DIGITAL_DEVIL_DATABASE Community Forum

Hi everyone! First time poster on this board.

I'm writing because a few days ago I began working on a tabletop RPG that would have more than a few thematic elements and mechanics borrowed from SMT and its spin-offs, being a fan of the series ever since playing Digital Devil Saga. I completed a very rough alpha of it (base rules) in record time after discovering there was an official Japanese pen & paper game, but in a massive "more tables than a furniture store" format which is exactly opposite of my game which is trying to be a little more "pick up and play", rather than worrying about if your monster has Agi or Agidyne or if it fits the right algebra formula.

My question to you guys is "What would you like to see in a game like this?"

Thanks!

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but my suggestion is this: a disco.

Maybe I can be a little more clear... the project is a Pen and Paper Role Playing Game like Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire, except there will be a few elements in the game that you might find familiar in the console SMT games. I'd like to know if there's any elements from the different game series I should consider adding to the game.

It would be very nice, instead, if you do a graphical adventure :3. Well, just an idea.

Yeah, no one bothers with pens and paper anymore these days. If it doesn't have graphics, no one will bother.

Actually I believe pen and paper is still quite popular.

[citation needed]

I still play the pen and paper games with my pals, but they're so boring.  :goodnight: Some advice I would give when creating a tabletop game, more specifically a Tensei one, would be to build the game around the worlds twisted themes. I'm the DM amongst my friends, but I've never really been with the rules and regulations. So my campaigns are usually pretty story heavy, and the Tensei games have quite a bit of good material to work from. Since you didn't want to worry about the magic system to much, a focus on narrative could be your best bet.

I can't give you exact estimates but the fact is that in the US, RPGs ("analog", non-computer based ones) have a reasonable hobby market share. There are plenty of companies still releasing games, a healthy indie market that sell much different games than the big companies (think of them as Atlus or Mastiff compared to Squenix or EA) and professional websites that allow you to purchase cheaper PDFs of the games or get a PDF/Book combo, no different than Lulu.com.

The largest convention for the hobby (for which there are many all over the country), GenCon has hit it's 40th anny last year with 27,000 people in attendance, far more than the largest anime conventions and RPG.net, a independent website dedicated to the hobby on all sides has 46,606 forum members, and I'm gonna ctrl-c how many are browsing the forums right now:
781 (279 members and 502 guests)

The hobby is there... but I'm not really concerned about that. What matters to me is that I enjoy it as much as I do video games, it's a great way to hang out with good friends for a few hours with little equipment set up and the graphics are always fantastic (Just can't beat the Mk.1 Imagination! :) )

I came here to ask you guys, fellow fans of this unique game series, what you might like to see in a RPG that shared similar elements, not if you'd buy it or play it when it is released. All I'd like is in the end once it's finished, if one of you happen to just read it you can think "Yeah, It has set ups so you can work in that part where Lupo lost control" or "They got that mechanic worked into this".
It's will be its own beast and I'm doing a few things that SMT and its spin-offs aren't using just yet. It's "inspired by" and not going to be "the RPG"- as I said, there's an official SMT (and very large) pen n paper RPG in Japan already, where the hobby is far more smaller there than it is here in the US.

If there's any more questions you have about traditional RPGs, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability and if you also happen to have a few suggestions for my project, that's fine too. ;)

Oh yeah, one thing was I made it so Character Creation only takes no more than 5 minutes once you have an idea for him.

If you arent going to do something at PC, it also would be nice a board game like that of warcraft ^^.

Supposedly the next version of Dungeons and Dragons will include a pc counterpart. I'm not sure how extensive the system will be, but it certainly opens the possibilites for you to mod the pc software to your needs. It would be pretty cool if there was a D20 Tensei that could be played online. Similar to Imagine I suppose, but a better story. Of course I am not sure how good the Imagine storyline is because I can't read Japanese.  :sadani:

There's always room for spin-offs later on. It's worked for Deadlands, Cthulhu and Anima.

From what I understand, you can make an official character online with a portrait designer then play the game with a gaming group that's all over the world. Outside of a few of the more fancy things you can do with this add on (which is a monthly subscription for the service and their online magazine) there's enough free software material you can use already for ANY tabletop RPG to play online.
The product looks also to be very client-server side, so I doubt you can really modify the 4e supplement software.

I've never been a fan of D20 and D&D but 4e looks neat for what it seems to offer, even if the total price tag is tough to swallow for a full game IMHO.

What is this 4E you speak of?

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. This is the new version you speak of, due in the middle of this year.

Thanks for the clarification! I suffered from some acronym confusion there. ;P

Any time. All these acronyms gets really confusing at times. I am however making great progress with the story and game elements with the project though.

I'm a big fan of P&P games myself, I've tried creating a few as well but they're lost do dust and such =P

Anyways, what I always found hard to accomplish was creating a sufficient level of depth in character creation which also allows a new player to come along and understand it from the start.

It's really cool to hear someone's making something like this though.  I've given it some thought myself plenty of times.

Thank you for the kind words. One goal I set out with this project was to make a game ANYONE can pick up and play. Easier said than done, but I removed a good deal of conventional "tropes" in these types of games to make the game offer enough depth to the player to make the character he wants while not bogging it down in "rule flipping" (I.E. "let me borrow the book for a second, I need to see what's the difference between Boxing and Martial Arts") so the story can begin as quickly as possible.

That one line describes almost every campaign I have ever lead. :grinani: Initially when my friends and I began to play tabletop games we were new to the rules. I took charge of DM*ing and our first campaign was story heavy, but as my friends learned the rules they began to constantly crunch stats. Now the ratio of story to statistics, flipping is 1:5. (story:stats). I had mentioned that pen and paper became boring for me, and that was the reason why. I am happy to hear your creating a simpler system which embraces what I love, storytelling.
If you need any help you have come to the right community.

I usually DM'd for any table top sessions I ran as well, and the number crunching  usually fell onto my shoulders.  Eventually I took a lighter approach to most situations and tried to simplify how to execute dramatic actions whatever PC's intended.  I found that using the rules as soft guidelines instead made things progress much easier--after all, you're in charge of the world when you're the DM.  

>)

I used to get stuck in the role of being the game master, but another guy (the same one who gave me the idea to do this RPG project) in our group now is running our current campaign of OVA (open versatile anime) RPG.
Recently, I've been reading and playing more indie level RPGs, so that might part of the reason why I'm taking the project in this method. I can recommend a few games that more focus on the storylines rather than min/max your character:

Inspectres: It's ghostbusters as a internet start up company! Die rolling on stats allows players to dictate the action. The better you roll, the more control you get. Also I like their "confession" mechanic: A player can do a interview segment like from a Reality TV series and things have to go the way of the confession. Really awesome since a GM doesn't need any prep time.

Bliss Stage: While I haven't really played it yet outside of a short demo by the author, the game is best described as "Evangellion: The RPG". In the future, Only kids and a few messed up adults are left to defend the world from the "Bliss" and the strange aliens that created it with giant robots. It's unique because of its "round robin" style. Players frequently shift roles from their main characters to others, depending on the scene, even the GM's position changes due to actions in game.

Panty Explosion: The title is a little more exploitive than the game itself (the author has a history of making very controversial names for his games- he got a lot of heat releasing "Classroom Deathmatch" around the same time as the Virgina Tech shootings.) players play Japanese Schoolgirls who may or may not have psychic powers and try to survive the Japanese high school system and monsters that prey on the young. I like their "Best Friend/Rival" mechanic, which gives another player the power to tell what the character did- if you did good, your best friend tells what happened and your rival explains any failures.

I have a question that maybe you guys can answer: In my game I'm working on, the monsters that players fight are usually invisible to the average person, until they attack. Can any of you think how the monster attacks, and the fights against player characters, are conducted in a way where it does NOT become common knowledge? (I.E. "Coming up on the 6 o'clock news, a giant monster summoned by young man destroyed the bay bridge after blob attack.")

In DtotheD an enemy cloaked with the Greater Invisibility spell is almost entirely unseen. If you were meaning how they are logically invisible. More along the lines of story and such. Im reminded of Killer7 which had the enemies invisible until scanned. You could treat the enemies as belonging to a digital frequency that players must synchronize with to reveal. Just a little idea.

The player characters can already see (most of) the monsters, it's just the average person who can't see them and/or won't acknowledge their existence.
I suppose what I'm getting at is: What are good tactics or methods that can be employed by the monsters to keep the providers of their food (the spirits of normal people) docile and ignorant until it's too late?

Ahhh! Well any low intelligence npc is unable to see most invisible targets. The monsters could also exist within shadows of the npcs and use traveling people as transports to the next dark area. Alternatively monsters who have devoured a soul can take the form of those absorbed. You could also say that the mosters exist as tools of a corporate organization, and this company has established cloaking towers around cities. Monsters could also freeze time ala Persona 3 and move about during those periods.

Oh and all those Pen and Papers you mentioned sound great! I especially love the shoujo psychic game.