Would You Like To Play A Game? (Yes or Yes)
For a while, I’ve been working on a creative fiction set in an alternative reality of the world, focusing on a group of elite military magical girl special forces, known as the Magical Girl Misfits. This team of five girls has serious flaws, and it’s a fun and interesting story to immerse myself into. But, lately I’ve found myself staring at a blank page, and I think I know the reason why I haven’t had much success writing this truly awesome story: My characters are lacking definition.
So, in an attempt to create more detailed versions of my protagonists, I’ve decided that I’m going to start a role playing game, set in another alternative reality, but where the characters are all much younger. I need to explore some of their youthful missions and mishaps. So, in this version of the world I’m creating, all the girls are attending a magical academy. I’m basically combining the worlds from the following anime together: Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and Tenchi Universe. And while I have no doubt that we’ll probably run into some of the cannon characters from all of these anime shows, as well as others, much of the character cast will be originally created from our collective imaginations.
I’m borrowing specifically from Negima! Magister Negi Magi for the massive school campus and all inclusive academy for the characters to learn and grown within. I’m taking from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha because I love the interpersonal and character development, the vast and complex universe that the setting offers, and the fusion of genres, specifically the Magical Girl and the Science Fiction ones to provide an easy to develop magical system to exploit, I mean use. Finally, I wanted the chaos that Tenchi Universe offers with the expansive galaxy, Jurain Empire and romantically charged plot. Mixing all of these elements together with my main cast of five magical girls and the various misadventures that they will find themselves in should provide for a rich context so that much needed humor can flourish.
I’m also deciding to Keep It Simple, Stupid, by only using the character generation piece of the Big Eyes Small Mouth role playing system to establish a flexible framework of standardized characters. The specific edition of the game doesn’t matter all that much, since the bulk of the character is defined by the Attributes system. I’d rather focus on the story and imaginative creativity of the players instead of game mechanics. This is an experiment, as I’ve had varied results from using full game systems in a Play By Post environment. I’ve had the most success with Free Form styled role play, that pretty much could be considered Multi-Authored Stories, but I wanted a standard format for all the characters. It makes my job as a Game Master easier.
To Be or Not To Be? (is kinda irreverent…)
To play, you’re going to adopt a fictional persona of a Magical Girl (Guys, Theys, and Nays also welcome!) I would prefer originally created characters to enter the game, rather than cannon characters from an already existing anime. However, I know I haven’t see every anime that’s ever been created so, if you’re borrowing the concept of a character for your own nefarious purposes, I won’t mind. Just keep in mind that we may run into cannon characters in our many adventures.
You’ll be entering (some randomly named academy of the magical persuasion). Hopefully your character is between the accepted ages of five through 25, and your specific magical abilities, I’ll leave to your imagination. Just remember that you’re a Misfit, and you’ve probably got some undesirable quirks about your personality, magical talents, or perhaps you’re just a really bad klutz. There’s a reason why you’re in this particular classroom, filled with other eccentric oddballs.
But class is only the beginning of your adventure. You’ve also been drafted, abducted, conscripted, volunteered into the a military special forces brigade, typically reserved for the best, fastest, smartest, overachievers and brown-nosers the Government can choose from. Despite being chosen, you probably believe the reality of your situation is that your specific brigade is merely only meant to serve as a distraction. But that’s not good enough for us! We will prevail as the ultimate champions! (And hopefully not destroy the known Universe while we’re at it. After all, there’s the upcoming School Dance, and we simply can’t miss that! Priorities.)
As a member of this Special Forces Brigade, you’ll go on various training missions, and whether you end up saving the Human Race from some mutant Slime Lord who oozes with perverted distastefulness or not…is well, really not up to you, now is it? You won’t have too much time for homework with all the additional responsibilities that will be piled up on you, but that’s why you’re paying Henry or Bob, Suzy, or Michelle, right? So they can do your homework for you, riiiiight?
Oh, and if you’re unfamiliar with any of the above mentioned anime, have no clue what a Magical Girl even does or looks like, don’t worry. I got you covered! Just imagine your favorite superhero, put him in a pretty skimpy and frilly pink dress with lots of flowing ribbons, and change his hair style to include pigtails, give him a mishmash of Japanese sounding syllables (or not), make up some awesome sounding magical attacks that you’ll end up shouting at the top of your lungs, repeatedly (get strange looks from your dog who will truly believe you’ve lost your mind — even if you don’t have a dog!), and you’re good to go! Oh, and don’t forget about the high-heeled boots that come up to the knees. These are super important. Or, you could just use Google to research Sailor Moon.
Does this dress make me look fat?
I’m looking for individuals who enjoy writing, who like anime and manga, and aren’t afraid to cross lines (all in good fun). I want humor, I don’t care if it’s dirty, or dare I say naughty. This is set in an anime setting, so throw all the tropes you can think of at our imaginary audience! I’m hoping there will be a minimum post frequency of weekly, however, I’m also allowing members to have multiple characters to exploit, I mean, to play with, that doesn’t sound right either! To run around as in this virtual space.
If this sounds like this could be you, and are interested in signing up, feel free to head over to the forum and register for an account. You’ll need an invitation key, so you might want to reach out to me personally first via Direct Message here. Just say, YO! I NEED A KEY!, or something to that effect. I believe the key is good for 15 days? I’m not really sure, because I’ve just recently implemented this after my last forum was overrun by spam-bots — which is why the place looks like it’s either pathetically lonely or haunted. I’m not sure which. In any case, you can click on the button below to go directly to my digital home away from home. (I promise, I picked up most of the trash before I came over here!)
By the way, if you find my personality soothing, funny, or silly, Hi, I’m Kaitlyn, and I’m in desperate need of friends (because I’m unofficially batshit crazy and probably scared everybody who’s sane away)! It’s nice to meet you, and I hope that we can have a blast together, creating mayhem and chaos all over the Interwebz (or at least on my own corner of it).