Formerly Misty-Escape

"They've got nobody in the Odyssey?"

"No I'm saying they don't got nobody."

"Nobody's there?"

"Nobody's not there!"

"So everyone's there?"

"Everybody but nobody!"

But when we look at the Magical Girl TTRPG scene, there are pretty much exclusively loosely-defined story games, most of which I've seen some pretty strong complaints about.

I am also of the mindset that combat is a form of roleplaying and an aspect of the story, not something separate. The best way to make magical girl characters feel superheroic is to give them cool, satisfying abilities and a place to use them imo. I think a game like this would want a lot of cool, flashy feeling abilities and a generally high-damage focus.

Also this is maybe a matter of taste, but I think my favorite "power of friendship" moments in games have been finding satisfying combos with friends in stuff like Draw Steel and Lancer. Sure "clear a condition by playing out a tender moment between characters" is nice, but have you ever set your friend's characters up to deal 4x damage as a support? Have you ever found out that your group's tank took a new ability just to protect your character? That's power of friendship right there. So we'd be looking at a game that seeks to create those cool combo moments so a team can have chances to really work together.

Finally, while it's not a dedicated magical girl system and not primarily a tactics game, it does have one of the only really good magical girl player options I've seen and a solid combat ruleset, so I wanna mention Eureka here. The magical girl trait in that has a lot of good mechanics, but my favorite is the base game's "composure" (basically emotional HP) mechanic impacting their combat effectiveness more than most, but going up and down primarily based on story moments that happen outside of a fight. It's a very simple and elegant way to encourage players to create the kinds of moments a lot of story games want to encourage without feeling too prescriptive about the details.

But when we look at the Magical Girl TTRPG scene, there are pretty much exclusively loosely-defined story games, most of which I've seen some pretty strong complaints about.

I am also of the mindset that combat is a form of roleplaying and an aspect of the story, not something separate. The best way to make magical girl characters feel superheroic is to give them cool, satisfying abilities and a place to use them imo. I think a game like this would want a lot of cool, flashy feeling abilities and a generally high-damage focus.

Also this is maybe a matter of taste, but I think my favorite "power of friendship" moments in games have been finding satisfying combos with friends in stuff like Draw Steel and Lancer. Sure "clear a condition by playing out a tender moment between characters" is nice, but have you ever set your friend's characters up to deal 4x damage as a support? Have you ever found out that your group's tank took a new ability just to protect your character? That's power of friendship right there. So we'd be looking at a game that seeks to create those cool combo moments so a team can have chances to really work together.

Finally, while it's not a dedicated magical girl system and not primarily a tactics game, it does have one of the only really good magical girl player options I've seen and a solid combat ruleset, so I wanna mention Eureka here. The magical girl trait in that has a lot of good mechanics, but my favorite is the base game's "composure" (basically emotional HP) mechanic impacting their combat effectiveness more than most, but going up and down primarily based on story moments that happen outside of a fight. It's a very simple and elegant way to encourage players to create the kinds of moments a lot of story games want to encourage without feeling too prescriptive about the details.

oh yeah totally, this visionary's gonna have to save us from behind bars, you know, as she's serving out that 11-year sentence of her's. embarrassing.