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YES! YES! YES! 6 (85.7%)
NO! NO! NO! 1 (14.3%)
Total Votes: 7
A Bizarre World Interest and Info; because I can't make up my mind
Topic Started: September 24, 2016, 4:38 pm (258 Views)
Onime No Ryu
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
So I know I was thinking about the Mech idea, but honestly only 4 people even voted in the poll and it was kinda complex and i was having trouble paring it down. So now I wanna propose this:


In a small city on the west coast of the United States, an archaeology project unearths a stone thought to be a meteor that hit the planet long ago. The meteor is put in a musuem, and the discovery brings much needed attention to the city...until it is stolen by a mystery thief. According to the security cameras and all guard personnel, the stone was there one moment and gone the next--no images or witnesses were able to provide any clue as to the thief's identity or the method he used.

And only days afterward, the murders begin. Night after night, people are stabbed to death with no clues left behind. Even eyewitnesses to the murders cannot offer any insight--the victim is fine one moment and dead the next, and no one can remember seeing anything or anyone.

But then, someone survives the attack. They are found with seemingly fatal wounds, yet they live. They make a full recovery...and still cannot offer any information on their attacker. It is as if this person is completely invisible. Superstitious fear seizes the city and rumors abound. As time goes on, more victims--and more survivors--are discovered. And then, the survivors begin to experience strange things...

You are one of the survivors of the murderer's assaults. You did not see, hear, or in any way sense the attacker...nor can you remember exactly what you were doing before you were attacked, save for what you can deduce from where you were found and what items you had on your person at the time. You only know that now, something about you is different and...bizarre.

You begin to discover strange abilities...and soon, a being reveals itself to you.

This is only the beginning...of A Bizarre Story...




This is an idea I had a long time ago, and if I had to give the power system a name, it'd be pretty close to psychic and psionic type stuff, but at the same time not.

When the Mysterious Attacker's victims survive rather than die, something about the experience empowers them. They gain two things, or perhaps it'd be better to say one packaged deal.

A Stand is a spiritual entity that is formed from a person's latent psychological strength--their fighting spirit, their will to live, literal psychic abilities that manifest themselves in this way, whatever. A Stand confers upon its user the ability to make use of a power, typically through the Stand itself. For instance, if your Stand's power is manipulating fire, the stand may appear to breathe flame rather than you summoning a fireball to your own hand. Most Stands appear as a manifested being of some sort, though they're only visible to, and can only be affected by, other Stand Users. They can be humanoid, bestial, mechanical, or have any other kinds of nuances to their appearance. Some Stands can also be bound to objects, like books or swords, or even to their user's own body, such as the hair or the fingernails. In the case of a Bound Stand, they usually don't manifest outside of their bound object's form, so if, for instance, a Stand is bound to the user's hair and makes it as strong as steel cable, as well as allowing them to manipulate it at will, they would not have a spiritual entity floating around beside them like other Stand Users do.

A Stand Power is the ability granted by the Stand and used at the behest of its User. They can range from typical psychic powers, like pyrokinesis or remote viewing, to really odd things like creating a poisonous virus that rots away flesh at lower altitudes. However, strengths and weaknesses are part of the same coin--a Stand with a very strong power will have an equally glaring weakness. A Stand that allows the User to fire their fingernails as razor sharp projectiles, for instance, might require that the user consume relevant foods or get a lot of rest in order to heal their fingers before the power can be used again. A Stand that allows something as ridiculously powerful as Time Stop might strain the User's body until they're coughing blood from only 2 seconds of use, due to the intensity of all the physics that have to be broken for such a power to be viable.

Once players have awakened and understood their Stands, what they do with them is ultimately up to them. But the plot of the RP is meant to be focused around finding the Mysterious Attacker, and learning just why and how he's been committing his crimes.

I would be using stats for this, because I've found that I really like them, but for one thing it'll be pretty simple and for another thing it'll be focused more around the Stands themselves.

Regular Humans, i.e. the Players, do have stats, but they're completely average ones. Unless special conditions arise, they don't need to be listed--if this were DnD, you would simply have straight 10s across the board.

Stands, on the other hand, would have the typical stats we tend to use for RPs and would use them in the same way--like most of my statted RPs, it'd be based on simplified DnD. Roll a d20 and add modifiers to attack, roll a d20 and add modifiers to perform tasks that have a chance of failure, etc. There would also be a few stats that are renamed or replaced, since Stands are not really their own "characters" but an extension of yourself, and thus they wouldn't necessarily have things like their own "Intelligence" or "Wisdom" (however, certain types of stands do display autonomous behavior or personality traits).

Here's an example of the character sheet:
Spoiler: click to toggle


As an ending note, if you hadn't guessed already, this is based on the anime/manga series Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. However, all the information you need to know about the series has already been stated up above.
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Sin
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Slow and steady...
I voted yes, but why the name restriction on the Stand characters? If that's a part of whatever Jojo's Adventure is, can that be dropped? It's kind of silly.
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Onime No Ryu
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
Sin
September 24, 2016, 5:13 pm
I voted yes, but why the name restriction on the Stand characters? If that's a part of whatever Jojo's Adventure is, can that be dropped? It's kind of silly.
It's a big part of flavor about the series that I want to keep, just for the aesthetic factor. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is titled very aptly, and features the musically drawn names of the stands, their odd and colorful designs, and the characters' often anatomically impossible posing all as part of an overall "style" and design that at first glance seems silly, but gives it a lot of charm and humor.
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Kazemitsu
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Assassin
Name:
Agnarr Gulbrandr
Age:
25
Gender:
Male
Appearance:
Agnarr feels like he's a good looking guy. Shoulder length mahogany hair that is normally tied back from his face. Thick eyebrows leave his eyes in a shadow. Said eyes are an odd stormy gray and slightly recessed, like looking into twin caves. His nose is a tad bit wide with obvious lines and ridges, a strong feature and just slightly crooked from breaking. A thick jaw with a strong chin finish off the look that leads to a set of averagely shaped lips. Along his jaw, chin, and upper lip is thick scruff that's borderline beards and mustache.

He's a fairly tall and well built man. Standing as six feet two inches and obviously muscled. But he's not very toned, he's got a healthy layer of fat hiding the contours of his muscle. He has various scars littering his body, heavily concentrated on his arms and silvered with age. A single tattoo mars the well tanned complexion, it's located on his left bicep. It's a tribal tattoo, an odd spiked thing curling into a ball, alien in nature.

Agnarr doesn't dress like your typical normal person. A leather skull cap covers his head, around his neck is a pull-up face mask with a demonic skeletal jaw and a pile of bullets along the neck. A simple muscle shirt, maroon in color, and a dusty black trench coat with the sleeves missing covers his torso. A dark forest green pair of canvas pants along his lower body with a pair of black, knee-high, leather boots. A worn leather belt holds his pants up, they're a bit baggy after all. Lastly he always has gloves on. Depending on the day he'll have on leather bike gloves, leather gauntlets, fingerless work gloves, and sometimes make-shift archery gloves.

Backstory:
Agnarr was born into a great deal of money. He never really asked as a child where it came from, always assuming one of his parents had hit it big with a lottery. They didn't have any businesses aside from a mechanic's shop. It was here that he got into his mechanical fun, enjoying working on various cars alongside his parents. Both of which worked there, each of the family members having a specialty. His father specialized with motorcycles, dirt bikes, and ATV's. His mother was into working on trucks of any size, from pick-ups to freight trucks. Agnarr, even as a child, enjoyed working on older cars of the early 1900's up to the 80's.

Unfortunately this domestic bliss didn't last, his parents died while he was in his early teens. Blindsided while joyriding on the father's bike, thankfully killing them on impact. Suddenly alone with boatloads of money Agnarr didn't really know what to do. Even rich his family had lived simply, none of that butler shit or owning more land than needed so no need of a groundskeeper.

A relative of Agnarr's father took him in though, an ornery and impatient man. This is where Agnarr's temper developed, the man, he couldn't remember if he was an uncle or something else, always made it feel like he had done something wrong. Nothing was ever done right or done fast enough and it grated on the mechanically inclined youth. He lived like this for several years until he was old enough to get out of there, never looking back.

He returned to his old home, dust littering everything and memories coursing through his mind. Finally allowed to properly grieve he cleaned his home and returned to what he enjoyed doing. Working on old cars and restoring some from a rusted shell. He lived like that for years, occasionally going out to socialize at a bar. Of course booze and a temper didn't mix and he got into plenty of fights. This got him to go from being in good shape, to being in great shape. You don't fight without exercising so you can win and not get your ass kicked.

He had been on his way home after a good bar brawl, his nose dripping with blood from a good round when he was stabbed by the mysterious murderer who had been on a spree lately. He didn't know how much time had passed but he woke up in a hospital. He was told by one of the doctors he had healed miraculously fast after an intense fever, a stab wound he didn't remember had just knit right back together. Happy to be healthy Agnarr signed out of the hospital and returned home.

He continued his usual routine, work on some vehicles, go to a bar, get drunk, and get into a fight. But something had changed, during the fight the oddest being appeared right next to him. An odd skeleton clad in medieval clothing and armor. His first meeting of Spooky Scary Skeletons, but not his last. It implanted the knowledge of what it was and what it was currently capable of in his mind.

So like any normal person, he experimented! He got to experience the excruciating pain of what his abilities were for the moment Needless to say he learned that he needed to eat more calcium based foods to keep up with his capabilities and that rest was required. No more all nighters sadly enough. Thankfully not much changed after getting his Stand, he could still do what he loved to do, was still rich, and he still got to kick the shit out of people.

But he does wonder, why did he get this Stand, why had he been attacked, and who was actually doing all of this? Questions without answers didn't sit well in his mind, and he planned on getting some answers eventually.

Stand: Spooky Scary Skeletons. (AKA: SSS)
Appearance: A large skeletal being, roughly seven feet tall and constructed of nothing but ancient looking bones. Dull purple fire are where its eyes should be but the skull seems to be reptilian in nature. Elongated jaws and 'face' with numerous sharp teeth. Possibly alligator in nature. A dull breastplate covered the torso, chipped and dented from possible combat. A stained vest of chain hangs down to his mid-thigh, seemingly the last of the armor he has. Beneath the armor is a brown shirt that seems to be 'filled', giving it the shape of a fairly muscular being. The same could be said for the gauntlets he wears, with mimicked bones along the fingers and hand, along with his pants and knee high boots.

Power: SSS allows Agnarr to grow and manipulate the bones within his body. To start with he can make basic melee weaponry, such as small blades. Knives, daggers, short swords, to name a few. But to keep regrowing and shaping these bones Agnarr needs a high calcium diet and plenty of rest between the uses of this ability and combat.
Stats:

  • Power: +2

  • Speed: 0

  • Range: -1

  • Precision: +2

  • Durability: +2

  • Development Potential: Class A
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NTNP
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So basically Persona? Stands are physical representations of the "second self" while their powers are more "one unique, variable ability" rather than multiple smaller ones? Yeah I can get behind that system I suppose. But I want to know more about the plot- we have the whole murderer, survivors with supernatural gifts things- which is fine. But where are we? What is the goal of the story? What will the plot resolution be? Is this about the characters? Is it about the "effects" on the town, city, college etc this is taking place in? Is it about stopping the bad guy? I feel like those parts are more important than the "system" really, which seems to have been the major limitation recently.
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Onime No Ryu
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
NTNP
September 30, 2016, 5:56 pm
So basically Persona? Stands are physical representations of the "second self" while their powers are more "one unique, variable ability" rather than multiple smaller ones? Yeah I can get behind that system I suppose. But I want to know more about the plot- we have the whole murderer, survivors with supernatural gifts things- which is fine. But where are we? What is the goal of the story? What will the plot resolution be? Is this about the characters? Is it about the "effects" on the town, city, college etc this is taking place in? Is it about stopping the bad guy? I feel like those parts are more important than the "system" really, which seems to have been the major limitation recently.
We're in a fictional west-coast town in the United States, somewhere within like, maybe an hour's drive of Los Angeles, that kind of place.

The goal of the story is to figure out why and how the Mysterious Attacker is doing his thing, and who he is. The plot resolves when the Mysterious Attacker has been stopped and the town becomes safe again.

The story is meant to be driven by and revolve around the characters, but the plot remains a pretty straight and simple "catch the bad guy." In the series proper, there's an almost unfailing rule that "Stand Users are drawn to each other by Fate." This means that, unlike in some other RPs where we have to find in-character reasons and motivations to do what we're doing, the power of Stands will naturally draw us together through strange coincidences. And of course, when different personalities clash--literally in the case of Stand battles--conflicts grow and influence the story.
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NTNP
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If I could make a few suggestions? First, scale. Make it a very small town, with enough "stuff" to justify the various types of characters. Given the age demographics on here, I would suggest a college town built in the Mohave area- basically a lot of nothing in every direction, a single college, a single highschool a booming/dying main street and maybe a single strip mall giving it a population of perhaps 1,500 people while keeping it geographically far removed from anything else.

Secondly, introduce a bunch of NPCs- and make it where the mysterious attacker is one of them. This helps with the smaller population, the fewer people that there are, the more reasonable the suspect pool becomes. Someone is doing this, someone that the NPCs know- and they must be stopped.

Lastly, I would make it where the "stands" effects somehow distort reality to keep say "idiot PC 2" from deciding to summon bloody Satan in the mini-mart and blowing up the whole masquerade aspect. Maybe when a stand is summoned it "freezes" time for everyone and everything that is not effected somehow? Or can only be triggered in distinctive spots (like say in spiritually rich areas like a grave yard or that junkyard where that teenager was drugged and murdered, but not in say the lil girls room of the 7/11) or at distinctive times (like the "dark hour" in Persona 3). This should limit the amount of "damn it" moments on your behalf when someone breaks the narrative. Because, to be honest, if I figured out that I could magically summon say Pikachu and control electricity with him I would show anyone, everyone etc that I could because it would be the most amazing damn thing ever.

I would be in the hallway going, "Sup- wanna see a Pikachu?" and make him appear, turn off all the lights in the hallway and then turn them back on. If I saw the neon sign in front of the diner, I would be like "I bet you 200 bucks I can make that neon sign go out" until someone bet me, summon Pikachu and be like "bam! Money!" And while that is childish, you can't say you can't see why a limitation like that would not be needed.
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Onime No Ryu
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
NTNP
October 3, 2016, 4:31 pm
If I could make a few suggestions? First, scale. Make it a very small town, with enough "stuff" to justify the various types of characters. Given the age demographics on here, I would suggest a college town built in the Mohave area- basically a lot of nothing in every direction, a single college, a single highschool a booming/dying main street and maybe a single strip mall giving it a population of perhaps 1,500 people while keeping it geographically far removed from anything else.

Secondly, introduce a bunch of NPCs- and make it where the mysterious attacker is one of them. This helps with the smaller population, the fewer people that there are, the more reasonable the suspect pool becomes. Someone is doing this, someone that the NPCs know- and they must be stopped.

Lastly, I would make it where the "stands" effects somehow distort reality to keep say "idiot PC 2" from deciding to summon bloody Satan in the mini-mart and blowing up the whole masquerade aspect. Maybe when a stand is summoned it "freezes" time for everyone and everything that is not effected somehow? Or can only be triggered in distinctive spots (like say in spiritually rich areas like a grave yard or that junkyard where that teenager was drugged and murdered, but not in say the lil girls room of the 7/11) or at distinctive times (like the "dark hour" in Persona 3). This should limit the amount of "damn it" moments on your behalf when someone breaks the narrative. Because, to be honest, if I figured out that I could magically summon say Pikachu and control electricity with him I would show anyone, everyone etc that I could because it would be the most amazing damn thing ever.

I would be in the hallway going, "Sup- wanna see a Pikachu?" and make him appear, turn off all the lights in the hallway and then turn them back on. If I saw the neon sign in front of the diner, I would be like "I bet you 200 bucks I can make that neon sign go out" until someone bet me, summon Pikachu and be like "bam! Money!" And while that is childish, you can't say you can't see why a limitation like that would not be needed.
Yeah the town's meant to be kind of a small urban/suburban type area, so your description probably fits well enough.

NPCs are planned, and discovering the mysterious attacker's identity is of course the crux of the story.

The stand problem is already handled--Stands can only be seen or interacted with by other Stands and Stand Users. Normal people can't see them, and any effects of their powers that would be seen can't be proved or can be hand waved with excuses like "gas explosion." Technically there's still nothing stopping you from showing off your powers, but that's part of the "plot," so to speak, seeing what happens when individuals are granted these powers and allowed to use them for their own ends.
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NTNP
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So basically stands make humans stupid/stupider? I mean, if I showed my science teacher a Pikachu and had it drain all the energy in the room, appear/disappear in front of him, let him pet it as it wandered around the room, created a thundercloud that caused a lightning bolt in the middle of the classroom to flash fry an apple he would probably assume "Holy shit, that is real" rather than "cute toy made with super science" or at least "Ok, show me how this works" would follow. I mean, if that is OK with you storywise, that is fine. Or if we go with the "the appearance of these powers will greatly alter the little world our characters exist in" then that makes a lot of sense too. It just changes the scope a bit from "Over the next 6 weeks find the killer and try to maintain normal life" to "by Friday, you will find the killer and deal with what happens when say 10 people in 1,000 gain super powers and start wrecking reality" sort of stories. Not to say those are bad, I rather like those kinds as a short story or in some fiction, but I wanted to know what to expect and create before I got too involved.
Edited by NTNP, October 3, 2016, 6:20 pm.
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Tercera Espada Yarott
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Just a pretty cool guy
It is all documented here http://jojo.wikia.com/wiki/Stand

And for a more legit source, the manga and chapter to where the Stand Guidelines are is also cited there. Stands and how they work are pretty serious business to the strictness of power creep and such. I mean, there are also exceptions to each and every rule, but to employ said exceptions, that's to be determined and handled by the one who manages this RP. Seriously, read it a bit, and you will see just how thorough the concept was reaalized. With more thought put into it than Power Levels were in Dragon Ball, or the Hierarchy of things in Bleach, etc.
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Onime No Ryu
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
NTNP
October 3, 2016, 6:19 pm
So basically stands make humans stupid/stupider? I mean, if I showed my science teacher a Pikachu and had it drain all the energy in the room, appear/disappear in front of him, let him pet it as it wandered around the room, created a thundercloud that caused a lightning bolt in the middle of the classroom to flash fry an apple he would probably assume "Holy shit, that is real" rather than "cute toy made with super science" or at least "Ok, show me how this works" would follow. I mean, if that is OK with you storywise, that is fine. Or if we go with the "the appearance of these powers will greatly alter the little world our characters exist in" then that makes a lot of sense too. It just changes the scope a bit from "Over the next 6 weeks find the killer and try to maintain normal life" to "by Friday, you will find the killer and deal with what happens when say 10 people in 1,000 gain super powers and start wrecking reality" sort of stories. Not to say those are bad, I rather like those kinds as a short story or in some fiction, but I wanted to know what to expect and create before I got too involved.
If your Stand ability was "summon Pikachu," and your Stand Power was "electricity control," you could show your teacher "Electricity control" by making lights flicker, starting electrical fires, so on an so forth, but your teacher would NOT be able to SEE the Pikachu. He could see the effects of your power, but nothing aside from your word and the convenience of the lights flickering at that exact moment could prove that you had the power to control electricity. They could do various scientific tests and eventually conclude "Yeah, when he says something is going to happen, it happens," but they would have no way to categorize it or explain it.

Stand Powers can greatly affect your normal life, but most stand users choose to keep a low profile because A) they don't want to end up arrested or in a government experiment, B) they usually don't want people to know it's them causing the strange things to happen, and C) once you learn that other Stand Users tend to be drawn to each other, you start thinking maybe it's better not to advertise your presence to others who can fuck with things just as much as you can or more.
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