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[Logical2u]

Current status: Recruiting! See below.

I am currently recruiting 4-6 players for an attempt at running a Touhou Project (henceforth referred to as Touhou for convenience) RPG created by Bahamut – rulebook available here. If you are interested in playing this game, I ask you to send me a private message (via these forums, or if you're more comfortable, through twitter or tumblr) with your basic character details. I’ll review them and provide you a final FP score for finalizing your character creation process. I will be accepting applications on a first-completed, received and accepted basis, until I have 6 players or until a period of 1 week from this post has expired. (So, to be generous, next Sunday (the 14th) at Midnight, EST.)

Update: Oct 8th: Currently, there is 1 reserved spot.

• What’s this thread about?
  
  Have you ever wanted to decimate hordes of enemies with barrage upon barrage of deadly magical bullets, but found that 1. Magic isn’t real and/or 2. You can’t play shooter games? Then perhaps this thread is for you.
  Touhou RPG – Tale of Phantasmal Land, is an adaptation of the Touhou setting and gameplay into a tabletop RPG format, designed by a person known as Bahamut. Bahamut is currently working on a different project (a small TTRPG known as Treasure Hunters, apparently soon to be part of Goblinworks), but someday intends to come back to this project. As such, the game is in a partially finished state, which I will attempt to rectify myself (much to the chagrin of game balance).
  
  
• What do I need to do?
  
  To participate in the game, you must create a character. In the world of Gensokyo – Touhou’s setting – crazy things – incidents – happen on a regular basis. If you were to somehow get wrapped up in one… well, you might end up a hero! Thus, you should view your character as a ‘hero in training’, although you have significant leeway in that. However, to become the greatest hero… you must also get more of the glory than your partners – either by getting more points, or by convincing others (both in and out of the game) of your greatness…
  You cannot finalize your character without gamemaster input – that would be me. Unfortunately I haven’t gamemastered before so I could make many amateur mistakes. Hopefully that won’t happen. Please be patient with me… Note: if I really like your character but we have a full party or your character would severely clash with the rest of the party, I may ask your permission to put your character in as an NPC. Otherwise, we can talk about waiting lists.
  Moreover, your character will probably have some traits that are best kept secret from other players. Thus, do not post your character information in the thread or you will be disqualified.
  
  Posting in this thread is not enough to guarantee a spot.
  
  
• What will happen?
  
  Expect to get involved in an incident and attempt to resolve it through any means necessary. You will likely encounter a group of individuals also inclined to resolve said incident, and work together. However, you will need to compete amongst yourselves (for points, mainly) to make sure you walk away looking the best out of all your friends.
  As to what the first incident will be, I have something planned, but I shouldn’t give away too much. You will find out as part of your introduction to the game, if you get in.
  You should expect combat and some skill challenges throughout. You could hypothetically brute force your way through any incident, but there may be more efficient ways to advance your goals…
  
  
• How do we play?
  
  Gameplay rules are described in the rulebook. We will be operating with a play-by-post system. I will be making all rolls myself using dice I have on hand. You just need to tell me what you want to do when it’s your round (i.e. what rolls I should be making for you) or turn to act.
  You will be expected to follow the thread so that you keep your character’s orders up-to-date. If you have not posted within 72 hours of one of my updates during a combat situation (which will encompass one complete turn) I will make a decision for your character on my own. Otherwise, for non-combat situations, the time will vary, but never be longer than 72 hours.
  Some information will be shared publically with the thread – anything that any character could notice or hear will be shared in this way. If one character has specific information (e.g. telepathy or somesuch) that information will be shared via private messages to that player. They can then share that information either in the thread or with other players via PMs – basically, I can’t stop metagaming, but I can make sure that the initial information is given in a way that makes sense.
  
  
• Are there any gimmicks?
  
  The main gimmick of this game is Fandom Points, or Faith Points, depending on what you prefer. Basically, in Gensokyo – the setting of Touhou – things that no one believes in end up there, and the power of belief and faith is a real power. Thus in this game, accumulating FP means getting more power. You can get FP by acting in character, being a badass, or pandering to the masses.
  Touhou has three main gimmicks that might transfer over here… 1. Most characters are females of various origins and ages. 2. The art is usually really bad. 3. The music is usually really good.
  There is a Touhou trait that has become a gimmick – your character should be readily identifiable from only a headshot. I am not expecting you to draw anything, but if your character has unique hair, hair style, and/or hat, that is good. Otherwise, I reserve the right to 1. Give you an (in?)appropriate hat somewhere along the way or 2. Give you one less life to start with at the beginning of an incident.
  Finally, the last combat gimmick draws from both: Half of combat is looking cool. Thus, giving me an awesome description for your attacks will get you a bonus.
  
  

THREAD RULES

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Obviously the forum guidelines and subforum guidelines apply here.
• There is a specific thread rule of DO NOT BE CREEPY. In any fandom there are always weird, inappropriate, or offensive things that appear. I really don’t want those showing up in this thread. I’m trying to be careful not to do anything of this sort myself, so this applies to everyone here – including me.
• Posting a character sheet will disqualify that character from playing.  If you post someone else’s character sheet, I reserve the right to disqualify you – the poster – from playing.
• This is not a general Touhou thread – please do not post images or music in bulk, or otherwise without relevance to the current story. There are topics in General Discussion relating to Touhou that are linked at the bottom of this post. Please do not discuss Touhou here, outside of what’s happening in the game and what might be useful to provide additional background to people.
• This is not an out-of-character thread. Obviously I can’t control every single post, but if you want to have a big discussion on the game’s content, direction, loot division, and characters, may I suggest you use this thread? I will apply the same rules there as there are in this thread, except for the ‘general touhou’ one, so don’t think that you can be super creepy in one thread and normal in the other and expect to keep playing as if nothing is happening.

Quick character creation guide

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Create a concept or idea for a character.
• Pick your stats – you have 6 stats, starting with 2 in each, plus an extra 12 points to allot. Might: Might/2 + 2 = lives. Finesse: Finesse = Evasion. Resolve: resolve/2 -2 = hitbox. Will: Will = To hit bonus. Charm: Charm/2 +2 = bombs. Cunning: cunning = initiative. No stats higher than six at character creation! You can buy more stats later.
• Pick your race (See Kludges for specific notes on half-ghosts, bird-youkai, and moon peoples).
• Pick your skills. You start with 5 skill points to spend. (See Kludges for notes on how skill rolls are being modified)
• Build your free spell card. (6 points, 2 rounds, 1 round of supernatural border, 2 attack volleys per round)
• Build your character’s equipment and style (using 15 yen to start).
• Decide on your character’s name, look, title, combat style, danmaku style, bomb names, occupation, and location.
• Browse Endearments, very Bad Things, and FP abilities and items. You start with 10 FP, can gain up to 10 from Endearments, and 10 points from very bad things. Endearments are generally less mechanically dangerous than VBTs, are paid off easier, and can help pay themselves off with time. Continuing costs 3 FP. You can take up endearments and VBT in order to continue up to that limit as needed....  (See Kludges for notes on custom endearments and FP items)
• In order to finalize FP, you need to talk to me about your character's endearments, bad things, etc and your general character design. I will also want to talk to you regarding FP items. Once you have a final FP value, buy your endearments, very bad things, abilities and items.
• Boost your spell card, skills, money, or items with remaining FP. 1FP -> 3 Spell Card points. 1 FP -> 5 skills. 1 FP -> 15 more yen. AFTER CHARACTER CREATION, these values drop, so if you think you want these things, maybe do so now. I will allow you to bank spell card points for later!
• Finalize everything else.
• Submit to me your complete character profile.

[/list]
Note: for really quick character creation, skip directly from race to FP stuff. If you manage to finalize your FP stuff with me, I'll consider you "finalized enough to have a spot". Then you can do the rest later.

FAQS

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Do I need to know anything about Japan to play this game?
  
  Not really. I don’t know very much about Japan myself – although I am using a variety of resources to create a somewhat ‘Touhou-like’ experience. If you need help with character names I recommend the following websites: http://www.behindthename.com/usage.php or http://www.20000-names.com/female_japanese_names_02.htm
  For adapting a more common Japanese word to a gendered name try : http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2271.html or http://www.aboutnames.ch/japanese.htm
  In Gensokyo the most common backgrounds are Japanese, Chinese, and European.
  General problem with figuring out names: some names sound similar, or the same, when translated, but have different meanings and characters. I would try not to worry too much about that unless you are going for something extremely clever, in which case you should confirm your cleverness using a service such as This English->Japanese and Japanese kanji -> english translation service
  
  
• Do I need to know anything about Touhou to play this game?
  
  It’ll certainly help, but I don’t think you’ll need to explicitly know anything about Touhou to get through an incident. I’ll be helping you out with character profiles of people you meet or know (although only with knowledge you know in character.) If there is something in specific you want to know about Touhou (at least, the Touhou setting I’m ‘building’), I encourage you to contact me via PM, tumblr, twitter, or Steam.
  
  
• What is Touhou?
  
  Touhou is a series of vertically scrolling ‘bullet-hell’ style shooters created solo by Zun – he’s sort of a Japanese counterpart to Toady, but Zun reportedly works best when drunk (in contrast to Toady, whose creations work best when drunk).
  Touhou takes place in Gensokyo, Japan. Gensokyo is kind of a weird place… There are often big incidents that draw extremely powerful people together in the interest of resolving them, usually by forcing the initiator to recant under threat of magical bullets. The end of an incident is usually marked with drinking, partying, and tea.
  There have been many large incidents in the past – these form the story of the various Touhou Project games. I’ll summarize the current and past situation as it’s needed.
  
  
• What is Gensokyo?
  
  Gensokyo is a location in Japan that has been magically sealed from the real world by means of a great, semi-impenetrable barrier, called the Hakurei Border. The border is maintained with the faith given at the Hakurei shrine – which exists in both the real world and the land of Gensokyo. Thus, the Hakurei shrine maiden – Reimu – is probably one of the land’s most powerful individuals, and is similarly considered by some a key component of the land’s day-to-day existence.
  
  
• Who lives in Gensokyo? (With spillover into “why do they live in Gensokyo”)
  
  Gensokyo is populated by humans, youkai (a catch-all term for various Japanese supernatural oddities), devils, gods, ghosts, and animated spirits, among other mythological creatures. I will group all of the later under the term ‘youkai’ for now.
  Youkai have existed for a long time, but when people stopped believing in them, they began losing their power. They were also being driven out by experienced, combat-savvy humans. As such, a plan was begun – the Youkai Expansion Project – to increase the effective power of Youkai by localizing themselves in a specific region – Gensokyo. This drew Youkai not only from across Japan, but from across the world. Gensokyo became a center for supernatural activity, and also drew brave humans ready to stand up to them.
  Eventually, an uneasy status quo was established between humans and Youkai. Youkai preyed upon adventurous humans for sustenance, and humans hunted down and exterminated extremely dangerous youkai. Even so, the power of youkai continued to wane, until 1885, when the Great Hakurei Barrier was established around Gensokyo.
  This removed Gensokyo from the world of the real and brought it into the world of the imaginary. As such, all remaining youkai became attracted to Gensokyo – this is the only place where they can continue to exist. It also firmly established their power – as youkai become things of the imagination in the outside world, their effect in Gensokyo becomes more real.
  As it stands now, Gensokyo is nearly entirely cut off from the outside world – only a few rare items, and even rarer visitors, manage to make it to Gensokyo – and many of those visitors are quickly caught and eaten by youkai. There are locations in Gensokyo where a youkai is not welcome to attack humans – the Human village and the Hakurei shrine among them – so anyone who does make it to Gensokyo typically learns to integrate into the existing human settlement.
  As part of various incidents, other supernatural locations – various incarnations of Hell, for example – have become connected to Gensokyo. These oftentimes bring new manner of youkai with them. Sometimes they become part of the landscape permanently.
  A few literal gods also call Gensokyo home. This game does not allow playing as gods, due to obvious power creep issues and the fact that they are extraordinarily rare. However, many species of Youkai and devils are available, as well as Gensokyo-native humans, who are on the same scale of strength as Youkai, for the most part.
   
• What exists in Gensokyo?
  
  Anything that could be found in 1885 era Japan can be found here. Extremely rarely more modern objects may be found in Gensokyo after they pass through the Hakurei border… but good luck explaining how they work, or what they do, to someone whose knowledge of science and technology is based on 1885 era facts and the existence of magic.
   
• How does combat work, in general?
  
  You shoot ‘bullets’ (danmaku) at people. As a character you are assumed to be able to do this via some method. If you have a gun or bow, maybe these are literal bullets. If you have a melee weapon, perhaps you throw it at people, or create anime-style travelling ‘cuts’. More than likely there is some magical component to this.
  All attacks are considered to be at range. Only in extraordinary circumstances would someone, during combat, ever be out of range. Thus, you never need to worry about positioning or range.
  Actually hitting someone with something physical is relatively rare – all combat is governed by “Spell-card rules”  (available at http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Perfect_Memento_in_Strict_Sense/Draft_of_Spell_Card_Rules) which basically say “hitting someone a bunch is extremely frowned upon”. They also say beauty in your attacks is of the utmost importance – hence the ‘stylish’ gimmick from earlier. These rules also mean that actually killing someone is extremely rare. More likely is the ‘bad end’ which usually just means you go home, make tea or sake, and give up on your dreams of adventure for fear of getting beat up by someone again.
  
  
• Wait, isn’t this that game with all the little girls in it?
  
  Yes (sort of)
   
• Isn’t that kind of creepy?
  
  Only if you want to make it creepy. If you get creepy in the game I reserve the right to ask you to leave, or otherwise eliminate your character.
   
• What do you mean sort of?
  
  As I said earlier, Zun can’t draw – thus most of the character portraits look ridiculous and it’s hard to judge age from them. Moreover almost everything in the series is some personification of some devil or evil spirit (e.g. Japanese devils, sentient cats, curse dolls, etc) so age doesn’t really make a lot of sense when talking about ageless horrors from the darks of the human psyche. I hope I don’t have to say more on this point.
  
  
• Also isn’t the cast all girls?
  
  Yes, but feel free to play a male character – there are no intrinsic changes to character creation beyond the heights for tiny, small, short, regular, and big/tall are all scaled up by 10 cm. Men do exist in Touhou canon, just they don’t get the limelight.
   
• Isn’t this the game with the huge numbers of bullets in it?
  
  Yes.
  
  
• How the heck can I dodge that?
  
  Have a high evasion or hitbox stat and roll well versus your enemies. Everything is condensed down for combat (except for spellcard creation…) so all of these masterful dodging feats you see in replays on youtube are stuff you can assume your character is doing in game.
   
• Can I deathbomb, then?
  
  Not really, but you can bomb to avoid death.
  
  
• Can I be (character from Touhou series)?
  
  I expect you to make up your own characters, because I may draw from existing characters for combat, npc or plot purposes. Feel free to be inspired though.
  
  
• Can I know (character from Touhou series)?
  
  Until your character successfully solves an incident, assume them to be a relative nobody. Thus, don’t expect to be able to call in any favours from outside this thread… I will be ok with you saying “Oh, my character is aware of so-and-so through X”, but really don’t expect to stand out to them.
  E.g: Your character can be a devout Buddhist, but don’t expect Shou (in short, a dangerous Buddhist defender) to come at your beck and call.
  
  
• Help!
  
  You can contact me via PMs, Steam, twitter, or tumblr if you have any questions.
  
  
• No, help, I’m on fire.
  
  Oh, in that case you should call your local emergency responders, not read this FAQ.
  
  

FIXES AND KLUDGES – You have my permission to break the game with these if they're obviously broken. But also expect me to try and figure out to fix them for the future.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Note: I also reserve the right to secretly kludge things if it’s in the player’s best interests to do so. I don’t expect this to happen too often, but it may come up if I have really messed something up (e.g. skills or combat).

There’s a FP (burning spirit) item that has an element with it. Feel free to change to any of the other elements. Also, feel free to change the type of item it is, with the exception that you may also be expected to pay some yen towards it as well. Also, silver throwing knives – feel free to replace with another seemingly-infinite thrown weapon (e.g. shurikens, holy waters, small hand axes, arrows, etc). In fact, for almost any item, if you have a good idea of what you want to do, but it’s not listed in the manual, tell me about it. I’m happy to kludge something together. Especially if it is close to, in terms of abilities, to something that already exists.

Note that clothing/armor/decorations are already intended to just be general styles of clothing, so as long as what you're telling me on your character sheet makes some amount of sense in its adaptation, I'm fine with it.

Birds – although Mystia and Tokiko are the only bird youkai, obviously not all of the birds are night sparrows. Feel free to pick another type of bird and I’ll do my best to come up an alternate ability (to Blanket of Darkness) for them. If your bird is a song-bird, you’ll get the sing-song ability, otherwise I’ll see what I can do.
E.g. Owl – nocturnal – owl-youkai prefer to sleep during the day and work at night. Night-sight – owl youkai can see normally at night (e.g. all vision ranges at night are the same as they would be during the day) and get the benefits of enhanced sight during night.
Hawk – gets the benefits of superior flight, gets the benefit of enhanced sight when explicitly tracking something.

Half-phantoms – this race  is broken at present. I have no idea how they were supposed to play, but I thought up my own kludge for their racial ability…

“Two Halves are Better Than One”
Your spirit half can be operated independently of your corporeal half. Mechanically, this does the following:
For the cost of 1 life, once per incident, your spirit half can be controlled independently to within ~30 ft. This lasts 30 minutes or until the end of the stage, whichever comes first. Your spirit half has no attack or bombs, an extra evasion and hitbox score (it’s immaterial after all) and only one life (the one you gave it). If your spirit half is not hit in combat, you regain the life after this ability expires.
On its own, the spirit half can take the form of any material object or person you can visualize, or a person holding one object. The spirit half makes no noise and floats above the ground. It may pass through walls but doing so will obviously break the illusion that it’s a physical object. It cannot interact with anything (e.g. open doors, hurt someone)
In battle, the spirit half can take one of two stances: Offensive or Defensive. Your spirit half behaves like a regular combatant and can be hit by attacks. If your spirit half is hit, you may bomb on its behalf.
Offensive stance: Pick a target. That target suffers -1 to its evasion as long as your spirit half remains. If the target loses all its lives, you may pick a new target on your next round.
Defensive stance: All attacks that could hit you first must hit your spirit half. If your spirit half is hit in this fashion and the attack was multi-target (e.g. a spellcard), the attacker gets to immediately roll against your evasion and hitbox as well. Otherwise, the spirit half dissipates and the attack sails safely into space.

Moon-rabbits and Lunarians – they’re welcome in Gensokyo now, although you will probably be known by the inhabitants at Eientei, and if you’re a Lunarian, you should probably have a good reason for coming to earth – in universe, they’re kind of space-racist and thus prefer the moon.

Being small – get an extra +1 bonus to thievery rolls – you’re tiny, that means you have tiny fingers! (This is an attempt to make Small just as valuable as Big. )

Spells – the spell name and descriptions are suggestions. Keep the costs, (General) effects, requirements, and stage limits, but feel free to modify the name and how they look. (What do I mean by general? For example, Ice arrow will always be a water elemental attack, but it need not be an arrow nor made of ice - it could be a rain storm of some sort, a ball of water, fog or some sort... water cantrip specifically includes etc. in its description. If you are unsure of what a cantrip or spell could do, feel free to talk to me. E.g. for nature cantrip, if you wanted to temporarily preserve food, I would say that nature cantrip would do that.)
The following spells are all reclassified as enchantments, not elemental. Any boost, blind, silence, root, sleep, lunacy. You can also make lunacy and blind illusion based if you’re so inclined. (This shouldn’t have much mechanical effect.)

Endearments – have a good idea for an endearment? Tell me about it and I’ll make a decision. Don’t give yourself any points until I confirm something though.

Biography/art/song endearments – give yourself 1 point if you have anything at all, for a first estimate, and I’ll tell you how many extra points you get, if any, after you finalize with me. Ideally your art and song will be 1. presentable and 2. not revealing a lot about your character, so I may ask your permission to use them in the dramatis personae post. Your biography will not be presented to anyone except me.

Code of honour: I expect you to tell me what that code is! Likewise I need to know how you’re exploitable. Expect to be called to use your code of honour, and expect to be exploited.

As with all characters, your character sheet is hidden so you shouldn’t tell anyone else this stuff… however, you will also go on the dramatis personae, so if something substantial is revealed publicly, expect everyone to know about it.

Want to have decorative stuff in your spellcard? That’s free. Any mechanical stuff will cost you, though.

Skills: Probably a bit broken due to the fact that apparently this game was on a D20 system before it swapped to D6-D6. As a temporary, kludge, Skill rolls are d6 + associated stat + skills (+ whatever other applicable bonuses). As such, you should expect anyone to be able to do simple feats all of the time (except in extreme circumstances or adverse endearments), challenging feats if they have some natural talent, and everything else if they have some extreme talent. E.g. to easily make folded metal weapons, you need a combined stat + skill + bonuses of 11, meaning for Might 4 (an average starting Might rank) you need skills + bonuses of +7, meaning you probably will have 5 points in blacksmith and either take the blacksmithing ‘feat’ or take extra time to make items (allotting extra time -> a bonus, as you’re not in a rush.)

Stances: There are three stances in the rule book: Assault, Play it safe, and Flirt with death. I propose to add two new ones (although I expect them to come up rarely). 1. Defender – a pure-dodging stance. Add +2 to hitbox and evasion. While in this stance, you may make no combat maneuvers (i.e. spells or attacks of any kind) against an enemy. Basically this is just combining the two focused stances into something for someone who wants to survive. 2. Distracter – an aggressive stance, intended to draw enemy fire. While in this stance, you may only make 1 combat action per turn. (I.e. no multiple spells or attacks per turn). Pick a target. You suffer -1 evasion vs all other targets, and -1 hitbox versus that target only. In exchange, that target suffers a -1 to hit versus all targets.  This could be useful, for example, in drawing the fire of a major enemy, but you run the risk of exposing yourself to incoming fire. Note: This effect does not stack – an enemy can only be so distracted!

Useful posts

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• OOC thread
• Dramatis Personae
• A brief history of time Gensokyo
• Touhou thread in general discussion
• Touhou music thread in general discussion

[Logical2u]

Dramatis Personae

Given nothing has happened yet, I'll fill this in with two characters you're likely to meet eventually...


NPCs

• Reimu Hakurei - The Shrine Maiden of Paradise
  
  Reimu is the current Hakurei Shrine Maiden. Given the Hakurei Border's importance to preserving Gensokyo, and Reimu's own involvement in Gensokyo's many past incidents, there are many who view as either one of the strongest people in Gensokyo, or the most critical person in Gensokyo. Although Reimu has in the past been involved in every single major incident in Gensokyo, given her tendency towards laziness, there must surely be some that slip through her sight.
  
  Her primary job is youkai extermination. However, if you cause trouble in Gensokyo, it's more than likely that Reimu will be the one to deal with you, whether or not you're youaki.
  
  
• Aya Shameimaru - The Traditional Reporter of Fantasy
  
  One of the few people in Gensokyo who actually bother to try and catalogue all the crazy stuff that tends to happen. Aya is a crow tengu, and is frequently seen with a camera snapping pictures of incidents, danmaku patterns, and people for use in her Bunbunmaru newspaper. In terms of its content, to us, it falls somewhere between a small newspaper and a tabloid in terms of usefulness. ["This is rather the sort of newspaper that is more suited for a human or youkai that wishes to whittle away a lazy afternoon perusing its pages while sipping a cup of tea."] Nonetheless, it's frequently read across Gensokyo, by both humans and youkai.
  
  Aya will typically try and report on any incident that occurs in Gensokyo, if she can. Although she's not a renowned incident solver, she still tends to get a little wrapped up in them, due to her reporting.
  

[Logical2u]

Reserved for history overview post/anything else that shouldn't go in the other two posts

[Logical2u]

Hey, for future reference: If you were intimidated by the massive PDF I linked, I do have a quick character creation guide in the first post. You'll still have to dig into the PDF eventually, but maybe not right away.

Well, in the interest of bumping thread with the information that I've opened an OOC thread (even if it is wildly premature), I guess I've reserved another post for future use... Wonder what can fit here? The OOC thread can also serve as "asking general character creation questions" if need be.

Anyways, happy Canadian thanksgiving everyone!