I have an idea that I've been wanting to try that is like a mix of Ultraman, Pacific Rim, and Godzilla, with a layer of Neon Genesis Evangelion's philosophical transhumanism.

In the wake of giant monster attacks and the appearance of an Ultraman-like savior, mankind has developed 4 branches of anti-monster defense. The first relies on the giant savior, the second on controlling and pitting monster against monster, the third on creating giant mecha, and the fourth on utilizing conventional military to provide support to the other three branches. The player characters would be members of one of the three branches, excluding the first branch, and will learn more about the organization in charge and the people in it, the origins of the monsters, and how far humans are willing to go to protect themselves. I would generally like palyers to spread out which branch they would like to be involved with, but this isn't a hard rule. I am also not letting players be part of the first branch, which involves the Ultraman-like savior, as this character would know more spoilery info, but I can relent on this if you convince me otherwise.

If this idea interests you, then below are my RP habits. I tend to be casual to advanced and expect similarly from my players. I am looking for or a small group of players (3-5). For this idea, I will basically be GMing and playing the NPCs. Given that this is a group RP, I expect each player to have a single character, but I may allow you to play multiple characters. I am slow at posting and can take weeks to respond depending on how busy I am. I intend to RP through a forum thread. I can open up a Discord server for OOC and collaboration if requested.

Yeah, that should be it ask if you have any questions.

The big question I have is: "Are we using actual Canon Kaiju? Or the other kind?" because I have been on a Gamera kick recently and would probably prefer the former, but have some ideas either way.

The big question I have is: "Are we using actual Canon Kaiju? Or the other kind?" because I have been on a Gamera kick recently and would probably prefer the former, but have some ideas either way.

This would be an original universe, so the 'Ultraman'-like savior would not actually be Ultraman, but I have no qualms if you want to do a "my OC is heavily inspired by X".

On that note, are you considering creating a member of the second branch? There could be multiple ways to go about this. You could have a genetically modified human who grows and transforms into a kaiju, a telepath who mind controls a kaiju, the kaiju can be remotely controlled (Tetsujin) or piloted (Eva-style) through the use of technological control mechanisms/limiters, or some other idea you can come up with.

@Stern Algorithm Currently, im thinking of a hybrid type of creature of Mothra and Legion from Gamera, Attack Of Legion.

Pretty much a child who has symbiotically linked mentally with an enormous insect queen who can split into millions of smaller bugs. Of course, each bug that gets killed diminishes her power, so when she reforms, she's weaker.

@Stern Algorithm Currently, im thinking of a hybrid type of creature of Mothra and Legion from Gamera, Attack Of Legion.

Pretty much a child who has symbiotically linked mentally with an enormous insect queen who can split into millions of smaller bugs. Of course, each bug that gets killed diminishes her power, so when she reforms, she's weaker.

OK, that's a pretty cool idea. However, the organization will take every measure to ensure that such an entity can be contained if necessary. I don't think this will matter for your character, but I should point out that there are no kaiju that are native to earth, even though I know that earth-native kaiju are pretty common in the various kaiju media. In this universe, all kaiju are from space. If this causes any hang-ups, we can brainstorm further.

Would like to throw my interest in this!

What kind of mechas were you thinking of for the third faction?

Just finished GaoGaiGar so I’m on a bit of a Super Robot track of mind but Real Robots are cool too!

I'm also interested to know more about the mecha branch! I'm actually fine either way, I'm personally more familiar with real robo stuff, but I'm interested in super robo as well(and in fact think it would be fun to explore a new facet of the genre).

What kind of mechas were you thinking of for the third faction?

Just finished GaoGaiGar so I’m on a bit of a Super Robot track of mind but Real Robots are cool too!

I'm also interested to know more about the mecha branch! I'm actually fine either way, I'm personally more familiar with real robo stuff, but I'm interested in super robo as well(and in fact think it would be fun to explore a new facet of the genre).

My initial idea was to start somewhere between real and super (like wherever Gundam sits on that scale) and escalate to super as the technology develops. This would also depend where the other branches are, power-wise, at the beginning of the RP, since I intend for branch 1 (ultra) to be the most developed (hence why it is tentatively off-limits), branch 2 (kaiju) and branch 3 (mecha) to be on the same footing, and branch 4 (military) to be the lowest, mostly for support, ie. launching giant-sized weapons from an aircraft carrier for the kaiju or mecha to use. If we get into combiners (and I'm sort of hoping we do), then branch 4 will begin to shine in this regard, by essentially being folded into branch 3 as standard combat vehicles get upgraded into mecha body parts.

Also, I think I'm going to close applications now since I think I've garnered enough interested players. I'm going to ping everyone here as a roll call:

@mattmanganon, @baraquiel, @The Irish Tree, @Gisk, you responded in this thread.

@Foster, you were in the 1x1 IC thread so I'm pinging you just in case.

@Dragonfly 9, @Vixere, you liked my opening post, so I'll take that as interest.

When I have the actual RP thread made, I'll ping everyone there.

My initial idea was to start somewhere between real and super (like wherever Gundam sits on that scale) and escalate to super as the technology develops.

The cool thing about gundam as an example is that they've been all over the spectrum between real and super robo, so you can kind of point at different places in the franchise for inspiration.

Like, maybe starting with something like Alaya-Vinjana, or psycommu controls; it's mostly a real robot, the thing that makes it special is how it integrates with the pilot, either psychically or perhaps through neural implants. Or maybe spiritually, if we wanna go that direction.

Then develop a "psycho frame" version, that's more integrated and lets the user project some amount of psychic power(or spiritual, or whatever!) through the robot.

And eventually end up with stuff that may as well be magic, like the GN particles in 00. They don't even pretend to explain the technology, GN particles just do whatever it is they need to. They're propulsion, letting the gundam just kind of float around instead of needing thrusters. It produces a field that can absorb attacks, and it can be projected into beam attacks. But also it fundamentally alters the pilots, and makes them evolve at a crazy rate(but there's also a "bad" version of the particles, that will cause DNA damage, but that's okay because the "good" GN particles can heal the damage too).

And if you wanna do combiners, maybe they literally just fuse together at that point. Go full super robo and just have a scientist do some techno babble on the side about how their constituent molecules harmonized briefly to allow the fusion, or something.

<Snipped quote by Stern Algorithm>

The cool thing about gundam as an example is that they've been all over the spectrum between real and super robo, so you can kind of point at different places in the franchise for inspiration.

Like, maybe starting with something like Alaya-Vinjana, or psycommu controls; it's mostly a real robot, the thing that makes it special is how it integrates with the pilot, either psychically or perhaps through neural implants. Or maybe spiritually, if we wanna go that direction.

Then develop a "psycho frame" version, that's more integrated and lets the user project some amount of psychic power(or spiritual, or whatever!) through the robot.

And eventually end up with stuff that may as well be magic, like the GN particles in 00. They don't even pretend to explain the technology, GN particles just do whatever it is they need to. They're propulsion, letting the gundam just kind of float around instead of needing thrusters. It produces a field that can absorb attacks, and it can be projected into beam attacks. But also it fundamentally alters the pilots, and makes them evolve at a crazy rate(but there's also a "bad" version of the particles, that will cause DNA damage, but that's okay because the "good" GN particles can heal the damage too).

And if you wanna do combiners, maybe they literally just fuse together at that point. Go full super robo and just have a scientist do some techno babble on the side about how their constituent molecules harmonized briefly to allow the fusion, or something.

Idea [+]

Maybe our robos use an otherworldly, semi-sentient power source that bonds with the pilot, and the furthering of that bond could be the entire impetus for the advancement of their power. Early in development, it's just viewed as a fancy, super advanced reactor, which is necessary for machines of this scale. The robot itself is more or less just a machine(the absolute bleeding edge of technology, bust still), but unbeknownst to the R&D team, the mysterious power sources that they used form bonds with their most frequent pilots, and soon they stop responding to anyone but their chosen pilot. Over time the engineers realize some of what's happening, and lean into it with their development, leading to further advancements.

OK, this is a good idea. Instead of flying through space unassisted, the Ultraman-like character has a gigantic spaceship that they used to travel to Earth. Much of mankind's recent technological advancements were made thanks to reverse-engineering this technology, so it stands to reason that the core of the mecha has this black box AI that no one really fully understands. I will elaborate more on the lore in the actual RP thread once I've written it up.

<Snipped quote by Stern Algorithm>

The cool thing about gundam as an example is that they've been all over the spectrum between real and super robo, so you can kind of point at different places in the franchise for inspiration.

Like, maybe starting with something like Alaya-Vinjana, or psycommu controls; it's mostly a real robot, the thing that makes it special is how it integrates with the pilot, either psychically or perhaps through neural implants. Or maybe spiritually, if we wanna go that direction.

Then develop a "psycho frame" version, that's more integrated and lets the user project some amount of psychic power(or spiritual, or whatever!) through the robot.

And eventually end up with stuff that may as well be magic, like the GN particles in 00. They don't even pretend to explain the technology, GN particles just do whatever it is they need to. They're propulsion, letting the gundam just kind of float around instead of needing thrusters. It produces a field that can absorb attacks, and it can be projected into beam attacks. But also it fundamentally alters the pilots, and makes them evolve at a crazy rate(but there's also a "bad" version of the particles, that will cause DNA damage, but that's okay because the "good" GN particles can heal the damage too).

And if you wanna do combiners, maybe they literally just fuse together at that point. Go full super robo and just have a scientist do some techno babble on the side about how their constituent molecules harmonized briefly to allow the fusion, or something.

Idea [+]

Maybe our robos use an otherworldly, semi-sentient power source that bonds with the pilot, and the furthering of that bond could be the entire impetus for the advancement of their power. Early in development, it's just viewed as a fancy, super advanced reactor, which is necessary for machines of this scale. The robot itself is more or less just a machine(the absolute bleeding edge of technology, bust still), but unbeknownst to the R&D team, the mysterious power sources that they used form bonds with their most frequent pilots, and soon they stop responding to anyone but their chosen pilot. Over time the engineers realize some of what's happening, and lean into it with their development, leading to further advancements.

Big fan of mysterious alien tech that bonds with the pilot and lets the machine evolve alongside them. BIG fan.