A New Magical girls RP, anybody?

[VitaVitaAR]

Magical girl originated as a genre geared towards primary school to middle school aged girls, with bones thrown to other audiences, such as surprisingly intense plotlines or fluid, dynamic action sequences.

Precure is basically this to the core. The target audience is younger girls, but it also has a lot of dramatic moments(which really is good for both the target audience and the periphery demographics) and some pretty over the top action sequences.

Dramatic absolutely does not mean dark and it's a fallacy to think so.

Nanoha's darker moments aren't too horribly out of line and facilitate the story's triumphant moments. Overall it's not a dark series at all.

You can have dramatic moments and dark moments without making the entire series dark. Again, Precure actually does this even, though to a lesser extent(also depending on the season since they vary pretty greatly).

Like I said, I like Nanoha and Symphogear a lot. I'd like an RP that has a serious plot and antagonists, but isn't something overly-dark.

And nothing can really change my mind on Raising Project. I love the designs and the characters themselves seemed creative and fun but I feel like that makes the series even more wasteful.

[Lost Cause]

Plus Nanoha has the advantage of being a Seinen show rather than a Shoujo one.

[Saltwater Thief]

I kind of agree with the sentiments against Madoka and Raising Project. They're alright shows, but I feel the concepts in them don't make for good RP premises- a lot of what makes those shows what they are is this slow but inevitable slide into the depths that drags the viewer down with the characters. Since RPing is typically about the players being faced with challenges and the chance they'll get put on that slide but with the means and opportunity to overcome it as part of the story, it's very difficult to properly introduce the inevitability and the creeping despair without making people upset.

Stuff like Precure, Nanoha, Symphogear, Vividred, etc make for better RPG premises in my opinion because they don't depend on the Despair Event Horizon like Madoka and Raising Project do. Not to mention, as has been said before, there's enough Dark Fantasy Magical Girl RPs right now, I'd rather see a lighter/more classic oriented one.

Also because the Nanoha series is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm more than a little biased...

[Lost Cause]

I kind of agree with the sentiments against Madoka and Raising Project. They're alright shows, but I feel the concepts in them don't make for good RP premises- a lot of what makes those shows what they are is this slow but inevitable slide into the depths that drags the viewer down with the characters. Since RPing is typically about the players being faced with challenges and the chance they'll get put on that slide but with the means and opportunity to overcome it as part of the story, it's very difficult to properly introduce the inevitability and the creeping despair without making people upset.

Stuff like Precure, Nanoha, Symphogear, Vividred, etc make for better RPG premises in my opinion because they don't depend on the Despair Event Horizon like Madoka and Raising Project do. Not to mention, as has been said before, there's enough Dark Fantasy Magical Girl RPs right now, I'd rather see a lighter/more classic oriented one.

Also because the Nanoha series is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm more than a little biased...

@Saltwater Thief

Also Vividred has mayonnaise. Lots and lots of mayonnaise.

[Rin]

@Saltwater ThiefOh hey, someone else who's watched Vividbutts! That makes about... Five of us or something! :D

...I kind of wish that show was more well known since I thought it was pretty fun really.

[Hammerman]

@Rin I'll admit, I haven't watch a lot of Precure, but it seemed very childish to me.

@SleepingSilence

Well, it is aired for little girls after all.

And it's particularly more lighthearted compared to the previous shows in its time slot like Nadja (the villain shits on the heroine hardcore) and Doremi (has people dying of cancer, uncurable by magic).

[Natsu]

I'd be interested

[IceHeart]

Well ya, Precure is for young kids and there is a lot of Precure product placement in the series too. Its obvious the various items they get are all designed in order to sell toys to little girls. The of the biggest reasons you can tell it's a kid show at heart is that for most battles any damage taken on the environment just disappears, putting everything back to normal again. This is quite different from say Nanoha, where the city gets really messed up by the magical battles. Wonder what kind of story they had to come up with to explain giant trees suddenly ripping through the city and tearing up the place big time. Sure they have the magical barriers to essentially isolate the area from the 'real' world but after its over the damage is still there.

Precure may be very light-hearted but man is that universe under attack all the time. Every series has a world destroying or manipulating type bad guy to fight in the end and if you ever watch Precure All-Stars movies, all the Precure come together to take on Universe crushing sized foes at times.

---

When you look at the magical girl genre there are also at least two types of Magical Girls by how their powers work. You have the more 'pure' magical girl type whose powers are usually awakened or given to them through some sort of magical power, like the Precure. Then you have the 'techno' magical girls who have their abilities amped through some sort of device like Nanoha and Symphogear. With the 'pure' type often their strong emotions give them power and while their equipment can be upgraded in the end it is more their emotional state that determines their level of power. With the 'techo' type they are mostly reliant on their equipment, how it can be upgraded and how they can improve upon it and their skills.

Of course there aren't really distinct classes of magical girls but I'd say they tend to go one way or the other on a 'pure magical' to 'techno' scale in how their powers work which is something to consider in a role play.

And then of course you got the...ummm...very unique magical girl anime...

Gonna Be the TwinTail

I feel like I have committed sacrilege. XD

[Rin]

@IceHeartTwintail was a whole heap of fun though! Dark Grasper best girl. :D

[IceHeart]

@IceHeartTwintail was a whole heap of fun though! Dark Grasper best girl. :D

@Rin

Ya I loved it too. Its a hilarious parody of the Magical Girl Genre, I'm just slightly fearing for my life from any Power Ranger people out there for putting that link. XD

[SleepingSilence]

I suppose my thoughts about roleplaying most shows I'd watch as a kid or when I was younger, I typically like to respect those stories but do want my RP's to be a bit more mature. (blame my adulthood for disliking most kid things nowadays. :P) You don't really need to make them too dark, if you don't want to. But I do feel most drama is best when it's dark, because more extreme moments will make the tension better. (it can be overblown or done wrong, but it is the most effective method if done correctly.)

I assume when you say this (the darker magical girl shows) wouldn't work as an RP plot, it's because it's blood thirsty and character death is involved. Right? Because a lot of roleplayers are too attached to their character to allow them to face injury or death. Despite I'd argue what makes the great RP's stand out from the good ones, that in the story the characters are involved in, it actually seems threatening and they don't have magical plot armor around them.

But, I do agree that slice of life and fun going adventure rp's are much easier to keep track of and not as demanding. And yes, most magical girl shows have surprisingly complicated plots (and/or good character development.) Which is why people enjoy them. Like I said, I guess I'm in the minority when I do prefer the darker ones. ;3

(forgive me, I typed this late and on a shitty laptop. Because petsitting.)

[VitaVitaAR]

Characters becoming injured is one thing.

An RP where your characters can be killed at any time is an RP I will never, ever join.

A lot of effort goes into creating a character, and a player might have a lot they would like to do with that character. Effort goes into writing for that character as well. Having that character suddenly killed without your discretion is intensely demoralizing and feels unfair. After all, you put a lot of work into creating this character and now they're gone. If a player is okay with having their character killed, then that character can be killed.

You can have a complicated and dramatic plot without being like Madoka, and I like Madoka quite a bit though it's not my favorite magical girl show. Nanoha and Symphogear both have more complex and dramatic plots, Precure can get pretty dramatic(but I'm not really advocating the RP be like Precure. I tend to lean Nanoha or Symphogear for tone when it comes to magical girl RPs).

Part of the reason I bring up Symphogear is admittedly because, well..

Who doesn't like it when the action in a magical girl anime suddenly turns up to incredibly over the top levels?

[Natsu]

This never got off the ground and it makes me sad, if anybody wants to adopt it, I'd love them forever.
roleplayerguild.com/topics/82599-when-..

[Saltwater Thief]

I suppose my thoughts about roleplaying most shows I'd watch as a kid or when I was younger, I typically like to respect those stories but do want my RP's to be a bit more mature. (blame my adulthood for disliking most kid things nowadays. :P) You don't really need to make them too dark, if you don't want to. But I do feel most drama is best when it's dark, because more extreme moments will make the tension better. (it can be overblown or done wrong, but it is the most effective method if done correctly.)

I assume when you say this (the darker magical girl shows) wouldn't work as an RP plot, it's because it's blood thirsty and character death is involved. Right? Because a lot of roleplayers are too attached to their character to allow them to face injury or death. Despite I'd argue what makes the great RP's stand out from the good ones, that in the story the characters are involved in, it actually seems threatening and they don't have magical plot armor around them.

But, I do agree that slice of life and fun going adventure rp's are much easier to keep track of and not as demanding. And yes, most magical girl shows have surprisingly complicated plots (and/or good character development.) Which is why people enjoy them. Like I said, I guess I'm in the minority when I do prefer the darker ones. ;3

(forgive me, I typed this late and on a shitty laptop. Because petsitting.)

@SleepingSilence

You assume incorrectly. Plots that allow the characters to suffer serious injury or death are perfectly fine by me, but that isn't what makes the darker magical girl shows so ill-tailored to the medium the way I was talking about; it's that the deaths and the despair throughout the entire setting are completely unavoidable. Since I know Madoka much better than I know Raising Project, I'll go into detail for it to show you what I'm talking about. (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)

Madoka is essentially the story of Homura's attempts to save Madoka from her fate. It takes a bit to get there, but that's the crux of the plot- Homura knows what Kyuubi and the Magical Girls are, she knows that Walpurgis Nacht is coming, and she knows what will happen if Madoka takes the bargain to fight her, and her goal is to prevent that at all costs. But, as the series goes on, absolutely everything she tries fails, even as early as Episode 3. The same goes for Sayaka, who tries her damndest to make things work with her beau, only to have him slip away and the despair trigger her transformation. Yes, there is a lot of character death in some very brutal ways, and that certainly does contribute to the darkness, but the bigger aspect is that nothing anybody tries ever works; the show is failure after failure until the final breaking point. It's the same thing with theatrical Tragedies; the appeal comes from the catharsis and the heartbreak from watching the protagonist try and either fail or succeed at Pyrrhic cost.

That sort of thing doesn't translate well to an RPG because a main draw of them is the players being presented with a problem and using their wits and the tools at their disposal to overcome it. Having your efforts fail because you made the wrong choices and you pay the price is one thing, but in my experience being presented with a scenario where you fail because there was no correct answer in the first place leaves a sour taste in everybody's mouth.

So it isn't that you can't have high risks to the characters or a mature plot, it's that setting things up like Madoka has them would, I feel, not go over well. For me and a lot of the people I've played with, having a fighting chance is where a lot of the motivation and the fun of a roleplay comes from; by contrast, Madoka and premises like it derive a lot of their appeal from the characters not having any chance at all at victory, and that makes finding a compatibility between the two exceptionally difficult, if not impossible.

[mattmanganon]

@IceHeart I an get behind Mechagical Girls.

[SleepingSilence]

@Saltwater Thief I understand where you're coming from. I suppose that's reasonable enough. I don't think I would want to follow any plot of any show exactly I would prefer to make my own version, because most exact plots of shows don't convert well to role-plays if they're not edited in some way. I guess I'm a little too used to D&D where most of the time I'm expected to die eventually, or to lose a fight or two, despite any possible effort I could put into it. Because like real life sometimes effort isn't enough. And I think in a magical girl RP, if there was some kind of big threat I think some of the role-playing could come from picking your battles. But I suppose I agree to the extent of not pulling stuff like this out of thin air and to warn everyone ahead of time that stuff like this will happen, so they are prepared for it. I know most people would rather win than lose, but I prefer wrenches being thrown if I'm in any roleplay with some kind of combat. Because I don't want to feel like there is no reward/challenge/risk for my effort. (sorry for the wall of text using phone to type this.)

[VitaVitaAR]

Losses and injuries are, again, something totally different from having your character killed.