more than it does nullification. The idea came from saying, "Okay... if I can see your magic swirling around and stuff while we fight, what advantage can that give me?" Reading patterns is a natural fit (to me), and the power needed more applicability against non-MAG.
Blake Bennett
You're goddamn right.
Bentley Johnson
I think the solution will likely be to give Null a trade-off for negating things/making things cost more, but making it more potent at that than Third Eye is.
Camden Thomas
Mind elaborating on your thought process? My perspective on Nullification is that a power which disables one other power is balanced, even at no cost and without interacting with specialization magic. If your opponent relies on their power it may hurt them more than you, but it's useless against non-mahou enemies. It also has to be used on your turn, which makes it slightly worse. If I were to alter the power, I'd probably want to make it more applicable against non-mahou enemies.
I've always thought the "no doubles" restriction was at most a minor (almost pointless) inconvenience, since most specialization trees have multiple ways to do nearly the same thing.
Easton Bailey
Having multiple ways within a kit to do the exact same thing is it's own problem and shouldn't happen.
Also, Third Eye is ALSO useless against non-magical targets, so there's that.
Logan Rivera
Yes and no. Let's say you think lightning as a spec is about dealing high damage (the specific example doesn't matter). Then it's a given that you're going to have several different single-target damage spells. Using one and then a different one every other turn is easy and probably almost as effective as spamming one spell of choice.
Certainly a well-made tree won't have too much redundancy and my update's limit on spells known further restricts things. Even so, I think the nullification restriction does very little.
For your second sentence, my response depends on what you meant by non-magical. If you're talking about how current AMGC Third Eye is useless against non-MAG builds (specifically direct-offense ones) then you're right, although I talked a little about why I see that as a problem. If you're talking about magical enemies in general, remember that mahous tend to fight mostly magical enemies. Being only effective against mahous is also strictly worse, since mahous are a subset of magical entities.
Attached is an illustration of balance that I think is clearly bad.
Brayden Stewart
What's a 'Regular Monster' statwise?
Brody Hill
>Third Eye functionally useless unless they go hard in on magic. >Then it's OP. That's silly.
Jackson Cox
In this case it's just a hypothetical to make my point easier to understand. Proper PvE balance would depend on how many allies and enemies there are, and the GM would want something like a 95-99% win rate when the players are doing everything right. Any worse and after a few battles/quests everyone would be dead.
The actual point that I'm making is that wherever a typical mahou is balance-wise in PvE, some powers are way worse off.
That's exactly my point, and it's why I changed how Third Eye works. My version is something closer to 45% against no-MAG builds, 55% against some-MAG builds, 60% against full-mag builds. Those aren't the exact numbers, it gets sort of complicated when you're trying lots of different powers and build combinations. At any rate, it's a lot better than the other design approach.
For something like Nullification, I can accept some loss of effectiveness against non-mahous but not a whole power's worth.
Given my writefaggotry is progressing as such a glacial pace - she's homeless for the moment. But she'll shortly be living in a teammate's inter-dimensional apartment.
Also, speaking of my writefaggotry, I'm finally hammering out the damn monster fight, so I hope to have another part to put out next week. That only took what, 6 or 7 months?
Bentley Smith
Shacking up with inter-dimensional bro as a owner to a Arcade in OverCity
Leo Russell
Is that fucking Puzzle & Dragon on the far-right cabinet?
Do any of these mahou missing living back home with their parents?
Grayson Hughes
It's been almost 20 years. She has her own kid fighting evil by moonlight at this point.
Of course she misses living with her parents.
Robert Gomez
Who even dares separate their normalish-type Mahou from their parents?
Comfy parents are a very important part of most Mahou Shoujou.
Levi Hall
A lot of mahous aren't typical or comfy.
Jayden Reed
>Do any of these mahou missing living back home with their parents?
Uh... no, given that home hasn't been 'with their parents' for a decade. Home was with her wife and child in their own house. And yes, she misses that home.
True. Not necessarily a big part of the CYOA though, since most wouldn't qualify as normalish mahou.
Justin Nelson
>implying most people in the community don't still live with their parents
Joseph Jenkins
Does Jace count? I guess he does. He's about as fed up with Zeffy's antics as she is with his boringness.
Something something, DUBS BOIS.
inb4 check em
In ZA WARUDO.
>not being part of the most badass lineage of magical girls >not feeling the presence of your predecessors It's like y'all don't even WANT to be best girl.
Gabriel Barnes
They miss the people but not the living arrangement. Its been about five years since they lived with their family anyways.
80% Monster Fighting, 20% comfy friend time and sleeping.
