So I'm trying to put together a game centered on magical girls, but I'm having trouble finding a system with good mechanics for it. Most of what I've found is too heavily based on the Puella Magi franchise, or puts mechanical functions on in-character relationships (which invites a level of munchkin/twinking that I find creepy and hard to trust players with), or has a combat system that depends too much on its own setting-specific details. Can anybody recommend something for this?
>>47955347
Mutants and Masterminds
>>47955347
GURPS is actually a good diea for this. You can find templates for Magical girls online. The system doesn't rely on a specific setting, nor does it put any emphasis on in-character relationships through mechanics. You may want to read the pastebin on magic in general if you want to know more about how to handle magic in the game.
>>47955347
D&D 4e.
>>47955347
I really hate to say this, but Savage Worlds.
Get the Necessary Evil setting for SW. The Super-Power rules presented there are EXTREMELY flexible and could just as easily be used to make a magical girl as well as a supervillain.
Hell, why not run a Magical Girl campaign in the Necessary Evil setting? Have the PCs in alien-occupied Japan for a few sessions as a kind of Magical Girl resistance. Then Dr. Doom shows up and tries to recruit them to join the Resistance.
>>47955347
Hey OP, you in need of players? I feel like it would be fun to try this kind of rp
>>47956125
Ah Necessary Evil it's such an incredibly fun and flexible setting/campaign.
This reminds me, when I ran this one of my PCs was literally Ryoko who was out for revenge after the V'Sori slaughtered all of her friends and dragged Tenchi away.
I'll check these out; thanks, everybody :D
>>47956595
I'm running this one in meatspace, sorry
>>47955347
Strike! is fucking perfect if you want to have game-y, lighthearted tactical combats.
4e works too.
>>47956125
Savage Worlds is really good for anime, I'd reccomend it to OP too. Spirit rolls to transform and such.
>>47955347
Maybe try BESM? It's specifically billed as an anime game, so there's probably at least a little support for magical girls.
>>47955915
That's...surprisingly inspired. Just change the flavour text of the classes and you're pretty much good to go.
>>47957399
Stop shilling Strike!
Why does /tg/ keep shilling Strike!?
>>47966288
/tg/ doesn't keep shilling Strike.
Touhoufag keeps shilling Strike.
>>47966827
[citation needed]
Fuck you all. Go with Wild Talents.
>>47967701
This man is a hero
>>47966827
Touhoufag is too autistic to not post kawaii anime girls with his posts. QED, that's not him.I know this because it's me.
>>47955347
Just use the old Sailor Moon system. It's pretty good and flexible enough to handle most shit.
>tfw there will never be a system where I can run a Nanoha campaign
>>47955347
The relationship thing has been greatly revised in the latest edition of MB. Hell, too much, even. Still, worth a check if that's your problem.
>>47955347
Tristat Dx would work. It's free, plus it's the updated version of the system used for Big Eyes Small Mouth and the Sailor Moon RPG which have been suggested already.
>>47955915
>>47962629
Personally, I'd suggest Gamma World 7e instead. Same base mechanics and ability to refluff, but ultimately more straightforward.
>>47956832
Nostalgia. I was in a NE campaign for a very long time as a premade generic cackling supervillain who was pretty much Dr Doom and Ming the Merciless' bastard offspring.
The rest of the players accused him of being a closet hero when he busted his archnemesis out of a V'sori prison so he could fight her once the aliens were gone.
And honestly, I'd suggest OVA for OP's game. Mostly because I'll never get around to running it, but partly because it's better than Tristat/BESM and the Golden Sky Stories crossover has a great relationship-based mechanic for when you wanna go all SOCIAL LINK GO.
What sort of magical girl thing are you going for?
I'm in a game set in the Nanoha universe using Legends of the Wulin, and although it's designed for Wuxia stuff it works very well for action heavy magical girl stuff. It's not a light system, but the combat is so damn fun when you get it working, and it also includes a lot of useful touches, such as the ability to defeat someone by befriending them as a core part of the system.
>>47971044
And now I feel like a derp for missing this post. Posting art of my PC (A combat cyborg) as moderate proof of said campaigns existence.
>>47973787
Lookscute. What's the campaign like?
I really just wanna run a campaign in what StrikerS should've been, military politics mixed with classic mahou shojo fighting and unique Nanoha-esque moral struggles.
>>47973958
The game isn't actually far from that premise, we're a group of cadets at the TSAB Academy who've ended up getting involved with a major political conflict with Hyperion, an independent administered world who've ended up a problem for the TSAB.
After a catastrophic Belkan invasion early in their history, the world developed an extreme aversion to magic, instead progressing mundane and non-magical technology to extreme levels of sophistication. This makes them an issue because, at this point, they're a minor interdimensional power in their own right, which is long after the point the TSAB would usually come in to help administer the fledgling world, yet by the TSAB's own first contact doctrine, due to their lack of magic we lack any authority over them.
This is further complicated by their use of mass based weapons and cloned armies of cyborgs and synthetics to make up for their lack of magic.
We've befriended a group of their cyborgs who came to awaken magical ability (which means they can't return home unless the law changes), but while we've made personal steps towards a peaceful resolution, there are forces within both the TSAB and Hyperion's intelligence groups trying to engineer a war for reasons we still can't decipher.
It's been great fun though. We've shot demigods with ancient Belkan superweapons, had dogfights with swarms of fighter drones around huge golems and even taken part in a tournament arc. Currently we're investigating a strange Belkan ruin which, amazingly, still seems to be active and functional- Which also means it's full of deadly defenses and traps.
>>47974389
*independent unadministered world
Attaching NPC art of a neo-belkan noblewoman we know.
>>47974389
Sounds loads of fun. What's the party like? What system do you guys use?
>>47973787
>>47974389
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/41521864
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/41612411
Any chance of new write-ups soon? I remember reading these threads about your campaign a year ago, but that's basically the last we've had.
>>47974624
Sadly the first archive link is still broken for some odd reason, but https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/41521864/ still hosts the thread.
>>47974607
Legends of the Wulin, it's an odd one but it works well, as I described in >>47973754
As for PC's, the storytime goes into detail, but the tl;dr is an unfinished combat cyborg, a magical musclegirl, a belkan noble with rose tinted glasses and Claire, who is also there. (Claire is the most normal PC, it's a running joke, but she's also the only one capable of magical flight in our group, and ended up being mentored by a terrifying spirit and learning special magic from her.)
>>47974624
Oh, right, new writeups. The guy who did them has been a little busy for a while, but I'll give him a poke. He's been meaning to get around to it.
mgcyoa
irc.rizon.net/mgcyoa
>>47974988
The community is fucking shit tho
>>47975854
How so?
>>47974988
CYOA!=RPG system
>>47973754
Cute, but dire. The idea is that you have magical girls who are given their powers in order to prove they can be the new queen of a sealed magical world, but the last queen set the fairly-specific criteria for what her replacement should be able to do, and she died before she could tell anyone what they were.
Now the only person who can un-seal the world is the new ruler, all her minions can do is pass out powers to whoever they think would be good for the job and hope they manage to pass the test without knowing what the questions are. It'll be obvious (the "coronation" is instant and automatic), but nobody's managed it yet. And naturally there's monsters! And other problems! And in the end that's worth solving even if the kingdom stays sealed forever, so the overall theme is "Well, shit."
The main thing is I have relatively new players, and the biggest obstacle to our games is getting the character sheets done because everything is either highly specialized and comes with an assload of rules for building powers (and we're all nerds, so naturally everybody already knows exactly what they want their powers to do), or is so broad they have no idea how to make the numbers do what they want.
I would prefer BESM, honestly, but that's already been nixed on account of the aforementioned assloads of rules and paperwork.
