As usual for this sort of thing, it is time to introduce the PCs, in no particular order. Also, the game system is M&M 2nd edition.

Dramatis Personae:

Felly: Full name Felicita Ohjaleto ,but not even her player calls her that. Military "royalty", she's from a long line of generals and such, and is of course following the family obligations. She uses fire-based attacks and a lot of things with areas that are way too big.

Kunede Fuzen: A lazy mage who joined the military because it was the single thing that would piss her parents off the most. She teleports around, produces illusions, and is capable of "stealing" powers from enemies or allies, preventing them from using them and becoming able to use them herself. She cheated her way through school with this technique.

Lucas Joran: Token male of the group, more of a gadgeteer using tech than a proper mage. Dropped early-on due to inability to make the game sessions reliably.

Katya Kotarou: Russian Cyborg Ninja Magical Girl. Product of a Russian project to artificially boost the abilities of those with weak magical powers. Hated-upon by Felly due to relying upon "devices" rather than raw talent. Dropped due to not being able to make the time for the game either.

Verity: Strange girl from a line of parthenogenitcally-reproducing clones whose progenitor sealed herself and her mansion away in a pocket dimension centuries ago. She decided to return to proper reality and see what had changed in the intervening years, and joined the military as a way to see the world, etc. Summoned pumpkin servants to shoot beams at her and protect her. Was awesome. Sadly,she, too, dropped due to not being able to show up.

Yes, that is half of my starting cast gone for the same reason. Is Saturday evening really a BAD time for this?

>>14436093
Dramatis Personae, Cont'd:

Caira Mor Sheridan: The first of the second wave of recruits because I can't see the point of running a game for a party of 2. Destined to join The Wild Hunt in death, she trained for it in life. Her powers tended to lean toward a spectral nature, and she summoned a gigantic gun with which to shoot her enemies. Joining the military was, essentially, part of her "training." She is also a reasonably famous idol singer. Unfortunately, she eventually was dropped; I forget if I heard from her player as to why, or not.

Maya'ryn Solanyi: Just about everyone just calls her "Maya." A psionic space elf who crash-landed on the planet where things take place after getting very lost, or...something like that. She technically uses psionic powers, so lots of stuff with "kinesis" or "tele" in their names. Magic/psi transparency means it's all effectively the same stuff, though. Joined the military because she's well-qualified for it and she felt it was a good way to get back home. Currently the only non-evil, non-monstrous alien lifeform in the setting. Her ears twitch when she's annoyed.

>>14436325
Important NPCs:

Yukari Ichijo: The PCs' commanding officer. Rank of Major. Obviously younger than the people she commands. Likes coffee and tends to be no-nonsense. Hands out weird punishments to her underlings. Drinks a lot of alcohol and probably smokes, too.

Aya Sakurano: Probably the NPC the party interacts with most often, she's their "operator", and basically fills an AWACS/field communications and logistics role. She sits at home at base and keeps in constant telepathic contact with the party in the field, to provide them with mission updates and support. Or random commentary. She's kind of silly, energetic, likes tea, and is quite talkative. Rank of Lieutenant.

Eirin Sonomiya: A civilian researcher doing her best to understand the alien enemy and how to fight them. She's shy, quiet, and retiring, which is pretty much everything her best friend Aya isn't. She was intended as the way by which the party could learn about the enemy, but they never seem to bother her, so I guess they don't need or want the details.

>Verity

Cool.

>>14436333
Ok, there we go. Now then, finally time to blast off and befriend the evil Bydo Empire.

Well, a few notes on the game's setting, first. The world is pretty much Mid-Childa, from Nanoha. It's like Earth, with slightly futuristic technology and magic and magitech are pretty much everywhere. I mean, it's got armies of mages and shit. The PCs are all members of the Magical Crimes Task Force, or MCTF, a military, pseudo-police sort of organization which exists to deal with incidents of a sensitive or highly-magical nature. It's effectively the TSAB with a different acronym. The world's been at war with evil alien monsters for a while now, and nobody's sure why, beyond that some of the spaceships first encountered them way out at the edge of the solar system, and they've fought their way all the way to the planet. The original fleets which encountered them pretty much disappeared completely.

The game starts with the usual meet and greet sort of session, in which all the characters at the time (Felly, Kunede, Lucas, Katya, and Verity) get situated. Introductions are exchanged all around, rooming arrangements are discussed, and the group is established as a new MCTF SWAT unit, pretty much. About the most notable event is Felly hitting the practice range. With attacks that blow up a 100-foot radius area. This got everyone's attention, including Major Ichijo's. She proceeded to punish Felly by making her strip to her skivvies and run laps around the grounds. I forget where this idea came from, but I think it was from a joking OOC comment.

So is Felly going to end up being the problem player, hating all the magitech shoujos?

>>14436460
After some other shenanigans, an emergency occurs, resulting in the first mission for our group. A group of terrorists or mafia goons have attacked a research installation and are holding the people there hostage. They've holed up in the spacious main lobby and are in a firefight with the mundane authorities ,but it's a facility housing research on the evil aliens, so the MCTF is getting involved to make sure nothing really nasty gets stolen. The party gets a quick briefing from Yukari, including a warning that it is a hostage situation until proven otherwise, and is out onto a transport to be airlifted near the building. They're dropped off a good distance away, so they at least don't start out under fire. They then proceed to worry about how best to handle the possibly delicate situation, and eventually, Felly volunteers to make a diversion by being as unsubtle as possible in a frontal assault. Verity agrees to join in, and the three stealthier characters of Kunede, Katya, and Lucas loop around to a side-entrance Aya suggests they try.

The infiltration group ends up getting into an office wing, and they encounter some evidence that they shouldn't have taken so long to figure out what to do, in the form of ransacked offices, some containing the cooling corpses of their occupants. They are fortunately quick enough to also find the kill-team running around the place and put a stop to their activities before they can get too far. After stopping to talk a bit with the thankful and terrified desk-jockey they'd rescued, they proceed to the main entrance to back up their other two members.

>>14436481
Her player has messaged me to call you psychic, so you can make a guess as to the answer.

>>14436620
The diversion team, meanwhile, has been quite successful, with Felly's opening salvo destroying one of the vehicles the teroritst had driven through the nice glass front of the lobby as a combination entrance and blockade/cover. It took out a few of the enemy, as well. Felly and Verity proceed to fight their way into the lobby, where they're pinned down by about 8 guys. Once the entire party is there, their numbers quickly dwindle, until only one remains. Now, this one mook has been insanely lucky. He's survived every attack against him by rolling ridiculously well (this is M&M, he's a mook, so his first failed toughness save is his last), and I think he or another of the mooks managed a very good roll and did some damage to one of the characters. I know Felly had a nice bullet hole after this fight and she discovered that her defenses aren't as good at stopping solid slugs. Anyway, this guy amuses everyone so much that he is voted into a slightly more important bracket and specifically captured for later opportunity to bother him. He also earns the name of Hermes.

>>14436692
After defeating the throwaway extras in a much longer battle than expected, our intrepid heroes enter deeper into the facility, to hunt down the last group, who supposedly headed into the labs. They see more scenes of wholesale slaughter of any researchers encountered along the way, as well as a few live ones in hiding, who explain that they saw the terrorists heading for the maximum security section of the labs. At some point, Felly also finds a medkit and patches herself up, so she isn't staggering around anymore. I'm going to say a rescued civilian probably gave it to her, because it makes sense.

I...think the security breach and containment breach alarms started around then, and got everyone to hustle to the maximum security wing. Everything had gone on high alert, and the big lab area, which was theater-like in scope, had been closed off. Armored shutters on the windows, whole nine yards. Aya manages to get the alerts shut off after a bit of work, and the party continues through some control rooms and a decontamination chamber to get to the lab proper.

Inside, it's a bit of a charnel house. Scientists...dead. Terrorists...also dead. The only other thing in the room that isn't research equipment is a "small" (meaning the size of a large van) alien scout ship. It was obviously downed and recovered for study, with the damage to its armor still apparent. Then flesh bubbled up from said damaged areas, and it lashes out with tentacles. It is then promply defeated in a single round thanks to some good luck on the part of the players and terrible luck on its own part. ""Boss" enemies who don't get to do what they were supposed to sucks, but being able to recycle their tricks and still surprise players who killed them too quickly to see them doesn't.

>>14436798
Fresh off of the high of their first successful mission and first encounter with the Bydo, everyone gets some bad news during the debrief. Bydo tissue can, if give the chance, infect a person and spread like a virus, turning them into another enemy. It can also grow on metal and do the same to machines or other things, assimilating them. Naturally concerned, everyone takes this s an excuse to hit the showers for some skinship and scouring off the first couple layers of their skin. ...This despite being told that just about any magical shield or defense is enough to prevent any such contamination from happening in the first place. It's anime, why complain about four girls in group showers? Felly also expresses fear that Kunede's personal weapon, a magic chain, will mutate into a tentacle and attack someone, which gives Kunede an idea for a prank.

Actually, Kunede's chain is a fun little weapon. It's mostly got a few utility enchantments on it, so it can move on its own and pick stuff up, but it's also got a big spike on it she uses as her primary melee attack. The really fun part is it was originally a staff, and an important one she earned as a graduate of the prestigious mage school she attended. She customized it because staves are lame. She'd be in deep shit of her parents or anyone else important found out.

>>14436884
I need to post more pictures. Also, to explain a bit of how this game is structured, it alternates between sessions of pure roleplaying around base or otherwise letting the players just faff about and interact with each other or the NPCs, and missions which take however many sessions they need to finish. The girls have gone drinking with their 12 year old CO a few times, and done other things like bother prisoners.

At some point, Kunede makes good on her idea, and uses some cloth to dress up her chain as a tentacle. She then ides under Felly's bed, and waits until the poor girl's half-asleep and lying down to have the chain float up and poke her. Felly freaks the fuck out because tentacle enemy, her prediction came true, and blasts the fuck out of it. And the bed. And Kunede, who was under the bed. And the entire rest of the room. This incident also earned a stern reprimand and punishment from Yukari. As Felly and Kunede were found jointly responsible, they both had to clean up the room, and Felly had to make do until they could get her a replacement bed. I...think they might have also been put on latrine duty, but that might have been the next segment of the prank war.

The next mission for the team is a pretty standard job: repelling an assault by the Bydo on a city. They start out flying high above the city, and are technically only a small part of the total forces there. The first encounter is a large swarm of revos, small fighters which spin around their roll axis at all times. They're easy to kill, and Felly in fact is quite happy to blow up whole groups. And hurt her own allies with friendly fire.

The party then proceeds to a town square, in which one of the really big Bydo has set up shop. About the time they arrive, something aircraft like flies away, and the magical girl who was in the area (an independent mercenary) leaves the big monster to the party to chase it. Said big monster is the Dobkeratops, which everyone should probably recognize as somehow turning up in every R-type game ever. It's absolutely gigantic, and can spit some nasty projectiles or hit things with its tail but...not much else.

Verity masses her pumpkins above the beast and blasts it with a downward-aimed beam of incredible power, demonstrating why autofire is a very good extra to have on a power when it's aimed at something with huge toughness and concurrently low AC. The Dobkeratops is staggered, but not dead, and unleashes a terrifying roar, exerting its fearsome presence against the party. A few of the girls fail their saves, including Felly, who is driven to panic, until she spends a hero point to recover a round or two later. Actually, I think only Katya was completely unaffected. Felly tries to blast it with a vengeance-fueled and improvised attack, but it shrugs it off. I can't remember who got the killing blow in, it's been too long.

After that mission was over, is i think about the time we lost over half the group to scheduling issues and had to go get some fresh blood because I refuse to run a game for two players. I'm getting a bit off-topic here, but as much as I love this board, recruiting on it is incredibly hit or miss in terms or reliability, both player and GM side. So, Ciara and Maya join the team, to fill out the roster after some of the members transfer.

Another mission done, another debriefing and some fluffy roleplaying time earned.

Felly discovers that the merc from before is a top-ranked fighter in the Magical Battle Arena circuit and becomes a fan. She and Kunede continue to clash over pranks and sharing a room in the barracks. The fact that Kunede's side is a trash heap probably doesn't help matters. The new girls are introduced without much incident, and if I remembered more specific events from this period, I'd mention them.

I remember their next mission pretty well, though. It was fun. They're called out to investigate a derelict starship which was dropped out of the same portal the Bydo attack force used to get to the city. It's banged up and lying in the middle of nowhere, but it's also one of the early ships lost in the battles against the Bydo. So, a lot of people are interested in fining out what happened to it. The girls deploy and begin investigating the presumed-empty but possibly full of hostiles hulk.

>>14437258
Now, the crashed ship was a fun session. I had planned it from the start, which means it had more notes than my stuff usually gets. I set out to make it creepy and spooky and, well, "haunted" and i think i managed to do a decent enough job. My players were entertained, I am therefore happy. Things started out normal enough. The ship's pretty much dead, no power anywhere. Dark, claustrophobic corridors, closed bulkheads to open back up. Perception checks which result in someone being privately told they hear or see something. Fun stuff.

The real fun started when the party opens a bulkhead in the way, and they discover a pile of corpses on the other side, all in attitudes to suggest they were desperately trying to get through the same door, or escape something. Aya's relayed that to get to the bridge and thus, the black boxes they need to recover, that the power needs to be switched back on in main engineering. People start hearing the usual stuff. Terrified screams from the last moments of the crew, things skittering in the walls or overhead. Throughout all this, not a single enemy is encountered. At all. Hell, the only potentially dangerous moment is when some still sparking power cables fall through a damaged section of the roof, and everyone has to jump out of the way.

>>14437330
The mission continues. As everyone move deeper into the ship, strange things begin to appear. Mats of fleshy organic material are smeared on the walls. At one point, Felly sees the nearby corpses get up and lunge to attack everyone. She responds with overwhelming force, and catches all of her allies in the blast. It has now been two missions in which she has managed friendly fire, and probably is responsible for at least some of the injuries her allies sustained. Since she was the only one to see the dead men walking, everyone is a little spooked, as by now, they're certain of two things: they aren't alone, and someone or something is fucking with their heads.

The girls get to engineering, and get the reactors back online. Ciara had gone exploring, and is blasted by a jet of plasma from a leaky line when power is suddenly restored. She isn't hurt, at least. With the power restored, the ship's security systems come back online, and treat the party as enemies. Hell, they'd probably treat anything as enemies. So, there are a few quick fights with security turrets and more sealed bulkheads to open. Although they're injured a bit, the girls elect to just get things over with rather than pay a visit to the crew quarters and medical bay.

>>14437419
At the bridge, the ship's mission data recorder and black box are removed, to be brought back to base and analyzed. There's also plenty more of that organic, gooey stuff smeared around the controls and other systems in the bridge. I forget if it was this or a later mission with another ship where they found some interesting text logs with dates that didn't make sense an references to "going home," but more on that later.

The mission all but complete, everyone's out of the ship and still on edge because they haven't encountered anything that could possibly have been capable of messing with their perceptions. Before they can leave, they're interrupted by a warning shot fired from the ship. Standing on part of the outer hull is some sort of 8-foot tall humanoid mecha with a huge gun that's got a pile-bunker stake built into it. It attacks without saying much. The fight that ensues is actually a good one. Despite being statted as a few PL below the party, the mechanoid is extremely tough and tanks quite a few hits before finally going down. It dishes out a bit of punishment, too, an might have knocked Kunede unconscious. I forget now, I just know she gets knocked around a lot. It may not have put up the most effective fight, beyond surviving.

It's finally defeated, and since it doesn't blow up or anything, it's going to be sent to a research lab for study, as it's suspected to be of Bydo origin and is in very good condition despite the combat. Ciara landed the killing blow and wants to claim a trophy off it, but others argue that this wouldn't be fair to the researchers. She eventually settles for just a small piece cut off of its armor, rather than an entire pauldron or its head.

Triumphant, the girls return to hand off their spoils to the proper authorities.

Well, shit, it's late. And I have no clue if anyone's paying attention, but it's been fun writing. This game's got a lot more ground covered, so I can keep going if anyone's interested. But I'll have to do it tomorrow, because now, I need to get some blessed sleep.

I've found it an entertaining read. Please tag it tomorrow if/when you continue. And near as I can tell, you did a good job GM-ing.

>>14437634
Honestly, I know I have by the only real measures for success at the job: the players have fun and so do I. I'm just a really nasty critic when it comes to myself. Or I know all the stupid tricks and improv I'm using behind the scenes. I do know that this game has been the smoothest I've ever run, due to various reasons. Including probably that even if I don't have detailed notes for it all, I do know where the game is generally going at any given time.

Consider this a morning bump. I'll post more story during lunch.

>>14437529
Okay, it's lunch time, or might as well be, so I'm posting more stuff. Now, I'm not sure if it was around now or a bit earlier, but somewhere around this time in the story, I moved to my current apartment and was left without internet for a couple weeks. This is, well, bad for games on IRC, so there was a few weeks of nothing happening at all.

Anyway, next thing I remember is another mission. I'm sure there were downtime shenanigans that I missed, but I just can't remember them, it's been too long and I guess if I can't remember any of it it wasn't all that interesting in the grand scheme of things.

Next mission, the girls are deployed to a train, to safeguard some sort of top secret cargo, as there's a good chance that someone will try to steal it. At one point, someone asks if they'd have to catch up to the train if they somehow got separated from it or fell off or something. Now, let me give you some advice: never, EVER give the GM ideas that were harder on you than his original plans, because he'll gladly use them, too. So, if someone got knocked off the train ,they'd now need to spend a few rounds catching back up, and if they had no reasonable way to, they were just out of the fight. Obviously, if this happened to everyone, mission failed.

>>14440688
The girls arrive at the station where the train's currently being loaded. They have no clue what the cargo even is, because they're not cleared for that. I have yet to explain it, but nobody's really tried to figure it out, either. The train looks like a normal enough train, although talking to the conductor and guards reveals that it's got a few surprises. Once the cargo's loaded, the girls get onboard and wait for anything untoward to happen. Kunede, either before or after this point, does some snooping around on her own, certainly not to see if there's anything worth stealing for herself.

The train is, inevitably, rocked by gunfire. The girls exit the vehicle to stand on top of the cars or fly alongside the train and see what's up. A bunch of the typical Bydo throwaway mook fighters are attacking in a swarm. Many of them are tied up by pop-up turrets on the train, but some break off to attack the girls using massed firepower. They are...mildly successful.

>>14440739
After a few rounds of thinning aircraft numbers, the first enemies who are actually talkative and recognizably human since the very first mission arrive on the scene. They're a pair of magical girls, and look a bit on the younger side. Both are wearing a kind of organic/symbiotic armor, though. One makes the introductions by dropping I think a sleep spell on the area, which...actually works on a few people. The other, being more of a hothead melee fighter, rushes in and starts beating on people with a bigass energy sword that bears and odd resemblance to Gradius' Big Core. Well, the hilt at least, the energy blade is just a standard giant sword. The two work as a pretty good team, actually putting pressure on our heroines and coming off as an actual threat, with the combination of ranged support and melee pressure.

Felly is hit by a snare and completely bound, which really sucks for her and makes her a priority target for the melee girl, as she's really easy to beat on. At least, she's the target until some of the others start picking on her "sister' providing ranged support. This pisses her off something fierce, so she rushes them down instead. In the end, the hard-fought battle results in the sword girl getting KO'd, and her sister rushing to carry her away and retreat. Ciara tries to shoot her down and succeeds in slowing her down, but not preventing her escape.

>>14440824
I actually have an image I used for the other girl, but I dare not post it due to NSFW and other factors. Anyhow, this turn of events leaves the girls in various states. Kunede doesn't really give a fuck, Felly's angry someone tied her up with magic, Ciara's annoyed that her prey got away, and Maya is fostering healthy paranoia ,because those girls looked more like human agents of the Bydo than their usual monsters. She requests a big list of anyone who'd taken leave or vacation time recently, after discussing things with the group. She hasn't gotten around to it, but her plan was to check for anyone behaving oddly, to try and pin down any spies within the ranks.

>>14440954
So, about this time, we get an interruption to the usual fun downtime, because there's been a nasty situation at the research lab that mechanoid was brought to. Apparently, it reactivated, and went on a rampage with surprisingly few casualties, to reclaim its gear, and then blasted through several very tough doors and shutters to escape. Eirin was at the facility at the time, and Aya convinces everyone to rush over and see how she's doing. She is fortunately unhurt, and only very badly shaken by the whole ordeal. Some of the less tactful of the PCs try to pump Eirin for information, but they don't get much more than the basics of what happened and what the science teams had managed to learn. And the obvious, that that robot guy was capable of self-repair.

There's also another little extra around Christmas time, in which the girls go shopping and find presents for everyone. Some of the gifts were appropriately in-character, even. Kunede gets Felly some videos of that mercenary girl's fights, for instance.

The next mission is a trip to another ship. But this one's still live. I've one of ours, but it's entered the atmosphere and is on a course to destroy the city and MCTF HQ. The girls are given the important task of stopping it.

Now, my original plan was to make this a big running battle where the ship was dismantled piece by piece and destroyed from the outside. It's a setpiece of many shmups, and is totally awesome. Unfortunately the players wanted none of that, and instead abused a few tricks they had to teleport inside of it once they fought their way to the hull. I got a plan B going quickly and the team (now just Felly, Kunede, and Maya, as Ciara's player disappeared after the train mission) is treated to another exploration of a ship taken by the Bydo.

This time, there's no haunting to mess with their heads, but they're on the lookout for it. The mats of tissues fused to the walls are far more prevalent, and as the girls fight their way through automated defensive emplacements, they find hints that the stuff is, in fact, controlling the ship.

old Bydo thread from /m/

http://archive.easymodo.net/cgi-board.pl/m/thread/5118474

tons of interesting stuff

>>14441436
I remember that thread. I posted in it. There were something like two or three consecutive R-Type threads on /m/ some time ago. Good times.

>>14441414
The girls can't stop the ship at the bridge, because they're locked out of the controls. So, they form a plan to blow the engines. And go out back to the engine room. This is where things get...interesting.

Inside the engine room are the engine systems they need to blow up, a lot of hard radiation that causes damage every round they're in it, and that fucking robot from before. Being a robot, radiation doesn't bother it one bit. Being that it CAME BACK FOR MORE, it has everyone afraid of it. So afraid, in fact, that they refuse to enter the room with it, and hang back to figure out what to do, while it shoots bouncy lasers down the hallway at them.

>>14441505
I forget the exact plan by now, but i think Kunede managed a few spectacular skill checks to figure out exactly where to place charges to blow an engine without any bad things like more radiation getting into the area. She and Felly wen in to plant the bombs, while Maya kept the robot guy distracted, or if only one of the girls was playing diversion. Whatever the case, it was a bit of a nasty thing, with the radiation damage piling up, but charges were placed on all 4 engines after several rounds of fighting. The girls then retreat and blow the engines, with the mecha guy still in the room. Situation resolved without fighting him directly, and he's going down with the ship, probably for good this time.

I'm sure that at some point, Felly used a big area attack and hit everyone again, probably injuring Kunede because her player has either incredible luck with the dice, or, more often, rolls terribly. Since resisting damage involves saving throws and Kunede is fairly squishy, she tends to be the worst off at the end of every mission.

Anyway, the day is once again saved, and the plot is congealing nicely.

>>14441587
After this, we have more downtime, and another mission. A mission which, effectively, wraps up the first "arc" of the game. The MCTF has located a Bydo base of operations, and are launching a strike to take it down in the hopes of landing a major blow and setback to the enemy. In fact, they're launching a coordinated assault on several such locations, as many as they have, in a decisive action.

The MCTF even had to hire on some additional help to ensure these missions go smoothly, and the girls are teamed up with Felly's arena battle idol. Now, I haven't talked much about her before, because she's been in the background, but Felly has a "well-informed" feat which lets her roll some stuff to see if she just knows people. She'd use it on everyone, but it kind of bothered me because at first, she forgot to announce what she was rolling for. Anyway, this ability and asking Yukari about "the girl in red" from the Dobkeratops mission is how the party even knows the character.

Miss Red's name is Leona Jaeger, and she's a very good independent agent. In a throwback to one of the ways I was planning to run the game, she's effectively the magical girl equivalent of a Raven from Armored Core. She dresses in a snappy red uniform and has mechanical wings/engines sticking out of her back, she's very cool-headed, an is good and efficient at her job.

>>14442579
The group is briefed. They are to attack the primary Bydo citadel, situated in a skyscraper complex. Meanwhile, the hired help will provide a diversion by launching an attack on the defending forces, and draw them away so it's easier to sneak in. And actually land the party's landing craft for them to disembark.

After the usual questions for clarification on things, the girls go out to meet their ride, an the one they'll be working with. This is when they discover it's Felly's idol. Felly tries to suck up a bit, mentions she's a fan, which is met with a reply of "I don't do autographs." The ride there is a bit quiet, with some awkward attempts at conversation with or about Leona. She eventually drops out of the transport early, to start her part of the mission.

Which, i might add, does go over well. of course, being scripted NPC vs NPC stuff, it's pretty easy to make sure shit happens the way one wants it to, as a GM. The defending forces pull away to deal with the person zipping around and blasting them with huge lasers and shit, and everyone else gets an opening to get out and hurry on into the place they were drawn away from protecting. They do so.

>>14442744
Inside, the building is...well, the gooiest place they've been yet. Organic glop everywhere. Also, dead people. While exploring bits of the office complex, the girls stumble upon a group of corpses. They wonder what they're doing there for a bit, before the dead reanimate and rise up to attack. What's worse, when one is felled, it just gets back up a round later...as long as it's still connected to the flesh-covered walls by a tendril of gore. Well, except for the one who failed its toughness save so spectacularly, simply "dying" wasn't enough. That one exploded all over the group, leaving them splattered with rotting corpse goo for the rest of the mission. Much to the chagrin of the girls, none of whom had shields or defenses of a kind that would really prevent this.

Once Maya realizes the source of the zombie problem, she attacks the walls instead of the bodies, and manages to put them down for good by burning off enough of the tissues there. As the group proceeds, they continue their fiery assault against the living thing that has grown on and into the building. This naturally pisses it off, and it tuns on the sprinkler system to contain the damage. The girls are now covered in zombie goo AND being showered by cold, scummy water.

Aya has directed them downward, as there's stairs, and the Bydo infestation seems to get more intense as they go down, so it must be the direction to get at the core of the place.

>>14442579
Oh, I forgot to mention. Despite her earlier expressed disdain for cyborgs or people using "devices", Felly didn't even comment on Leona's wings. Which look more like they'd work on an orbital frame. I pointed this out to her player, and I think he just didn't realize what I was going for at the time. Alternatively, the yuri goggles have blinded her to the faults of a person she idolizes. Or you just don't insult someone you suspect might be able to kick your ass.

>>14442883
And on with the show. In a big room on a basement level, out intrepid heroines discover the two girls from before, who are both a little annoyed at someone running around and doing shit like turning on the sprinklers. They also discover a lot of network and communications cables run into a hub of some sort, which is connected to a gigantic brain in a jar. The brain in a jar wakes up, and begins psionically speaking. This freaks the two girls, whose names are Philo (the range done) and Soma (the melee specialist), because "it wasn't supposed to activate yet." Commence extremely fun boss battle.

>>14443167
Philo and Soma do what they usually do best, and work as a team. The brain does its own thing, starting by firing mental blasts at the various girls. Mental blast, by the way, is one nasty power in M&M. It's damage at perception range, meaning it has no attack roll, and it targets will save. Players have a habit of neglecting their non-toughness saves in M&M, so throwing out stuff like Philo's debuffs or mental blasts, which target other saves, is a great way to trip them up. About the only non-toughness save most PCs will pump is reflex, because it lets them dodge area attacks better.

So, people are taking damage, attacks and such are flying everywhere, other status conditions drop, and then someone hits the brain with an attack, knocking it a...bit out of whack. It starts going on about "the glory of instant celebrity" and accessing all the local Internets through the hub connected to it. Well, according to Aya. Then, it starts flooding the 'net with images of itself, much to Aya's disgust. If this seems like a certain boss battle from Oni, it should. The brain even uses the line "Who can resist my subtle charm, my rakish lobes? No one! The world is my oyster and I...I am the public's pearl." The fight is now officially awesome, what with the brain firing off insane rants along with every mental attack.

Image is Aya's face when the brain started flooding the internet. I had planned to use this since day one, believe it or not.

I'm actually surprised to hear of several Nanoha games for a while now, it's nice to hear of another one, all based in Midchildia.

Ours has been going on for about 7-8 months now, once a week only missing maybe one session in all that time due to ill GM.

The difference between our games is that ours is based on a special class in a Saint Church School, only to copy the success of the TSAB unit our class took talented young mages and gives them the experience necessary that they might become a slick unit of Knights for the Saint Church.

So yeah, from several different walks of life five young teenage girls found themselves in class sixteen. So far we've had missions ranging from investigations of chance, bringing down a immoral lab on church territory, tasting cakes for the cookery club, cleaning out some old church building before demolishing it and a long slew of dramatic moments involving both familiars and a UNISON device.

Lately we picked up a new mage for the squad, a part device, part human cyborg girl with a tragic past she's slowly working through, and even more recently we revived a broken UNISON device in a somewhat dodgy manner.

I must admit though, we've been pretty lucky, we only lost one player near the start, and then carried on concistantly ever since, a good tone and a nice bit of fun.

>>14443258
Sounds like a good game. I think I've seen stories of bits of your group's adventures in other threads, as well. Not the whole hog, though.

Mine is, technically, completely unrelated to Nanoha canon, and is set in Not-Midchilda. It's really more R-Type but with magical girls instead of R-9s. As far as primary story and influences go. With a good helping of Oni mixed in, and some nods to other shmups.

>>14443255
As the battle rages on and the brain takes more damage, it gets even crazier. Shouting about being a celebrity and megalomaniacal stuff, and so-on. It calls everyone present in the fight its "adoring fans" and so-on. At one point, it spends a round talking and commanding the Bydo troops outside to find it television cameras so it can broadcast live. It all goes to hell when the brain mind probes Felly. And she completely and utterly fails to resist it, so all her secret thoughts are laid bare to it. And, as Aya reports, the internet. Her innermost thoughts, her three sizes, all her hopes and fears, all of it.

Now, hell hath no fury like a pissed-off woman, and Felly proves this by using extra effort to boil the brain alive in its own juices with one shot. That's...one enemy down, two to go.

>>14443370
For the rest of the fight. At some point before Felly lost it, Philo slaps a snare on her again. And Soma goes after her because she's an easy target. Again. The next round, Kunede teleports up to Philo and attempts to grope her linker core and steal her powers. She doesn't succeed, so she just seems like she tried to grope the poor girl, and is accused of being a pervert. This has Soma's defensive instincts kick in, so she chases after Kunede instead of continuing to beat on Felly. A few lucky shots after the fall of the brain, and Philo's down for the count, which has Soma going fucking berserk. Her rampage and wild swings at the one who KO'd her sister are less than effective, however, and she's soon beaten into submission herself. Rather than fight to the very end, she stops an gives herself up when she's staggered, because at that point, she isn't going to last much longer anyway. Her one condition is that neither she nor her sister are harmed, and nobody cuts them open or anything.

The girls lead their captives back to base, where they can get a much-needed shower. And the routine debriefing. Felly expresses interest in sparring with Soma at some point, leading to many OOC jokes about wanting a piece of her big, thick sword. She actually does advocate that the two prisoners be treated well, and asks for visiting rights, although she hasn't gotten a chance to exercise them.

>>14443370

player in said game pitching in. it's been a fairly entertaining run so far, and the GM is pretty reasonable about us hammering that big plot-shaped button he keeps putting in front of us. Though he hasn't put us through doom quite as much as I would have expected. Maybe it's just residual shellshock from being in a group GM'd by That Guy in the past.

Of course, he makes it sound like we're facing this combats and overcoming them well. most of the fights we've been in have been snatching victory from the jaws of defeat things, the impending defeat either due to player silliness or really bad dice luck.

fun run so far, though.

>>14443466
This marks a milestone and the end of a major plot arc. I'm now VERY out of notes and beg some time to prepare before the next major plot injection, and my players are awesome enough to oblige. They do still get regular sessions, it's just more fluff than usual.

During one, I realize that both Felly and Kunede have parents. And reasons not to want to meet them. And even more reasons to prevent them from meeting each-other. So, naturally, a session occurs in which Felly's father, an important general, is visiting the base for a series of strategic planning meetings, and Felly is informed. And told that she should go spend the day with her mother. By an unhappy coincidence, Kunede's parents, who are both conscientious objector academia-types have decided to stop by and check up on their daughter, plus try to convince her to make better use of her life.

A...rather tense day follows, in which a tour of the base is given, and everyone tries their best to avoid being at someone else's throat. Felly's mother is fortunately a very friendly type (unlike her child) and probably helps things go smoothly. Eirin trips over herself to make a good impression to both of Kunede's parents, when they visit the lab in an attempt to distract them from the military stuff. She...is too shy to really manage it.

Another incident during this time involves the girls going to a cafe and then a bar off the base. At the bar, at least, they encounter their CO, who invites them to join her for a round. They discover a few things about her that she lets slip while drunk, and that she only orders drinks that are years to decades out of fashion, like Singapore slings.

>>14443738
>Of course, he makes it sound like we're facing this combats and overcoming them well. most of the fights we've been in have been snatching victory from the jaws of defeat things, the impending defeat either due to player silliness or really bad dice luck.

You usually do pretty well in my book, although it is true that combat tends to end with at least one team member (usually Kunede, poor thing) wavering on the edge of unconsciousness, and there's usually a length of the fight in which people aren't trading blows so much as trading whiffs.

>>14443790

Anyhow, the purpose of General Ohjaleto's visit turns out to be important. The top brass has decided to go on the offensive. Well, sort-of. Best defense, technically. See, a gigantic Bydo about the size of Manhattan Island has exited the portal way back round the edge of the solar system, and it literally ate the fleet stationed there as a blockade against anything coming through. It's now slowly making its way in toward the planet, and all anyone can guess is it will be very bad news if it can get there. Yukari's team will be joining a small scout cruiser which is equipped as a base of operations ,and is tasked to go out there and find a way to stop or destroy the monster, preferably from the inside, as it's probably the best bet for people to manage anything against something that big.

>>14444060
I am now stealing scenario from Galaxian 3.

There's a couple more sessions of roleplaying with no combat, but they move the plot along. Everyone goes out to meet up with their new ride, the Astrea. it's not the biggest or most powerful ship, but it an move fast and is harder to detect. it's also been outfitted with a nice transporter suite, so the girls can get back and forth from their new base of operations and the Zolgear's innards whenever they want. They also get to meet the ship's captain, Rinnosuke Togo. ...By now, at least half of my NPC naming convention is probably obvious (Leona's an outlier, but she's another bad joke entirely). He's a pretty laid-back guy, and it seems like both Felly and Maya have taken an interest in him.

The girls are introduced to their quarters, where, being a starship, things are far less spacious than they're used to. They're bunked for to a cabin, and stuck with Aya (who called one of the top bunks). Yukari presumably has her own, less cramped living arrangements elsewhere on the ship. The Astrea gets underway, and the MCTF girls are invited to dine with the Captain that evening. It's a nice informal event, and better food than the usual fare, so it went over well. It may be worth pointing out that the Space forces are technically their own branch of the military.

Before lights-out, the girls play truth or dare, with some amusing results. Including Felly forced to make a lovey-dovey confession to Kunede, and some subtle attempts to get information out of Maya about her background.

>>14444313

heh... yeah. I think we were fortunate in that we didn't have enough time to properly descend into the grim depths that parties typically do sometimes.

The party, further on, tries the much more devious approach of simply asking maya about her backstory.

>>14444446
I forget if that simple expedient did any good, either.

>>14444313
I've finally got enough of an idea of how I want things to go that the mission can finally go on, and so it does. The briefing goes over a rehash of what the MCTF knows about the Zolgear and the mission to somehow kick its ass Bacterium and Goliath style. The first primary objective is to get inside Zolgear and place a special signal repeater which will allow teleporting to and from the repeater's position. As long as they're carrying it, the repeater is also useful as an emergency exit, in which it would teleport itself and anyone around it back to the ship, should they be faced with truly overwhelming odds or some other extremely nasty situation before planting it. Rather than leave immediately, Maya asks to deploy some probes to uncover more information. This proves to be a good idea, as it reveals a mode of entry less questionable than flying down the Zolgear's gullet. It has an injury from its brief encounter with the blockade fleet, which they could probably use to get in through its armor.

The girls decide upon taking this approach and make their other preparations, mostly collecting spacesuits and development of rituals to provide emergency life-support. I should mention that already, several plans have bene put forward that ignore the primary objective entirely, in favor of an easy, quick victory in a single trip. Things like going after the ships the Zolgear ate and using any still-functional ordinance to give it one hell of a case of heartburn. The recommended course of action to finally kill it is to attack its brain or other essential organs.

>>14444645
Anyway, once all the preparations are complete, Felly, Maya, and Kunede suit up and get ready to start dungeon-crawling a giant, spacefaring organism. They get up to the wound in its side, and proceed to blast a hole through the still-healing flesh, kunede using fire powers "borrowed" from Felly without also draining her own ally's abilities. They make a hole big enough to fly through, but it's closing fast. Fortunately, all three make it through just in time.

Inside wherever they are, is a large chamber lit by some sort of organic phosphorescence. The cavernous chamber is completely open, save for a number of spires suffused with the same blue glow, which wink in and out of existence in any given moment. Currents of force cause the girls to drift around as the admire the scenery, and eventually, they run into other drifters, in the form of a swarm of antibodies.

These antibodies are just blobs of goo, originally just...floating around, although a swarm passes by the group and they hav eto make reflex saves to avoid getting any stuck to them. A few of the girls fail, and are minorly inconvenienced, movement-wise, by the things sticking to them. The swarm, now onto some foreign bodies, goes on the attack, and comes back for another sweep. The girls panic and ether try to get the antibodies off of themselves (Maya rips hers off with telekinesis), or try to fight off the swarm. They eventually manage to finish them off, with Kunede proving she's better with Felly's powers than she is, by incinerating the lot of them. Felly burns the antibody stuck to her off of herself, and Kunede elects to keep hers, as a valuable scientific sample.

>>14444953
Now, it never happened, but these antibodies were fun. Effectively, they were a staged snare, with one stuck to a character meaning she was restrained, and two meaning she was bound. If a third antibody managed to get on a bound character, they would have enough mass to completely encase her, at which point, they'd explode violently.

Anyhow, the girls continue exploring, and eventually, are found by someone else, a young lady in pink and purple armor that makes her pretty mecha musume looking. She introduces herself as Karina and questions the group about why they're wandering around the gravity organ. During the conversation, Maya manages to slip through Karina's mental defenses well enough to read her surface thoughts, which...don't say much more than what she tells them already. Even with many a leading question to make her provide more information. Karina claims she isn't a Bydo or anything, and is just working with them. This is met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Her thoughts seem to indicate she's happy for a fight, though. She eventually suggests one, as she can't just let everyone go, but doesn't care enough to really get rid of them, so if they win, she'll show them a way out of where they are.

Pic is Karina's character image.

>>14445040
Karina goads the group into fighting her with little real difficulty, and summons up some more antibodies to play support for her. She's pretty talkative, continuing her earlier conversation and taunting everyone when they fail to hit or injure her. She's the toughest single opponent the group has faced, somehow, although they avoid her broad sprays of bullets like the protagonists of a touhou game. The antibodies are a minor distraction at best, although they are a new type, as Maya discovers, when one runs into her and bursts, covering her with a nasty, toxic liquid which soaks right through her spacesuit. She resists whatever effects they might have, at least. Or maybe she doesn't, but it's not enough to take her out of the fight.

Karina eventually uses her signature attack, and continues the odd quirk of my personal targeting algorithm hitting Felly with snares. She launches a little missile at Felly, hits with it, and sends an electric shock down the energy tether. Felly fails the save against that, too, so she's both stunned and bound. This is honestly a VERY abusive linked effect, and I may limit the stun effect to daze only in the future. Anyway, Karina reels the now very helpless Felly into a grapple and hangs onto her, continuing to taunt the other girls. And, incidentally, push pretty much every one of Maya's buttons. Which just continues when she uses Felly as a human shield against an attack a bit later. Maya gets angry about this, and a bit of talking later, Karina casually tosses Felly's barely-conscious form over at Maya because she's pretty much done with her.

>>14445149
Maya is by now angry enough to pop some sort of super-mode on Karina. It takes this to finally stick some damage on her, bloodying her nose. She doesn't care, keeps fighting. Felly either shakes off her stun, or just hero points out of it, and is back in the fight, and Karina chases down Kunede and punches her hard in the gut, draining some of her energy to heal herself.

The battle would've been even more grueling if Felly didn't try a different tactic, and rolled intimidate. She does have the feat support to demoralize her enemies. She rolled well. Karnia rolled a natural 1. Or otherwise was absolutely terrible. So, she is now pretty damn terrified of the group. At least temporarily. Threats to take her apart are made. Which do happen to really get to her, as she's terrified of going back to any labs or being put under the knife again. As she lets slip. Kunede's wheezing attempts to catch her breath are roleplayed as possibly something one could mistake as creepy laughter, making the whole sudden change to the situation even funnier. Karina is allowed to flee, and the girls regroup and decide that rather than continue on, they'll stash the signal repeater beacon and get the hell out so they can continue exploring fresh from some rest and medical attention.

>>14445213
Time to pause in the narrative to explain some things I explained to my players. Karina is, well, a Russian cyborg girl. We...used to have one in the party, and it is a shame the two didn't get to meet, because Karina would've gone nuts if that happened. Ah well. Karina's also an amazingly effective opponent, and certainly a demonstration that things aren't so easy anymore.

Back on the ship, Kunede's met with a hazmat crew and escorted away so they can scrape the bydo antibody-thing off of her and ensure she goes through a thorough decontamination. The girls also ask a few questions and discover that there was an attack on one of Russia's cyborg installations a while ago.

Also, I just remembered something from earlier which was a bit funny. Felly had to have a psych evaluation because she got all mind-blasted by the giant bydo brain. A few jokes were made about "Help me, Eirin", out of character, but Eirin's not a medical doctor in this game. Instead they get Dr. Kokonoe. Who is some bad combination of the bitchy cat-person from BlazBlue and the young girl from KnJ. Needless to say, she's another example of age apparently being no barrier for this setting, and her bedside manner is absolutely terrible. At least she shares her supply of lollipops with anyone she treats. Felly gets Kunede forced through the same evaluation as a bit of revenge, too.

>>14445310
Anyway. Where were we? Anyone even reading along at home?

After a fluff session in which we discover that Felly doesn't know how to relax and have fun, and attempt to teach her how, everyone's back in the belly of the beast. They eventually find a variation on those eyeball boss doors in Metroid game,s and blast it open to move on to the next area, which is a series of smaller, branching tunnels and chambers, like veins or something.

Somewhere in all this mess ,they find another organic "door", with a metal plate that has Cyrillic lettering on it stuck to the wall nearby. Felly's player correctly guesses that it reads "Karina's Room," out of character. Maya and Kunede bypass the door via teleportation, and as the killer cyborg isn't waiting for them on the other side, begin exploring. Kuende fins a way to open the door for Felly. And Karina, who is in the shower in another part of her little "apartment" hears everyone outside. When she shows up, she's already complaining about never knocking or waiting to be invited in before she realizes who was there. Unlike the last encounter, this one goes over without a fight, and is just a nice, almost friendly conversation. Karina again confirms that she isn't Bydo, just working with them, and implies both that she's only using them to meet her own goals, and that she's mind-controlled and has no say in the matter.

She also repeats the hints she'd dropped earlier about the whole conflict being more complex than it initially appeared. How can the Bydo be out for revenge, when humanity had never encountered them before they attacked out of nowhere? Karina says she isn't involved and that they should go find an actual Bydo if they want to talk about that stuff, and suggests that one of her usual contacts is probably investigating the ships in the Zolgear's stomach. She and Kunede also exchange hair care tips.

>>14445435
Our last session ended just after the party had entered the stomach. Another gigantic chamber, this one with mucus-coated, muscular walls, pools of vile-smelling acidic glop on the "floor" and more acid dripping from the ceiling or flowing down the walls, and a large number of warships in various states of...digestion lying around. Well, they did want to try and investigate those ships, now's their chance. Unfortunately, along the way, they also encountered some sort of Anti-Magic Field which seems to be reducing the effectiveness of their abilities...

This was a few weeks ago, and we haven't met since due to one reason or another, notably shit's happened to Felly's internet, and in a 3-player party, missing a player means the game might as well not happen.

And there we go, finally, the story's done. I'm not sure if anyone's been entertained or the like, but I wanted to write it all out, and so I have. The rest of this thread can be, uh, whatever. I'd be interested in hearing about other Nanoha or magical girl games which are ongoing.

>>14445509
>>14445435
Yush, red thru it thurohlay. Also archived for sup/tg/, albeit I prematurely tagged it before the Gradius bits were inserted. Weeaboo fightan magical girl epicity at its finest and some of most well-done plagia- err... "idea borrowing" ever.

Schedueling problems. Know that feel, bro.

Anything else happen with PhiloSoma after their prison internship?

>>14445919
>Anything else happen with PhiloSoma after their prison internship?

Unfortunately not. The PCs got shipped off to space before Felly could get to them, so they're still off in some sort of limbo. Maybe I'll see if her player wants to do some off-session roleplaying to go bother them. It'd certainly be better than doing nothing again, if there's issues keeping the game from happening this week. At least they're mostly RL stuff that really can't be controlled, so it's pretty understandable. That and the group's pretty chill and laid-back about this sort of thing.

Bah, I wished I could have kept up with the games. It seems you guys ran quite a bit of stuff after I dropped.

Still, getting a job with a saturday shift is pretty draining. I wanted my cyborg girl to trade CQC tips with the other cyborg girl :(

I shamelessly stole this character design. With skill in systema/sambo on par with the Spetznaz, her weakness was shitty magic potential. Only though cyborg modification could she use spells, and even then only with a specialized combat suit that she modified to look like a futuristic ninja costume because she was a ninja otaku/weeaboo.

>>14436361
Thanks.

o/ I was the Verity player. Sort of miss it all, but the scheduling is as inconvenient as ever, heh. Right around dinner time and I'm not forever alone enough to power through that on weekends.

It's been a while, so I don't remember much, but I took my time making Verity, and it was my first time with M&M too.

The concept was essentially line of witches from way far back, during a more developmental age of Magic, and being scorned by men (lol), Decides to shut herself in a private dimensional rift (kinda like Testarossa, lol) and then essentially, every generation, at the end of life, casted a spell that deaged them back to infancy (thus avoiding that "clone has different magic potential" stuff, like Fate), and the Pumpkin servants would raise them, continuing work on the accumulated magical theory.

Katya and Verity roomed together, and pushed their beds together, soooo they slept together. Verity also liked fondling with Katya because she "felt interesting". Lots of yuri hijinks there, since I knew the player well.

I'm pretty sure I also implied that she used her ESP-like link with her servants (she can send pumpkins out via spatial distortions and see through them) to basically spy on everyone in base.

Especially when they were in the shower or on the potty.

Eccentric kuudere, I guess.

>>14446030
Must be because they both had white hair.

OP, this came out of fucking nowhere, but I am enjoying this story immensely, and have been for the last hour or so. Just thought I'd let my appreciation be known so it doesn't seem like you are talking to yourself.

>>14445994
>>14446030

would be nice with more players, but yeah. life happens.

>>14445994
>>14446030
Hey, nice to see you two again. And good to hear you're doing well. Pity about the scheduling issues, though, as you both had fun characters and it sucks to lose players to begin with.

You should both hang onto those characters, though. never know when they might come in handy, and I do keep them on the wiki because I never delete anything on there.

>>14446088
Glad you liked it. And, don't worry too much about me talking to myself. While it's kind of weird to somehow manage a story thread this long with pretty much zero interruption, and thus no questions along the way to answer, on the plus side, it's pretty much a coherent narrative with no interruptions or anything else, which is pretty damn cool in my book.

Bumping for no real reason. Should probably let the thread quietly pass away, though. I'm no STORYTIEM or the like. This was still fun and a nice experiment. ...Also, what the hell, /tg/, how can anyone do a story this long with nobody dropping in to say something? It's just weird.

>>14435926
Funny.
I'm just playing in a Nanoha game myself and it's pretty much the best game I've played in the past 5 years. Very friendly, reliable, nice people around.

>>14450337
Cool. It's not this one, is it? >>14443258

Whatever the case, care to tell me a bit about it?

>>14450356
Yep.
>Lately we picked up a new mage for the squad, a part device, part human cyborg girl with a tragic past she's slowly working through
This is my character.

I don't know what to say really...
The game is weird. One of the players stated that he can honestly tell his Warhammer 40k game master that a he's in a game with magical girls that's darker than that. Then again it has a lot of very bright and noble bits in it.

>>14450403
>The game is weird. One of the players stated that he can honestly tell his Warhammer 40k game master that a he's in a game with magical girls that's darker than that. Then again it has a lot of very bright and noble bits in it.

That's kind of how magical girls are these days. Which is pretty strange, but hey, it works. I've actually avoided too much grim or dark moments in my own game, although maybe I'm jut saving it all for major mindfucks and such in the final act. Because, for a shmup, R-Type has an involved story. and it's dark and depressing as fuck, if you think about it long enough.

Mostly, though, I think it's not very grim, gritty, or dark, because I'm not all that fond of those themes anyway. Or otherwise just don't do them well. I'm hardly a brilliant storyteller, although I'm doing my best.

>>14450356

I'm another player in it too. It's very fun.

The Dramatis Personae.

Yvenne Azhur-Rhoze: A girl born to a pair of old nobles, one from a family with an afinity for ice, the other fire. Due to that, he linker core is more than a little messed up and she has to use a specialist device. Still, she can use both fire and Ice. She's also very very noble acting.

Shiri: A Cyborg, designed by M-tech, a weapons design company who make Spaggetti look like a nice person. She's more than a little broken, mentally, but we are trying to help her overcome her past and move on. Nice girl but until recently did not concider herself a person.

Izzarita: Daughter of Scientist, her device is his legacy. A legacy in the form of the magical equivilent of the Nuke Launching Gun from fallout. She's very serious and cynical and has serious personallity conflicts with Sephia.

Francessca: A girl with a family history of Archeology and a rare skill for superspeed. She fights like the flash if he was a wizard. The leader of the team and currently trying to deal with the fact that she is the leader of this madhouse.

Sephia: The only girl without a rare skill, unique device or unusual past. She makes up for it be being mad. The daughter of a pair of minor officers killed in the line of duty, she was raised in a Saint Church Orphanage. She uses a lot of mass based spells for defence and acts most of the time like she's a belkan knight with her spear. She's very moral but not allways the wisest person, though very skilled with devices. One of her eventual goals is to find out how her parents were killed as all she has is a letter saying they were killed in the line of duty and a pair of medals, each the equivelent of a Victoria Cross.

>>14450523
Sephia is secretly the protagonist of the series.

>>14450508

Ours has plenty of dark but a large part of it is that people are fighting the dark parts and trying to make them better.

When Sephia and Shiri are not going 'Reanimator' on Unison Devices.

>>14450523

Yvenne's player here, may as well fill in the details.

A recent revelation showed that she actually has two linker cores, one for each type of elemental mana. Unfortunately for her, neither class of mana entirely recognizers her as its 'natural' user, so both types of magic can hurt her. She nearly died several times when she was very young.

She was saved by none other than Jail Scaglietti, who installed some kind of specific AMF system which protects her from accidental self incineration/freezing (for the most part). This has the downside of course that she was surgically altered by Jail Scaglietti, and god knows what else he did while he was there.

The other fun thing is that, whenever she gets hit by an AMF effect, it interferes with it. So far, nothing too bad has happened, but its still an extra risk.

On the other hand, she can also punch you with Ice and Fire. So, its probably worth it.

>>14450554
That session was made of bitter sweet though...

The peek of grim darkness in our game is... I think... the cyborg numbered XII. Her mother was also turned into a cyborg when the girl was 5, she was even the first successful model but... she went insane, we don't know in what specific way but she did. And eventually the Linea (XII) was also inducted into the program.

Some time later XII killed her mother and disabled her own emotions (our cyborgs unlike Sphagetti's cyborgs mostly have mental implants) which is the state in which we found her.

When asked if killing her own mother was painful for her she answered saying that it did indeed hurt, but her mother was in more pain... and then it didn't hurt anymore.

>>14450624
>>14450636
Man, stuff like that is pretty cool. And speaking of character development and details, it's one thing I wished I managed to do better with my NPCS. How the hell does a 12 year old girl end up as a military officer with a bottle of whiskey in her desk, anyway? And just how powerful would she be on the battlefield? I've at least implied that Major Ichijo has also done the whole "accidentally nuke the entire firing range" thing. There's also a rule about no pool parties at the rec center, after an incident at one, but nobody questioned on it would give a straight answer.

Leona also got a lot less attention early-on. I'd originally intended to give her a bigger role, but she got swept aside. At least that fucking mecha guy is doing his job as annoying recurrent antagonist and Karina's actually managing a few things. There would be so much of a bigger dump on her background if Katya were around to set her off, though.

>>14450782

Our logic is "They are still in school, they just manage to keep intruding on operations. That and you couldn't have kept them from trashing M-tech with a force field."

All the actual teachers, who can more than match any one of us, are adults.

>>14450782
>There's also a rule about no pool parties at the rec center, after an incident at one, but nobody questioned on it would give a straight answer.
Someone went ballistic during a pool party?

>>14450838
Pretty good logic. Out of curiosity, what system are you guys using?

>>14450866
M&M 2e

>>14450866
Mutants and Masterminds 2e.

>>14450838
Basically, we do stuff either because due to circumstances we're the only people they have on hand, or we're just in the wrong place in the wrong time, or very rarely because we're the only people that can do it.

On the other hand we're not really chumps either.
There are just more powerful people around.

>>14450853
Now, it's going to be strange coming from the GM, but even I'm not sue, because I never worked it out in detail. But, essentially, yes. The most obvious explanation is that Aya's case of breast envy went out of control and something untoward or embarrassing happened, but just because it's the most likely doesn't make it right. Aya got a little bitter toward Felly for a while after certain details were made clear to her and the internet, speaking of.

>>14450989

Umm...wow.

The most our game has had in that sort of way is:

1: The Shopping trip, which was basicly nobles going 'look how much money we can spend on clothing you poor people cannot!' as well as Sephia having some body issues.

2: Looking up some of the odder functions on Yvennes device she didn't know exist. One of them is a a hologram so the device, an intelligent one, can communicate better. It has a few settings. They are: Maid, Catgirl, Foxgirl, Schoolgirl and swimsuit.

We may need to talk to the creator about what he was doing.

>>14451101

Hey, the nobles bought the poor people clothing too! So it counts as a good deed!

As for the other thing... Uh, yeah. Kinda odd. We Really need to talk to that guy.

>>14451101
You forgot caek contest... if that even counts.
And some of the really strange things that happen in the dorm.

>>14451101
Yeah. I haven't used them too often ,but I've got a list of silly things to happen around base, in case the non-mission sessions get too boring. It's got some normal stuff, like pick-up sports competitions, or laundry day happening. And some weirder ones, like Aya forming an itty-bitty titty committee and going around oppressing the well-endowed. My favorite is probably a Mass Change Gender spell going off in a lab, and the PCs being caught in the area of effect, but that one's probably TOO silly for actual use.

>>14451153

Well, yeah. Sephia DID have Shiri in her bed twice. But in her defence, she wasn't in it herself.

>>14451168

>Mass Change Gender

It's as if a thousand Yaoi fangirls cryed out in joy and then were silenced by drawing fanart.

>>14451177
And bleeding into her bed.
"Can I touch you?" and "It's ok if it's you [touching me]."
And a case of two girls actually sleeping in the same bed in a non-sexual, non-subtextual way.

>>14451203

Ok, in retrospect there is a lot of Shiri/Sephia subtext. Oops.

Just part of being a paladin, I guess.

>>14451203
>And a case of two girls actually sleeping in the same bed in a non-sexual, non-subtextual way.

Par for the course in Nanoha. Although Nanoha and Fate do come off as "We're TOTALLY not gay, honest", in the sense of nobody's buying it for a second. Not that anyone would call out the ambiguously gay duo on it.

>>14451236
In our case it's REALLY not like that.

One case is a group of five clones sharing a bed, but they are pretty much little girl versions of tachikomas and... well... have a hard time with telling who is who. (Not us, we have no idea which is which. THEY can't tell themselves apart.)

And Shiri sleeps with her "sister" because we have only six bedrooms and she insisted. I don't really know why but from the start she insisted on watching over Shiri when she sleeps.

>>14451260

That's because XIX is obsessed with being Shiri. I'm pretty sure if she ever gets told she can't be like you she's going to got at us with an axe.

>>14451280
You're mistaking XIX and XII.
XII sleeps with XVIII, XIX has her own room.

Adding to the cavalcade of would be subtext but isn't, the general structure of the bond between Yvenne (the noble) and Sephia (The Knight) has been somewhat amusing.

While entirely innocent, Yvenne inviting Sephia to be her knight came off like a proposal, several PC's and NPC's have questioned whether they're ready to choose someone they'll spend their life with, and it culminates in a large formal ceremony of union...

Of course, the GM lampshaded this by having the Yvennes father ask, as part of the conditions for officiating a knighthood, if the PC's were lovers, which was an extremely funny scene.

>>14451297

Right.

Then she's just being protective, I think.

>>14451298
>>14451221
>>14451203
>>14451177

Sephia has a harem?

>>14451305
Yes, but then again it's XII.
Would you want to wake up next to XII every day?
(Fortunately Shiri is oblivious to what constitutes normal human behaviour and is unphased by XII's habits.)

For those from outside the game:
XII is the nearly emotionless girl who killed her own mother.

>>14451320

*Shrugs*

Well, she is the protagonist

sage for animu shit

>>14451320
"Sephia is the protagonist".
She also has a magical cat by the way.
And now also has a naked UNISON device sleeping on her desk.

>>14451348

Wow.

Sephia clearly became a magical girl for the chicks.

>>14451385

Heh. Pretty much everything Sephia has done that's caused subtext has been completely innocent. It's a combination of 'Paladin-level nice' and 'Thicker than a sack of bricks about such things'

>>14446662
Yeah, sun is my sat and mon is my sun. Shitsux.

I should be happy to have a job at all in this economy, especially one that pays well, but it's still disappointing.

>>14449266
Yeah I never forget the characters I made for fun games. The ERPG guy creeped me out a bit (I was fine with the obligatory yuri skinship because it was tongue in cheek.) but otherwise I liked all the other characters too.

If something changes, because my living situation is never stable, and there is a new campaign or opening in your old one, I might be able to join, but that's probably wishful thinking.

>>14450523
You might not be aware of this, but "shiri" means ass in Japanese slang. That aside, I love pitiful cyborg girls.

>>14452724
Not sure if I still have your email or not, but I can let you know about other games at other times that need or want players. We'll probably have a few coming up as most of our current ones are getting closer to finishing up.