Persona Tabletop RPG

Sorry, should have been clearer. I want to run something similar with freaky enemy monsters and a strange otherworld, but without Personas as such. So I thought about giving the players Weird Skills to compensate.

Oh! then yes that would absolutely work.

Preach, brother. I feel your pain.

Rolled 10, 10, 1, 3, 4, 1, 10, 9, 8, 8, 6 = 70 (11d10)

I'm going to give a demonstration of how the One-Roll Dungeon system works. It's in the Velvet Room starting on page 27.

Rolled 1 (1d10)

Okay so here's my Sets:

2x1
3
4
6
2x8
9
3x10

So that means we've got the following:

2x1: Elemental Motif
>2x1- Minor Undertone: The motif is clear and distinct but does not overshadow other aspects of the Dungeon. It’s more of a garnish than the main course but it adds some interesting aesthetics and puzzle opportunities. All Minor Shadow encounters should feature at least one Shadow that Resists the motif Element and one that Attacks with it.

I'll make this a random one too and roll another d10.

2x8: High Security
>2x8- Evasion (5d): The Dungeon is lightly patrolled or monitored by guards either too few to fully cover the terrain needed or too lazy or disinterested to pose a serious threat. A talented infiltration team should be able outfox them if they’re careful.

3x10: Jackpot
>3x10- Jackpot: This Treasure is going to be a major part of your Dungeon. It could be the whole reason for going in there in the first place, or if it’s not, it’s discovery could completely divert the Players exploration towards “we need to get that.” It’s definitely going to be booby trapped or guarded or otherwise inaccessible without jumping through some hoops, but laying claim to a Jackpot can be a game changer for the Dungeon.

For our Shadows we have 3 (Empress or Moon), 4 (Emperor or Death), 6 (Chariot or Justice) and 9 (Temperance or Devil).

Now to start putting it together.

Hey nice. I was going to be starting a persona campaign based off of this book just next week. Anybody got any ideas for dungeons or bosses they wanna give away fro free?

I rolled a 1 for my Elemental Motif, which is a Fire Motif. So I'm dealing with a Fire themed dungeon with High Security that conceals a Jackpot somewhere in it's depths.

The Dungeon is Vulcan Industries. It's a factory set in a volcano where crucibles transport molten ore and slag from one area to another where they are forged into statues which are then broken apart to release Shadows. It's patrolled by steel automatons that were once powerful, fearsome sentinels but most are now worn down by age and disrepair. Instead of attacking you directly they will summon hordes of Shadows to attack you.

Vulcan Industries is patrolled by Temperance and Moon Shadows who have been chained to work the lines by the Emperor Shadows that run the joint and by Justice Shadows who keep the laborers in line.

At the heart of Vulcan Industries is the Presidential Vault that contains, in addition to a vast store of Shadow Coins, weapon upgrades for each and everyone of the Players who enter it.

Check out the One-Roll Dungeon mechanics from the Velvet Room here:

My prior two posts demonstrated how you can build a Dungeon out of them in a flash.

I'm taking a look through it right now. Nice work

Here's another Dungeon premise that we rolled up on the discord:

Sets are:

>3x1 (Significant Elemental Motif; Rolled a 7 for Water)
>2x4 (Automated Defenses)
>2x10 (Nice Treasure)

Loose Dice are 2 (Priestess/Hierophant), 6 (Chariot/Justice), 7 (Fortune/Tower) and 8 (Strength/Hanged Man)

The Dungeon is a sunken Pirate Ship at the bottom of the ocean, overtaken with Shadow Coral that's slowly breaking it apart and allowing water to spill in. Certain areas are flooded while others are dry. The inner hull is infested with Barnacles that spray jets of super-pressurized water that can slice through solid metal and potentially damage the hull.

Outside the ship on the ocean floor there's a treasure chest easily within view through one of the holes in the side, but with no obvious way to reach it.

The Shadows are of the High Priestess and Chariot, as the Pirate crew; Hanged Men as galley slaves in the lower decks; and Tower as the brutal and vicious officers.

So, for 1roll dungeon creation, let me see if I got this right. I rolled this using a random number generator:
>10, 9, 8, 3, 10, 5, 10, 8, 2, 2, 8

Rearranged into ascending order and then sets:
>2, 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10
>2x2, 3, 5, 8x3, 9, 10x3

lots of triplets, and they mirror they're mirroring the demonstration already which is kinda lame. At least it means that I'll have more guidelines for it

>2x2
Hidden passages, 1 or 2 of them that arent necessary, but are helpful.

>3x8
Heavy Security, at a cautious level. Corridors are heavily patrolled, which would make the dungeon tough. Would work really well in conjunction with the secret passageways.

>3x10
Jackpot level challenge. I guess that could explain why there's lots of security. This is kinda like p5

>3, 5, and 9
These would be the shadow types? So (Empress or Moon), (Lovers or Star), and (Temperance or Devil).

Anything I messed up? Assuming the OP is still here

Nope, looks perfect!

So the key then is to take this outline and figure something cool and interesting to do with it. What you've basically created is a pretty straightforward Persona 5 dungeon: High Security, a big Treasure, some Hidden passages here and there. I feel like the Hidden Passages might be the key; maybe do like a rich guy's mansion with Clue-like hidden corridors behind bookcases and stuff.

Great. As far as I'm seeing, the book naturally presumes Personas for making Minor Shadows. Do you by chance have similar formulas for Weird powers?

So who plays the waifus? Players or the GM?

make waifus the npcs. Then make them bully the players until they rank up.

I should add optional rules for Waifus to be played by the other players to make it as awkward as possible.

No, they should be played by members from other groups that only show up every once in a while.

I like your out of the box thinking.

So how many are in, or have played in campaigns of this? how'd it go?

Not really, BUT a 3d Persona has the same number of dice as a normal human, so I theory the math should line up okay.

Shadow budgeting is a constant work in progress. For instance between this draft and the last I raised the AP calculations by about 20%. Still need to update the Compendium itself.

Currently in a Discord game with the main dev group. It's going bretty good. We just started golden week after a trip to Inaba. As far as mechanics go, they're a good mix of crunchy and narrative elements that I find enjoyable (even if I can't remember them half the time).

I’m running a game currently using the system. I’ve ran one other one in the past to sort of teach myself the system, and I’m currently playing in another.

The system has a bit of a learning curve but it’s sheet versatility makes it extremely fun as both a fan of tabletop and a fan of Persona.

For instance, the game I am currently running is a zombie apocalypse style game mixed with Persona. I’ve kept the social link aspect without sacrificing the feel of a “need to survive” zombie world.

I'm in a 'villain' campaign that's really fucking good.
We're playing a group of assassins that carry out their mission by finding a 'key' to the target's mental fortress, which is played out as an investigation, and we break in and carry out a hit on their emotions, basically. Now, beyond the hard cash our handler offers us for doing these jobs, we also have another reason--a memetic metaphysical cancer that twists the nature of the Other World. If it got out of control, there's no telling what could happen.
We ended our last session by murdering our homeroom teacher for two million dollars hard cash.
Also, the waifus are pretty great. Big thumbs up for the system, overall.

Oh hey, thread's up now, so I figure I'll post this.

I'm writing Subpersona rules for TVB. This allows you to benefit from Wild Card-esque abilities without writing full stat-blocks for the Personas you want to use (Subpersonas instead modify your primary Persona by adding skills, extras, and adjusting resistances/vulnerabilities), and also use Fusion rules that even allow a degree of choice from players.
About the only thing you need to supply is your own set of Subpersonas, and a fusion chart to determine how Arcana interact with one-another, but once you've got those figured out, you have rules for the following:

>Normal fusion
>Triangle fusion
>Sacrificial fusion (two flavors of this, actually)

Subpersonas are even designed as such that you can do full-on WEAPON FUSION. Yeah, there's some basic rules for that too.

I've been running a playtest campaign to fiddle with these rules, under the name "Haven of Peaches", where a person known only as "Solomon" granted Personas to 72 people so that he could use them to develop this ability, and then take their powers for himself. The group has an ally named "Fawkes", an Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon whose Persona, Janus Bifrons, is a fox-like mask.They also recently came to the conclusion that another of their allies, a hacker who communicated only through edited/spliced audio, was feeding information to Solomon.

2 of my players (both playing as robots, the setting is a near-future Mississippi where a Kirijo Group scientist fled from Japan and sold ASSW designs to an American corporation) jumped ship for various personal reasons, so half of the original group is gone, but we're about halfway through World in terms of story progress.

In the next couple of sessions, we're likely doing a series of boss-fights, wherein the bosses are Persona users who also wield Subpersonas. They've already had some experience doing this by sparring with Fawkes, but I've got new Subpersona-related mechanics to test out.

Attached: The Velvet Book_ Subpersonas (1).pdf (PDF, 325K)

You left out the part where the teacher was drawing power by being a camwhore as well.

Any DMs looking for more playtest players? I'm not familiar with the system but I've been on a persona kick lately and am super down to play.

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Do you guys have any other stories from your games? I'd like to hear more.

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My players probably could give more exciting accounts for parts of the campaign that they liked, but here's something to bump the thread up a little.

>Alanna (Magician): Schoolgirl, hacker.
>James (Moon): Roboboo. Student. No friends. Hates his stepdad.
>Allen (Emperor): Privately-owned android practicing law. Not terribly important during this scene, but he's there.
>Dyson (Devil NPC): Teacher to both of the students. Covert weeaboo. He owns a personal assistant gynoid, Dixie (Empress NPC), who he's hardmodded and softmodded beyond recognition.

During one of the group's regular treks into the other world, they found documents relating to the Dark Hour and other events in Japan that happened around the time of its creation, on a USB thumb-drive with a label in Japanese. Naturally, the document itself is also in Japanese. Being that none of them read Japanese, they saw fit to bring it to somebody who could: Dixie.

James decides to distract the teacher as Alanna tries to drag Dixie away, in an attempt to keep it somewhat secret. To begin with, one of the very first things that Alanna does is show off the label, which reads "the end of the world". Already it's not going too great, and she's suspicious. What she's reading is basically text detailing the scientists' fanatical obsession with using Nyx to bring about The Fall. Naturally, a student that she hasn't talked to for a while, who's also begun to associate with the antisocial James, brings her this edgy shit about a bunch of men wishing for the end of the world, and she's kind of worried about it.

>"If you're being bullied or getting caught up in something weird, make sure to tell one of your teachers, okay?"

Attached: hermit arcana social link.png (640x960, 792K)

Great, that's at least an estimate. Thanks user!

so when are you all designing a cool shin megami tensai looking character sheet?

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WIth how tightly wound up each Persona game is around its central themes and how nearly the different setting elements fit together (dungeon motifs, the party, the social links, etc.), i really think that if you’be gone as far as to provide so many sample Links you might as well go and present an entire sample “game”/setting. It’s a very tall order, I’m perfectly aware, but it’ll both be very helpful, a better representation of the Persona series, and something which you appear more than equipped to handle:

I'm currently running a game and have been for a little while. The central theme runs around resentment and underlying hostility. The current party of a rebellious rich girl, a boy who wants to be a cop, and a studious lad looking to improve his lot in life. By clearing the first dungeon, a haunted house done up in the style of J-Horror, they stopped a classmate from stabbing a bunch of people.

Like the vidya, I try to keep a good chunk of time for out of dungeon adventures. They have explored part of a sprawling, ruined city populated by shadows imitating humanity. The party recruited a track star from a broken home as our fourth player. Some have joined clubs, like Kendo and Writing. The party disguises its own actions as a school club of its own. We've even got exams coming up. And the next dungeon but I don't want to spoil that since I know they might read this thread.

Attached: IGOR portrait.png (225x209, 81K)

Here's the standard sheet that's been made. It's not *super* functional for online roleplaying but works pretty good at the tabletop!

There's a google doc version somewhere that's a bit easier to deal for folks not playing at a live table.

Attached: TVB_Character Sheets.pdf (PDF, 1.58M)

So did anyone run a game of this where Philemon and Nyarlhotep played a role? I miss them and I've basically given up hope of seeing them in the videogames. Let me live vicariously through you.

Doesn't Yaldabaoth at least appear in Persona 5?

I know that they are front and center in at least one of our test campaigns, lemme see if I can dig up the info.

That's something on my (the dev's) schedule for the future once the rules are completely, along with optional rules for Wild Cards and Persona 1/2 style gameplay. If you look at the sample NPCs you can sort of see two different settings: one in a coastal Japanese city, the other in a small rural American town.

What central theme/conflict do you want to base your sample Persona game on (to, say, Persona 3's "death and the acceptance/denial thereof", 4's "Identify, truth, and convenient lies" and 5's "systemic oppression vs. freedom")?

Contemplating introducing REIGN style company rules to this game.

Mostly for if you wanna build/run an organization. Current thoughts are making "Kirijo Group" and "Phantom Thieves of Hearts" the two examples.

The beauty of REIGN company rules is how easily they slot into any ORE game. That would, I'm sure, work great.

How come Chie's wearing glasses but the others aren't? She doesn't need them in the real world and in the TV world they all do.

They're cosplaying as the Scooby Gang, you autist. She's supposed to look like Velma.

The setting I've always talked about but never had time to put together is basically Persona meets Donnie Darko. The core theme is Sacrifice: that you need to give up what you want or suffer to do the right thing or to make people confront the truth about their life. The pantheon would either be Meso/Native American or be based on literary and historical Martyrs.

On the Cosmic Level, the Other World comes in two parts. The Overworld is called The Wasteland, representing the teeming mass of human subconsciousness. At regular intervals, a fragment of the Jungle splinters off and coalesces around a human mind, who becomes The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice is almost always a victimized person subject to a Tormentor. The fragment forms a Temple, a parallel Universe identical in part to the main universe but twisted by the thoughts and emotions of both the Sacrifice and the Tormentor.

If the Temple is not collapsed safely within a set amount of time, one of two things will happen. Either the Sacrifice will die, taking the Temple with him, or the Sacrifice will live and the Temple damages the real world in some meaningful way by creating a Crisis: an earthquake, a fire, a mass shooting, etc...

The only way to safely collapse the Temple and rescue the Sacrifice is to find a Proxy, which is a tangible artifact within the Wasteland that represents the Sacrifice's pain and suffering and bring it to the Altar, a place within the Temple guarded by the Tormentor's Shadow. So successfully clearing the Temple involves:

a. Finding the Sacrifice and exploring their Temple
b. Exploring the Wasteland to locate their Proxy
c. Bringing the Proxy to the Altar and defeating the Tormentor

That's interesting. Did you have that in mind when designing the sample social links, for example? In the last three persona games, the social links were always symbolically very close to the central theme (e.g. in Persona 5 just about every Confidant is a person who, in one way or another, feels trapped by society's perception of them and struggles to break free)

My campaign is about to end due to IRL circumstances, but I basically had the same sentiments as you. Phil and Nyar are/were key figures in the conflict for the plot.

So yes, you can easily have a game where those two are important. Don't let your dreams be memes.

Attached: Low Poly Phil.png (100x150, 18K)

Not really. To be honest several of the American social links were borrowed from Friday Night Lights (specifically the Empress and Hierophant). I wanted to make them generic enough that any GM could adapt them to their game if they felt like it without needing to rewrite their backstories.

Pretty cool, I'm making an homebrew Shin Megami Tensei tabletop game (more mainline SMT than anything else) myself but it's more for use with my little group of IRL players and it's not in English.

I've never published Tabletop RPG material on the Internet before and I don't have a blog or anything else, is it a good idea to post it here when eventually I finish translating everything? So far in English I only have skill, item, and demon lists, very incomplete and only for lower levels since I'm balancing the game as I playtest it with my small group (which by the way have never played SMT games).

Attached: SMT logo.png (250x250, 47K)

Sure! I don't have a blog either, I've been released each draft on the Discord that I'm in and here whenever I make progress on a new version.

So here's one potential option for the packed-in Setting to go with The Velvet Book:

>docs.google.com/document/d/1oc7jZVvrKhTc5v83zvzpjFkU-NA0aPSl_ptnjU9Jz3A/edit?usp=sharing

I'm interested in any games as well. Too much going on to run anything, but I could play.
I was thinking of something involving a kid whose parents are both 'nerds' but he's enthusiastic about athletics despite his natural talents being more academic, and has a rebellious/violent streak as a result. I've never played this style of game before, but it seems simple enough to pick up.

I'd be very interested in seeing more setting specific NPCs, dungeons, party members, etc.

Well one thing I'd like to develop is the idea of Personas as NPCs that the players can interact with. Instead of having a single NPC (Morgana, Teddie, etc...) that knows a heck of a lot about the Other World, I'd like to have the players Personas each know a little bit about the Wasteland which they can use to guide the players. This bridges the gap a bit between Personas and standard Monsters.

This has got to be the most fitting an well done hacks ive seen. good job OP and whoever was involved.

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I've recently started running a game using this, thought it.
I'm not entirely sure how the hell Useful Healing is supposed to work. I'm just assuming it works like a normal role and you just heal for the width?

Correct. Width-1 by default. Height doesn't matter, you can apply healing whereever you want on your target.

Couple points:

Your Heal Level tells you how many times per fight you can heal. So Heal x3 means that part can be used 3 times.

Heal works with Sweet (Heal Width-1 + Sweet), Area (Heal in a radius based on the Area Dice they roll), Spray (Use more than 1 Heal set at a time).

Thanks! I owe a big dose of credit to the playtesters who took to it so enthusiastically and have provided me with so much useful feedback and suggestions. And of course it helps that the source game already fits the hack's themes so well.

Just thought I'd chime in to say that this is a pretty neat out-of-the-box setting. Very well put together.

Glad to be getting so much positive feedback. I’m going to keep working on it as I continue to flesh out the GM chapter.

So we just had a couple test campaigns end in the Discord so if any GMs are interested we have a fresh batch of Players looking for games.

Well I'd love to see a SMT rpg, but perhaps we might try by translating/using the official japanese one ?

You're free to try and find a copy of one.
All I've ever found was a Chinese repackage. I can't read Chinese. Pic related, it's Odin's stats from 真・女神転生TRPG 魔都東京200X.

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Oh man, I remember making the MaOCT-Persona connection way, way, way back when I first read the book. I even wrote down stats for SEES and the Investigation Team and all. Tatsumi had a relationship with "His Machismo".

Nothing on this level, though. Very good job.

I can see how the random dungeons could work for a Mementos stand in. How have the games in the server been using it?

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Here's a few things I wanted to experiment with :

Shadows/Demons yield Macca if defeated. Macca can then be used for negotiating, buying strange things in the Other World, or can be used by some individuals to artificially increase stats, a very costly and sometimes dangerous method. Macca may become an alternative currency if too many demons escape to the real world.

Characters have an allowance of 15$ a week, if they want to buy anything, they can check the price on amazon and buy it. Additionnaly, they start with a 300$ personal item when they're created.

Characters are created with one advantage and one disadvantage from these categories: class smarts, health, sanity, popularity, home situation. These perks have effects outside of stats, such as an advantage in class smarts means the character does not need to pay attention in his favoured subject to get even average grades, or a disadvantage in health would mean you suffer from a permanent disease or liability such as diabetes or a limp leg.

Also, rather than tie every subject to a different Stat, I would let each player choose one "good" and one "bad" subject and tie every subject to Knowledge+Education. I mean, anyone that has gone to school would know that school is not "balanced", and also that most of the time, paying attention in class is enough to get adequate marks. Of course, under those assumptions I'd have to notably modify your education mechanics.

What do you think?

Random Dungeons are the newest edition to the book so they aren't fully tested yet (although the individual aspects like Security, Automated Patrols and Environmental Hazards have been in other games that I've run). When I put that draft of the The Velvet Room up folks immediately started rolling up Dungeons so that's going to be the next thing that we test.

Cool! I'd love to see your results.

Some remarks:

>Macca and Allowance
Resources like money is the next thing I'm working on after putting together the One-Roll Dungeon rules. My goal is to make something flexible and interesting that can work in a variety of settings. I'm thinking of using Reign's Wealth Rules or something derived from it.

>Advantages and Disadvantages
Not bad. Reign and Wild Talents both use rules like that (Reign's Advantages, Wild Talents' Meta-Qualities). They could definitely be used for a MaOCT based game like the Velvet Book.

>School Stats
You bring up a good point that Players should be able to do at least *okay* without needing to put forth a lot of effort, but I don't fully agree that Knowledge + Academics is the only way to go. I like that the system rewards characters with different builds in different classes. It's not 100% realistic but it is interesting, I think.

However, it does make me think that it should be a bit easier to nail "average" grades without breaking your back. I'm gonna give that some thought. Maybe make the Grades chart more of a curve than a linear progression.

>I don't fully agree that Knowledge + Academics
I doesn't have to be all Knowledge + Academics either. You could still allow other stats to be rolled, with a harder difficulty.
My reasoning is that when I think of someone with high Academics, I'd expect him to be at least adequate in most subjects if he so much as pay attention in class. You can still get by with low Academics if you have other high stats and manage your school work, but of course the nerd with high Academics is going to have an easier time. Until P.E. that is.