Academy City. A sovereign city-state, renowned globally as an institution dedicated to the furtherment of science and education. Located in a walled enclave of Tokyo, Japan, its population of 2.3 million (of which 80% are students) are spread out across 23 School Districts, learning, growing and thriving for the neverending cause of advancement that has allowed the city to stay thirty years ahead of the rest of the world. Of course, an individual of said population (such as you), might not particularly care much for the specifics of something as vague as scientific progress, especially when it's really more of a footnote to Academy City's main attraction:
Psychic powers.
You see, the purpose of the city is to study psychic powers by creating beings known colloquially as Espers. These beings, usually members of the student population, have unlocked their potential to make use of a wide variety of extranormal abilities (some pretty cool, some useful, and some as pointless as a Creative Writing degree) thanks to the efforts of Academy City's local researchers and scientists. Ostensibly, the continued development of these abilities is core to the success of this "Power Curriculum Program", but the truth is that the students still continue to participate in a reasonably normal (albeit high-tech) school life, with regular testing by the institutions being the only difference to education anywhere else in the world.
Except when you've gathered up an entire technologically advanced city full of superpowered students, anything can happen, even if it may seem completely unbelievable. Strange happenings, shady organisations, and rumours coming true, all of these are almost "normal" in a place like Academy City.
For beneath its veneer of respectability, there are many dark mysteries waiting to be solved ...
Introduction
Academy City is a place of stories. No, let's try this again. Stories take place in Academy City. From the big to the small, the students of Academy City do things, whether they're powerful Level 4 Espers doing whatever a teenager does with immense power or a scrappy lower-levelled punk hoping to rise through the ranks or just being an overall drain on society. They do things, have their own little stories and whatnot, and sometimes, these disparate folks have their tales intersect.
And when at least two of them meet, that's how you get an incident.
Whether it's something small-scale like an argument over vending machines, or a bloody battle to assert the dominance of their respective ambitions, a meeting between inhabitants of Academy City is never going to be uninteresting. What goals do they hold? How will they succeed at them? How do they react to other people? And what happens if those others get in the way of their dreams? All these things can lead to a wealth of interaction, and the incidents that arise will be what they make of it.
And as more of them connect, the closer they might get to understanding Academy City as a whole.
What is an Esper?
Of course, you may also be wondering right now: what exactly is an esper, and what is this level thing you're yapping about? As the name suggests, espers are those who possess extranormal abilities, but to be more specific, espers in this setting are those who have undergone the Power Curriculum Program and cut themselves off from regular reality through drugs, surgery and other experimentation, thus giving them access to their powers.
Espers possess their own personal realities, and through the mysterious energy field they emit (known as AIM), they impose their own reality onto that of the world. Powers differ from esper to esper (although some types can be common, such as telekinesis), and each can only possess one type of power. These are ranked from Level 0 (essentially powerless) to Level 5 (of which there are only seven in Academy City) depending on their effectiveness. In this RPG, no characters are allowed to have already reached Level 5.
Quick Rundown
With the recent release of Index S3 (praise Battle Royale), I've decided to drag this thing back out from dormancy. This is an RPG set in the world of the Raildex franchise (with A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun being its main representatives). You're all going to be students in Academy City (powers possibly optional, given the presence of numerous Level 0 Espers), hanging about and in most situations, enjoying your everyday springtime of youth as usual.
However, because it is Academy City, your springtime of youth is definitely not going to be what we'd consider normal. Whether it be a mystery of the week that you've stumbled into, or a plot of your own making that you're running for the sake of your dreams, you're going to be doing your best to get through it and get out in a way you want.
There's loads of stuff on offer for your characters to do. Loads of stuff that you might want to do (message me if you got ideas too). And hopefully, you can have fun with that.
Also if you got any issues, HIT ME WITH THE Qs.
Character Sheet
Name:
Nickname/Alias: (Optional)
Age:
Gender:
Appearance:
Biography:
Personality: (Likes and dislikes optional)
Esper Power: (If your character's an Esper, what is their power and what level is it from 0 to 4)
Skills: (what are they good at?)
Ambition: (What drives them? What is their goal in Academy City? What do they want to do? How will they go about doing this? How will they achieve it? How will they achieve it in the timeframe of this RPG? Eg. do they want to steal fragments of Tree Diagram and learn how to uplift dolphins? Is there a plot you wanna run to achieve this goal? Send me a message there as well).
Extra: