RoflsMazoy

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@Vega7285 that's a fair criticism of things. Higher ranks in Arts is supposed to translate to more complex and more powerful spells rather than restricting the amount of spells. It probably feels strange because both class systems were kind of off the cuff... But you're right in that fighter feels a bit restrictive and Arts feels a little too free by comparison.

Would it be better for fighters to have more freedom or arts more restrictions? I'm not the one that's affected by the decision so I need to put it to you all.

@TheMushroomLord I wanted the culture for Japan in general to be like it bounced back after the initial period of chaos, to be close to what it is now in real life. There's some clear differences with the presence of Yokai and stuff like Arts being an everyday thing. And that people are probably more physically capable compares to the real world. There's possibly a couple more things that'll come up with the mutations breakdown, but that's about it for Japan.

For the world as a whole though, I wanted to leave it undefined for the most part, because I haven't exactly decided what to do with it yet. There could be all kinds of things happening out there, or there could be nothing. I honestly just haven't thought about it.

@Dog I suppose there could be a kind of exchange program between the US and Japan. They send a few US soldiers to sign on with the Akasha Agency in various regions to introduce them to the program, and they may be testing how allowing small amounts of military personnel affects operations.

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

<Snipped quote by RoflsMazoy>
Can't the agency just go buy some firearms for some agents?

@Dog

I just read up on it a little bit, and it looks like it's currently only law enforcement and military are allowed to carry guns. I think for something like the Akasha Agency it's certainly possible but they're in essence giving guns to civilians. It'd be a big problem if they gave them to the wrong people who were there just for the guns. It's also sort of implied in the history that they didn't need to use the guns as the iniative was successful enough even in it's early forms. That said, there's still a couple of avenues for a guns character?

I might make it so that they allowed civillians to get gun licenses for self protection, especially in rural areas who likely won't have had as much protection in the early days.

The other is perhaps a policeman character who transfers to the Akasha Agency as part of a new program to begin to integrate the police into the Agency. Perhaps they take like team leader and help mentor the younger agents.

What kind of character are you thinking of making?

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@Dog Yeah, it is kind of harder to get guns in Japan though (going by real world rules for this one)

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@TheMushroomLord Oh yeah, so like, there's a little bit of that, but it's more like Arts is currently, say, an elective in school rather than something like a core unit. Consider it a bit like the early days of computers, possibly equivalent to the 1980s or 1990s. Not everybody knows how to program, and learning how to do computers isn't for everyone.

But if you know how to start you can start really early, and do pretty well. Realistically Arts' timeframe and circumstances are quite similar to computers, so they should realistically be about as advanced and as part of human society as computers is today, but Arts hasn't reached that level of development yet (mostly because it's just easier to not have to think about it that way...), so Arts users are relatively in the "minority" still, but they're increasing in number thanks to the adoption of more early learning programs (perhaps, kinda depends on how much need for it there really is). It's something that's likely to be advancing rapidly in the background already, but such changes would take a while to translate into full societal shifts for a while.

I imagine a lot of information about Yokai is public already considering most people living right now will have interacted face-to-face with at least one at some point in their lives. The kind of scientific studies that are publicly available now on similar stuff in the real world is probably equivalent in that aspect as well.

The Akasha Agency and Arts teachers probably also have a vested interest to keep students from forming misconceptions in the first place about Arts, because it's quite a task to teach anything in the first place. If it's at all like learning science, you shouldn't be learning anything in an overly simplified manner because it's a type of continual education which'll continue right back up at the place where you left off if you decide to pursue it further.

There may be such preconceptions if going from something that is completely removed from, or has no traces of Arts. Because in such a situation you'd only know what you've heard through word of mouth or far off exposure.

Or actually, if it were more akin to IT then it probably would like that now that I think about it. Maybe that was just my IT teacher though but IT was pretty over simplified for me before getting into it in university.

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@TheMushroomLord I was more going for that they are known, but I just didn't list them. It's a bit more like.... well, real life, where you start learning 'science' with like Chemistry and Physics but later on you've got a ton of other fields like geology, psychology, climate science, and that sort of thing. Only I guess it'd be a much broader field than science is.

I guess Literature and some of the humanities is a more fitting comparison. You can have general english and general literature and you'd consider that like your intro, or the general kind of knowledge you'd need at a certain level in the Akasha Agency. At the same time there's a lot of random fields like Egyptology, Ancient Literature which is different, world history, political history, specializations in specific literature movements (like the enlightenment and whatnot), etc.

So the idea is that there's a general knowledge of the 'basic' arts (which I'm loathe to really define, since it's not something I feel needs to be defined if it's assumed that anyone can know it, and characters' expertise with it is going to vary anyway.), and then there's a bunch of specific Arts schools you may or may not have heard of.

Maybe actually I'll define an extra layer for Arts. So you have your broader 'Schools', you would consider them schools of thought, so all Arts under that School have a sort of basic premise that applies to all of them under that school. But a person will have a specific 'Style' of Arts which is the way those Arts are specifically cast which differentiates one group from another under the same school.

For example, under the Sonshō(損傷) school, you may have learnt spells under the Hibari style, which emphasizes large area of effect spells, or something along those lines? Kinda spitballing here but that would give it a more specific structure which you and others may be looking for?

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@Hyyde322 Oh hell yeah, I was already intending on adding a little of that aspect to the Specialist breakdown. There are still many things that can't be explained, it can't be possible to unveil all of the world's mysteries in 50 years. But if you do have thoughts on something that you'd like to see in the RP, you can PM me if you'd like. I'm usually very open with players adding things to the world and even making their own plotlines if they want to.

@Vega7285 Haha... yeah... it's kind of in the nature of Arts being such an expansive field with various methods of doing it that I feel like I can't quite put it in more detail without ending up restricting it. My intention is to maintain freedom to include any type of magic you all can really come up with, because it is an entire magic system, I don't imagine myself thinking out every school of Arts myself, and neither would I want to. I'm curious about what people can make out of it.

I only listed 5 schools, but they aren't the definitive. And they aren't, so to speak, the be-all end all. You can make up more of your own if you want to, those were just the ones I could come up with to fill up an example list... I should probably make that more clear in the description.

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

Arts is up!

I didn't proofread it super hard so there may be some mistakes or some things off. Also I tried formatting for a bit but it kinda got too annoying. I wanted to format the schools portion so that it was not centered, but something to do with centering around hiders was throwing it off no matter what I did so I'm gonna just leave it for now.

There's also a little bit on Yokai and Half-Yokai characters at the end there, so anyone who wants to make one should also read that portion (although there ain't too much in it).

Next is Specialists/Mutations and we should be about done!

Ask me anytime about any questions you may have or anything you think is funky or wrong

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

A quick notice for this morning, I've already told a couple (read: exactly two) people about this, but haven't yet formalized it yet so I figured I may as well do it now. Half-Yokai are available to play as characters. Since Yokai have been there for a while, you'd certainly assume it'd happen to not an insignificant portion of the population. A part of the reason why Yokai even can apply to stay in the human world is for this exact reason, to not abandon the children they would have left behind.

A full Yokai will have to come with a specific story reason for it so ask me directly about that, but Half-Yokai will otherwise likey fall into the Specialist umbrella, since it's the class specifically for beings with innate power that makes it hard for them to be classified in the traditional ways.

You can easily still have Half-Yokai be Fighters or Arts Practitioners depending on their background. It'll all be up to you and how you think your character should be classed.

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

@Vega7285 weeeeeelllllll, in another RP I'm still running, we have been known to wait around for months on end. Surprisingly a great deal of them still stuck around and put up with that, so if you're ok with that sort of thing happening then we should be fine... Kamigakari sounds awesome though! I can't believe I've never heard of it. I'm not generally a tabletop kind of player though unfortunately.

Akasha Agency (Tentative interest check)

Alright, I made some small changes for today. A little elaboration on what a Shokuden is (spoiler: I conmpletely made up the word anyway), and a little tiny fixes and other additions to fighter stuff. I'm anticipating finishing Arts by tommorrow night. If I'm sufficiently motivated I may finish both Arts and Specialists but it's a bit hard to tell at this point.

Depends on how late I sleep tonight, I suppose. And if nothing else comes up tomorrow.