Persona 3 d20: Where Shooting Yourself is Fun and Healthy!

[Leliel]

Now that I have your attention...

I'm sure at least some of you have played the Shin Megami Tensi spinoff, Persona 3. In it, you play as a fine-ly screwed up lad and his equally dysfunctional friends, the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, who summon their mind-spwaned buddies, the titular creatures, by uh...apparently doing an imitation of putting a bullet in one's skull. Admittedly, the Evoker only looks like a gun, but still...

Anyway, I thought the premise was excellent for a d20 game, so I thought, "why not pitch this idea to the boards"? So here's my thought:

Campagin takes place after the events of Persona 3: Reincarnation, in America (not due to patriotism, mind you; it is simply the country I am most familar with). PCs are perfectly normal people, ie non-Persona users, who are abducted by a mysterious governmentat orginization, the Masjestic 12 (yes, I took that name from conspiracy theory), who, seeking to understand the Personae and their relationship with the time-altering Shadow demons, forefully awaken their Personae. After they let the PCs go (for yet unknown reasons), the ever-eccentric Igor approches the players and gives them the ability to summon multible Personae, although they are restricted to the Arcana that their original was born in, their corresponding elements and the ones that do not correspond at all to any element (so that each player can round out the other's strengths and weaknesses).

After that, they get shoved into saving people from the Shadows and evil Persona-users, find out the secrets of the Majestic 12, juggle all this with trying to live a normal life, and so on and so forth.

So what do you guys think? What are your suggestions for creating a system for this?

EDIT: Corrected boneheaded mistake...

*Fires Evoker, summoning Geek of the Nerd Arcana, urging you to post on this thread*.

[SurlySeraph]

The Giant's Champion base class would make a good starting point.

[Rutee]

D20 is probably not a good system to emulate Persona series. Persona users have a tendency to use impossible weapons (Or Firearms), right off the bat, and the mix of Magic and Melee in every character isn't terribly good for a class based system anyway. I'd recommend.. oh I'd say Unknown Armies, perhaps?

A few specific reasons.

1: More true in SMT and Persona 1, every character tends to be competent with gunplay, melee, and magic, to a much greater degree then classed systems lend themselves to. Factor in the PErsona Series making every character a negotiator in addition to that, and well...

2: The extent to which Persona affect characters. They're stat mods, determine resistances, weaknesses, spells, growth rates (Though that part can probably go), and more.

[Leliel]

D20 is probably not a good system to emulate Persona series. Persona users have a tendency to use impossible weapons (Or Firearms), right off the bat, and the mix of Magic and Melee in every character isn't terribly good for a class based system anyway. I'd recommend.. oh I'd say Unknown Armies, perhaps?

I was also thinking d10-The WoD system.

A few specific reasons.

1: More true in SMT and Persona 1, every character tends to be competent with gunplay, melee, and magic, to a much greater degree then classed systems lend themselves to. Factor in the PErsona Series making every character a negotiator in addition to that, and well...

Yep. That sounds like it.

2: The extent to which Persona affect characters. They're stat mods, determine resistances, weaknesses, spells, growth rates (Though that part can probably go), and more.

That too.

The only problem with that is it sets me on thinking what a Persona-using Spirit Claimed (or indeed, any other supernatural, playable or not), would be like...

Though beacuse of both (A), the rules might prohibit that, and (B), even with a set of feats that supernaturals can use, it's still both cool and practical, so that might be a non-issue.

[Rutee]

I... am not totally sold on D10 either, though if you were going to go with "Unholy fusion of Persona and SMT", Werewolf Totems may serve as an excellent start, with every player getting an arbitrary (and probably high) number of Merit dots to represent particular Personae. It's an unholy fusion since Totems can be summoned, like SMT demons, but considering that all Persona magic is effectively summoning your Persona to unleash beatdowns, that's not that big a change. When you adapt D10 to other settings, you have to be willing to throw out or modify rather sizable amounts of crunch if it doesn't suit setting fluff. So the rules 'prohibiting' a Spirit-Claimed Persona user is there, but not terribly relevant, considerring how it'd (probably) have to be done.

[KillianHawkeye]

I dunno. While summoning your Persona and dishing out the hurt was all pretty cool, I think my favorite part of that game was the social interaction with all the different NPCs and scheduling and stuff. That stuff just wouldn't work in a table-top style RPG.

[Rutee]

If by "Scheduling" you mean "Scheming", then yes, it works perfectly fine in an RPG. Unless you mean "PCs as suckers". Because that would be the worst tabletop RPG I've ever played.

[KillianHawkeye]

I meant forming relationships with NPCs, which pretty much doesn't happen in my gaming group. Unless you count things like paranoia, mistrust, and the swearing of vengeance.

[Leliel]

I meant forming relationships with NPCs, which pretty much doesn't happen in my gaming group. Unless you count things like paranoia, mistrust, and the swearing of vengeance.

Yeah. Once again, good point.

Though part of me wonders: Would Nyx count as a spirit in the WoD?

'Cause if she were, she's have to be a, I don't know, Rank 12 or something-she basically possessed the moon in order to do her thing, which in the nWoD is basically akin to elbowing Luna out of the way, crossing over from the Gauntlet, and still having enough power to smite over 6 billion people-Not an easy feat, I can assure you.

That would make sense in-game though: according to Ryoji, she is a fundemental force of the universe, rather than just a powerful manifestation.

And honestly, if you deal 9999 damage per attack, wouldn't you be a sentient natural force?

[Rutee]

I meant forming relationships with NPCs, which pretty much doesn't happen in my gaming group. Unless you count things like paranoia, mistrust, and the swearing of vengeance.

Not.. really a Persona series Requisite. Maya had Tetsuya.. um... Ellen crushed heavily on Chris... yeah you don't really see deep relationships with NPCs much in Persona anyway. The question is whether they can foster it with /PCs/..

[Starsinger]

Not.. really a Persona series Requisite. Maya had Tetsuya.. um... Ellen crushed heavily on Chris... yeah you don't really see deep relationships with NPCs much in Persona anyway. The question is whether they can foster it with /PCs/..

You mean.. Jun had Tatsuya.

Although, if you're going with d20, Binder comes pretty close I think.

[tyckspoon]

Not.. really a Persona series Requisite.

Except for 3, which is the one that's probably the first reference for 'Persona' for most people and where forming relationships with NPCs was pretty much the whole point.

[Rutee]

You mean.. Jun had Tatsuya.

WHY IS THAT NOT CANON!? ;.;

Except for 3, which is the one that's probably the first reference for 'Persona' for most people and where forming relationships with NPCs was pretty much the whole point.

Bah. That's just silly. What happened to big long conspiracies being foiled by people who had no business finding out about it beforehand?

[CherryC]

There was a dude on the Something Awful forums who was designing a Persona 3 RPG. I'm not sure what kind of system he was using though.