/ore/ One Roll Engine General

Yeah, they call it Guts in P5.

Let's get some Wild Talents talk going too up in here.

1. How's your campaign going?

2. Wild Talents has a dearth of published one shots, which is sort of a problem for people getting into it. We talked a little bit a few threads ago about prospective WT One Shots, so let's bring it up again. How would you approach a WT one-shot?

3. Do you use any home-brewed subsystems in your game?

4. Let's share some more powers and miracle equipment

5. Any newcomers to the system, feel free to ask questions about how to do stuff or make stuff work. In my opinion this thread is the best when we're helping people grasp the basics of the ORE and see why it's such a cool system.

Does ORE emulate OWoD stuff well? I've been thinking of trying it out with Mage

>3. Do you use any home-brewed subsystems in your game?

There are a couple systems that my group uses fairly regularly and one that I'm working on right now.

First is a system for simulating parties, galas, clubs, etc... You put together a 1-10 list like this one that I used for a recent session (it's a spot crude since I sketched it out in like 5 minutes for a midnight party at a downtown hub)

1- Crazy partiers
2- Drug Offer
3- Stumbling into a fight
4- Coming onto
5- Rumors
6- Actual Intel
7- Invited to a store
8- Rumors
9- Gang stuff
0- Close call with exposure

Then you roll some dice based on how crowded the area you're in; if you're on the edge of the crowd you roll like 5d, whereas if you're in the thick of it you could roll around 10d.

Your matched Sets tell you what is happening TO you, while your Loose dice say what's happening around you. Width tells you how intense the interaction is, and potentially how much Width you'd need to roll to escape or defuse it.

So someone trying to avoid attention rolls 5d and gets a 2x3, then we describe it as him walking past an alleyway where a couple of drunk guys are slugging it out. If he managed to get a more intense 3x3, then it could be a real nasty beat down.

Someone in the middle of the crowd, meanwhile, rolls a 2x2, a 3x7 and a 2x9-- drug offer, invited into a store and gang activity. These could be interpreted as separate events, OR they could be a single event: the character gets lured or swept into a head-shop by someone linked to one of the city's major gangs.

Probably though I'm not familiar with any direct mods of it. I know that there's a ORE Exalted conversion which uses Storyteller, and anecdotally Greg Stolze invented the ORE after working with oWoD and brainstorming about its resolution system, so they're blood related.

>Exalted
Solar! uuaaaAHH!
Fighter of Abyssal, uuaaaAHH!
Champion of the Sun, uuaaaAHH!
You're a Master of Karate,
And Friendship- For Everyone!!

So thoughts concerning Persona combat, One-More and All Out Attacks.

>They should be included...
The vast majority of Persona players coming into this game are going to expect these mechanics to be a part of the combat engine in one form or another. They're as much a part of the game as Social Links.

>...but they're super broken as-is...
The whole point of One-More and All Out Attacks is that by paying attention to your enemies and building your party correctly, you can pretty much trivialize most fights you come across. This is great when combat ends in 12 seconds, but that's not going to happen in a tabletop game.The last thing we want to do is to have every fight boil down to the same repetitious actions that leads to a total route of the enemies. It's boring and poor game design.

>...so they need to be modified
Here's how I'm looking at it:

1. Whenever you hit an enemy's Elemental Weakness, you have an opportunity to use One More Set that you rolled. If you don't roll another Set, then you don't get to take advantage of this system, which makes fights more dynamic and less predictable.

2. Your One More Set can be used for one of the following actions:

2a. You can use it to launch a second attack against another enemy on the field

2b. You can use it to Knock Down the guy you just hit for Width-1 Rounds. Knocked Down enemies lose 1d from their roll unless they spend an entire turn righting themselves.

3. If all the enemies on the field are Knocked Down, the players can make an immediate All Out Attack. They do this by creating a dice pool of 1d for each player and adding everyone's Beat-Down dice. One player then rolls this pool (whoever declared the All Out Attack) and the players narrate how they wreck the enemies, with each Set rolled going to a different target.

>OP pic doesn't have Maya in it
bad fucking post there buddy

So, Shadows.

I'm thinking that shadows should be divided into two categories: Minor and Major.

Minor Shadows are your Jack Frosts, Pixies, Succubi and the like. The stuff you'd fight in a random encounter in a Persona game. Alternately you can go the Persona 3-4 route and have these things be weird abstract stuff like tanks and giant floating mouths. Either way they represent basic negative thoughts, emotions and mental conditions.

Major Shadows are suited to be boss and minibosses for dungeons, palaces or whatever your game's world is built from. They are more complex because they represent the specific problems, fear and issues that people have.

A Minor Shadow has a single dice pool where all its qualities are located. This means that Minor Shadows are only good at one or two things, but fights against them are designed for you to have to contend with more than one at once. A Minor Shadow has a Point Cost which tells you the total cost of its dice pool, as a sum of its actual dice and extras. A Minor Shadow's Arcana also gives it one free Extra

So Jack Frost could look like this:

Jack Frost (6 pt Magician). . . . . . . .5d
>Attacks (Ice, *Fire*), Useful (icy tricks)
Resist: Ice, Weak: Fire

It's total point cost is 6: 5 for its dice pool plus one for a Useful Quality. Since Jack Frost is a Magician it gets a free Element extra (indicated by the * * around Fire), allowing it to attack with a second element. It can't defend or heal itself but it's a decently varied attacker. Any attack aimed at Jack Frost will sap its 5d pool, so it's pretty weak.

In contrast, Major Shadows are built like Personas, with a full array of hit locations and dice. That allows the GM to custom tailor them to the person that spawns them.

How does that look?

>4. Let's share some more powers and miracle equipment
Here are a couple pieces I put together for a character named Tox. She's basically a Plague Doctor from Darkest Dungeon, complete with the beak mask. Previously her weapons were a pair of pistols that fired capsules full of fugu poison that would knock guys out after three rounds, but we found that it was leading her towards a very passive play-style (fugu a dude, then avoid his attacks until it went off), and if the target passed his Endurance Check it made the whole thing meaningless.

Instead we cooked up these, which make her even MORE of a plague doctor.

Nightshade Rifle 8d+wd (1 pt per die; 12 pts)
>Attacks Extras and Flaws [Attached-2 (Toxicology), Duration+2, Limited Damage-1, Focus-1, Depleted-2] Capacity: Range
Effect: Tox’s Nightshade Rifle is a gas powered hypodermic needle gun loaded with a supply of poison rendered from deadly Belladona toxin. Before each shot, Tox must make a Toxicology roll to configure the dosage, which is done with a very precise dial on the rifle’s side.

A successful Set inflicts 2 Killing to the target location (regardless of the Width rolled). On each roll that follows, the target takes 2 Shock to his Torso until he makes an Endurance roll at a difficulty of 5.

The Nightshade Rifle comes with a supply of 12 darts.

Aspirin Grenades 7d (4 pts per die; 28 pts)
>Attacks Extras and Flaws [Daze+2, Area+3, Focus-1, Depleted-2, Radius+2, if/then-1(requires inhalation or skin contact, if/then-1 (damage is from Area only)] Capacity: Range
Effect: Tox’s “Aspirin” Grenades are vials of pressurized salicylic acid. They explode when thrown, drenching anyone in a 10-foot radius with the stuff. The only damage is caused by the grenade’s Area 3 Killing effect, but the acid’s effect induces nausea and disorientation, Dazing her targets for Width in Rounds.

Tox normally carries a supply of 7 Aspirin Grenades.

I like both Shadows and All Out Attack. Not sure about One More

What are you thinking about One More? Too unpredictable?

Here's the Preface to the combat chapter. I wanted to write something that would help people who were only really familiar with Persona to understand how combat is going to play out if they're brand new to tabletop games, since it could potentially be a huge swing going from the video games.

So here are the basic points we need to hit for the combat section:

1. Character and Persona Attacks
2. Weapons
3. Elemental Warfare
4. One-More, Hold Up and All-Out Attacks
5. Useful Buffs and Debuffs

How does that read? Anything we're obviously missing?

This is good
Are we gonna make all the Persona usual attacks? It should be simple. Adding dice every stronger stage of the Power.
Also I wanted yo add some Arcana specific abilities that should differenciate every Arcana a little more. Or maybe powers that are "stronger against X Arcana but weaker against Y Arcana and has an extra effect against Z Arcana"

I am guessing Arcana unique abilities os better since the Arcana weakness and strenght feature depends in encountering enemies of certain arcana something that can never happen since there are 22 arcanas

Maybe something like: Magician has 1 extra dice in the beggining for an elemental attack and 1 more dice foro the same each time he gets so much stronger

Or having abilities that cant be normaly used for Battle. I was thinking since the beggining that The World Personas can interact with the physical World normaly. Maybe the Fool Arcana can act as one Arcana that he wants once a day irá different one each day (with the exception of the World that maaybe can also have a stronger versión oficial this ability. The Justice Arcana maybe can know when someone is lying or breaking an specific Code of rules that your social link Justice Guy has. Maybe the Tower can being "bad Luck" to someone or smell when something bad is happens. Maybe Lovers can make someone like someone else for a day or know what soemeone feels for you. And so on and so on.

>Are we gonna make all the Persona usual attacks?
I wasn't planning on it, because I'm not really sure it adds much. Skullcracker is better than Lunge so why bother with Lunge at all? Those kind of gradually improved skills don't really fit into tabletop games. The idea of "Better Ice Magic" or "Better Physical Attack" is captured by the use of Gnarly on your Persona's attack Qualities in the first place, and you can boost them further by feeding Relationship Arcana to your Persona (giving you bonus dice and/or bonus Extras depending on the Arcana).

The basic idea I have is that since we have 20 regular Arcana and 10 Extras that are relevant to combat (ignoring Awesome which is The Best Extra and therefore excluded from the list), each Extra is attached to two Arcana. So Wicked Fast could be linked with, say, The Chariot and Fortune, while Gnarly is linked to The Emperor and The Tower, as examples. These influence both Shadows (Shadows get a free Extra based on their Arcana) and Personas (Personas can get a single use of an Extra by eating Arcana linked to it).

This is an interesting idea but generally would be governed by a Persona's useful abilities. It's worth discussing though.

It should be a free Useful ability. One that is not combat centerer. I think It should be in the manual at least as a optional rule (well, all rules in all tabletop rpgs are optional)

The Nain splat Stolze wrote for Reign has a more freeform magic style that could be adapted to Mage. It's not the same but had a similar feel to me and feels like iy could convert fairly easy.

1. on hiatus currently since everyone is busy for the foreseeable future
2. I have an entire setting full of places and characters I will likely never use, but for non setting specific one shots, you're part of the cops/heroes, you're on patrol, it's a bad night. cue string of fights/mysteries.

3. A ton actually. the big ones are having broad pre-established archetypes, and powers based on your characters unconscious desires/fears.

4. I could stat try stating my party from memory? Or the "loot" powers I use?

very cool! would you mind if i used this?what would a major shadow look like?something about this is setting off alarms in my head, but I honestly can't think of anything I honestly object to here.

It's still very cool, thank you for sharing

>what would a major shadow look like?
either one of the arcana shadows from P3 or an "I'm you" shadow from P4.
Basically, a "boss".

In Persona 5, the Shadows of the heroes took forms based on their personas. Likewise in 5, a lot of people's shadows take the form of personas/demons.

A Major Shadow's probably a Persona that's become twisted through something. Often by belonging to someone without any Social Links/Relationships. The lack of any connections to others has led the Persona to effectively take over. Their favorite thing has become a driving urge.

This can lead to physical mutation, or the Shadow assuming their user's form, or a mixture of the two.

Er, I meant Persona 4 for that first one.

Maybe if one of your Personas (if you have more than one) is killed off (having one of your body parts and one of his adjacents without dice) then It becomes a Shadow and the only way yo retrieve It is to make your Social Link better again and defeating the Shadow.

A Major Shadow is any kind of boss monster, including the Arcana Shadows from Persona 3, the character Shadows from Persona 4 and the Deadly Sin Shadows from Persona 5, as well as any kind of unique boss, miniboss or enemy in general that the GM wants to cook up to menace the players.

Can you elaborate on "loot" powers?

The fact MaOCT already has guts as a stat probably tipped the scales that way.

An interesting thing to keep in mind and that I think people forget because MaOCT doesn't get enough play is that Guts is the hit location with the biggest range of numbers, so it's your main damage buffer, of sorts

Yeah it works nicely for combat in that the most likely way a conflict will end is that you either socked a guy in the stomach hard enough to knock him flat, or you intimidated him enough that he loses the will to fight. Both of which are guts. It's very elegant.

Look what I found

ah right sorry.

loot powers would be things like vials of mutagen, or borderlands style shield generators.

technically speaking, they're miracles/hyperstats in a form that can be found/interacted with in the game world.

the example i used last time was a mutagen that granted a small healing factor/limb regen upon consumption, but carried the risk of causing physical deformations

is that the one we made?

Bump

Is am old one from Veeky Forums A group is going to play It near me.It is too videogaming foro muy taste.

Yeah this is pretty much "We copied the numbers from Persona 4 directly and added a d6 roll to them". There's also a lot of unnecessary cruft too, like a lengthy Merits and Flaws list (4 pages of them, including stuff like being Multi-Lingual and having an Addiction) and a Social Link Ranking system pulled directly from the game without really paying much attention to how it would work on the table. It's an interesting piece but I think what we're building will be better (if only by virtue of being an adaptation of a working system).

>very cool! would you mind if i used this?
Sure thing! It's a great way to run scenarios that will surprise even the GM, and it cuts down on the amount of prep-work he needs to do since the dice helps you along.

>something about this is setting off alarms in my head, but I honestly can't think of anything I honestly object to here.
It could be how I interpreted Limited Damage; in the RAW the rules say that you choose to inflict either Shock or Killing, not Both as an Attacks quality would normally have. The way my group uses it is just to say "this attack deals less damage than it normally does."

So, Combat.

In MaOCT, the expectation is that Kids and Monsters fight alongside each other, with Monsters ripping and tearing each other apart while the Kids sling insults, encouragement and insight.

That's not exactly how it works in Persona, and I'm thinking it should be changed for a couple of reasons.

First is that by having Personas and Users acting independently, you're doubling the number of actions everyone needs to manage, which slows down combat significantly.

Secondly, it's more true to the source material. In the games you choose whether you or your Persona will attack during your turn

Third, it makes sense with for the theme of Persona itself. Your Persona is your armor and sword against the unknown and harmful, so it acts in your behalf to protect you.

Here, then is the idea:

On your turn you can choose either to have your Persona User do a thing, or Evoke the Persona and have it perform an action. Here's the important part: whichever action you choose determines who your enemy can target. If your Persona attacks, then it's making itself a target for the enemy. If your User acts, then he or she becomes the target.

Naturally this makes acting with your Persona the preferred move, but that's true for the games as well. Most of the time you want to be attacking with your Persona, not with your party directly, but there are edge cases that make it worth the risk.

What do we think about this?

As an outsider, would it not make sense to combine the Arcana sections? Make them describe how the Arcana applies to people and Persona, and how to use them in your plots.

That's something I floated back in a previous thread but the general preferenced seemed to be keeping the Arcana relevant for each section in those sections, since it means you can read the book clear through to get a strong understanding of the elements at play. But nothing is set in stone yet.

i think that may have been it, but that's still a pretty valid interpretation of it i think

Here's another Persona character I whipped up while waiting for Nintendo's E3 show:

HUDSON POOLE
Arcana: The Emperor
Persona: Gilgamesh

>BIO: The half-black, half-caucasian son of a chef and a doctor, Hudson is a charismatic punk of a kid who's a thorn in both parent's side. His stubborn refusal to stick to the Lifeplan for Success that his parents laid out for him has resulted in his being transferred to a new school for a "fresh start", which he rapidly squandered, in their eyes, by immediately forming a punk rock band with a squdron of underachievers from his automotive maintainence class.

DILIGENCE. . . . . . .3d (Beat-Down 1d, P.E 1d, Block 1d)
GUTS. . . . . . . . . . . .3d (Courage 1d, Fighting 2d)
PROFICIENCY. . . . .3d (Shop 1d, Guitar 2d)
BRAINS. . . . . . . . . .2d (Academics 1d, Notice 1d)
FACE. . . . . . . . . . . .4d (Charm 2d, Connive 1d, Put-Down 1d)

RELATIONSHIPS
Lancet 2d (Star)- Hudson's punk/hip-hop fusion band
Francis Poole 2d (Hanged Man)- Hudson's Dad, who works himself to the bone at his hospital
Nadiya Poole 2d (Lovers)- Hudson's Mom, who's had to make tough choices to keep the family together

Yeah. I like that for the most part. But how would evoking work? Your Persona stays for the duration of the whole round? Or maybe for as long you want? Also what edge should using your own character have? Maybe Personas cant be evoked outside the Shadow World (unless veryn strong, or the World Arcana, or both, or neither). Maybe Personas cant interact with things that doesnt have a concious (like people, Personas, Shadows and some animals). Maybe Personas arent as strong against non-Shadow/non-Personas (have a dice or 2 less).
Also should we make the game more mortal than MaoCT? The base game is nor very mortal at all and maybe for the kind of adventures one would want to do in a Persona game there must have some kind of real danger/difficulty. Not very mortal, just enough to make it feel more challenging.

GILGAMESH
Arcana: The Emperor

ORIGIN: Gilgamesh is the titular hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian poem. The brutal, tempermental king of Uruk, the Epic tells of how Gilgamesh's wrath is tempered and he learns to be a civilized ruler.

APPEARANCE: Gilgamesh is a towering figure of stone, flesh and greenish metal riding atop a horned lion. He has four arms: one holds a stone tablet bearing his epic, another a mace that doubles as a microphone, and the last two cradle a sick double-necked bass guitar. Gilgamesh wears a golden crown containing the wild man (and Gilgamesh's closest friend) Enkidu.

FAVORITE THING: Breaking things
EVOCATION: Hudson summons Gilgamesh by strumming out a face-melting lick on his guitar.

RESIST: Earth
WEAK: Water

HIT LOCATIONS

1-2. . . . . . Royal Horned Lion 7d
>Useful (roaring beast), Defends, Attacks, Gnarly x1
3-4 . . . . . Epic Slab 7d
>Defends, Tough x2, Bounce
5 . . . . . . . Noisy Mace 4d
>Attacks (Earth), Useful (voice applification)
6-8 . . . . . Double Bass Guitar 8d
>Attacks (Electric), Awesome x2, Useful (irresistable bass), Sweet, Gnarly x2, Tough x1
9-10. . . . . Crown of Uruk 8d
>Useful (Enkidu's cage), Tough x2

Evoking is purely a flavor thing, as well as potentially a mechanical aspect if you need some object to perform it (as in the example I posted, if Hudson doesn't have his guitar he can't Evoke Gilgamesh). You don't need to perform a separate action to Evoke a Persona, it's part of commanding it to do a thing. As long as your Persona is out there doing stuff, it's Evoked, but if you don't command it then it vanishes.

Doing other stuff while also Evoking your Persona to act requires Multiple Actions-- so it can be done, it's just harder.

Whether you can use your Personas outside of the Shadow World (or whatever) is pretty much up to the GM, since it varies by game. In Personas 1 and 2 there was no separate Shadow world, so Personas could influence the real world directly. In Persona 3 it's kind of ambiguous, since at least the Strega chick was imperiled by her own Persona. Persona 4 and 5 were much stricter in that regard.

The main advantages that a User has over his or her Persona is that they are a tiny, fleshy human instead of a giant glowing god, so there are places and things they can do that a Persona might not be able to. On top of that, in the MaOCT RAW, Monsters kind of have one-track minds and can't comprehend things like Toilets and Cars. Similar a Persona isn't super capable of doing much outside of what his Useful Qualities allow him to do, or at least not very well. An actual human character has a lot more flexibility in that respect.

Take the Asmodeus fight in Persona 5. At a certain point you can send one of your party members off to steal the Treasure while the others distract the boss. It works because the party member is small and easily missed, instead of being a giant floating ghost pirate.

Does that make sense?

So a game question:
Should players all choose a joint theme for their personas? Such as 3's Greek Mythology, 4's Japanese Mythology, or 5's Thieves?

And other than mythoses, what would make good themes for teams?

I added a second page to the Combat section covering the major way that the module is streamlining combat, as I laid out in this post here. It's the last bit of expository text I'm going to write for the Combat section before we get into actual rules for playing. I hope it's not too self-indulgent but I think it's important for establishing the feel of the game.

I'd say that's ideal but in no way required. Firstly because it's not likely that everyone playing the game will have the same cultural points of reference or knowledge, and second because a Persona should be meaningful to its user, and requiring that someone choose a figure that player doesn't really know anything about is a burden on roleplaying.

Of course if everyone's totally in on it then that's awesome.

As for alternate themes, I think Literary figures is definitely a good way to go. I loved how Persona 5 threw open those doors and I'm sure that a lot of players would probably find themselves leaning in that direction.

Is the Wild Talents GM running the superhero academy thread still around? I'd love to hear about that.

Also the MaOCT guy doing the Horror Monsters at Catholic School game too.

Maybe. But I dont know. I think normal people should have a mechanic that gives them some sort of small edge in combat. Like something that wont come out very often but that will.
Great. And I love you adding the fighting for everyone's souls section.

>Like something that wont come out very often but that will.

That's kind of covered in the Physical Damage types sidebar that I just wrote up for the Weapons rules for the Combat section. Check'em

Yeah. I like that. But why a player would want to be weak against a physical attack when there is no real reason to be resistent ti one.

They don't need to be weak to anything, and they're fully in control of what their weaknesses are during the Persona creation stage. The only rule is that you must have one Weakness for each Resistance you have.

There's been a bit of discussion of this on the Discord, but one thing observed is that most of the "modern" games feature a mythos structured around a mythos narrative. Both P3 and P4 feature protagonist persona that are a subject of a "descent to the underworld". P5 doesn't really use a typical mythos narrative, but has a Phantom Thief theme structure around taking treasure.

I think if you pick a mythos grouping then you also want to pick out a structuring narrative; some sort of way to frame adventures in the world of the unconscious.

Some ideas (reposting from the Discord):
1) Arthurian Legend
Sample Personas: Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, Bedivere, Morgana Le Fay, Merlin, Nimue, etc.

Narrative Themes:
Quest for the Grail - The Grail represents the culmination of human desire and longing, at lies in the depths of the world of the unconscious. The PCs are not the only ones seeking the Grail but are competing with other malevolent forces who seek it for their own ends

2) Sumerian Mythology
Sample Personas: Enkidu, Enlil, Gilgamesh, Inanna, Dumuzi

Narrative Themes
Inanna's descent into the Underworld - Campaign theme could be about saving/aiding others in need

Theft of the Tablets of Destiny - Like the Arthurian Grail campaign, the Tablets may represent some facet of collective humanity, but in this case the plot objective has already been stolen and must be recovered

Clearly I need to hang out in the discord more because those are some great ideas for campaign structure

How do you like my Gilgamesh persona I posted earlier?

I think it works pretty well - it melds elements of the mythic with the elements of the character's personal experience.

It does make me think of ways to build on - I think what a campaign also benefits from thinking about is that "common bond" that the PCs share. By default in most of the modern games this is easy enough - all the playable cast are usually high schoolers.

But Hudson Poole, posted above, might feature in an alternate game where all the characters are musicians of some sort, for example.

Still, the great difficulty with trying to emulate Persona is that a lot of the feel of the games comes from the fact that they're highly scripted single player experiences which weave in a lot of intertextuality and heavy themes into a narrative whole. It's hard to make that play nice with an emergent, story-by-committee format - at least, not without avoiding some level of railroading.

I'm going to GM Wild Talents in a couple of weeks and the setting I chose is "Military academy for Talented, in a world where everyone has a Talent.". It would be a low-power cinematic game. I need help on deciding the point level. Do you think 150 would be enough? The characters would be young adults and I plan on giving them quite some points during the game to show how much they've progressed.

Any other general tips? Maybe someone already ran a similar setting and could share experiences.

That's a kind of neat idea.

Of course it's interesting that most of the Mesopotamian Personas are from the generation before the gods. Apsu, Tiamat, Kingu, for instance.

Split that 150 point total into points stats and skills and points for powers (125/25 or 100/50, depending on how you want to do things). Try to make sure that people have 5D+ in shit they want to be able to do reliably, they'll probably have to specialize a bit early on.

We really should make some adventures (modules) like this after the game os finished.

What discord? Can you share the invite?

Not a huge fan of needing to use Diligence + Beat Down against unharmed foes. It makes sense if they're fully stationary but wouldn't that mean that someone dropping their weapons is actually a better form of defense than being armed in some cases?

Here's a bunch of 25 points power sets I made for dumping onto people, could be useful for NPCs or PCs if people want.

The Discord should be in the OP

The Discord is not in the OP; for now you can get in using: discord.gg/Dx9uDg

Permanent invite to the Persona Module Development Discord for the next thread (please include in OP): discord.gg/aWZMuZP

I can definitely provide some input on this tomorrow morning. It's a real cool idea that WT would do great with.

That's actually the point! If you discern that your opponent is a way better fighter than you are, you may be better off throwing down your weapon to de-escalate the situation, and hoping that their sense of fairness prevails (i.e. having more Fighting than Beat-Down). Of course you could be wrong and they end up being equally as vicious as they are skilled (Good Beat-Down in addition to good Fighting), so it's not a sure thing.

It's inspired by a mechanic in A Dirty World. To attack someone in a fair fight you roll Vigor + Courage, but to beat on inferior fighters you roll Vigor + Wrath.

Speaking of the next thread, I'm thinking it may be a good idea to just include the stuff in the pastebin depository in the 2nd post as an extended OP. That way it's accessible to more people. I feel like it probably gets overlooked by more readers than it should.

One lasts thought for tonight: what if we call the Persona module "The Velvet Book" as a reference to Carl Jung's Red Book and Black Books that are kind of the inspiration for a lot of Persona in the first place.

Here's the first entry in the Black Books. Tell me this doesn't give you Persona chills:

>My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you–are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again....

>Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. ... My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude.

Thanks a lot.

Alright, I'll be waiting. I'm curious to hear what other have done with such a setting.

I understand its value in that context, and it is neat but consider this example: Epic fight under the rain against your sworn enemy, who murdered your family and is trying to murder you. You're both wielding swords until you disarm him, and he continues to try and kill you.

You'd usually expect an unharmed opponent to be in a far worse position than an armed one by default, or at least in the vast majority of times. That's why people have weapons in the first place. Like this, it'd actually be viable assuming people have Guts + Fighting higher than Diligence + Beat Down.

Meanwhile from what I understood, ranged weapons suffer no such penalty, so throwing a rock is always golden.

This might just be years of dealing with systems that treat weapons as a + to everything, but lowering your blade and expecting a sense of fairness in your opponent to save you seems like a very setting dependent action.

Some fair points made here, but the scenario you're describing really is not something you'd encounter in either a Monsters and Other Childish Things game or, frankly, a Persona game. Your enemies aren't normal dudes you have a vendetta against, they're otherworldly products of human misery. If your nemesis is a guy who killed your family, your GM isn't going to have you fight him in the rain on the street, you're going to fight him on the street, you're going to contend with him in the shadow world, and when you defeat his shadow he's going to reform and turn himself into the cops or throw himself off a building.

But for the sake of your argument, let's say it does go down like that. I'm going to adjust the wording in the weapons chapter to say that you can only use Beat Down if your opponent isn't trying to fight back. If you disarm your enemy and he keeps swinging, you can still roll Fighting. But if he holds his hands up in surrender, well now it's a question of what kind of person are you? Will you strike an unarmed man, or try a different approach?

It's also worth noting that a disarmed person is still plenty dangerous because he can attack you emotionally. If you keep your sword and prepare to attack, your enemy could roll Face + Put-Down to call you a coward, and if he hits your Guts then it's as nasty as being slashed across your chest and you may drop your weapon anyway.

> If your nemesis is a guy who killed your family, your GM isn't going to have you fight him in the rain on the street, you're going to fight him on the street, you're going to contend with him in the shadow world, and when you defeat his shadow he's going to reform and turn himself into the cops or throw himself off a building.

This sentence got screwed up since I walked away from my laptop for a second and lost my place. Should say "your GM isn't going to have you fight him in the rain on the street, you're going to contend with him in the shadow world..."

Didn't want my point blunted by illiteracy.

Alright first off, what said is absolutely correct. If you plan to have a setting where everyone is roughly on the same page you should silo-off Talent points vs regular stat and skill points as their own. Since you specified that it's a low power campaign 125/25 should work pretty nicely.

As for General Tips:

---Wild Talents can be a pretty deadly system. By default, offensive super powers deal Width in Shock and Killing which can put someone in the hospital really fast. If you want to restrain this, to keep it lower powered, be sure to make good use of the Limited Damage flaw or keep dice pools with that kind of damage output under 7d.

---Pay attention to Loyalties and Passions. When I started playing the game I made the mistake of taking them pretty lightly, but since then I've made sure that I hit one of those for each character about once per session. It really keeps the players engaged and rewards them for good role-playing.

---If you want to keep things from getting out of control, never allow your players to have Wiggle Dice in their Stats. Skills and miracles only.

---Use the optional rules for Expert Dice along with Hard Dice. Hard Dice are deceptive: they work perfectly for passive abilities but they can be very disappointing when you're using them for actually active ones. Expert Dice tend to work better when you're actually rolling your dice, since they let you make free called shots, basically.

Can you share some elements of your campaign? I'd be interested in hearing how you're approaching it.

Update on the combat section concerning Elemental combat, and a lead into rules for One More, Hold-Up and All Out Attacks, which will probably be the most important parts of this section.

this shit is looking good dude

And here's the proposal for how to handle One More. I'm sure people have plenty of opinions about how to approach this particular mechanic, so I'm interested in a discussion of possible problems or improvements.

A couple things from the pastebin too if you haven't seen them:

>pastebin.com/qa4NcKr5
This is a system for random teenage social drama that works real well for any kind of school setting, including the Military academy idea

>pastebin.com/32yNPtax
This is the Miracle Flea Market where a bunch of user-created powers have been saved. Some cool stuff in there for you to use or get ideas from.

Thanks.

Now more about the setting. In 2036 the first Talent was witnessed in a sports competition. The following few months more and more people had gotten a Talent themselves and after a year every single adult person had a Talent. Every single country started using these talents in their own ways, even staging wars.
The US was the first one to start military academies designed for combat-oriented Talents, where teams of 4 would be prepared to respond to various dangerous situations. Other nations followed suit and quickly developed their own academies of different styles: the Chinese Academies train country-loyal soldiers in teams of 3, the German Academies use state-of-the-art equipment to create pairs while the Lunar Colony Academy focuses on individuality first and foremost, with students competing in leaderboards in order not to drop out.

The players will play in 2060s, in one such academy, likely the US one. I've prepared a scenario involving the players being tested in a VR environment to get them (and me) used to the system, a tournament to make them used to their powers and a scenario involving Chinese spies in the Academy, to get the plot rolling. I've thought up of a way to "nerf" bullets, so that the players and the characters would have incentive to use whatever weapons they wish, not just assault/sniper rifles.

>I've thought up of a way to "nerf" bullets, so that the players and the characters would have incentive to use whatever weapons they wish, not just assault/sniper rifles.

Please share.

This sounds like a super fun idea; the idea feels suuuper anime but since you say you're aiming at a low-power feel that's interesting, since one would expect crazier action for that kind of thing. What sort of powers are you envisioning?

I like this idea. But it is too early to plan modules.
Shadows can use One More? I would say that only Mayor Shadows can

Rules for Hold Up. I'd love some feedback on these ideas because I was really just writing what came to mind based on my experience with the ORE and Persona games in general. The whole concept is very much borrowed from A Dirty World's resolution system, so it should seem familiar to anyone whose played that or Better Angels.

>I like this idea. But it is too early to plan modules.
I meant as a name for the actual Persona and Other Childish Things module, not an module for the module. Should have been more clear.

Another name that popped up in the Discord was "Dramatis Persona" which is also nice.

>Shadows can use One More? I would say that only Mayor Shadows can
Maybe, that's probably a matter of play-testing though.

This can make some really cool situations where PCs have Shadows momentary in their party or Shadows helping in some way. But I have a little complain, the difficulty for those things should be highter. Something llike this: Width +2: its open. Width +4 its on board with you. Width +7 It wants to be your friend. Also this shouldnt be possible against mayor personas or maybe be more difficult

Remember, Width is how many dice you have in your Set. A Width of 4 is an astounding success in most rolls, Width of 7 is so staggeringly unlikely as to be nearly impossible.

In A Dirty World a Width of 2-3 is a standard success, a 4 is an extreme success and a 5 can turn the tides of an encounter single-handedly. It works for that game because ADW has rules that let you pretty easily add +1 or +2 to your Width directly. Since MaOCT lacks those rules, capping it at 4+ seems fair. It's within a realm of probability where you might actually get it on a roll, but you shouldn't expect it.

Hi guys!
Can you help me with building GANTZ equipment?
Specifically Z-Gun/H-gun and '100 point suit'.

I'm only vaguely familiar with GANTZ; can you explain what this equipment can do?