[Note: Experience with the sources of inspiration is not required]
In theory, every existence possesses desire. A child's desire to be stronger, a fetus's desire to be born, a friend's desire to shoulder others' pain. In order to be a sapient being without a single desire, you must be an impossible being. You must be something that has glimpsed what mankind calls "Enlightenment", something that has seen the truth of the world and escaped its laws as a result.
So then, if that is the case...what should happen when one's desire is tapped into?
This is what we call "magic". Those capable of tapping into their deepest desire, the locus of their existence, the origin point that their nature springs from, acquire with it the capability to manifest that desire into the world.
In this simple town, in the year 2017, those with that potential have been gathered by the red string of fate spun by an ancient fool. By her will, a separate world paints over theirs, taking only those chosen few with it. By her will, the potential of these individuals is forcibly awakened.
-And by her will, a declaration is passed. Those gathered here shall fight to the death. This world, this Naraka, will not fade away until one has died. The mundane world will reappear, and normal life may resume until the next day when a new Naraka begins.
Each day, they will be pulled back into this separate world and made to kill one another, lest they wish for Naraka to feed on them should it not obtain a sacrifice in due time.
Welcome to Naraka. Do try to put on a good show.
Yay, another magic anime battle royale thing.
So, to clarify how this works a bit:
Once a day, there will be an "instance" of Naraka. So, at, say, 4:00 PM, the world will seem to change, the sky changing color and every human and animal (with the exception of PCs) will disappear. This signifies that Naraka has begun. This will be explained in the roleplay itself, but once Naraka has begun, it starts a twenty-four hour countdown.
If, in that time, nobody dies, then everyone present in Naraka will automatically be killed. If, in that time, someone does die, then Naraka will automatically end, and the world will return to normal, now at the time of 4:05 PM. Then, the next day at some time, Naraka will happen again. This continues until only one person's left.
As an aside, Naraka and the normal world can be considered fully separate, so blowing up a building in Naraka won't have an effect on the normal world's building.
The powers of PCs are based off their core desire. For instance, to use an example from Dies Irae, your core desire being "I want this moment to last forever" would give you the ability to slow the flow of time. You can only have one such core desire, but it can be exhibited in a few different ways. This is further explained in the character sheet.
In terms of the framing, this pulls most heavily from the Fortissimo series. In terms of the themes, this pulls most heavily from the Fate/ series. In terms of the character abilities themselves, it pulls most heavily from Dies Irae.
Name: The first and last name of your character. Maybe a middle name, if you're so inclined.
Age: No younger than 10, no older than 80.
Gender: Self-explanatory
Appearance: A picture is fine, a written description is fine, a stick figure is probably not fine.
Personality: Don't skimp on this.
History: Everything that has occurred in their life up until now, which is worth noting. Nobody is allowed to know about the existence of magic, Naraka, or so on. Also, whether born in it, or having just moved in last week, your character must be in the small, largely suburban town of Riversfield at the start of the roleplay.
Skills: Noteworthy abilities, talents, or knowledge. Please put it here if you have any intention of using it.
Other: Anything else you want to note.
Desire: The fundamental concept your character revolves around. If you had to sum up the heart of their nature in one sentence, structured as "I want X", then this is what that should be.
Assiah: The most basic manifestation of a desire. It can best be compared to something like a "psychic power". For instance, the ability to burn something with a glance, or to cut something without contact. However, as the strength of the souls is similar, it is impossible to affect another player character with these effects a priori. For instance, you cannot light a fire inside of their skull; instead, you can only create the fire outside of their body and manipulate it from there. A passive capability that, for all intents and purposes, can be used without constraint while in Naraka.
Yetzirah: Granting of physical form to a desire. In other words, formation of a construct which represents that desire. Weapons are the most common among these, but there are Yetzirah which are not weapons. The Yetzirah inherits and amplifies the trait of the Assiah in strength, but with its manifestation, one's ability can only be used through the conduit of the Yetzirah. There is thus a tradeoff between the Yetzirah's power and the Assiah's versatility. To invoke the Yetzirah requires one second. To keep things from being messier than they need to be, a Yetzirah cannot be a gun.
Beriah: Overwriting the rules of reality with one's desire. This can take one of two forms. The first is internal, in which one rewrites the reality of their own body and Yetzirah in line with the rule of their desire, for instance allowing their physical abilities to be amplified heavily. The second is external, which projects a space that overwrites the world and paints over it with one's own; in other words, creating a bounded-off "dimension" which is the crystallization of one's desire. Use of this stage taxes the body and soul. Internal Beriah-users can maintain it for five minutes before they become incapacitated under the strain, while external users are limited to one minute. To invoke the Beriah requires one second.
Parameters are on a scale from E to A, with E being the lowest and A the highest. The average value for your parameters should be C. For instance, all parameters being C, two being A and two being E, or two being D and two being B would be acceptable.
These are to be used for guidelines, do not attempt to outskirts battledome powerlevel arguments this. I am not giving the rankings numerical values for a reason.
Power: The strength your desire outputs. In other words, your damage stat. This is primarily applicable to Assiah and Yetzirah; with Beriah, things can become weirder.
Vitality: How much of a beating your body/soul can take from external sources. In other words, the consolidation of your defense stat and HP stat. As an aside, the importance of vital body parts while in Naraka is heavily lessened; rather, the true importance is on the damage sustained by the soul being attacked by an opposing desire.
Range: Maximum range you can influence. E rank range means that you need physical contact to use your Assiah, and your Yetzirah is useless unless it touches the enemy. A rank range means the ability spans an entire "area", for instance a school grounds or a shopping mall. This only applies to Assiah and Yetzirah; for Beriah, range is not a function of this parameter, but is rather a function of if it's internal or external. Internal Beriah have a functional range of E, and external of A. The range of your Beriah does not factor into this parameter whatsoever.
Growth Potential: Capacity to strengthen yourself through the souls of the fallen. When your desire kills another, it is possible to claim some of their strength; this determines the likelihood of that. At A rank, you have a 50% chance of parameters increasing through killing an enemy. At E rank, you have a 10% chance. The level of increase will scale with the number of enemies that the enemy in question killed, but the likelihood of increase will not. The presence of this parameter makes it ill-advised to avoid combat entirely, as if you survive to the end by hiding, the person opposite you will have gorged themselves on the strength of their kills.
Though Battoru Royal RPs, from my experience, tend to die quickly if not taken care of by a tight narrative with some heavy railroading.
Not to mention that such RPs generally attract the kind of people who spend way too much time having a dick-contestdiscussing things about fictional power-levels OOCly in a heated manner which sets a bad mood rather than enjoying the chuunige for what it is and just writing something nice. Aka I am worried about core-believes clashing because I'm pretty sure a 'I want to be faster than anyone.'-Schreiber wannabe would very much not like it if he or she gets fucked by something like Fuji's timehax Shirou's awesomeness or Longinus Backstab. Would you just play kindergartner use your GM powers to its fullest and tell the fighting children to split the cookie because the're clearly too full of themselves to welcome the idea of sharing is caring?
Basically, if you would have mentioned Tokyo Babel too this would have spoken to me on all levels so I'd probably join. But after having seen so much failure what can you tell me that gives this the edge that it won't die compared to the many others?
Though Battoru Royal RPs, from my experience, tend to die quickly if not taken care of by a tight narrative with some heavy railroading.
Not to mention that such RPs generally attract the kind of people who spend way too much time having a dick-contestdiscussing things about fictional power-levels OOCly in a heated manner which sets a bad mood rather than enjoying the chuunige for what it is and just writing something nice. Aka I am worried about core-believes clashing because I'm pretty sure a 'I want to be faster than anyone.'-Schreiber wannabe would very much not like it if he or she gets fucked by something like Fuji's timehax Shirou's awesomeness or Longinus Backstab. Would you just play kindergartner use your GM powers to its fullest and tell the fighting children to split the cookie because the're clearly too full of themselves to welcome the idea of sharing is caring?
Basically, if you would have mentioned Tokyo Babel too this would have spoken to me on all levels so I'd probably join. But after having seen so much failure what can you tell me that gives this the edge that it won't die compared to the many others?
If I mentioned Tokyo Babel or Ayakashibito then it'd have been too much even for my chuuni ranking.
At any rate, to jack the themes of Nasuverse, this whole deal is a battle of concepts. To that end, I readily invite OOC debate about what should happen in a given clash. However, to codify things further, I will be making use of some aspects like the Fortissimo parameter system so that it's not just miscellaneous wanking in a vacuum.
With that said, while this is a "PvP" RP (well unless you all decide "fuck this shit" and attack the person making you fight to the death, which is totally an option, I'm not the kind to say "no my NPC is the strongest you can't win do what I say"), it's also fundamentally just a mess of chuuni fun, so if people start getting heated then I'll be breaking that up.
Conflict resolution in the case of disagreement will have two stages. First, the participants can chat it out about their own perspective and whatnot; others are welcome to chime in, but don't use that to persuade your friends to gang up on somebody with you. This'll at least let people air their perspectives, and also because the chuuni debates over which power should win are just fun to have. After everyone's said their piece, I'll evaluate everything and pass down a verdict. I'll also be including a Tiger Dojo knockoff to explain things further, in the case of a character death.
As far as what's to stop this from dying, there are some bits and pieces peppered around as insurance against some of the usual pitfalls. For instance, the smart thing to do in most battle royales is camp out and do prep time shit; here, that's pointless, and also if everyone just hides then you all die in 24 hours. Fate/stuff has a pitfall of "what happens when someone has to drop out", especially with the partner dynamic; here, that's less of an issue. This is also going to be pretty fast-paced in its execution, as compared to something like a Holy Grail War which spans 14 days out of necessity.
Little things like that have been built into the setting and mechanics as safeguards against the more common shit that kills this kinda thing off. Of course, they're not guarantees, but you can't exactly make an RP that's guaranteed to make it to completion; in the end, that just depends on if the players and GM can work as a cohesive enough unit to get off their asses and write a damn story. Hopefully that'll be the case here, but if not I'll at least write one hell of a killswitch-RP-ending post should it wind up dying.
Oh, damn. This looks... REALLY, REALLY cool. I'm already pretty busy, but I can already tell that passing this up would be a mistake. In any case, I do have one question, but I think I'll take it to PMs. Don't want to clue people in on what I'm planning, just in case we keep everybody's abilities secret from each other. :D
So that people have an idea of what to expect, since I've gotten a couple PMs about prospective power-sets, I've added a tentative character sheet skeleton to the OP. Specifics may be subject to change before I make the OOC up, but at least this way you can start thinking about how to structure stuff thematically, if you like doing things early.
To clarify something I've gotten PMs about, attacks caused by an Assiah, Yetzirah, or Beriah deal spiritual damage as well as whatever physical component there is to it, as your existence is being attacked by a foreign desire. This means that, as explained in the Vitality stat description, the only way to reliably kill someone in Naraka is through use of your own desires, rather than through buying a gun online and shooting them in the head.
Alrighty, we've got a good sized roster now in here and with some people who've been PMing me, so I'll make the OOC later today. Newcomers are still welcome, of course.
