/ore/ One Roll Engine General

Let me know if I've made any glaring issues here, I always appreciate corrections/help

Ok, lets do potion dude, named him Brew.
BREWING
Attacks Extras and Flaws: Delayed Effect –1, Duration +2, If/Then (Variable Effect requires a workshop and time to work) –1, If/Then (Variable Effect is only for potions) –1, If/Then (Potions must be based on observed biological processes) -1, Manufacturable +2, Variable Effect +4, Depleted -1, If/then (only passive effects) -1

Defends Extras and Flaws: Delayed Effect –1, Duration +2, If/Then (Variable Effect requires a workshop and time to work) –1, If/Then (Variable Effect is only for potions) –1, If/Then (Potions must be based on observed biological processes) -1, Manufacturable +2, Variable Effect +4,Depleted -1, If/then (only passive effects) -1

Useful (gadget creation) Extras and Flaws: Delayed Effect –1, Duration +2, If/Then (Variable Effect requires a workshop and time to work) –1, If/Then (Variable Effect is only for potions) –1, If/Then (Potions must be based on observed biological processes) -1, Manufacturable +2, Variable Effect +4, Depleted -1, If/then (only passive effects) -1

Ok so this one is probably more than slightly off the mark, and I had to re-purpose depleted, but hear me out.

The basic idea: Functions like normal gadgeteering for the most part, except instead of making space age technology, he comes out with a 2-liter bottle filled with the nastiest shit you've ever seen. The potions last for about a week in storage, or for maybe a day in the field.

the depleted flaw is a stand in for a flaw of the potions themselves, namely they're consumable. Each potion is one use, and you need to chug the full 2 liters, so you're really unlikely to get more than one effect at a time. Since this isn't the case with normal gadgets, I threw on a flaw like they did from the utility belt power.

Now, as for what the potions /do/.
Each potion is made to mimic something brew's studied. Study a fish, get a potion of water breathing; study a crab, bone armor. (1/2)

He can't mimic everything though, namely he can't do active effects, like firing spines, or granting fire breath. His potions do a thing, and they keep doing that thing until they wear off.

Now, where the manufacturable comes in. Using the normal gadget permanence rules (spend willpower equal to cost, then base will), you create a potion that's basically as close to mundane as he can get. Then, use manufacturable's similar rules to allow other talents to reproduce it, and boom, you can now produce health potions.

I do rule that you need to have relevant crafting skills, high mind, or at least some sort of gadgeteering yourself to reproduce without the original dude at least giving pointers, but it's nothing major.

So brew, plus a small team of pharmacists and labour, and boom, you've got an operation. It really is expensive though. It takes a few sessions worth of experience in willpower to really get it started

Oh shit I forgot, brewing is 12 points per die. If you throw on focus and irreplaceable (The brew npc I have does, but thats mostly a setting thing) it goes down to 3 per die, which makes it a lot more doable

I'll post plant dude in the morning, I'm really tired and I feel like I'm making mistakes copying/explaining things

Again, suggestions/corrections would be greatly appreciated, I've stayed away from gadgeteering in the past, so I'm really worried I messed something up

>Attacks Extras and Flaws: Delayed Effect –1, Duration +2, If/Then (Variable Effect requires a workshop and time to work) –1, If/Then (Variable Effect is only for potions) –1, If/Then (Potions must be based on observed biological processes) -1, Manufacturable +2, Variable Effect +4, Depleted -1, If/then (only passive effects) -1

Hmmm.
Dont use Depleted, use If/Then (Brews must have the flaw One Use Only.

will do thanks. I wasn't sure if required flaws were kosher

Hey what are some good house rules to use? I saw the revised first aid from a bit back and that looked good, you guys got any decent house rules?

i hope this lasts until morning

Is there a PDF trove for ORE rulebooks and such?

If nothing else pops up I have a bundle of them in my rpg dump

mediafire.com/folder/imzybr5fb8kf5/RPG

Oh hi thread! Didn't expect to see you so soon.

I'm working on something for Persona and Other Childish Things right now, will post when it's done in a few minutes. Just wanted to save the thread from Page 10 first.

So here's the introduction to Arcana that I wrote for the character building section of the Persona and Other Childish Things module. Let me know what you think. I'm going to be real busy today so I probably won't be able to work on it much more but if I do I'll post more in this thread.

Yeah, Manufacturable to me seems like it's not so much a rule meant to impact the game as it is a limiter on how cheap you can make Focus miracles. As in, sure, your power is attached to this weird device that nobody's ever seen before and all its flaws drop it down to 1 pt per die even though it's insanely powerful-- but could someone else build it if they had the time? Then it's Manufacturable. Nice try though.

In three years I've never come across a situation where Manufacturable as a rule has actually come into play, but it's still on half the Foci that I build because it makes sense for it to be.

Wild Talents Vehicles:
>pastebin.com/BC6YQhDV
A fairly deep ruleset for cars, car chases and car crashes in Wild Talents.

Random Social Problems
>pastebin.com/qa4NcKr5
This one is designed for Monsters and Other Childish Things but it can work really in any system where you want to simulate a tangled social network.

>Defends (+2): Permanent (+4), Interference (+3), Focus (-1), Adaptation (-2), Slow (-2), Fragile (-1) Must Defend (-1), Environment bound (Earth like atmosphere) (-1)

I'm confused about the "Must Defend-1" part; what's that mean exactly?

Also I'm assuming the 1 hit box is for the shield generator itself, not the shield it creates?

I really like this; I have a villain named the Alchemist that my characters have been trailing that does something similar to this, and I think this is a perfect approach. I'll add this to the Miracle Flea Market if it's okay.

I like it a lot, user. I've been lurking and watching the conversion stuff as it's been forming - as I'd love to run a Persona style game.

Keep at it!

Must defend means the player gets no input on how the gobble dice are distributed when multiple attacks come in. Shields defend based on whatever hits first, even if slower attacks would be more dangerous.

And yes the shield generator only has one hit box, sorry I should've made that clearer

Yeah dude go for it, i have a few hundred of these guys stated up from my last campaign if you're looking for anything.

Have you shared details about your campaign in these threads before? I'd love to hear about it.

So here's how I'm approaching the Arcana Archetypes. I don't want to spend all day writing these up but I wanted to get the first five down (I'm saving the Fool and the World for last, since they're usually edge cases). I'm basing these off two links, plus my experience with the Persona games:

>tarotcardmeanings.net/tarot-archetypes/tarot-card-archetypes-list.htm
>tarotcardmeanings.net/tarotcards.htm

so if anyone wants to pitch in I'd appreciate the help, since I'd like to move on to the section about turning Monsters into Personas.

Speaking of upcoming work on Persona and Other Childish Things, here's the outline from the previous thread of what the module is going to include:

1. Introduction

2. Character Creation
...a. Updated Stats
...b. Updated Skills
...c. Arcana and Relationships

3. Personas
...a. How Personas are the same as Monsters
...b. How Personas are different from Monsters
...c. Building a Persona
...d. Extras
...c. Elements
...e. Arcana

4. Combat
...a. Elemental Attacks
...b. One-More, Hold-Up and All Out Attacks
...c. Invoking Arcana

5. The Velvet Room (Running the Game)
...a. Themes of Persona
...b. Creating a Persona setting
...c. Shadows and other Threats

6. Other Rules
...a. Sub-Personas
...b. Wild Cards

I just posted the start of 2c, and I'm going to move onto section 3 now and continue to work on 2c piecemeal, since it's really just a compilation of stuff instead of a rule discussion.

The strawpoll in the previous thread also concluded that Weaknesses and Reistances should be intrinsic qualities of a Persona or Shadow's entire body instead of a locational extra or flaw, so that's how we're going to approach it.

Might as well help out a bit.

>The Tower
>Destruction, terror, and pain
>The Tower is often somebody who has had some great disaster befall them, or someone who brings disaster to others. Whoever they are, they know what it's like to suffer. Towers are often in the state they are in because of their own doing, whether through foolhardy acts or simple pride getting the better of them.
>examples: the homeless man in deep debt; the street racer who lost his legs in a crash; the mafia don that always gets his dues payed

>The Devil
>Bondage and freedom in vice
>The Devil is somebody who thinks with their heart (or their stomach, or their unmentionables) befire they think with their head. They are often pleasure seekers, hedonists, or people of little morals. Often ruled by their creature comforts, Devils often feel trapped within their habits. Above all, however, a Devil is passionate; whatever they truly want to do, they will do it like a man possessed.
>examples: the food reviewer who's lost his faith on the food industry; thd impulsive older brother; the classmate who grows and sells weed

>The Hunger
>That which consumes
>The Hunger, much like The Tower, is rarely a positive card. In essence, someone who has the Hunger arcana is nothing less then evil in some form or another. Those with Hunger are often cruel, insane, or animalistic, and usually get deep satisfaction in causing others pain. The Hunger is the id, the animal self, making its presence known, and the ever present desire to dominate others.
>examples: the school queen bee who bullies classmates to suicide; the righteous serial killer who restrains his urges, the psychopath in disguise

Here also are the new Extras we've proposed. Under our Arcana system, each Extra (except Awesome) in the game will be linked to one of the 21 standard Arcana (except the World), and you can "buy" single uses of those Extras using the dice you'd normally get from invoking that relationship on a task.

Brutal: Each point of Brutal cancels one Gobble Die thrown at your Set. Makes it harder to block your actions.

Pro: Useful only. Each point of Pro automatically raises the Height of your set by 1.

Heavy: Each point of Heavy allows you to ignore the die knock-off effect of one attack coming at you.

Cool: Defends only. When you defend against an attack, each point of Cool lets you roll an Area Die and heal a lost die to the location dictated by the die.

Recovery: Useful only. Lets you restore Width-1 in lost die to a target Persona's hit location. You can only use this Extra once per point each fight.

Flexible: Each point of Flexible lets you trade a point of Width for two points of Height (turning a 3x3 into a 2x5).

With the Extras that already exist in the core book and Bigger Bads, we still need 4 new Extras to complete our list. Also these are all of course up for discussion and debate-- none are set in stone.

I'm pretty sure I have, I was the dude talking about those bikers in the first thread? Basically, there were these events that would give people powers, happening seemingly at random (think like the opening of the video game infamous), and the setting is ground zero of the biggest event in history, about 4-7 years after.

The general idea of it is, after Louisiana, and most of the south Eastern United States, got obliterated after New Orleans got an event, someone decided to pull a Galts Gulch (think bioshocks rapture if you didn't get that) and built "a city on the edge of tomorrow" (yes it's mocked in setting), and collected the best and brightest (and a good number of destitute and criminal to act as labor/ human experimentation material) in a single place, safe from the chaos that was consuming the world.

It lasted 10 years before getting hit with The Awakening.
(1/2)

Now in a normal event, maybe one in ten thousand people would get powers, and the powers would come in fully formed and static.

The Awakening broke those rules. Everyone in the city, after surviving what they thought was a plague at the time, got the potential to be a talent (willpower), and instead of the powers just being a part of who you are, powers would often wound up bound to items or wind up mutating the host terribly.

The one thing that remains consistent is that the power is very much determined by the user. For example, let's take one of those powered items (called artifacts). An artifact won't give you a fully fleshed out power, it'll give you a theme to work in, maybe a way of doing things it can do easier than most, and then it molds itself to fit the user. So, say you have a ferrokinetic artifact, and you've always had an inferiority complex about your height; you can now turn into a ten foot tall metal golem. Or take the same artifact but give it to a serial killer who likes to keep his victims preserved and posed? Well, now he can turn people into fully conscious metal mannequins, frozen while he fetches his sculpting tools.

I do give the PC's a lot more leeway with their powers though.

Anyway, the city itself is divided into about 6-7 districts, each controlled by a major faction or two, but that's kinda dry.

I can go on if anyone wants, and let me know if anything I've said raises questions, I'm used to explaining things over several sessions, so info dumps are still kinda difficult

Oh I should mention, tech is a lot more advanced in the city. So if you don't want to deal with power gen, you can totally just make a dude with a plasma rifle and jet pack

I like it. Very clear.

Decided to write up Lovers, Chariot, Justice, Hermit and Fortune. That will probably be all I can do for these today.

I love the idea of Artifacts as a source of powers. Is it all subconscious, or if I get a pyrokinetic artifact can I say "I want to be able to breathe fire" and it works, or will it be "because I have a hot temper I can increase my body temperature to melt through steel?"

What were the city's districts?

You do get a say in what powers you get if you spend a lot of time working with the artifact and figuring out how it ticks, otherwise you kinda just get the power that "fits". And I'd need more info, but if you have, let's say, a temper that gets out of control, and you lash out without thinking, that would probably lead to an aoe power that, while powerful, lacks control. Again, the more detailed the character, the easier it gets.

Note: you may not get the power you want, but you'll never get a power you'd never use. Powers, above all else, want to be used

I'll do a distric rundown after work, since that'll take a bit

Gonna lend a hand too

>The Hanged Man
>Martyrdom and self sacrifice
The Hanged Man is one who gives up a part of themselves for the greater good, usually of their own accord. They tend to be selfless and uncaring of suffering inflicted on themselves. Or that's what they want people to think
examples: a terminally ill billionaire who turns to philanthropy, an overworked but devoted teacher, a criminal who's trying to turn his life around

>Death
>Coming to an end
>Ends can bring new beginnings. The people of the Death Arcana understand this better than anyone, as they have changed after they lost much. They also understand that this is but a part of life, and must carry on.
examples: a surgeon who loses many patients, an officer worker coping with financial ruin, a washed up and purposeless athlete

Love'em, especially the example of the washed up athlete.

Can someone write up Temperance? I'm having a hard time figuring it out. Here's what I have so far but I'm not really satisfied with it and can't think of any examples.

>Waiting is the nature of a person of the Temperance Arcana. She never rushes to a solution, preferring to wait and think things through to be certain that her course is the correct one. Caution, though, can give way to timidity, and this person may seem uncertain in situations that require definite action.

Gotta say I really dig that concept-- a nice marriage between "everyone has the exact powers they want" and "everyone's powers arise from their subconscious needs and desires" which is kind of the subtext of the original Godlike.

What was your player party like?

So a general thought about the new Extras in Persona and Other Childish Things (referenced here )

Should these Extras be available to the players to place on their Personas from the start? As in should we say "yeah there are like 22 Extras you can put on your guy, go nuts" and leave it?

My worry is that doing so could throw off the simplicity of the game a bit by introducing so many variables.

What if instead the Extras outside of the original 11 can only be gained temporarily as part of the Arcana Boost system? As in you can't just *give* your Persona Brutal on something, but you can get it by invoking your Emperor relationship for an action.

What do we think? Should we give them all to the players to choose from, or keep the trim list from the original game and make these Arcana bonuses?

Incidentally I just saw this post and I'm going to use the phrase "weaponize your subconscious" somewhere in the Persona module because it's amazing.

Arcana that still need to be written up:

>Temperance (see )- Time passes
>The Star- Distance
>The Moon- Longing
>The Sun- Triumph
>Judgment- Final outcome
>The Fool- Carefree ignorance
>The World- Success at hand

The last two, the Fool and the World, I'm including at the end because they aren't necessarily suited to be normal Relationships, but the options should be there if a player or GM wants to use them.

As for the non-traditional Arcana like Hunger and the Aeon, I'm going to include them at the end of the Module along with the other optional rules

Hey I just read the pastebin and I don't understand how this game works.
Is it singleplayer like CYOA?
If not how do I play with friends?
I'm interested in playing superhero in a world gone mad, what's the setting for this?

All the games listed in the OP have actual rulebooks that are all based/expand on the One Roll Engine, the rules you find in the beginning of the OP is just a basic summary of how the One Roll Engine works.
Head over to da archive thread and search the PDF for the games from the OP that sounded interesting, Wild Talents is bretty gud.

It's an Engine, so you get to pick your game for the setting you plan.

What you want is Wild Talents.
Beware though, the Power Building is like throwing your players at biggest and amoral gunstore in the world. If you don't keep a good eye on them, you'll end up with a tank crew, tank included, to beat up a hobo.

This doesn't read like a serious post but in case it is:

>Is it singleplayer like CYOA?
No.

>If not how do I play with friends?
Pretty broad question but this is a good start:
>drivethrurpg.com/product/57975/Wild-Talents-Essential-Edition
You'll need that and some d10s and that's about it.

>I'm interested in playing superhero in a world gone mad, what's the setting for this?
If you buy the non-Essentials 2nd Edition it comes with a built in setting that most people don't care for:
>drivethrurpg.com/product/78394/Wild-Talents-2nd-Edition

Most of us make our own settings, but the system has a couple published settings too.

I'm going to be gone for this evening, so here are some prompts for the thread before I go:

>WILD TALENTS
1. Share the weirdest power you've ever created for a character

2. What's the best mission/job/session or whatever you've ever run?

3. We've tossed around the ideas of one-shots for the game; let's bring that back around. What would you be interested in for a one-shot module?

>MONSTERS AND OTHER CHILDISH THINGS
4. People who've played the game: what's the best monster you or your players ever ran?

5. Persona related: given that every Persona game is set in Japan, how would you run a Persona and Other Childish Things game in America (or some other country)?

6. Still fielding suggestions for the final 4 Extras that we need to fill out our list

>how would you run a Persona and Other Childish Things game in America (or some other country)?
The main difference here would be school and social norms would be vastly different. And even then, different regions would have different ideas on those things.

It's more of a "tell me your idea" prompt. Would you do a big city, inner city type set-up? Or a quiet country town with a lurking evil, something like Stephen King's IT or Twin Peaks?

Could monster and other childish things be used to play a handler/drones game in the style of Robert chew's Big 5 artwork?

I think a rural, or small town setting would be more 'American' in nature. Japanese culture doesn't really facilitate that kind of stuff. Plus, a place where everybody knows each other for better or worse could be a good excuse for the players to poke their noses where they don't belong.

Hell, you could mix the two in a suburban setting, kind of like P4, but with more city thrown in

Hey I'm the guy from last thread that was going to do a small writeup on how arcana works in P1/P2 and I have a question. I only looked at the quickstart rules for Monsters and other childish things and how exactly does this system handle skills? Or more specifically, the skills that are independent of stats. Does the system facilitate spells or anything like that? I'll have the rest written up in a while but I would like something else to chew on while I get this done.

Generally it doesn't- every roll is Stat + Skills, like rolling Face + Connive to lie to someone. However it can be easily modded if you want abilities outside of the Stat+Skill system. All you need is to allow the kid to have a separate dice pool for it, kind of like a monster ability. What sort of things did you have in mind?

The general answer for "can you mod a one roll engine game for this" is "yes" because it's so flexible. Can you be more specific about what you're trying to do? I'm not familiar with that work.

>What sort of things did you have in mind?
Ok I can at least do this part without the chart I was making.

For Persona 1 and 2 characters have a mechanic called Affinity. All characters have their Primary or Signature Arcana, but also have secondary arcana (only in the second game). Since in these games characters can use more than one persona, and more than one arcana of Persona, affinity determines what types of Persona they can use, and what limitations or benefits can occur.

The system also changed between P1 and P2 and I currently had focused on P2.

Persona are graded along the following levels: Great > Good > Normal > Bad > Worst

When equipped a character will have a 25% reduction in SP cost for spells for Persona with Great and Good affinity.
Normal pays the normal SP cost
Bad pays 50% increased SP cost
Worst cannot be equipped by that character.

Great and Good also have higher mutation odds which is another mechanic where Persona may gain increased stats, new abilities, or even evolve after using Fusion spells.

I should mention that while everyone has only one Primary arcana; each character in P2 has 5 Secondary arcana. Secondary Arcana and Primary are all arcana types that they are guaranteed to have 'Great' affinity with. The system also uses the four minor arcana suits (Cups, Swords, Wands, Coins) as persona types. This is what makes the system fo flexible for parties, at any point in time you have overlaps on who can use persona at optimal levels since more than the MC can freely swap you are always able to keep people relevant and persona in play.

What I was thinking was using this as part of the dice pool I read about. So if the system you are making isn't going to be using any mana pool, than maybe instead offer a couple dice for using persona in your primary or secondary types, and removing dice for using your Bad affinity.

To elaborate about what is different between P1 and P2. Persona 1's affinity levels are: Best > Good > Bad > Worst
There is no SP changes based on affinity. And while you can equip Best, Good, and Bad persona. You cannot use Bad affinity persona in combat and can only use their support/healing abilities out of combat.

Affinity also determines if your persona will use their unknown power, which is an ability that only activates on low health. It's something I was never able to reliably use in the game but it's there.

If you want a more detailed look at that one I would recommend the Wiki
megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Affinity_(Persona)

As an aspiring technical writer I have some ideas about how this could be formatted and rearranged to make it clearer, ESPECIALLY for people not already familiar with M&OCT. My concerns are far too specific and nit-picky to send as feedback, but when this project nears completion I hope to dump a ton a flashier and revised version.

If my work is good you yourself will approve of it and it'll catch on, if not it'll drop.

K so ESPECIALLY if we're already bloating our system with Arcanus and damage types I really think we need to NOT invent more Extras. Most of these are poorly balanced and most possible Extras that are mechanically viable, wanted and actually going to get used are in the core books or one of the expansions.

How about each Extra can be accessed through multiple Arcana??? This seems way better to me.

The work is basically artwork of an AU were anti poacher teams work alongside animal-like drones to secure protected wild lands. I havent bought any ORE system games yet but i was wondering how easily the partnership between child and monsters might be able to be tweaked into that of a handler and their animal drone. And if i can use this system to set up a campaign for a team of anti poachers as they traverse and protect a large landscape and track dangerous poachers (most likely with their own drones as well)

Let's start with echo
A trans man (woman? Idk) who started having an identity crisis once their voice stated shifting as hormones became unavailable. Originally just had the ability to mimic voices/sounds and create bubbles of silence (related to her tendency to hide/suppress aspects of themselves), expanded a little bit over time

Shin, the edgy teen with the teleporting knife. Had a dagger that he could teleport to or teleport to him. Grew up in one of the city's more violent slums, had a desperate desire to escape and views violence as the best method of digging his way out. Power isn't that strong yet, but he's decent with a knife, and he's a damn fine scout

Sid, just a dude with more brains and charm (and alcoholism) than he can handle. Keeps the group together as kind of a hobby/ muscle for when he gets in over his head (which happens often)

Alpha, amnesiac with more than a touch of brain damage. Dudes basically feral at this point. Power is basically a werewolf shapeshifter, can slightly modify the forms (emphasize strength over speed, can be weaker but more perceptive, etc) has a bit of healing, bit of extra tough, and can summon wolf minions. Simple, rude, violent, and utterly and completely loyal to those who take care of him. The group tries their best to keep him on a short leash

Windwalker: an ex enforcer for one of the major gangs, decided he'd have better chances moving up in the world in a smaller scene. Superhuman with a bow and arrow, any arrows he touches with his finger gaurd ignore inorganic materials completely, and can sense any objects with spectral arrows up to three miles away. Power comes from an overwhelming desire to kill his old boss, and is unfortunately completely useless for that job. He is unaware of this

1) hat based memetic mind control. If you could perceive his hat, and in fact understood it was a hat, he could implant crude suggestions. Images, drawings, and descriptions of the hat held this power, but either had far less powerful, or far less controlled effects. I basically had to bullshit my way through building it, and I'm sure even that was wrong.
2) best mission I've ever run was when the players had about 5 different goals to go after, and they decided to go after all of them at once. There were half a dozen one on one fights, the players had to do a lot of research and thinking really quickly to figure out who was right for what job, and each job had a bunch of complications and twists along the way, some of them even bled into other jobs. Two pcs died, the players accidentally "resurrected" one of the most dangerous talents to ever live, and failed all but two of the jobs (half win on one of the others). The players talked about it positively for months, and I'm still not sure why.
3) a cool one shot I've always wanted to run involved this talent I made that had a memory consumption and implantation power. The pcs wake up in this cheap run down hotel, no memory of who they are or how they got there. They discover who they are, what their powers are, and why they're there as time goes on, but the potential for twists and fuckery is limitless, but I can't really go into more detail in case one of my players reads this (at least two of them frequent the board, and I'm running this for Halloween)

I'm into this on some real levels. I've messed around with formatting through Scribus but I'm a rank amateur, and I've never actually had any editorial input on anything I've written, so this is an exciting new first! I'd love to hear any input you have.

>How about each Extra can be accessed through multiple Arcana??? This seems way better to me.

...yeah that's a good idea.

We definitely do need SOME new Extras to reflect mechanics vital to Persona, like being able to heal, but needing to literally double our Extras is a tall and unnecessary task. Thanks for the reality check. Especially since the Extras proposed have been very fiddly mechanical ones.

Question: would you say that that there are *any* areas of MaOCT that could be improved or rebalanced, pending changes to the Extras system? Or is it as solid as it seems?

That would 100% work and would be pretty awesome. All you'd need to do is reskin the skills to be less high school and more militant. It's a definite possibility. Tell me more and we can work something out.

These characters are all super evocative of the setting, so nice job with them. Your group is to be commended. So is this still going on?

Interested in how you built Alpha's power and its inherent flexibility. Can you share it?

>1. Nice Hat
That's pretty much the most Jojo power there ever was. Nice job. What kind of hat was it? Or was it even a hat? It raises so many questions...

>2. Failing upwards
This is one of the things I love about Wild Talents. The flow of things can get so chaotic and crazy if your players are willing to just cut loose and it's so deadly that you never quite know who's going to live or die. Do you remember what the goals where?

>3. amnesia one-shot
This is I'd say a perfect idea for a one-shot at a con and as an introduction to the game's mechanics. How do you imagine dolling out the powers? Would it be random or would the players have some say in what they get?

Awe, yay. I'm helping.

Hey every good idea posted here contributes to the final product.

>started having an identity crisis once their voice stated shifting as hormones became unavailable
Technical point: voice is actually, as weird as it may seem, developmental. Trans people and mimics get vocal training to get their voices to shift, it doesn't just do that with hormone therapy. I'm sure you can still run it, just know it will probably be on the mind (and possibly tongue) of some players so address it early or establish a tone of setting wherein small stretches of realism to fit theme are normal or whatever.

I'm so glad. Fiddly bits are the worst.

The core rulebook's Extras are pretty solid, except Awesome which is more than twice as good as any other Extra. I suggest removing Awesome or replacing it with Sweet and the home brew "Exacting" which allows actions with that body part to use the "called shot" mechanic without sacrificing a dice in addition to the dice that's roll is pre-determined. If you want to to replace Awesome entirely, these steps combined with an Extra that adds to the initiative of defensive actions and an Extra that acts as this defensive extra, Sweet, and Gnarly all in one but only costs 2d would replace the "jack of all trades" aspect of Awesome as well.

From "Bigger Bads" Sweet is is pretty solid while many GMs remove Big/Farness and AwesomexMoreThanTwo for being fiddly and broke as hell, respectively. Though I LOVE the idea of having an angel persona that does AOE air damage by flapping its wings, Spray and Splash are useless or moderately OP depending on the encounters one's GM makes and should probably be cut. If either of them can be salvaged it's Spray. Bounce is OK but it should be stressed that one also needs Defend on a part for it to do anything, the vanilla rules leave a LITTLE room for interpretation that should be closed.

Make sure healing costs a finite resource or all heals will have to be "can be used in battle only" which is SHIT in M&OCT, and also note that Assisting (human characters spending their turn on an action that's successes will be increase another PC's dice pool on one action... permitted that action makes sense) is also a helper-type move and could be utilized.

I'm pretty novice as well and most of my expertise comes from a native understanding of... idk... "sectioning" and the way layout affects expectations and chunking. I also had a late-teens fixation on graphic design and was fortunate enough to have very skilled teachers as friends. Once all the technical stuff is squirt away and a rough draft is assembled I'd take it to Adobe InDesign myself, but am already considering and checking out other software.

It's challenging to list all the edits I'm planning in text form, but I suppose I'll have to make a To Do list at some point and you're interested so here goes:

In general:
1) I'd move all the mentions of how this version is different from vanilla and expanded M&OCT on a single page at the front OR the back (depending on how long the doc is) for people already familiar with Monsters to get their bearings of what they need to learn instead of having it dotted throughout the explanations. Though I'd also have the final mechanics described in a way that vanilla and Persona mechanics were visibly separate to someone already familiar with one (in separate paragraphs and signified with key words) but otherwise harmonious. The vanilla book is pretty wordy imo and not terribly well organized, and describing Persona&OCT to a M&OCT virgin would mean abridging that. Fluff must be cut and replaced with broader and less extensive info blobs and word choice modified to better fit the themes of the Persona setting.
2) Better headers and a font that reads better and has more distinction between italicized and non-italicized text seems ideal to me, but stylistic flourishes like that should be left 'till the end. I'd use the original M&OCT core rulebook for a base, but a slightly sleeker more Jpop/modern design (read: slightly different font and framing style) might fit better.

cont:

>cont.

For the character creation: 1) I'd clearly divide "this is a PC/NPC Arcana label, this is what it should means, this is how you pick one" aspect from the "this is a relationship, this is what it's good for" into two different sections even if they were both under the same header. (a paragraph break and a change of subject should do the trick)
2) I'd separate that info about Jung and the history of the Tarot as tool for identifying archetypes in a light-grey colored box off to the side in a smaller font to make it a the-more-you-know kind of thing. I'd also relate it to the need to assign your characters an archetype to spell out to anyone that this was actually relevant and not just a fun fact.

For the Arcana: 1) I'd adjust the text size and spacing of the Arcana pages so that all of a single Arcanum's text is in the same column with no examples running over to the next.
2) I'd also make sure each Arcanum specifically mentions how it might describe or shape a PC and NPC, even if both descriptions are covered with the same sentence, and rearrange those parts so that they're separated consistently such as always summing the archetype up with vague descriptions about how one might see a character of this type as an introduction, a brief sentence about what having this type might say about YOUR character, and then reiterating the point with NPC examples. This would be quite similar to how it is already, but with a bit more order and readability. (it's nitpicky but very important to making sure people remember what was written with only one read) It'd also help us track down descriptions that emphasize a type's roll to a PC or NPC too much or too little.

if decent images of the game's Arcana can be found without those thick grey boarders (but with the roman numerals) I'd use them instead.

Are these descriptions based on Jungian work, the wiki, or traditional Tarot meanings? It's the first one, right?

Bump

My timing it seems is pretty impeccable since today is the second day in a row that I woke up at 6am to workout and saw the thread on page 10.

It's actually a combination of 1 and 3. The italicized portion is Jung's archetypical interpretation of the Arcanum, and I bent the tarot interpretation of the card around that reference point. Personally I wish I had a more comprehensive resource for Jung's archetypes; if anyone can offer their expertise it would be a great boon.

Some good input here.

I'm not too keen on removing Awesome entirely, since the concept of Wiggle Dice/Master Dice is important to most ORE games. One way around it could be how REIGN handles it, which is that when you take a -1d Penalty your Expert and Master Dice, it's equivalent to Awesome and Awesome x2, get dropped from your pool first. So if you have a dice pool of 5d+MD and you take a -1d Penalty you're reduced to just 5d. So maybe make it where Awesome is still awesome but is prone to getting knocked out of your dice pool?

(Also Awesome x1 is exactly the same as making a called shot without a penalty. Reign even goes so far as to say you don't need to follow the Called Shot rules if you have an Expert or Master Die in your pool, because both of those are better than a called shot from the get go).

As a less punishing option we can say "You can't have more than 3 points of Awesome in total on your Persona). Or do both. On top of that we make it so that none of the Arcana can be used to buy temporary points of Awesome.

I agree with dropping Big/Farness and the more elaborate Awesome rules from Bigger Bads. Spray I think is fine as it's a time honored ORE tradition, but maybe nerf its damage output somehow so that while you can hit alot you'll do less damage-- but then we're getting into the territory of Area, so I'm not sure. Let's keep it as it is for now.

Bounce will be clarified.

For healing, I have two thoughts. One is what I already wrote up: that Healing is an Extra you can put on a Useful location that lets you restore dice lost to damage, *but* you can only use per fight/scene for each point of Healing you have. So if you have Healing x3 you can perform a healing action 3 times in a fight.

The other way is actually how I play Wild Talents, which is that healing capacity is dependent on the person *being healed*. In other words if a characters has 3d in Body they can be affected by First Aid at most 3 times in one day.

>1) I'd move all the mentions of how this version is different from vanilla and expanded M&OCT on a single page at the front
Interesting idea. Right now I'm writing up sections 3a and 3b about how Personas are different from Monsters, as I think it's important to establish in very clear terms from the get go. Essentially what we need to convey to someone familiar with Persona is that not *every* rule and mechanic from the games are translated to the tabletop, but that the total result is that the experience of Persona is preserved and optimized for the platform. For instance you never really interact with your Persona in any meaningful way outside of combat in the games, whereas the expectation of MaOCT is that you'll be constantly interacting with your monster. Now you CAN play this module without any interaction with your Persona and it will still work just fine, but I want to communicate that this isn't using the game to fullest.

>2) Better headers and a font that reads better and has more distinction between italicized and non-italicized text
Brother you are speaking my language. Fonts and typesetting is kind of an obsession of mine, so much so that I'm actually trying to get AWAY from it during the design stage in order to focus on content. Also for Persona in particular it's tricky because all of the games have extremely different aesthetics, so we need to settle on a font and style that is both evocative of Persona without favoring one specific game.

Thanks for the kind words man.

Alpha has 4 powers, first is modified alternate shapes from the book, the one all other powers are attached to. It's literally the exact power with If/Then (only for wolf forms) -1, and focus+ Irreplaceable due to being an artifact user.

Extra tough and regeneration are vanilla
But with attached and focus plus one level, so while super cheap, they only work in wolf form

His minion power is vanilla, except they have an attached attack to represent their bites, it looks like this

A+3: limited damage (killing) -1, touch only -2, focus(irreplaceable) -3, attatched (summon wolves) -2, go first(2) +2, penetration(2) +2.

They deal a lot of damage once he gets the ball rolling. Downside is he doesn't actually have any solid means of controlling them besides sheer intimidation, which means he normally has to kill them himself when the fights over, since they usually wind up causing trouble.

>For the Arcana
What about something like this? It goes from 5 Arcana per page to 4, and it gives a little more space for description. I want to keep our economy of words tight-- to be as brief as possible without glossing over important elements. Which is my concern about "If You are the Magician..." or whatever, because it could make this bit even longer. With this format we're already gaining a whole extra page.

I could maybe put all of the descriptions for If You are the... together on one page, to preserver the flow. Not sure.

So basically you took alternate forms and used that if/then to say "he can turn into anything as long as it's basically wolf-like". Nice solution.

>They deal a lot of damage once he gets the ball rolling. Downside is he doesn't actually have any solid means of controlling them besides sheer intimidation, which means he normally has to kill them himself when the fights over, since they usually wind up causing trouble.
Oh man that's great, I may have to use something like that sometime.

What I like best about this is how nicely your players slotted their characters in theme and atmosphere of the game. Everyone you're describing is clearly on the outer fringes of civilized society. For some reason it's giving me flashes of Akira, of all things.

It was a top hat, notable in the fact that it appeared to have eyes if you looked at it from the corner of your eye. Besides being an artifact, it was a completely normal hat

2) the goals were as follows
A) break alpha out of prison, and grab the biker artifact they have on the way
B) find carburetor, heal his brain damage, hope to god he has a grudge against jack for inflicting the brain damage. I still have no idea how they thought this one would go well
C) help some relic hunters break into a vault so they'll give us one of the biker artifacts they have. If they don't, shake them down
D) go to the dude in charge of keeping paranormal shit in check, tell him the bikers are coming to rob/kill him. So obviously we need to rob him first. For safety
E) there was a fifth one, but I forget

Sorry hit post by accident
3) the powers are pre set, but they're pretty flexible. Since I know my players I know what type of powers they'll prefer, if I didn't know I'd probably just ask a few questions and hand them the appropriate sheet.

I kinda forgot to mention, the sheets are blank until you try to do something. You literally know nothing about yourself, so might not work super well at a con

Honestly no ones questioned it. One of my players is big into LGTB stuff, but I guess she just didn't know. No one else in the group really knows the stuff well enough to call it out, including me.

Thank you for the info

That's actually pretty close to be honest, and yeah I love my players, they can be a bit much to handle sometimes, but we're all friends IRL, so we get lots of chances to talk things over

I forgot to mention that the setting is actually pretty close to an almost rebuilt post apocalypse, if that helps you picture it at all.

I just realized I forgot to go over the districts

Oh hey this thread's back. Read through godlike since the last thread I was in, I'll be running a oneshot for some friends come next weekend.

No worries, hit us up. Yeah that's absolutely the vibe I'm getting so I guess my feeling of "Neo-Orleans is about to E-X-P-L-O-D-E" is pretty on the money.

>1. Share the weirdest power you've ever created for a character
Maybe not the weirdest, but I made a dream manifestation power that let the character create real versions of objects from his subconscious (ala Psychic Artifacts). The kicker was that it functioned off a token based economy that would build up as he used it and would only bleed off when: 1) he slept, giving him terrible nightmares (no Willpower recovery amongst other things), 2) it would twist his manifestations in unsuspected ways or 3) at high token levels his power would gain the Uncontrollable flaw and start twisting the world around him with abandon.

You planning to use one of the published modules or something you cooked up?

Glad to have another disciple on-board. I'm incredibly pleased that there's an actual discussion of this system and these games on /tg, where before I felt like I was screaming int the abyss.

I'll be reading over the one offs that some user from the last thread told me about. I'll likely use one of them or steal their pregens and ideas. Depends on how much time I have, but I've run military scenarios at cons before so who knows.

There's a good one about regular military vs. German talents. I can't remember the title though.

Ok so let's do the district where the players first met up, and go in order

>The Slums
The prime residential district of the city. It's entirely hyper dense urban sprawl up and down, with thousands of petty gangs, cults, survivalist, and straight up nutjobs trying to get their start. Ironically, despite the absolutely insane level of crime, this district is probably the best place for a group of talents to start out. Stronger talents don't normally stick around in the slums, since there's no real reason for them too, there's always someplace to loot for gear, and The Law always has a bounty or case they need help with.

The Law is the dominant faction in this part of the city, the remnants of the city's old police/military forces, and a good number of recruits to make up for their insane turn over rate. They have a rather complex history, and their current leader has some controversy around him (since he used a major disaster to sieze power), but corruption is kept surprisingly low all things considered. They've given up on maintaining conventional law in the slums, only able to really deal with the gangs who try to be slum lords, and the outside gangs trying to creep in. The rely heavily on Bounty hunters and private detectives to supplement their forces, and in rare cases, making deals with the more benign groups of criminals (an example I normally give, The Law has a really good relationship with this band of super thieves called the rovers, they're thieves, yes, and no, they probably won't reform, but they try not to kill people, they stay under the radar, and they generally go out of their way to be a positive infliuence on their community (if only to buy loyalty))

Now I do want to address /why/ the slums are so violent. It isn't just because people are assholes, it has a lot to do with resource scarcity and how people survive there.

A basic example, since you can't really grow food in the slums (or at least not enough), people will often flock to (1/2)

Found it. "One O'Clock Wake Up", it's on DriveThru as PWYW.

Talents that have some method of feeding them, or gangs that control arable land/can raid enough food to support them. Well, the problem with the first is you've built your community on one, easily removable, person. if they go down the entire community is at risk of collapsing (assuming here that everyone grabbed talents for other roles. Also healers/matter generators are pretty rare to begin with), which leads to raiders usually, which perpetuates the cycle. Gangs skip the collapse step, and just become targets for the powerful/desperate, not to mention they normally conflict with The Law regularly. There's other reasons, but this one I feel helps illustrate what the average slum community looks like a little bit.

Well thank you, I'll add that to the read through list. I do love the idea of grunts, but will likely run something with talent pcs just for the sake of trying the system in full. Though that does remind me of the more successful of those con one shots.

2 squads of regular dudes was the best character (everyone else being ww1 supersoldiers and their handler).