Hi RPGsite!

I'm starting a new game on Thursday and thought I'd solicit the internet for thoughts on it. The game is based on the Persona series of JRPGs, in which teenagers (largely) fight off a world-threatening ... threat, using the powers of facets of their personality made real.

I'm probably not doing justice to the source material there.

Personae are loosely based on one of the Arcana of the Tarot, as manifest in a particular historical figure, figure from myth and legend, or demonic force. Each Persona-User also has a particular Arcana. In the JRPGs, the lead character is normally The Fool, and has the ability to switch between Personae. In Persona 2, every character can switch Personae, and I want to keep that as an element of the game, as I feel that having the characters be able to swap between different powersets helps to add a tactical element to combat.

As I'm not a huge fan of any generic power systems, and only have access to Mutants & Masterminds, we decided to hack together something for Unknown Armies. This is still a work in progress (with three days to go, haha!) but at the moment I'm thinking along the following lines (C&P'd from RPG.net where I've also tried to get feedback)

Character Generation is going to be Lifepath based in order to help people think about who their characters are rather than assigning stats and being done with it. Got a draft of that together, the intent being that they get stats done for them and then distribute skills to fit their concept.

Each Arcana is a skill (based on Soul), each character gets an Arcana which they get as an Obsession skill for free. The Arcana of the player also gives a bonus advantage when playing to type. The Fool costs stat points and an obsession skill, but enables the user to switch between other Arcana far more easily than people who are beholden to the others. The World is not available as a starting point. Your Arcana can change throughout play (but you may not change to The Fool), and you can swap Persona out when you have made a bond with them ala Persona 2. Bonds are limited to social links in the respective arcana, you get extra social links through building relationships (and I've ported over the social stats from P3 as an additional bolt-on to help gauge which NPCs will be available).

Madness Meters I'm undecided on. I like them, but they probably don't fit the setting so at the moment I'm ripping them out.

The players want to be members of SEES, so we're going with an Evoker style for summoning. Nice and easy for me at least! (Each of the Persona games has a different method of summoning the Persona; I only need to worry about one in this game)

When manifesting a Persona you gain additional HP, an SP bar, and your stats become the average of yours and your Persona (which will normally be higher in most areas). Still working out the specific skills, but that is not as immediately important as getting everything else together.

I'm not sure whether I want to bring in Charges. I'm thinking they may be used to Fuse personae in some fashion, or possibly to establish Social Links. Wibbling on that.

And if the campaign runs long enough, I'm thinking it may be amusing to make the Persona universe simply be the 'Occult Underground' of Japan. It'd amuse me, anyway.

Welcome to the RPGsite Kisidan!

Quote from: One Horse Town;493912Welcome to the RPGsite Kisidan!

Thanks!

Geist the sin eaters was inspired by the persona games so you may want to give that a nosey for ideas(its not majorly persona like but the resemblances are there).

welcome to the rpgsite though.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;493918Geist the sin eaters was inspired by the persona games so you may want to give that a nosey for ideas(its not majorly persona like but the resemblances are there).

welcome to the rpgsite though.

I've been trying to grab Geist for my collection for months, but I can't find a physical copy for less than my arm and leg, and I hate White Wolf PDFs with the fire of a thousand suns.

Thanks for the recommendation though! I may have to bite the bullet and go electronic.

they're in the process of going print on demand so give it time and it'll be available for purchase again

If you're comfortable with cribbing elements from the other Persona games, you might consider tying the Madness meters to a confrontation with a character's personal Shadow in some way, in the style of Persona 4.

Ewen Cluney (I think that's his last name) is working in Magical Burst, loosely based on Magica Madoka, a darker magical girls anime.  It has relationships at its core, which some people have begun hacking to emulate the social ties mechanics from the video games.

There are also tabletop games in Japan, but the chances of them getting translated are nil.

That's funny because a Tarot card is pretty much the opposite of a "persona", its an archetype.

Nothing to do with your post really, just something that an occultist would find amusing.

RPGPundit

Does this game have llamas in it?

Because I won't play if there aren't llamas.




You see, when I was 12, llamas saved my family from certain death. Now, I must honor them all my life.

No, seriously.

Really.

I like where you are going with you Unknown Armies hack. I only played the first Persona game, but enjoyed it a lot.

I would possibly keep some aspects of the madness meter since (and I could be remembering it wrong) there were consequences of channeling a persona. Perhaps it could measure how 'comfortable' you've become with the supernatural world, meaning that normals begin to feel uncomfortable around you or see you as disturbed/odd.

Welcome to the RPG site!

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;494175I like where you are going with you Unknown Armies hack. I only played the first Persona game, but enjoyed it a lot.

I would possibly keep some aspects of the madness meter since (and I could be remembering it wrong) there were consequences of channeling a persona. Perhaps it could measure how 'comfortable' you've become with the supernatural world, meaning that normals begin to feel uncomfortable around you or see you as disturbed/odd.

Welcome to the RPG site!

Thanks! I'll definitely consider that...

Unfortunately, the girlfriend of one of my players is laid up in bed and he has to care for her, so I'm going to postpone the session by another week so that everyone can do character generation together.

Still, it does give me another week or two (if character generation winds up taking a whole session... which hopefully it won't, but it usually does in my experience) in order to finalize all the fiddly details.