Vrock_Summoner
2019-08-20, 06:56 PM
So, for the past couple of years, I've had the intermittent urge to play a game based loosely on the Millennium World arc of Yu-Gi-Oh. For those unfamiliar with what any of those words mean, I'll break down the essential aspects of my intended game concepts.
The campaign would cover two time periods played side by side - you'd play sorcerers (usually aristocrats, but not universally) in ancient Egypt, and their modern-day reincarnations who have suddenly started displaying their past incarnations' powers (gone and forgotten from the world outside of myth for thousands of years by this point) for unknown reasons. While they would have a degree of more "traditional" fantasy spellcasting, rituals, magic items, etc, their main/strongest power is the ability to bind a person's soul to their will in the form of a monster. When manifesting from their own soul, this probably has few ill effects on the user, except the probably obvious caveat that having your soul killed also kills you. However, unbinding someone else's soul from their own body to command it yourself is rather fatal for the other individual.
So the main things I'd want from the system are:
1) The ability to handle that sort of soul-monster-binding combat, both in the ancient and modern day. I have no problem with systems that don't put a lot of detail on the mundane human side of the equation so long as they're factored as existent - even just as Extras and whatnot. It would be ideal (but I'll figure something out if it isn't already baked in) if there's a way to make a individual-power-versus-scale tradeoff of some kind, so that even if somebody with an army of monster minions can do more groundbreaking-world-impact stuff, a clever heroic sort or group of such who don't want to strip the souls of the innocent as tools of war can still form a meaningful opposition. I don't want this to be a matter of PC-versus-NPC distinction, because...
2) This system should be able to handle good and evil PCs, who are not necessarily working in tandem all the time, and not fall apart the second you say PvP. (Mythender I'm looking at you... What an awful PvP resolution mechanic.)
3) This might not be hard to just staple onto an existing magic system, but it'd be nice if it can handle that aspect of "huge cost rituals/magic items creation" that I find very inspiring - I think Exalted has stuff like this, but could be misremembering? Like, for the Egyptian aristocracy side, the sort of thing where they devote huge masses of slave labor or make large-scale blood sacrifices for these region-shaking supernatural effects or artifacts of cosmic power, which the modern-day heroes can either find as relics of the past or try to orchestrate the logistics and political power necessary to make happen once again. This would also imply, but not necessarily require, a longer time scale for play.
4) Medium crunch levels. Like, Fate Core too "everyone feels the same"-y, GURPS too "oh my god please I want to be done defining every fiddly detail of human existence please."
I'm thinking something like Ars Magica could work, but I wouldn't know where to begin modeling this as a Magic tradition, so if you have any suggestions for taking it in that direction, please do share. Otherwise, any systems you can come up with would be very greatly appreciated!
The campaign would cover two time periods played side by side - you'd play sorcerers (usually aristocrats, but not universally) in ancient Egypt, and their modern-day reincarnations who have suddenly started displaying their past incarnations' powers (gone and forgotten from the world outside of myth for thousands of years by this point) for unknown reasons. While they would have a degree of more "traditional" fantasy spellcasting, rituals, magic items, etc, their main/strongest power is the ability to bind a person's soul to their will in the form of a monster. When manifesting from their own soul, this probably has few ill effects on the user, except the probably obvious caveat that having your soul killed also kills you. However, unbinding someone else's soul from their own body to command it yourself is rather fatal for the other individual.
So the main things I'd want from the system are:
1) The ability to handle that sort of soul-monster-binding combat, both in the ancient and modern day. I have no problem with systems that don't put a lot of detail on the mundane human side of the equation so long as they're factored as existent - even just as Extras and whatnot. It would be ideal (but I'll figure something out if it isn't already baked in) if there's a way to make a individual-power-versus-scale tradeoff of some kind, so that even if somebody with an army of monster minions can do more groundbreaking-world-impact stuff, a clever heroic sort or group of such who don't want to strip the souls of the innocent as tools of war can still form a meaningful opposition. I don't want this to be a matter of PC-versus-NPC distinction, because...
2) This system should be able to handle good and evil PCs, who are not necessarily working in tandem all the time, and not fall apart the second you say PvP. (Mythender I'm looking at you... What an awful PvP resolution mechanic.)
3) This might not be hard to just staple onto an existing magic system, but it'd be nice if it can handle that aspect of "huge cost rituals/magic items creation" that I find very inspiring - I think Exalted has stuff like this, but could be misremembering? Like, for the Egyptian aristocracy side, the sort of thing where they devote huge masses of slave labor or make large-scale blood sacrifices for these region-shaking supernatural effects or artifacts of cosmic power, which the modern-day heroes can either find as relics of the past or try to orchestrate the logistics and political power necessary to make happen once again. This would also imply, but not necessarily require, a longer time scale for play.
4) Medium crunch levels. Like, Fate Core too "everyone feels the same"-y, GURPS too "oh my god please I want to be done defining every fiddly detail of human existence please."
I'm thinking something like Ars Magica could work, but I wouldn't know where to begin modeling this as a Magic tradition, so if you have any suggestions for taking it in that direction, please do share. Otherwise, any systems you can come up with would be very greatly appreciated!