Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Isamu NEET-a]

Well, now that I have free time again, I'm casting Recarm, Samarecarm, or Necroma on this thread. I think I've got most of the ideas straight. I just need help figuring out two things: Persona manifestation and damage types. I was originally going to have Personas be relatively static and bound to the user, as they had become over the course of the series. Then I saw some fight scenes from Persona 4 The Animation. Persona use has swung back around to dynamic. As you will see if you watch this animated depiction of Persona 4's first boss battle, (minor spoilers, Jp VA, no subs,) Yu's Persona, Izanagi stays throughout the whole battle instead of being called and recalled, and can be seen jumping all around and going toe-to-toe with the Shadow. Also, while getting used to his Persona, Yu has trouble separating his actions and his Persona's actions, which leads to a critical turn in the battle. You can see the link between the physical states of humans, Personas, and Shadows from viewing the clip on Youtube and by searching Youtube for the anime version of the battle between Yu and the killer. (Killer's name withheld because spoilers.) I'm thinking Persona-users should suffer half the damage their Personas suffer, but suffer catastrophic backlash upon their Persona's incapacitation. With characters who can switch Personas, all Personas share the same wounds and fatigue. Personas and Shadows suffer everything their user/host suffers and Personas are incapacitated along with their users. Damage inflicted by Shadows against their hosts/repressors does not count against Shadows. Does all this make sense in terms of setting and game balance?
Second: damage types, weaknesses and immunities. Some Megaten games have 80-million damage types others are elegantly simple, but slightly limited. I want to keep the list of damage types simple and FFF while keeping most of the attack types. This will require some consolidation. Also, should all damage resistances reduce damage by half or what? Another quick note: Persona-users gain the resistances and weaknesses of their current Persona.

[kronovan]

[Isamu NEET-a]

Personas have functioned slightly differently in each game. The best way I can think of explaining Personas is that it's almost like the characters are the mythological figures their Personas are. In all of the games in the series, Persona-users have their Personas' elemental resistances, immunites, and weaknesses and can use all of their abilities, magical and physical. When they use them, the Persona is called out and performs the attack or spell itself, after which the Persona is recalled. In Persona 1 & 2, characters have their own battle stats, which the Personas supplement, adding strength, speed, etc. In Persona 3 & 4, the Personas entirely determine a character's battle stats. Persona-users can also attack with weapons independently of their Personas, but a character and his or her Persona can only do one action in a turn. After seeing scenes from the Persona 4 anime, the way the games do combat and Persona use seems a little boring. I was thinking one other thing I might do is have the character and Persona act on the same initiative and make it so that if both of them perform actions other than free actions, all of them are considered multiple actions. Maybe this would nerf them too much, though. In Persona 2: Innocent Sin, a Persona-user takes on and beats two Devil Summoners. Then again, it takes your whole party of five Persona-users to beat him.

[kronovan]

I think where I'm getting confused a bit, is that when you 1st posted a year ago you mentioned mostly using SMT Nocturne, Imagine and Strange Journey, which correct me if I'm wrong all don't use personas, but demons - I know for sure that's the case with Imagine and SJ. So it sounds like you had a change of mind since and have decided to base it on the SMT Persona series, which is cool. I have explored personas in SMT Persona 3 FES, but its been a while since I played, but I'm sure it'll all come back to me any moment.

There's so many flavors of SMT, but they all involve summoning of some sort, so something I think you should consider is establishing a baseline on summoned entities that better relates them to the Savage Worlds system. I'd recommend having a statement that relates all of them (Personas, Demons, etc) to Beasts. Then you can have separate sections that handle the different flavors. That way you'll create a conversion that could handle many different SMT settings/series. If you're only interested in summoned entities from the Persona series then only define the Persona flavor section and don't bother with the Demon one.

I wouldn't treat summoned entities as anything different than SWD beasts, whether they're Personas, Demons or Shadows, because without independent traits you'll probably end up unbalancing gameplay. More importantly they won't have their own wounds or fatique to fall victim to. I probably wouldn't make them WC beasts, but I might consider having them as Extras that take 1 wound such as exists in some settings. In the SMT games I've played their independence varies greatly; they're completely separate entities in Imagine, more closely tied to their summoners in Strange Journey and they were something different yet in Persona 3. How close a bond they have to their summoner could be defined in the different flavor sections. The 1 advantage I see in relating them to beasts is that GMs could expand the variety of summonable entities by reskinning beasts from the companions or other SW settings.

[Isamu NEET-a]

Sorry, I didn't explain the multiple actions thing very well. You nailed exactly what I want to do and phrased it better. And I was thinking all demons, personae, etc. would be written up as beasts. I think it's a good idea to give all the different types of summoning a common base. I still have to figure that out. I want a consistent ruleset and multiverse while giving each type of summoner a slightly different feel and play style. One thing that I might use for ideas is a barebones SMT TRPG with no author identification that was posted on 4chan's /tg/ and must have died, because it hasn't been updated in a couple years. It's called Shin Megami Tensei Amala, and you can find it through the Rapidshares page on 4chan, the mass of idiocy that squirms in the center of the Internet.

[kronovan]

I'd say you're on the right track then. All you need is a qualifying statement that claries that you're relating summoned entities to beasts, and that the different settings/series will have their own section. Maybe something like:

"All Shin Megami Tensei settings feature summoned entities and a player that summons them. For the purpose of this conversion, such summoned entities are Beasts as presented in the Savage Worlds core rules. In the various settings presented in the Persona, Devil Summoner, Devil Surviver and Digital Devil Saga series of games, the characteristics of these summoned entities vary. To provide a conversion to the Savage Worlds roleplaying system that allows for these settings to be represented in a unified multiverse, the details for each settings' summoned entities will be provided in a separate section."

[Edit] BTW, I'll check out the Shin Megami Tensei Amala RPG when I get a chance.