Kawaii Rebirth

Game Master BastianQuinn

I'm reading LTP as 'little tea party', fwiw.

I think that I totally dig the idea of Chessa setting of a furramework for her friends. Everybody needs peoples, and nobody should have to be alone or unsupported.

Edit: I'm really digging all the little easter eggs hidden on everyone's pages. :3

Edit, Edit: Only a couple that I can find. Oh well. :p

Oh? I never found any on anyone's other than yours.

Yeah, it's just ours. :P

I think Bastian added a bit to mine, though it may have been someone else. :)

I take it by your link that you found my mischief? :P

Indeed I did. Your shenanigans were what inspired mine.
Expect to see numbers rise exponentially.

FYI, new players, I hide spoilers and clues in odd places like hyperlinks on i's and periods.

Tracy, tell me more about Tomoe. How do you contact her? Did you want to talk to her as an Investigation?

Does Chessa see Tracy take the flower, or only see her bring it to the base?

Did Chessa see the flower before it was taken, if she didn't see Tracy take it?

Probably wouldn't have noticed the flower on their own. Ground zero was too dangerous and conspicuous to get a sneak peek; however, Chessa was likely watching when Tracy picked it, and saw it then. It was in the exact center of the devastation, in the thick of the ichor and Darkness.

Chessa will have seen anything anyone investigating in the library did but not necessarily everything they saw.

As near as I can tell, we've got a couple of scenes going on at present?

• There's Junpei & Tracy(are the rest of us there?) in the hideout (which turned into a roll)
• Chessa & Brilliance

Have I missed anything?

The scene with Chessa and Brilliance is more or less private and more or less concluded.

The scene at the hideout was open to all the PCs, it's a planing/sharing meeting in preparation for the mission (what to pursue, what else needs to be done beforehand, etc.)

:P Then I have missed plenty of opportunities to unleash snark. I didn't realize I was in that scene :p

Then all the more reason to make up for lost time, no?

Should I write something to refocus the scene, or are we just waiting on some RL stuff?

Let's think of the group meeting as a hub scene for some flashbacks and flash-forwards as you finish off your Downtime Actions. A little IC discussion will help when you're choosing a mission.

Oh, most certainly an "Perceive" action. Very fitting.

Perceiving: 2d6 ⇒ (1, 5) = 6

- With a mark in Perceive, is that another 1d6?Bonus?: 1d6 ⇒ 3

Or am I getting the system confused with Feng Shui?

One mark is one die total. You can push yourself for one more at the cost of 2 Stress, and others can help by contributing one die if they have the same Action. As long as you have at least one, the result is the highest die rolled. If you have none, it's the lowest of two dice.

Yup. Definitely Feng Shui.

Looks like it's a 1 for me!

Stupid question time; we can only do one 'mission' per mission, correct?
I mean we can't have some of us doing one thing & then others doing something else, other than possibly some kind of 'support action' off stage or the like.

Sorry I haven't posted in game in a bit. This past week has been mostly playing catch-up to all the things that dragged behind as a result of no gas & consequently no hot water for almost a month.

Home ownership is a pain in the ass. Especially when it is a home you didn't pick out yourself & you are constantly finding new & horrible ways in which the person who did buy the house got seriously screwed...

I have no problem splitting the party. The assumption there is that you're trying to save time so I suppose separate Fallout rolls would be unfair...

Whatever mission(s) the team picks, I'll be sure to arrange things to give most of you opportunities to pursue side quests.

Sorry to hear about the house stuff.

I thought Ao was maintaining the shrine as their DT action?

Tracy, who has three actions, elected to do so.

Characters with Downtime Actions remaining: Astre, Cygnus, Tracy, Ao.

I thought I used all three of my actions.

My notes say you kept the shrine and investigated.

Junpei rolled a social link with you with one of their actions.

My notes say you kept the shrine and investigated.

Junpei rolled a social link with you with one of their actions.

I think I see, I should have been clearer with this post. The dice I rolled were my social link action.

Gotcha. That gives Junpei a Social Link in kind.

Very good.

We should definitely figure out our promises before we get to the mission. Each of you check your sheet for your specific prompts. These are promises, spoken or unspoken, that are about another PC. Pursuing these promises gets you XP at the end of the mission.

Promises must be made to another PC, correct? Just as Social Links have to be with another PC, yes?

Each player writes a promise for each prompt on their character sheet. Each promise relates to a specific PC, pick a different PC for each. Playing towards these promises will earn the characters XP at the end of session. You don’t need to complete them, just show them in play.

They don't need to be to the other PC, just related to them, but yes. You pick another PC for each prompt.

Ok, new question; my promises are a naive promise & an imposible promise.
The imposible I can do...
I'm not convinced Tracy has any naivety left, if she does, I'm kind of scared to discover what is actually worse than she thinks it is...

Is there anything that might be more complicated than she thinks it is?

I'm going to try going about this in a very different way. Rather than trying to make up promises regarding another person's character (which strikes me as a very... controlly way to do things), I'm going to suggest prompts that fit for other people's prompts in regards to my character.

Junpei:
Forgotten: Chessa's Magatama is a double-edged sword. While you remember Nobody, her true identity is shielded from even your memories of the future. Perhaps you made a promise to her to keep her mother safe... whoever that may be.
Doomed: I think this one is reserved?
Paradoxical: Perhaps you promised to keep her identity safe once she revealed it to you, but now you don't even remember who she is?

Tracy:
Naive: Chessa has remained positively catty about where she's from, what she's doing here, and even what exactly it is that she does when she's not here. Perhaps Tracy is interested in trying to get to the bottom of Nobody's strange existence?
Impossible: Perhaps she has decided that Nobody in her epic levels of aloofness is actually a danger to the team, and she intends to keep a watchful eye on her?

For Ao and Astre/Cygnus, I'm having significantly more trouble making suggestions, as I don't fully understand your characters at this point... and 'martyrdom/protection' seem like hard prompts to fill, and 'both' promises and 'one but not the other' promises require more knowledge on my part.

I don't think Doomed is reserved, but that won't come up quite now anyway - Paradoxical is what I was struggling on, and thanks to you, I've got something.

If anyone wants my help with their prompts, feel free to ask, but I can't think of anything right now to fit them.

EDIT: Tracy? Do you have any ideas of something I could use for my Forgotten promise prompt?

Absolutely talk about the promises before you jot them down. You'll have an easier time bringing it up in play with some buy-in.

For the twins, the conflicting promises are easiest if they're made by each twin separately.

Amusingly enough, Tracy has convinced herself, thanks to Nobody's combined ignoring Tracy's question & general acting like every other smart-ass spirit Tracy has had to deal with for the last ten years of her life, that Nobody is actually the Kami of the hideout. Which on the surface would seem to negate the need to 'get to the bottom of' Nobody's existence, but 'Nobody's our Kami & I'm gonna prove it.' Sounds appropriate, don't you think?

Junpei... As it happens, I am going through 'Last Season's' posts as-it-were for reasons which should be apparent if you remember BastianQuinn's earlier comments. Nothing immediately springs to mind, but I will keep my eyes open.

Tracy, tell me more about Tomoe. How do you contact her? Did you want to talk to her as an Investigation?

Given my almost complete lack of knowledge regarding Japanese funerary practices & the fact that Tomoe's death, like all the other suicides that fueled an incursion of the Darkness, left no corpse behind; Tracy can't really go to her Graveside & hanging out where she died is likely also a bad idea. It might be cleansed but it's still an incursion site, so it's likely under some level of observation.

For Ao, 1st season was very much a "Wait, this is real?!" kind of situation, which got compounded by his sister being dragged into it, which was serving as a motivating force. Of course, that all went sideways in the span of an afternoon/evening for him, and provided the Convergence was more of a gradual shift provoked by the (not?)hatching of the moon, while trying to seal off what might have been the first major point of incursion or the establishing of the first "Pole" of The Darkness.

At least, that's what I'm thinking his research got him to.

It is entirely possible that from his viewpoint, slapping a "Reinforce" tag on what he conceived as his core "self" gave him a mental switch that might let him have worked with the Temple while thinking he was just eke-ing by, but that could explain his placement with the Erohin, as well as the visions with the matagama. Of course, that would have happened between seasons one and two, and I could be interpreting the visions that he got entirely differently, rather than them being linked. Heck, his matagama might be the condensed remnants of that cell, and that's just a disturbing possibility, though that would explain Shuji's fatalism, perhaps.

This season (I'm calling it "Rebirth: Convergence") picks up perhaps just after the cell collapses, Ao doesn't (yet)realize he's a sleeper agent, and watches the rest of the cell be destroyed.

His demeanor is the result of being around so many beings that could kill him with little effort that it's just acceptance, likely. It's hard to be scared perpetually, so he just goes with the flow, recognizing that as long as his work is flawless, and he occupies a crucial point in the necessity of things, his survival is guaranteed save for rogue elements and chance happenings. As he's tasked with identifying these "rogue elements" and minimizing the "chance happenings", that a bit more job security.

Suzu... "Moth to a flame" is the easiest summation I have for that, and as for "Martyrdom"... How about "I will be the crack that crumbles this ivory tower"?
"Protection" could be an idealistic, "None will fall before I do", or "I stand between the Erohin and the rest of the World"

Harder coming up with anything interesting than I thought...I don't quite have an enough of an idea what's going on with or between everyone to be aware of what would be fun.
Honestly, I'd love one of my remaining promises to be the product of some catastrophic screw-up on another 'run', that...just so happens to be hard to keep before everything's beyond saving.

Your promises relate to one of the other PCs. As grand as what I've just seen is, they don't seem to specifically relate to anyone else.
Not to mention a simple 'Protect Everyone' statement is far too easy to chase.

Well, then... how about 'Uncle Ao is just as oblivious of danger as he ever was. I'll have to protect him, for Mama's sake.' - Chessa has two moms. She was created through concerted effort of both 804-chan and Sora. Where is 804-chan, now?

Also, ha. Take that, Junpei. My goal is to protect the tank. Whose... goal... is to get hit in the face. :| That's about the best I can come up with for 'intimate'. :P

Those are great directions to take, Me'mori, but they don't connect you to any of your teammates specifically. Who among the team seems to need your protection the most? (this can be a misconception of Ao's which can be dramatically corrected later.)

This system relies heavily on character connections, but this doesn't have to be a question of "what connections already exist between characters". It can be "what connections do we want to explore between characters".

Kyou/408 will be a part of this story. Right now, I'm waiting on a more clear indication of what might have happened to her, whether that's a convenient plot hole, or input from a player.

Well, then... how about 'Uncle Ao is just as oblivious of danger as he ever was. I'll have to protect him, for Mama's sake.' - Chessa has two moms. She was created through concerted effort of both 804-chan and Sora. Where is 804-chan, now?

Also, ha. Take that, Junpei. My goal is to protect the tank. Whose... goal... is to get hit in the face. :| That's about the best I can come up with for 'intimate'. :P

I laughed. That's a good point on that, though. If the promises are supposed to be more personal, we may have to fast-forward a bit as that seems like something that would develop partway in, and we're at the beginning.

If I read correctly, 804-chan was a construct(?) that was actually Ao's grandmother, taking a personal hand in things... Would that make Chessa "auntie" or "kinda-mom"? Then again, grandma was "sis", so this is instantaneously contorted on the level that only Anime Magical Girl metaphysics can manage.

Ao's sister Kyou was only known to Chessa's human Sora as "408-chan" because that was her apartment number. Kyou also shared her first name with her grandmother (don't look at me, it's a legitimately common name. The Emi's are my fault though.) who was the eldest of the 'original three' Obusa magical girls. Kyou Oshiro's... 'corporeal situation' has not been explored, but there's a canonical story, and while it hasn't been shown on-screen, it shouldn't be 'coming out of left field' where she ended up.

Speaking of Emi (spooky singer Emi, not tiny tsundere Emi) I have not found an appropriate place for her in the new series. I'll keep her on the bench until I really know where she would do the most good, but I suspect it has to do with Tracy and Tomoe (who is not to be confused with Tomoyo, who is also MIA, but relevant)

~~~~~

The promises aren't permanent. Once you fulfill them, or they've lost their relevance, you replace them with a new promise. The point is to write out an objective related to another PC so you have a reason to do something other than roll dice at obstacles. It enriches player interaction, and feeds me more elements to weave into the story. How does your character see themself? Are these promises altruistic, motivated by desires, or a projection of their insecurities?

If you're worried about history, a) you've got three weeks to play with as far as promises made about being a team fighting the Darkness, and b) you also have 10 years of being god-pets where you might have run into each other. If that seems weird, recall the last time you ran into someone, became friends, then realized you knew each other from some other long-term activity like work or school, and never happened to learn each other's names.

That may just be me. I am not great with faces or names.

Nobody's combined ignoring Tracy's question & general acting like every other smart-ass spirit...

...'Nobody's our Kami & I'm gonna prove it.' Sounds appropriate, don't you think?

Are you referring to this post? If so, I'm afraid I didn't recognize it as targeted at Chessa. She'd still likely not have answered, instead grinning at you... So yes. Definitely appropriate. She is required by several statutes to be catty.

Keep in mind, that starting promises absolutely can be misinformed. Promises is really a bad term for them, as they're really more about being prompts that guide a character's actions, and the dangling XP offering is meant as some sweet sweet carroty goodness.

I do think it's a bit of a weakness of the system, though. I get that it's trying to reinforce roleplaying, but it feels odd to have a writing prompt on my sheet that exists only as a carrot. I think Fate does it better in making you -better- at being who you are and -worse- when you go against your nature.

Regardless, beyond the tangent, I think it's important to understand them more as sincere beliefs than as promises. Your character -believes- this, and acts upon it, until they see it through, or see it fail... Or until something more important shows up.

So, your promises at this stage don't need to be super informed. They need to not be outright against a character's nature (unless you want it to all be a huge misunderstanding), but being true, being real, being tangible doesn't really matter. It's about feeling and the consequences of that feeling. Whether Ao puts himself in danger, is aware of danger, needs protecting, or that Kyou would care if he died doesn't matter. The fact that Chessa believes it and will act on it is.

So, if it helps, think of them as placeholders until you better understand the other characters and your bonds grow. :)

Yep, that's the one.

I was thinking about some of the 'missing moves' in the playbooks, and here's what I came up with:

Guardian: Immovable Object (AKA Unbreakable Oath, AKA Word as Bond): When you're acting in accordance with a promise you've made, you gain increased effect. (This probably needs some sort of limiter in how often you can use it!)

Time Traveler: Forward Thinking: You know what your friends are capable of. Once per mission, when you spend a link with a friend, you may grant them the benefits of one of their transcendent abilities. (Needs something if they've already unlocked all transcendent abilities)

What are you guys' thoughts on those?

Should have posted earlier. Those look good. Too bad Guardian already gets special armor, or I would say have them get that & then spend it for the increased effect for Immovable object. On the other hand, the other 'increased effect' abilities I have seen didn't necessarily have limitations beyond 'you can only use this in this situation', so it might not really need it.
As far as Time Traveler being effected by the target having all their transcendent abilities, you could give them the same thing 'Untapped Potential' does they get one of yours & you get one of theirs.

Possibly... Coup de Grace: If your action might fulfill a promise, gain increased effect. Limiting factor being that it has to potentially fulfill the promise, not just work toward it.

Anyone have any questions?

I'll be moving into choosing a Mission next week.

Here are the four available missions and a few suggestions relevant to the fiction so far. The first two are Tier I, so you'd get +1 to the engagement roll.

*Cleanse a person or location (+1)
 Ao is falling to darkness

*Face a creature of Darkness (+1)
 Ayatori is an agent of the Darkness
 The creature from the attack is still at large

*Seek answers in a strange place
 Might be worth digging around in the domain of one of the Erohin

*Reclaim an object of power
 Shuji’s eggs have been claimed by the Erohin

Thoughts?

Here are the four available missions and a few suggestions relevant to the fiction so far. The first two are Tier I, so you'd get +1 to the engagement roll.

*Cleanse a person or location (+1)
 Ao is falling to darkness

As Tracy is unaware of this, this wouldn't really be on her 'radar' so-to-speak.

*Face a creature of Darkness (+1)

 Ayatori is an agent of the Darkness
 The creature from the attack is still at large

One of these two would be Tracy's choice, with the 'creature' being her preference over Ayatori.

*Seek answers in a strange place

 Might be worth digging around in the domain of one of the Erohin

Personally, i want a better idea what the questions are before I try getting answers for them.

*Reclaim an object of power

 Shuji’s eggs have been claimed by the Erohin

As Ao has not yet revealed that he feels it might be possible to somehow 'reconstitute' Shuji, this option isn't really even a blip on Tracy's meter yet.

Cygnus and Astre would push for exploring the domain of Perfection. she seems kinda... ishy

Chessa is pretty much in the same boat as Tracy.

Re: Ao: If she knew, this would be first priority. But she doesn't.
Re: Ayatori/Erohin: We don't have any proof besides 'we know what they are'. This is going to tell a very different story than if we'd worked to gather real proof... and we don't have any reason to suspect the Erohin, yet. (Aside from Ao seeing one)

The cool thing for this, though, is that if we check out an Erohin, maybe we don't see them being villainy villains, but instead see villainy villains doing something there...

Re: Creature: MONSTER HUNT
Re: Shuji: Again, this would be much higher if she knew anything about them.

As a side note, I think my Secretive Purromise is 'I'm really digging Tracy's attention, even if it is based on suspicion. I'm going to keep her guessing.'

What are your thoughts on that? :)

The amount of information you have, and your approach, will effect your Engagement Roll. The crew gets 1d for hope, and modifies that starting pool based on the following factors:

• Is the mission particularly heroic or noble? Take +1d.
  
• Does the mission’s goal or methods reflect the Darkness inside our characters? Take -1d.
  
• Is the mission following through on details from the crew’s investigation? Take +1d.
  
• Is the Darkness well defended here, or particularly strong against this? Take -1d.
  
• Does this mission center around one of your friends? Take +1d.
  
• Are your rivals or enemies working against you? Take -1d.
  
• Are there any other elements that you want to consider, due to circumstances or events in your world? At the MCs discretion, these factors might improve or impede your engagement roll.
  

Since some of those questions have answers you don't know, after you pick your mission, we'll talk about the roll a bit before I ask for it to be rolled.