Kawaii Cataclysm (Inactive)

Game Master BastianQuinn

Re: hope shift
One of the options is "You are able to heal someone else, removing points of Magic and Trauma, healing a serious injury, or removing a single effect caused by a Shift."

You've been using "Comfort", which has brought Lys back from a Trauma shift, and you've gained hope for it.

All the main characters are basically DMPCs. I generated them with a number of magic and trauma shifts, and they take trauma and magic when they do things. Like each time Pristine Princess Kaguya performs a sorcery...

BRAMM

~~~~~~~~meanwhile~~~~~~~~~
Like, he thinks they're both talking about Junpei's feelings about girls, given that he's assumed to be disinterested. However, Lysander's comments have had the context of his recent history because this topic is his deflection from his slip up talking about europe. He has no idea it's being broadcast. An ethics major would go nuts.

Also, for real for real, though... Like she'd summon an army of beanie baby puppies. (Zeek-bound Tomoyo, I mean.)

So... how about Soul Forger Tenshi?

I like forger ALOT. Like your pastels can make scribble-golems? Hella bonuses to 'filling in the holes.' Dangerously unchecked control over the aesthetic of a repaired psyche? Speaking of ethics majors... It casts Rainbow Bright in a dark light.

Huh. So that's how it works.

All things considered, happy to spend a shift like that - what specific impact it'd have I don't know, but I'll do it.

Also, I'm imagining Aratani magicking in food every time Lys's phone goes off, and considering just who she is, it's both a hilarious idea to think of, and an utterly terrifying one.

It's so bad she has bubblegum skin and bunny ears. She's had at least one Extreme Shift. That is one scary tray of totinos pizza rolls... or moon pies.

As it happens, Lysander is driven to submit to Hugues because he hurt himself. This conversation can repair that damage, and allow Lysander to trust his own judgement.

What's Ao's average Talisman per hour?

Awww, no "Koinu no Tomoyo"?

Probably for the best. She already has the blades of fire and shadow.

Yeah, definitely for the best that we not give the sentient trinket a fu dog trinket. :)

"I barely have a concept of what it is to be human, but I'm pretty sure they're a mistake. Because I'm perfect and I see all their flaws..."

That is, assuming a Fu dog would be a pride binding.

We already know about the 'Tomoyo destroys the world' ending, now. Though, that's only the bad version, maybe there's a good version. With Yarn. And kittens.

I don't understand the Rainbow Bright in a Dark Light. I've never seen it!

Also, as for ethics majors and not knowing you're under a truth spell, I really like the potential for Junpei to slip up and acknowledge something that's not being shared. :P I don't want the scene to get borked, but... it's definitely there!

Ao: You can roll now to find out how many perfect talismans you complete, or you can roll when you try to use them, and find out how well they were made then.

Rainbow Brite was a kid's cartoon about a girl who returned the color to a grey world. Color was a thinly veiled metaphor for happiness or emotions in general.

Roll to complete perfect talismans: 2d6 ⇒ (2, 4) = 6

FYI: Being sick and scrambling for finals is making putting up an update unpossible. It's half-written, but there's some delicate rp that I don't want to rush.

You're good, here! Good luck with finals!

Take your time, I'm still wrapping my brain around the sudden activity. :P

Is there an altar somewhere on your property? A secret place where she could cast powerful magic?

IS there anything like that, to my knowledge?

I mean, as much as I know my place...I don't exactly know about it in that much detail.

Not in your apartment. It would be a place she spends a lot of time that has a table she can work on. The kind of place her trainees would know to go to find her?

For the record, pre-hope shift Lys would have just called Hugues, and noon would have become Baphomet Vs Yggdrasil under the Cthulunar eclipse.

Also, awesome reference calling back to Aratani's trinkets, that's totally what would have happened there.

Whoever can guess Ao's Ünten driver in a PM gets 3 Fate.

simple4sight was right. This is going to be a whole mess.

I feel like I've said this before, but: I eagerly await the incoming disaster.

Yeah, Simple4sight was my third guess, with Simple4Sight being also my second guess, but now I've got the idea in my head that both are someone else, too...

Ground Control to Major Juno...

Oh, no, I mean, he was correct when he said missing his meeting with silverRose was going to mess stuff up.

Your second guess on the driver was right, Tenshi.

Folks are still welcome to guess.

Sure glad that, as a player, I know exactly who that baby is. If I didn't I would have to accept "murdered her firstborn" as a genuine possibility.

..."Tried to murder her firstborn" could still be a thing, of course.

I was almost certain Kiyomi's takaway would have been "the kids at school are talking about me?"

She is the most popular girl at school; someone is always talking about her, for good or ill.

The [map] of the garden is up.

I want to flail at how this story is going... I'm reading, and it's like watching an oncoming train collision (pun intended). I fully expect that Kyou will remember the incantation word-for-word, and things are going to get crazy. It's like we're in the third episode of Madoka, and barreling right on through.

*grin* This is going to be great.

:3 I'm not intentionally drawing you into the drama with only a thinly veiled attempt at blaming an NPC or anything... :3

Good call. Ao was going to remain as aloof as possible, considering the weirdness that is his job and coworkers. At best, he was going to encounter some oddity when placing tags- "You mean these are real?"- and could "nope" on out when he could.

Now, even if Kyou dodges a bullet and doesn't inherit a role, he'd still have to deal with sister guilt, "You let Hashimoto-sama get hurt and didn't do anything?"

*blink* Or worse... Kyou gets hired on at the Temple... Oh no...

Let me put things this way: I've shown the signs of three active phantoms: The First Born Son, The Withered Lover, and the Pilgrimess.

Well, I mean, just bringing the girl would be irresponsible. You've got to turn her into a witch if you're gonna bring her someplace possibly dangerous intentionally. It's just a requirement. :3

*facepalm, laughing* Indeed. There has to be danger on both ends for it to work out, after all... "Balance", and whatnot.

*dry look* Way to go whole hog there, Sora... ~,~;

XD

This is also the point where I ask, "How much of this (magical girl events) was openly visible before Ao started getting a clue?" Because that's a LOT to take in (which I have to roll... Stay Calm: 2d6 ⇒ (2, 1) = 3) NOPE!

That's Ao looking up, and deciding to look back down at the feeds, because he can at least control the feeds, and read his messages. He might just nope the hell away from reality for a while until his ride is done. *thoughtful* Could he unconsciously spend a Magic point to help "Nope" what he's seeing?

-For frame of reference, he'd probably "Nope" off of the driver's cue, if a magic point is/can be spent.

The eclipse is causing a nightmare in broad daylight. Magic stuff at this level usually coincidentally finds itself in back alleys and abandoned buildings.

This is 100% nope-worthy.

Magic is spent three at a time to have magic shifts. Fate can be spent to re-roll.

Otherwise, you're free to rationalize or panic as you feel suits your character. What did you have in mind?

Ah, completely forgot that it had to be spent in threes.

Hmmm... I'll be considering that and try to get a post up today.

Hey, that'd been a scene I'd been looking forward to since before May's player quit. Sora's not gonna just let a little fear of horrible horrible things happening to everyone she may get close to intimacy get in the way of trying to protect her loved ones.

It certainly felt like a Fate-fueled action to me. :) I figure if she'd rolled better, I'd have been able to have handed it to May with relative ease, but the scene turned out better for it. I also figure that if there's something time-sensitive involved in having left it that way, it'd be a fitting 'penalty'.

Likewise, just leaving it out on the table for someone to take other than May could be interesting. Maybe Ao is Sailor Klepto? Who knows! But it does leave things to be somewhat interesting. :) (Maybe we even get to learn what happens to a BA Normal who gets hold of a magical girl trinket? :)) It's left very open-ended how that all turns out. :)

Regardless, I just happened to get to ruin mess with another character a little in the process. :3

Ah, completely forgot that it had to be spent in threes.

Hmmm... I'll be considering that and try to get a post up today.

Don't worry, you'll have more soon.

Regardless, I just happened to get to ruin mess with another character a little in the process. :3

A fan*. You messed with a fan. *laugh* You're sooooo doomed.

The old recording studio is in the south-west corner of the map.
Pele (in orange-brown) is there right now. (or that's where she was last seen.)

Making a custom move:

Let No Bad Happen
At the cost of 1 Hope and 1 Fate, no one will be critically harmed in a scene until you arrive, so long as you are headed their way.

Oh, and Ayatori teleported Paresh to the alley behind the Wonderland Cafe because it's a Yokai safe-haven owned by Pele. There are actually characters and locations that are legitimately non-magical, but Kiyomi's "complicate life" table has "secretly magical" in its most common slot. "Ethically questionable" and "body horror" are to either side. The tables aren't that big, I use 2d4 and re-roll when it wouldn't make sense.

Sora has "rabbit hole", Alex has "distressed damsel", Junpei has "insurmountable odds", and Ao has "undeniable proof".

Do you adjust those when we go through major changes?

Also, do you have 'giant distraction' for me because I don't play well with others or because I play better alone? :p

They've shifted around a bit. I base them off choices. Rabbit hole came from that first time I tempted you with the dreamscape while everyone else was fighting Anastasia. It doesn't help that your title gave you access to information few others could get to.

The more you engage with a complication the closer to the center of the curve they get.

Troubled dreamers started out as your main complication, but is sitting at 3 right now.

...

To be perfectly clear, complicate life is always a giant distraction. -or, like 'a reason to not do the thing'.

Looking back, I was thinking I was often distracted by them, but I can think of explicit times I stuck with the main goal. Just not often. Like when someone came into my house earlier and I stuck with helping Kazue.

Also, though, it's a great call to keep reusing what works. I've definitely enjoyed my rabbit holes. :)

That was one of many times players have triggered each other's motifs. When you folks line things up like that I just let it happen. I use the dice to make sure beats have enough going on in them. If I need you traveling for a beat, I need a couple things for you to interact with in transit. If you're traversing the dungeon mall, I use them to fill the rooms depending on what characters are together.

Your first choices were at character creation. I just put them in a box and shook them. Natural selection has evolved them into the motifs.

So, how did you start off making your little terrariums-in-need-of-pruning exactly? I can easily see how you'd arrive at 'what worked to complicate, versus what didn't', but I'm less good at coming up with those notions to begin with. :)

*Gendo Ikari pose, paying close attention*

Honestly, pay close attention and take notes. Everything a player says going into a game is a reflection of how they see the game and their expectations.

I recognized Sora as a name from Kingdom Hearts. your theme is dreams. Sora is a former child star. Her perspective on coming of age is skewed by outside pressures. The villain, who's initial introduction was very "Morgana la Fae", became Anastasia in order to interact directly with those choices because Sora was the one messing around behind the Nightmare. Very Shadowrun Hacker in that sense.

In one of your first posts, you said "I dare not, Headmaster! If I join the table, we shall be thirteen! Nothing could be more unlucky! Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!" A reference to Harry Potter, and an oblique reference to Horcruxes.

Sora and May were inseparable, they entered play with Hiro. Wind, travel, dream in an arcade. Where the others explored scenes in the past, Sora and Hiro didn't live in the past like that.

Don't be afraid to leave things unsaid, decisions unmade. If it hasn't been on stage, it doesn't have to exist.

Ayatori and Paresh, I had need of an alternate magical girl, in case the table's moral compass gave horcruxes a hard no. However, Sora was the one to pop her anchor in the mixing jar, and suddenly the world needed the raven and the charming gentleman in the bomb ass jacket to be two characters, so Sora had someone to learn from. With Chrysanth, I had established a charming school friend who needed socketing in with other narratives, and I rolled out a DMPC.

Paresh had to be approachable, but charming to interface well with Chrysanth's polyphobia. Making him foreign unlocked another culture's perspective, but also made him an outsider looking for other outsiders. His disability and the attitude tied in with the polyphobia as well, but then he also had to be attractive to Sora and possibly Hiro now, so he became a rebel with a bile pact who found the way to make a male trinket.

In a game that adverized death as a looming consequence, I wanted to give you folks lives with dire consequences. Seven horcruxes, seven sins, seven bodily fluids, seven common passive super powers. The most obvious essentia gives the most critical power (blood is pride and regeneration) Characters who chose blood always had uncertainty about how stuff worked. Sakura had the most user-friendly power set, but everything was sad.

There was a noodle chef ghost in the mall we never interacted with.

-------

If there's a process it's this:

Where are we? Where are we coming from? Where are we going? Who would be here? How many are here?

What's the way forward? What would attract each character's attention? What's preventing the characters from moving forward? Many choices, or one obstacle?

What is this place doing? What changes are in progress? What kind of change do the present characters care about?

What is the objective doing now? What else is headed to the objective?

Who is looking out for the PCs if stuff goes south? What are they doing to keep tabs?

Who is behind it, and how are they keeping tabs?

Are there three things in this scene yet? If not, roll your way out.

Where possible, answer more than one question with one thing previously established.

To make the tables I roll on, I just take the notes on all the ways things connect and I keep track of them on tables. If they aren't getting attention, they drop off as I add new connections to the middle. Negative notes on the low end, positive on the high end. I look at the tables when I'm answering questions, and I make adjustments when they make sense.

Everything is always a consequence of what's been established.

Man.. that's a lot. That might be why I have trouble as a DM, to be honest. Typically I can do that for one or two of the characters (and players) that I get and that gets me super hyped for theirs, but it leaves a lot of middling ground for the others until inevitably I either lose their interest or figure them out. It's usually the former. :(

Do you also have trouble getting a lock on 'everyone' or... do I vaguely remember you asking us leading questions beyond the big three that helped to flesh us out?

* * *

The following is sort of an everywhere rant about Sora, so here goes, via spoiler:

Regardless, thank you for all of the tidbits. I'm working at being a better DM, but up until now I've been a much better player than DM. By a long shot.

Leading questions are like me acting as a player in the PC's backgrounds. Who are you related to? Who do you hang out with at <workplace>? What's <workplace> like? What were your plans before magic happened? These come when I need to answer "who would be here", "what changes are occurring here", or "where are we coming from", and the answer is that one of the PCs should know, or I roll and hit an empty slot.

---

May was the hardest. Her fear was stagnation, and they seemed to have a hard time posting or finding something to interact with. Her position was great as a kind of air break for all the magical nonsense, but as our group's Tomoyo a la Cardcaptor Sakura, hers was never a prima donna story.

I also have trouble with the Navy stuff in Alex's background because it's not something I'm all that familiar with. I've watched a lot of NCIS, but that's about it.

I feel like I overwhelmed Brigit's player. There were just so many tools I wanted to put in a player's hands, but trying to start a new character off with information the other players don't have felt like it went badly.

---

One of the most important things with BB-pop was baking in all the conflicting insecurities that made you grow apart. Emi's an evoker because she was the talented one (the one born good at music) but in magic it's the opposite. Sora and Kazue were born with a talent for magic, and Emi has to work hard to keep up, which she resents despite the irony. Kazue's been playing Janus the whole time, like a cosmically doomed Sailor Venus.

Posting here briefly before running around crazy for convention I'm helping GM at...

Watching NCIS doesn't hurt in the least, but it tends to focus on a 'procedural' approach to *criminal* activities.

UCMJ These are the laws that the military operates under, IN ADDITION to local civilian authority where a Status of Forces Agreement exists.

Japan Status of Forces Agreement(Wikipedia)

Basically, NCIS investigates cases that 'bleed out' of a given command, or if a given command does not feel it has the necessary resources to investigate a given situation.

Some cases never even make it to NCIS' attention -- showing up drunk to a watch, for example, is pretty straight-forward. Where NCIS would come in is if there's no clear indication of where the criminal activity is (such as something like embezzling, or a body found under mysterious circumstances, or a missing sailor who has not reported for duty after thirty days, etc.)

Essentially, part of the reason Alex may appear a bit restrained at some points is because if he gets caught doing something, he could theoretically be handed over to the Japanese for whatever punishment they want to mete out for criminal acts and THEN whenever that was finished have to face military justice for the *same activity*. The laws of double jeopardy do NOT apply to members of the military(even recently discharged members STILL fall under the umbrella for a given number of years), which is why it is actually rare to see them go 'ronin' or 'crazed gunman' statistically.

How is the "All" message being perceived?

Ah, I guess that should have been in a spoiler marked "magical girls".

That's Tiresias' telepathic network between senshi.

Whew... Ao would have really been worried.