So I’m a game designer or something along those lines.
Well, I say that, but uh, this currently is the only game I’m designing. As I explain in the first video, there’s surprisingly very few fan-made Persona RPGs. And the ones I have found are either A. Not complete or ready for testing, or B. Just weirdly complex. After playing Persona 5 this year I wanted to do something with Persona in a tabletop RPG format, and seeing that all my choices aren’t something I’d really enjoy, I opted to say “fuck it” and went about to create my own.
So how does it work?
My design philosophy going into this was to make it akin to “A Powered by the Apocalypse game by day, and a dungeon crawling RPG by night”. I took inspiration heavily from games like Monsterhearts and MASKS for the social (and of course Social Link) aspect of the game, while also looking at combat heavy games like Last Stand and Double Cross for the dungeon crawl aspect of it. I wanted things to be simple, and combat to be fast paced. Considering how there will chaff encounters in the dungeons, I didn’t want combat taking hours to finish.
The rolling is simple; 2d10 for everything. Any roll the player does is 2d10 + whatever stat modifier they have. The stats are divided into two “sections”, as I like to call it. Your Social stats (Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness, and Charm) and your Combat Stats (Strength, Magic, Endurance, and Agility).
Things get a bit more in-depth on the combat side when we factor in creating Skills and Spells, choosing your Arcana, etc. But you can read up on that in the PDF which I will link below.
The Campaign Itself:
Everyone has dealt with loss in some form; lost a precious item, the life of a close one, or even loss of their own life. Certain forces in the world however…cannot seem to let go. They keep hunting or mourning for the thing they’ve lost, and even through death they continue to hunt and mourn. These strong attachments then manifest in unfortunate ways if left unchecked.
A big thing that I discuss (a lot) in the PDF is that Persona centers itself a lot around themes. Going off this, a tabletop rpg based around the game should be no different. In a pre-character creation discussion I had with my players, we decided on a theme of loss and reclaiming what was lost. We then decided that the delivery method of this theme for the dungeons and antagonists, would be ghosts. Much like how the themes in Persona 5 were delivered with the method of “phantom thieves”.
So our players live in the fictional town of Kihaku, a once bustling, popular city that’s been on the decline for some time now.
So where’s the book?
That’d be right here!
However, one thing I strongly should state here, is that Persona: The Tabletop is not really ready for public testing yet. There’s still the very real possibility that things will be changed, clarified, or even removed. (Hell, it happens right in the middle of this first session.) Also, I haven’t written any sort of bestiary or rules to designing monsters and bosses yet, or at least not in this book. The reason why I’m putting this here is so that people can look and give feedback, but also so that this entire first post isn’t just a list of rules and mechanics.
The Players:
BellaDante as Hiroko Himura (Persona: Artemis, Arcana: Strength)
Grasslamb as Hisae Yoshiyuki (Persona: Bul Gae, Arcana: The Chariot)
Handel as Katherine Davidson (Persona: Ruth, Arcana: Justice)
Miijhal as Sachiko Sugiyama (Persona: Oiwa, Arcana: The Moon)
Phoenix as Kaito Sumisu (Persona: The Headless Horseman, Arcana: The Emperor)
Albis as Sebastian Tsukimoto (Persona: Til Eulenspiegel, Arcana: The Hanged Man)
The Sessions:
