Good evening everyone! While I have one game going strong, it's not super high maintenance, so I had a pretty fun idea for a second one! This one is an Urban Fantasy Game featuring a cast of characters who are reincarnations of fantasy heroes. Below I have a sort of 'advertisement' for the game, although I'm actually split on a few concepts, and might want some feedback.



That being said, there are a few things that I'm trying to work out/work through...

1. What sort of system should I use, or should I just go with something very light like The Window? I'm open to suggestions certainly. As far as generic systems go, I'm not terribly into FATE Core or GURPS, although Fate Accelerated or Savage Worlds are certainly a possibility. I'm also willing to do some light homebrew, or even mostly freeform.
   
2. Should I stick with High School? I think that it brings a sort of fun youthful energy to the game concept, and the fact that kids are coming to grasp with new mystical identities while growing up is a clear thematic link between the mundane and supernatural sides of the game. That being said, something like college could provide a little more freedom, although I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea of a more constrained setting, so centering around a school or maybe a small town would be best.
   
3. Should I base the heroic reincarnations off of Real Life Mythology? On the one hand it provides a useful base for the players, on the other hand it also means that the mystery of what one is will be gone as soon as I involve any really important part of their legend.
   
4. Any other concerns I should be aware of?

I have a long list of influences for this game, from Anime Fare like Fate/Stay Night to books like American Gods, to television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even a few RPGs like Scion and Mage the Ascension.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:27, Thu 23 Aug 2018.

PbtA!




Mm, college freshmen might provide slightly more freedom for actually doin' stuff...



I can see the advantages and disadvantages for each side... I could be happy either way...



I'm sure other people who aren't me will think of some...

I'd probably go with Fate Accelerated, freeform, or guided freeform.



High school is fun, and I do like the thematic link.



I'd say put an unexpected (but logical) spin on the real life myth. Maybe expand the idea of mythology beyond the ancient/classic world. What's myth but iconic story? And in the modern world pop culture has more of a resonance than Greek Myth. (If that matters)

Fate Accelerated seems like it'd have just the right amount of structure vs. freedom for a game with such a wide possible power base.



While College could provide more freedom in the 'Mundane' side of things, I think that sort of defeats the purpose.  Living a mundane life sort of implies a level of restriction, conforming to the expectations of those around you and of society in general.  Sure, you can lift a car over your head with one hand, but your Math Teacher is still gonna give you detention for sleeping in class.  I feel like that sort of Dichotomy is what makes these sorts of stories really interesting and fun.  Just look at the Persona games.



Why constrain yourself to just Real Life Mythology?  If we're talking about Legendary Heroic figures, their names and origins change constantly based on time, location, and just who's telling the story.  Maybe the truth behind that Myth is more fantastical than we ever thought; maybe the Myth that became contemporary is just the tip of the Iceberg.

College is an almost completely unconstrained setting, and nobody makes an issue of it if you have to skip a class to fight a monster. So yeah, definitely put everyone in high school.

4: Make sure that the importance of this is part of your intro blurb. A high-school focus does not work if the player characters decide to focus primarily on the supernatural side of things at the expense of classwork and dating - even the delinquent in the group needs to either care about normal-student things or be constrained by the results of blowing them off.

I'd also suggest FATE as being sort of aimed at this type of game. A high-school restrains things a good bit, however are you looking at an alternate reality, where adults go to a job academy that determines the rest of their life, as that would also restrain things.

I would say the system you should use is the one that promotes the kind of game you want to play.

If the focus of the game (not the Roleplaying) is on the dual nature of student and monster slayer then a system that promotes monster slaying is important.  Something like D&D 5e is very good at that focus without being difficult to use.

If you want to focus on the drama of a school setting that knows monsters sometimes happen then FATE can manage that fairly well.

As for the school itself College tends to have a more open campus in the real world, but in a world where monsters exist and for whatever reason High school students are required to fight them that works just as well.  It depends on how many parts of the society you want to bother changing.

Exactly.


Most systems are going to be good for that... to some degree or another.

FATE if want a good narrative feel, and a system that handles social and mental challenges as easily as physical.

GURPS for a grittier, more 'realistic' combat game (and to please any gun-fondler Players).

Windows is relatively unknown, but as you mentioned light.  it might be too light for people who like to have some rules to lean on.

I have no idea about Savage Worlds.

This might be a good fit for good old World of Darkness core.  Although I'm not super familiar with its most current incarnation, I know that NWoD manages to be rules light and narrative focused, and lends itself well to having things and powers layered on top of it.

It's definitely not a great simulationist system if you want to have any kind of tactical combat (IMO, it gets worse the more you roll and/or rely on turn-by-turn actions), but it does a decent job at giving you tools to handle narrative task resolution without being ultra-light like The Window (whose entire point is to be ultra-light).

Fate might be a decent fit, but you might end up with a big ol' pile of Aspects for a game like this, when you're trying to reflect characters with two different and distinct halves.  It's also a bit fiddly to handle Fate points in PbP in my brief experience with it.


I personally agree that high school characters are kind of the most compelling version of this narrative, because of the strong coming-of-age themes and the potential to deal with issues way over their heads.  The strictures of life are more difficult in high school.

An issue I run into (it may be specific to the games I've played), is that a lot of people play 80s high school movie characters - that is, 25-30 year olds dressed very badly - rather than characters who are high school students.  People mature at different rates, sure, but finding buy-in for the strange awkwardness of high school can be hard.


This is a hard one.  On the one hand, if you build up your own world mythos, you have a lot of freedom to do your own thing.  On the other hand, you can lose an essential hook - a player's ability to see and recognize and "figure out" their mythic ties.

One of the worst-kept secrets in gaming is that almost no player gives a crap about the DM's campaign setting.  If you do go with your own mythology, you'll have to make sure to tie it to recognizable archetypes and tropes.  If you don't, you'll have to exposit on the necessary fiction, which will ironically make the reveal even less mysterious, as you have to broadcast the necessary information that a player could otherwise infer from institutional knowledge.

You could split the difference - applying fantasy archetypes and tropes to mythical or other-fictional creatures and people.


Establishing the tone early is going to be very important.  Scenes in school might be important, but the classroom probably isn't.

Most importantly, imo, getting the characters to interact in a school setting (especially if you get very diverse characters) is going to take a potentially mind-bending contrivance or some kind of premeditation (for instance, everyone has to be in the school play, or everyone has to be on the track team) that will require buy-in from the players.  This should be part of the RTJ  (Why are you involved with this thing/group/project?)  Being too loose or open with character generation could result in characters that effectively never meet and don't have any common axis to get along, or even interact.

Glad to see that I've had some good, well thought out responses! I figure I might respond to some of them as well!

High School Vs College
From what people have been saying, I think that High School might be a better choice. Having that clash between their normal lives and their supernatural ones is something I'd actually like to emphasize. Fighting  monsters and such is cool and all, but it has more costs than spent mana and hit points.

I actually have a couple of ideas related to that...will discuss below.

GreyGriffin has a lot of good points on player buy in regarding playing High Schoolers. I might have to be a little picky, but a few tropey characters don't necessarily bother me overmuch. Those are good points to consider though. I'll have a good think and come back.

Systems
As I perhaps expected, this has been a hot topic! I'll give some of my ideas and thoughts regarding the systems people are talking about.

Powered by the Apocalypse
While I enjoy Powered by the Apocalypse, I'm not super experienced in it. Having a properly laid out list of generic and playbook moves is vital for determining how a game will go, and I don't trust my abilities with the system.

Gurps
Just really not interested in this one to be honest. I've looked into GURPS, but what I get from it I can more easily get from Savage Worlds, so I'd probably avoid it.

D&D 5E
This is an interesting option, it's popular and a system that I actually like. That being said, I feel like it's a bit too heavy and cumbersome, and I'd have to introduce lots of out and out dungeons to really make using the system worth it. If I use a full out fantasy system like that, I'd probably prefer Shadow of the Demon Lord, although my current leanings are away from that.

World of Darkness:
Something like this could definitely work, I'd probably use the new Chronicles of Darkness rules though, since they have some really clever hooks and ideas.

FATE:
Fate is definitely appealing, and I like the interactions between different aspects,stunts, and such. However, I agree with GreyGriffith. IT's really fiddly to handle fate points in PbP. At a table it's awesome to throw them around, but when you have to ask people and wait for their responses (often having to wait hours or even days) it really makes it hard.


Homebrew:
Between what I'm hearing from everyone, I might have an idea for a sort of light, narrativist, homebrew setup that might work for this particular game. It would be pretty light mechanically, which I might prefer for a game that can cover a wide range of situations.

I'll write up a longer post on the idea tomorrow (it's rather late out here) but the base idea of it is replacing the Fate Coins with a few resource tracks that represent the various stresses in the character's life. My current idea would have four tracks for Health, Mana/Magic, Schoolwork/'Real Life', and Bonds/Touchstones. Players would have to manage these things, being able to spend one to influence another, and letting any of them get too low means really bad negative consequences. This could create tense situations where one has to stay up late and have less health in order to keep up on their schoolwork, or perhaps they have to stress their relationship with their teacher in order to get the reagents for their magic. The system would be shored up with a few basic stats and maybe something similar to stunts.

As I said though, I came up with this idea fairly late in the night, so please tell me if it just sounds like crazy talk. Either way I'm super pleased with the excitement and discussion on the game so far!
This message was last edited by the user at 05:11, Fri 24 Aug 2018.

There's always the option to go Breakfast Club with it, have everyone in detention when *event* or *revelation* happens, which is the driver for future interaction. That way there's scope for characters from radically different cliques/interest groups to all be together for a reason. Plus the 'What are you in for?' gives immediate scope to showcase characters quirks and personalities at least a little.

I read your advert post for the game and thought the cypher system might be a good system. There's a superhero setting called unmasked about teenagers with powers they make a mask that gives them access to powers and alternative personalities so you have the teen character and the super character who don't have to be the same.

I thought the teens might inherit a trinket from their alter ego / legend or you could just use the character creation to make your character minus the mask.

Just an idea I thought I'd put to you :)

Thanks for the suggestions!

I'll look into this Unmasked game concept, although to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of Cypher from what I've seen of it. I enjoy The Strange well enough, but I'm aiming for something a little more grounded, especially early on.

Any thoughts on my homebrew idea? I'll write a bigger post/elaboration on it later.

Regarding the Breakfast Club thing, I have a few ideas for getting the group together in that regard. I'll list a few out.

1. The characters are recruited by a mysterious stranger, who sets them off on their quests of sorts.

2. A literal Breakfast club setup isn't a bad idea

3. A shared group activity or club. Something like a literature club or play might be particularly thematic choices, but it could really be anything.

Tokyo Brain Pop could handle this without too much difficulty.

In reply to CaesarCV (msg # 13):

If you do end up making a light homebrew system for this, I'll give the game a look. I would also vote for something like freeform or The Window as well if it doesn't come together.

Made me think of a study group since it could explain why different types of people may be together.

Just bake it into the premise. "You're all friends." Let the PCs figure out how and why. Cliques aren't iron clad tribes that nobody can cross between.

And I'm all for your homebrew system.

Leaning slightly away from the more overdramatic, anime focus for this particular game..but it does sound really fun. I'll have to look into it!



A pretty fair point...
This message was last edited by the user at 21:07, Fri 24 Aug 2018.

You can always do the opposite of this as well.  Have your people 'targeted' by someone of malevolent intent who knows more about them than they know about themselves.

I think combining this with the Breakfast Club could add an interesting horror tension angle - the school as prison or danger zone.  However, something extracurricular and at least medium-term might get a little deeper buy-in than a saturday's detention during chargen...

As far as "everybody's friends!" that's... surprisingly difficult to do.  Characters who are designed to be very closely intertwined can just end up having compatibility issues in play, and the dynamics of friendship are pretty difficult to manufacture - consider how much crap you're willing to put up with from your friends, and entering that level of emotional rapport in medias res.

The characters don't necessarily have to be strangers, and indeed some of them might start as (and remain) friends, but offering some narrative structure to hold a group in each others' orbits while they resolve those session one to three social dynamics issues is just helpful to cohesion, and allows more of a chance for those emotional and roleplaying connections to gel.

Those are some pretty fair points. Hm...maybe rather than defining the connection ahead of time, I could just grab players and ask that question OOC while people are finishing up theirs character concepts and (simple) sheets?

Game is up and recruiting. Thanks for all of the advice and discussion everyone.

link to another game

Just follow this fine link here if you're interested.

Thanks again, and I hope to see some of you soon!