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[_DivideByZero_]

IC Thread

You are a wayward soul, trapped within the limbo between Earth and Paradise. In a sudden turn of events, you found yourself dragged into the real world and re-embodied.

You woke up soaking wet in a puddle, with a familiar voice pounding in your chest: a real human heart. You haven't known this feeling for aeons.
It's freezing, and neon lights surround you on all sides, lights superimposed on colossal stone monoliths that reach up into the sky, converging into a point like a second horizon.

You feel something in your pocket. A folding pocket made of leather. There's a card, with a name and a teenager's face. The address: somewhere in Japan.  You peer over the article in your hand and notice your reflection in the puddle.

The faces are the same.


This is a game about wayward souls forced into an unexpected new life in modern-day Japan. Whether you were once a starving peasant or the scourge of the seas, you are now a teenager in high school.

Why? That's for you to figure out. But for now, you ought to blend in and figure out who your friends are, lest you be caught off-guard. You might not be the only one thrust into this situation.

Spoiler: Lore (click to show/hide)

In the afterlife, there is a river through which the souls of the departed leave this world. It flows through the Outer Darkness, where a soul's sins escape into the void and leave the soul purified, ready to enter paradise.
Some souls, those who have died unfairly, those who sought revenge but never achieved it, those who cling to their past lives by the silver thread of desperation, are not carried through by the river of souls, but instead linger in the outer darkness, watching the world through jaded eyes, always seeking a way to return.

These souls, over time, build up a local reality in pursuit of their goal, subconsciously drawing out thoughts and memories from the river of souls, and concentrating them into an alternate world, a living hell to some, a secluded paradise to others. These phantasmic realities can be visited by the echoes of the dead: justified souls making a short stop along the River's meandering route, or shadows consumed by sin and dissolved into the outer darkness. Some of these echoes even live within the phantasm, a microcosm in eternal limbo.

Spoiler: Dice Rules (click to show/hide)

Each action you roll a number of dice and add up the number of successes (4+). The number of successes determines the result:
[<=0] Normal failure
[==1] Partial success
[==2] Average success
[==3] Good success

Certain actions (such as, say, trying to cure cancer) have a difficulty modifier which subtracts from your number of successes.

If half or more of your rolls are natural 6's, you get a critical success. You overdo it.
If half or more of your rolls are natural 1's, you get a critical failure. Bad things happen.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

The stats you choose affect your soul in soul-to-soul combat, and how your soul assists your physical body. Your personal stats are something you determine through your actions at the start of the game.

Your Defense, Power, Presence, and Wit determine how many dice you can throw. The specific mechanics will be revealed in a tutorial during the first battle when it occurs. Some general rules:

Damage is determined by number of successes.
Having twice as much in a primary stat lets you throw twice as many dice.
Having more Reflex than target's Dexterity gives +1 to your blocking, having twice as much gives +2, and vice versa if your target has more Dexterity than your Reflex.
Having more Precognition than target's Dissembly gives +1 to your prediction rolls, having twice as much gives +2, and vice versa. Likewise, your opponents roll to predict your own attacks. Attacks listed earlier consume prediction first, masking your later attacks.

To join, just fill out the character sheet.

Code: (Character Sheet) [Select]

[b]ID: [/b](The name on the card)

[b]Real Name: [/b]What was your name when you were alive?
[b]Origin: [/b]When and were were you alive? Roman-era? The Aztec empire?
[b]Description: [/b]What did you do? Were you a pirate? A merchant? An astronaut?

[b]Your Phantasm: [/b]A phantasm is a dream-like world formed by those trapped in limbo. Essentially, a wayward soul will attract forgotten memories from the world below, and those memories will weave themselves together into a miniature world. The kind of world it is depends on who you were--a nobleman may find himself inside an endless castle for instance.

[b]Primary Stats: [/b]Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
Defense -- Used for blocking attacks
Power -- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
Presence -- Used for movement and evasion
Wit -- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception


[_DivideByZero_]

Current Players:

HighEndNoob (Gaius/Gai) (4Df 6Pw 3Pc 3Wt)
Ozarck (Di/Hamada) (4Df 3Pw 7Pc 2Wt)
Sir Elventide (Giovanna/Nagisa) (3Df 3Pw 4Pc 6Wt)
Wunderkatze (Ryzard/Mitsuru) (0Df 7Pw 4Pc 5Wt)
killerhellhound (Lanfrank/Fuji) (5Df 4Pw 3Pc 4Wt)


Waitlist:
Not listed in any particular order. I'll introduce new players into the game as opportunities arise, such as on a new day of school or some other checkpoint.

Bluexdog


On Leave:
Players here have entered the game at some point, but left formally. It doesn't give you any priority on the waitlist to be here, it just means that the character still exists in the game. You can also rejoin as the same character, if you wish.

Neoexdeath (Gunnulf/Shin) (3Df 3Pw 4Pc 6Wt)

[HighEndNoob]

Sure, why not?

ID: Gai Onotoyama

Real Name: Gaius Ontemius
Origin: 3rd Century Roman Empire
Description: A Roman Praetorian under the service of a Roman emperor, Gaius and his entire group perished in a palace fire, betrayed by the very emperor they served. When the praetorians began investigating into abuses of wealth, they began putting the pieces together that incriminated the emperor himself. Catching wind of this, He set fire to his own palace, burning his guard and staff alive, with them none the wiser until it was too late.

Your Phantasm: A burning roman city filled with countless locked buildings and alleys. they are filled with hired thugs battling with significantly outnumbered praetorian, a few survivors but most just out of reach of saving.
Primary Stats:
Defense -- 4
Power -- 6
Presence -- 3
Wit -- 3

[Ozarck]

Character Sheet
ID: Hamada Makiko

Real Name: Di Wu. it's not a name, as much as a number: fifth.
Origin: The fifth daughter of a peasant family in Rural China in the Three kingdoms era.
Description: Illiterate, uneducated. She worked the rice fields and died young.

Your Phantasm: rice paddies surrounded by bamboo forest, filled with kitsune and Oni. a small, rustic, two room house with a dirt floor. she never ventures into the back room of the house, as that was forbidden in life, and remains a dark, mysterious place, which Di Wu never properly knew in order to visualize it in the afterlife. She sleeps by the heart in the dust, if sleep comes in the Phantasm at all.

Primary Stats: Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
4 Defense -- Used for blocking attacks
3 Power -- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
7 Presence -- Used for movement and evasion
2 Wit -- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception

[Neoexdeath]

Well, this certainly looks interesting.

ID: Shin Managi

Real Name: Gunnulf Gunnhild
Origin: 10th century, Viking age. The first son of a renowned viking in Scandinavia.
Description: As the name would suggest, from the moment Gunnulf was born he was predicted to be a great fighter, yearning for adventure, much like his father. Needless to say, his family was terribly disappointed when he did poorly in every field that involved battle. Eventually he found his calling as a scholar and writer, greatly interested in subjects about the human psyche and how each of us perceive reality. His work was deemed pointless and eccentric, however, and the populace branded him as a lunatic. This rejection eventually drove him to suicide.

Your Phantasm: A seemingly endless room with the floor made out of a translucent material, giving way to a vast emptiness. Massive bookcases that go all the way up to the ceiling occupy the main portion of the area, each book having the face of a person as it's cover and their name written on it. In the middle can be found a wooden table made out of cheap wood and a few Norse figures carved into it's legs. A well made shortsword lay there, the gift given to him on his birth, and an old, unfinished manuscript left open next to some ink and a quill.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 2
Power -- 2
Presence -- 5
Wit -- 7

[Sir Elventide]

ID: Tsumiya Nagisa

Real Name: Giovanna Lamborgia

Origin: A budding apprentice to a selfish inventor.

Description: The female apprentice of an inventor in late 16th century Venice, Giovanna spent her life designing and improving contraptions that her selfish and lazy master passed off as his own. Wanting to become the next Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanna saw her master as a hindrance and plotted his demise. During a public demonstration on that fateful summer afternoon, the contraption Giovanna built for that occasion managed to sever her master's head from his body much to the crowd's horror. Later that day; however, the city guard suspected foul play and went to arrest her. Fearing that she was now destined for the executioner's axe instead of fame, Giovanna tied her heaviest inventions to her waist and leaped into the nearest canal.

Your Phantasm: A seemly endless workshop filled with various inventions and mechanisms of different sizes, this phantasm also contains shelves filled with tools and additional materials for future inventions. However, this so-called paradise is haunted by a dimwitted and domineering entity resembling a huge and morbidly obese man who is constantly on the prowl for assistants. Any unfortunate soul who are caught by this entity will be forced to attend to his needs as well as assist him in the workshop until they can finally escape. The good news is that there are plenty of places to hide in the workshop and he makes a lot of noise when moving around. The bad news is that he is surprisingly quick on his stubby feet and has great physical strength.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 3
Power -- 3
Presence --4
Wit -- 6

[WunderKatze]

ID: Mitsuru Murai

Real Name: Ryzard 'feral' Czajka
Origin: A young man of the interwar polish world.
Description: The Czajka family, having lost their business enterprise joined the KKP polish communist party. Unfortunately the KKP despite their communist alignment where not spared the wrath of the Stalin's Great Purge. In the ensuing ethnic cleansing, the 16 year-old Ryzard found himself crawling out of a hasty mass grave containing many other polish people including his family, it seems his executioner missed. Ryzard decided that he must return to Poland.

Thanks to a mix of village charity and the summer Moscovian wilderness Ryzard managed to cross the Polish-Soviet border. With nothing to designate him as a enemy of Stalin he though he had escaped the violence of the political world, then Germany invaded Poland. The now 18 year-old Ryzard unaware of that Gestapo intelligence had branded him as a dangerous KKP communist, set about reestablishing his family's business by tapping into his remaining assets and connections under his family name. Arriving late to a business meeting with a prospective partner Ryzard was greeted by a sudden barrage of gunfire. Not at him, but presumably at his partner, it blew out the windows above him, immediately realizing the danger Ryzard fled north to the coast. And with luck eventually made it to Great Britian where he signed up for the commando units, at this time he noticed that he had developed night terrors.

Ryzard trained intensely, earning the english name 'feral.' He honed his intense hatred for highly factional political parties who use excessive and constant violence to make up for their poor or nonresistant diplomacy while in England. He felt that parties like the fascist parties and communist-socialist parties did the most harm to their constituents and the people of the countries they control by burdening them with the complicity of the horrible actions they take. Ryzard was deployed in German occupied Soviet lands with the mission of training and establishing partisan guerrilla units. He did so, living off the land, but he was utterly disgusted with their violent behavior towards other partisan groups. It filled him with so much rage that he took it upon himself to eliminate the groups he created rationalizing that they could never ever contribute peacefully to a unified society. He fought the guerrilla cells as a guerrilla, leading some to their capture with false information, others he ambushed himself with explosives, machine guns, with knifes even, he fought with poor regard to his own safety.

Ryzard, in contact with the Lucy spy ring, died in an attempt to fulfill a self-imposed sabotage mission against the German war machine by a machine gun burst in the back. It was his deepest ambition to combat violent factional parties in isolation to avoid burdening families like his with complicity to all of the horrible actions he would combat them.

Your Phantasm: Ryzard resides in a world of contemplative meditative peace contrasted by the intense fiery climaxes of modern warfare. In this world of cool, lonely forests and wide busy and complicated urban plots Ryzard has tried many times to achieve his goals, embarking on the insane plots of his mind to deprive factionalism of its roots in human psyche. Whether these plans involve subjecting himself to brain enhancing anesthesia-less lobotomy, living off the boiled brains of dear in the far frozen north to pull off the perfect political ambush or any other sort of foolish ascetic plot they always represent a blatant disregard for his own person humanity and well being. Somehow Ryzard is always intercepted and chased away in his plots by a beast of countless names, a creeping darkness left unsettled since that 1938 summer day that he crawled out from underneath his sisters corpse. Perhaps conquering this beast and learning to accept his flesh is the key to setting himself free.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 0 (can I have no defense? I notice no one is paying any mind to the minimum.)
Power -- 7
Presence -- 4
Wit -- 5

[killerhellhound]

Spoiler: character sheet (click to show/hide)

 

ID:Fuji Ryo   (The name on the card)

Real Name:Lanfrank Wolff
Origin: A 14th century knight that trained his whole life believing that he could be the greatest knight the holy roman empire would ever know and live up to his family's legacy. In his first battle he received an shallow arrow wound before he even got to fight. The wound became infected and he died days later cursing the unfairness of it all
Description: A 14th century knight

Your Phantasm: A massive training ground complete with dummy's, smith, armory, stable jousting yard and bunk beds. The only oddity is the complete lack of people or animals. It is ever quiet with nothing but visitors actions making any noise.

Primary Stats: Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
Defense -5- Used for blocking attacks
Power -4- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
Presence -3- Used for movement and evasion
Wit -4- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception

[_DivideByZero_]

Waagh half of all people violated the minimum stat of 3 rule.

Oh well. It was more of a recommendation. You can go 0 but you'll have to live with the consequences.


Specific comments:

ID: Gai Onotoyama

Real Name: Gaius Ontemius
Origin: 3rd Century Roman Empire
Description: A Roman Praetorian under the service of a Roman emperor, Gaius and his entire group perished in a palace fire, betrayed by the very emperor they served. When the praetorians began investigating into abuses of wealth, they began putting the pieces together that incriminated the emperor himself. Catching wind of this, He set fire to his own palace, burning his guard and staff alive, with them none the wiser until it was too late.

Your Phantasm: A burning roman city filled with countless locked buildings and alleys. they are filled with hired thugs battling with significantly outnumbered praetorian, all just out of reach of saving.
Primary Stats:
Defense -- 4
Power -- 6
Presence -- 3
Wit -- 3

A phantasm isn't explicitly a personal hell. A burning city is great, but the idea of being permanently unable to save people is a bit out of place.

Character Sheet
ID: Hamada Makiko

Real Name: Di Wu. it's not a name, as much as a number: fifth.
Origin: The fifth daughter of a peasant family in Rural China in the Three kingdoms era.
Description: Illiterate, uneducated. She worked the rice fields and died young.

Your Phantasm: rice paddies surrounded by bamboo forest, filled with kitsune and Oni. a small, rustic, two room house with a dirt floor. she never ventures into the back room of the house, as that was forbidden in life, and remains a dark, mysterious place, which Di Wu never properly knew in order to visualize it in the afterlife. She sleeps by the heart in the dust, if sleep comes in the Phantasm at all.

Primary Stats: Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
4 Defense -- Used for blocking attacks
3 Power -- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
7 Presence -- Used for movement and evasion
2 Wit -- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception

Sleep is important to the soul.

That's why it's bad that you can't get any. D:

Well, this certainly looks interesting.

ID: Shin Managi

Real Name: Gunnulf Gunnhild
Origin: 10th century, Viking age. The first son of a renowned viking in Scandinavia.
Description: As the name would suggest, from the moment Gunnulf was born he was predicted to be a great fighter, yearning for adventure, much like his father. Needless to say, his family was terribly disappointed when he did poorly in every field that involved battle. Eventually he found his calling as a scholar and writer, greatly interested in subjects about the human psyche and how each of us perceive reality. His work was deemed pointless and eccentric, however, and the populace branded him as a lunatic. This rejection eventually drove him to suicide.

Your Phantasm: A seemingly endless room with the floor made out of a translucent material, giving way to a vast emptiness. Massive bookcases that go all the way up to the ceiling occupy the main portion of the area, each book having the face of a person as it's cover and their name written on it. In the middle can be found a wooden table made out of cheap wood and a few Norse figures carved into it's legs. A well made shortsword lay there, the gift given to him on his birth, and an old, unfinished manuscript left open next to some ink and a quill.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 2
Power -- 2
Presence -- 5
Wit -- 7

Interesting concept. I can't nitpick it much. Suicide is a bit iffy as it suggests your character may have been willing to end it all, whereas Lost Souls are specifically in Limbo because they have something they still wanted to accomplish when they died.

ID: Nagisa Tsumiya

Real Name: Giovanna Lamborgia

Origin: A budding apprentice to a selfish inventor.

Description: The female apprentice of an inventor in late 16th century Venice, Giovanna spent her life designing and improving contraptions that her selfish and lazy master passed off as his own. Wanting to become the next Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanna saw her master as a hindrance and plotted his demise. During a public demonstration on that fateful summer afternoon, the contraption Giovanna built for that occasion managed to sever her master's head from his body much to the crowd's horror. Later that day; however, the city guard suspected foul play and went to arrest her. Fearing that she was now destined for the executioner's axe instead of fame, Giovanna tied her heaviest inventions to her waist and leaped into the nearest canal.

Your Phantasm: A seemly endless workshop filled with various inventions and mechanisms of different sizes, this phantasm also contains shelves filled with tools and additional materials for future inventions. However, this so-called paradise is haunted by a dimwitted and domineering entity resembling a huge and morbidly obese man who is constantly on the prowl for assistants. Any unfortunate soul who are caught by this entity will be forced to attend to his needs as well as assist him in the workshop until they can finally escape. The good news is that there are plenty of places to hide in the workshop and he makes a lot of noise when moving around. The bad news is that he is surprisingly quick on his stubby feet and has great physical strength.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 2
Power -- 3
Presence --5
Wit -- 6

Interesting phantasm. Whether the workshop's master is an echo or another soul might be an interesting plot point.

ID: Mitsuru Murai

Real Name: Ryzard Czajka
Origin:
Description: What did you do? Were you a pirate? A merchant? An astronaut?

Your Phantasm: A phantasm is a dream-like world formed by those trapped in limbo. Essentially, a wayward soul will attract forgotten memories from the world below, and those memories will weave themselves together into a miniature world. The kind of world it is depends on who you were--a nobleman may find himself inside an endless castle for instance.

Primary Stats:
Defense -- 0 (can I have no defense? I notice no one is paying any mind to the minimum.)
Power -- 7
Presence -- 4
Wit -- 5

Fascinating.

(please finish this)

ID:Fuji Ryo   (The name on the card)

Real Name:Lanfrank Wolff
Origin: A 14th century knight that trained his whole life believing that he could be the greatest knight the holy roman empire would ever know and live up to his family's legacy. In his first battle he received an shallow arrow wound before he even got to fight. The wound became infected and he died days later cursing the unfairness of it all
Description: A 14th century knight

Your Phantasm: A massive training ground complete with dummy's, smith, armory, stable jousting yard and bunk beds. The only oddity is the complete lack of people or animals. It is ever quiet with nothing but visitors actions making any noise.

Primary Stats: Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
Defense -5- Used for blocking attacks
Power -4- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
Presence -3- Used for movement and evasion
Wit -4- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception

No problems that I can see.

[Sir Elventide]

Waagh half of all people violated the minimum stat of 3 rule.

Oh well. It was more of a recommendation. You can go 0 but you'll have to live with the consequences.

Whoops, I honestly thought you meant that we must at a minimum use at least three out of our sixteen points, not that each stat must be at least three points at a minimum. Would we need to change anything?

[_DivideByZero_]

I don't think people want to intentionally understat themselves. Though since I've left all of you waiting on the mechanics it may be fair to let people spend maybe half of their points later, after the tutorial fight.

The main reason I wrote a minimum of three is because your stat tells you how many dice you can roll. 3 is the baseline stat for most NPC attacks, so if you have less than 3 defense then even basic NPC's will be able to damage you regardless of what you roll, if they roll 3 damage. If you have 0 defense, it's not like you don't get a bonus--you don't get to roll. Period.

Basically what I'm saying is that my system punishes minmaxing. If you still want to minmax after hearing this, you can go ahead. People with stats below 3:

Ozarck -- 2 Wit
Neoexdeath -- 2 Defense
Sir Elventide -- 2 Defense
Wunderkatze -- 0 Defense

[Sir Elventide]

I don't think people want to intentionally understat themselves. Though since I've left all of you waiting on the mechanics it may be fair to let people spend maybe half of their points later, after the tutorial fight.

The main reason I wrote a minimum of three is because your stat tells you how many dice you can roll. 3 is the baseline stat for most NPC attacks, so if you have less than 3 defense then even basic NPC's will be able to damage you regardless of what you roll, if they roll 3 damage. If you have 0 defense, it's not like you don't get a bonus--you don't get to roll. Period.

Basically what I'm saying is that my system punishes minmaxing. If you still want to minmax after hearing this, you can go ahead. People with stats below 3:

Ozarck -- 2 Wit
Neoexdeath -- 2 Defense
Sir Elventide -- 2 Defense
Wunderkatze -- 0 Defense

Understood. Let me see what I will change... On a second note, if our characters were to get killed would they be able to respawn or do we have to reroll new characters? As you can tell, this will be my first Roll-to-Dodge Roleplaying session.

[_DivideByZero_]

Understood. Let me see what I will change... On a second note, if our characters were to get killed would they be able to respawn or do we have to reroll new characters? As you can tell, this will be my first Roll-to-Dodge Roleplaying session.

Souls are pretty, but your body can die under some circumstances. In that case you would have to find another.

You also don't know how your character left the Outer Darkness... so if you get banished there again you'd basically be out of the game.

I don't usually kill player characters permanently but losing your body is a possibility.

[Sir Elventide]

Okay, thanks for the explanation!

[Ozarck]

Sure, I'll drop one point from Presence into Wit, then. I missed the minimum recommendation bit.

What's this about lack of sleep?

Character Sheet
ID: Hamada Makiko

Real Name: Di Wu. it's not a name, as much as a number: fifth.
Origin: The fifth daughter of a peasant family in Rural China in the Three kingdoms era.
Description: Illiterate, uneducated. She worked the rice fields and died young.

Your Phantasm: rice paddies surrounded by bamboo forest, filled with kitsune and Oni. a small, rustic, two room house with a dirt floor. she never ventures into the back room of the house, as that was forbidden in life, and remains a dark, mysterious place, which Di Wu never properly knew in order to visualize it in the afterlife. She sleeps by the heart in the dust, if sleep comes in the Phantasm at all.

Primary Stats: Distribute 16 points related to the aspects of your soul. Minimum 3.
4 Defense -- Used for blocking attacks
3 Power -- Used for spirit actions and attacking in combat.
6 Presence -- Used for movement and evasion
3 Wit -- Used for predicting NPC's and for perception