What would you like to see in a magical girl-oriented ttrpg?

I love Madoka too! My system keeps a little of the sci-fi kyuubey weirdness but I like to think it’s going to be less exestiental horror-y and a little more dramatic/mysterious/suspenseful/actiony. I’m looking to make a more conquerable evil, if that makes any sense. I’ll definitely look at the timeline, thank you so much!!

That’s a really good idea and something I definitely want to implement! I’ll push it a little to the front, since I adore the idea and I think it result in super cool stories. Thank you so much!! :D

oh shoot, I’ll keep that in mind!! I’m flipping through it right now and I can see what you mean, but I’m still interested to see if I can improve on any of the ideas in it.
Thank you so much!! :-)

>What would you like to see in a magical girl-oriented ttrpg?
Suffering.

What you are describing sounds like a simplified Ninja Crusade or Legends of the Wulin. Could be fun, but I think spells is the wrong way to go. Not many magical girl anime use spells. The ones that do are set in a fantasy setting. Magical girls run more like super heroes.

Haven't heard of Ninja Crusade. Can you give a tl;dr?

And magical girl shows do use 'spells', they're just very different to the standard western eurofantasy sort. More often they work like superpowers or special attacks, but sometimes they do have some complexity to the spellcasting. The magic system in Nanoha, for example, is pretty interesting.

I’ll look into those, thank you!! I was half using spells as a placeholder, but I see what you mean and I’ll look into other systems for magic. Thank you!!

Why not use Kamigakari?

Not OP, but because it isn't a magical girl game?

It's a worthwhile resource though, the generic anime thing certainly could be used to do magical girl stuff, but there's also design space you could explore with that in mind in specific, rather than the broader scope Kamigakari has.

Kamigakari turns into magical girl bullcrap really easily.

I mean, it's the same fucking thing if you stop to really think about it. All characters even switch to magical "armor" instantly at the start of a fight.

That doesn't actually make it the same at all.

Explain, because Kamigakari is generic anime monster hunting bullcrap, which is what the fighty fighty magical girls are.

There's even the whole power of friendship/bonds horseshit.

Because 'generic anime monster hunting bullcrap' is not, in fact, what most magical girls are.

It can be an element of it, sure, but the pdf in has more detail if you want to understand the genre.

And OP wants fighty fighty magical girls.

Your point?

That, while Kamigakari can be used for the concept, a specialised system can support it better than one with a more generalised focus?

What more do you need for fighty fighty magical girls, really?

>What would you like to see in a magical girl-oriented ttrpg?
I've read a few JTRPGs and they do this idea of breaking the campaign up into scenes. So do something like that and have a variety of setups for how the "episode" can play out.

Aside from that I think a bonds mechanic to for both out of combat and and combat uses (being on bad terms with your team members maybe it requires extra actions to "make up" during combat.

This is weird as hell coming from someone making a magical girl ttrpg, but it feels a little too anime for me. I want to go for a more soft sci-fi vibe, and it feels like it’d be the 99% of convoluted shit homebrew versus that 1 lil golden piece.
I definitely like the magical ‘armor’ aspect of it though!! Thanks for the suggestion :-)

Exactly my thoughts!! Kamigakari feels like an anime ttrpg, I want to specialize a bit.

I definitely like the bonds aspect! I want this to be heavily story-focused and i think touches for both negative and positive relationships would be cool. Maybe like strings from monsterhearts?

Out of curiosity, have you watched the Nanoha series at all? They're magical girl stuff with a strong sci-fi flavour, especially in the worldbuilding, with the Time Space Administration Bureau basically being magitech starfleet with a Magical Girl officer corp.

Of the shows, A's is the only one I'd call a must watch. with the first series basically being entirely surpassed by The Movie First, a movie remake of the show. A's also has a remake movie, but both are worth watching as the movie cuts out some depth. With an interesting justification too- Both movies are actually in universe dramatisations of the 'real' events of the series, including an in character commentary track by the VA's discussing them. In the Nanoha game mentioned above, our PC's have canonically seen both movies, which I always find amusing.

StrikerS and ViViD are more questionable. StrikerS has pacing problems, but a lot of excellent worldbuilding and some great characters, while ViViD isn't a magical girl show, instead this weird slice of life martial arts thing in the same setting.

I’ve seen a little! It was recommended to me earlier and I’m going to watch more of it to get a firmer grasp. I’ve heard it described as a magical girl meets mecha kinda thing and I’m here for that. It also seems to have the tone I want, a little lighter than PMMM but still allowing for big evil dudes.

I actually haven’t heard of either of those before!! I’ll give em a look-through.
Thank you so much!! :-)

There's honestly no point to running magical girls combat. The criminally underutilized aspect of magical girls in TTRPGs are the shoujo trappings inherent to the subgenre, not the superhero combat with themed shit. No point in another combat simulator. Make a narrative game.

Best one I've seen run was in GURPS, with very little rules lawyering...

Oh, don’t get me wrong, narratives are definitely my priority, but I would like to have combat for storytelling purposes. Any non-combat mechanics you’re interested in? :0c

Why do you act as though combat and narrative are unrelated?

This is why Legends of the Wulin works well for it. It uses its combat system as a storytelling tool, in line with the Wuxia genre, but also in ways that works well for Mahou Shoujo.

Ha, that sounds kinda fun!! I’ll look through GURPS’ rules and see what sticks out. Thank you! :-)

Less nippon.

Less idealized shit, especially regarding personal relationships; more shit teenagers actually go through.In general I'm starting to think MS nowdays aren't recatching up as genre too much because K-On! has more realistic teenagers, goddamn.And I like iyashikei.

Less frilly dresses, more sacred/divine overtones in aesthetics.

I've seen this before... MGCYOA thread?

Toss any rules questions you have at the gurpsgeneral! We're helpful to a point

But yeah, just keep the point total low and run with the setting more than the rules

Look, I'm not saying the monster-fighting aspect isn't important, or that the combat mechanics can't be deep, what I'm saying is the focus should be on making a shoujo narrative with combat as an act in the structure of that narrative, not as a completely separate thing where you spend points to buy up your giant beam cannon like the user suggesting Nanoha probably wants.

Create some sort of built-in episodic format, then create the means for the plot of those episodes to be generated on the go. Maybe mechanics for an unseen villain. Look into Ryuutama's dragon mechanics, maybe? The GM chooses a villain type and that gives them narrative moves like "turn a person in a monster that represents their negative emotions", "infiltrate the school as a transfer student" or "Turn a friend against the PCs"

I'm the user suggesting Nanoha, and no I wasn't. That series, and the game I'm in, uses magical combat primarily as a storytelling tool. That doesn't mean the magical combat can't be fun in and of itself while also serving the narrative.

A lot of magical girl stuff has a very fairy tale feeling. But fairy tales are fundamentally no different than religion and mythology. What magic and ritual tend to stem from are a psychological need to deal with emotionally intense and difficult situations. Because emotions are most important the exact details of the myth tend to change a lot over time even when the emotions and ritual remain. A magical girl game should have a mechanic that allows players to introduce topics meaningful to them. There are minigames for collaborative worldbuilding. One for cities and towns could work. I also suggest looking up comparative religion textbooks in your local library.

That’s astonishingly insightful. Thanks user! I’ll take some time this weekend and do some research :-)

I really like the sound of that!! A few tables with the 5 w’s could be a really nice addition. Thank you!!

Thank you, I definitely will! I’ve seen some ridiculous builds and while I love seeing them, I definitely want a little more ‘realism,’ if it can be called that. :-)

Exactly my thoughts!

Beating a motherfucker with another motherfucker.

That’s exactly what my thoughts were! I wanted some actual, like, teenager issues. Depression and stress but overcoming it all AND beating evil alien shits up is my ideal.

Hell yes.

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Some art that was commissioned for the Nanoha game I'm in. The most straight up Magical Girl of the PC's.

I love you user, thank you!
(and that's super cute and really well drawn! My compliments to the artist :D)

An NPC from the game, an older Belkan Knight

And her partner

Another of the PC's, the fighty tomboy of the group.

>One arm
>War hammer
>combat fatigues
9.5/10 would play

>Maybe like strings from monsterhearts?
Never played that system but with what I know about the Magical girl genre not being in the right mindset can cripple a character until they get that pick-me-up from their friends an/or mysterious stranger.

For the setup I'm imagining each session or however long it take an "episode" to play out introduces a conflict both Mundane and supernatural. The mundane threat can inflict emotional and psychological damage onto a character which carries over to the supernatural and magical aspect of the latter conflict. Of course

You know, I wonder what would happen if there was a magical girl series from the boyfriend's perspective. I've seen a Quest that explored that, but it was clearly a netori (Like NTR, but it's the guy who cheats) setup.

Altea is awesome, yes. That's the second version of her art, pic related is the original. She lost her arm in game, as part of taking down a particularly dangerous opponent.

>netori

Why

There's already 2 of those on Veeky Forums, and also some faggot trying to make Magical Burst not a shit system.

Next time you see a Magical Girl CYOA thread, pop in there and look at their RPG systems.