Magical Girls: Fantasy Fucking Vietnam

A play-by-chat campaign run by The Wyzard.

The Game

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the campaign! I hope we can have a good time playing together. You will find that as a referee, I make extensive use of wikis and other online tools to keep track of everything. And, also, to set mutual expectations. This is going to be less sandbox-ey than my normal games, at least at first. I don't have much of an endgame in mind, though, so it's going to be up to the PCs where things end up. There are a number of things that the players should be aware of, since these elements are not for everyone:

• I let the dice fall where they may, and PCs can die, particularly starting PCs.
• This campaign is going to be moderately dark. Bad things can happen. However, it is NOT "Grimdark," because the PCs can become strong enough to change things for the better. The system is malicious, but by working within it you can become powerful enough to effect change from within or, potentially, tear it down.
• There is a horrifically powerful NPC who will be pushing you guys around a bit, mostly at the very start. This will not be as abusive and obnoxious as it is in most of the horror stories from TRO, but she is out there and you'll have to interact with her at least occasionally. On the plus side, I don't expect you to like her or anything.

Preface

This stuff is on rails. We'll play through it, just for the prelude, but don't fight it too hard. It is, if you will, part of the buy-in to the game.

• The player characters are girls going to Neo-Tokyo High School District N27. They're mostly sixteen years old, and may be either native Japanese or children from other countries who were adopted after the Year of Darkness. The high school, in terms of the layout, looks like every Japanese high school in every anime you've ever seen, except it's constructed from the ubiquitous Tuff-Crete that everything is made out of these days. It's a stronger, lighter version of concrete usually surfaced with a semi-gloss black composite.
• The PCs will recognize each other from school, but may not know each other's names or be close friends.
• One night, while dreaming, you all have a vision in your dreams. The Immortal Luna summons you to her palace on the dark side of the moon and marks you as her chosen ones. You'll have great power, and great magic, and be able to fight off the darkness that threatens the good in the world. However, first you have to 'earn' that power. These will all be tropes that your characters will be familiar with from watching normal amounts of television.
• To that end, Luna will begin sending you to the magical land of Cidri in your dreams. There, you can have adventures, develop your powers, and learn lots of lessons about the magic of friendship.
• When you get there, Cidri is not what you were expecting. For one thing, it's a great deal more dangerous than Luna might have led you to believe...

Style Guide

• Major inspirations for this game include PMMM, Sailor Nothing, The World Ends With You, the Persona series of games, probably a ton of other anime, and various old-school RPGs. There will be some relatively minor cyberpunk and transhuman elements, but this is not a cyberpunk or transhuman game.
• Everything in the campaign is mortal. The PCs can die, NPCs can die, named monsters can die, dragons and demons can die, the "Immortals" can die. If there are any Gods out there, you can bet that they could, in theory, be killed.
• The PCs should be passionate individuals. There's a certain tension between mortality and ambition, between the fact that you could die in the attempt at doing big things and that playing a character who just sits on the couch is boring. To a large extent, the campaign happens because the PCs are doing something. Don't be afraid, if you think you can back it up, to bare your sword, hoist a fistful of gems to the sky, and declare yourself queen of the ground on which you stand.
• There are boundaries of good taste in this game. Rape, torture, the cold-blooded murder of innocent non-combatants, anything resembling real-world bigotry, and similar squicky subjects, are not intended to be a part of this campaign. It is certainly true that evil lunatics or sinister monsters, for example, might engage in slavery, human sacrifice, and even worse vices. But the tone of those incidents should be closer to a somewhat exploitative pulp magazine rather than SAW or something. There is also a fairly substantial gulf between what the players should expect to see from the worst villains of the campaign and what I should expect to see from the PCs. Basically, it should be obvious to the reader that you are the good guys and the enemies are the bad guys, at least in a very loose sense.
• Similarly, persons younger than around 14 years of age will very rarely appear on-screen. Awful things happening to children is a bit too much, IMHO.
• There are a fairly small list of things that I must ask you to never do on account of the fact that they cause me to twitch in an unseemly manner. Please don't try to loot and sell purely mundane items. Retrieving normal weapons, armor, and clothing from your enemies in hopes of turning some extra profit sends me loopy. It's not like I don't hand out substantial treasure.
• Secondly, please do not ask me if it's okay to put something on the wiki. The wiki is here for you to put things on it! Just make sure it's in the right place. That is, it doesn't interfere with anything already here or clutter up some vital existing page, it's categorized appropriately, and it's possible to find it. I have faith in your best judgment. If you must mention your intent, just let me know what you did and I'll tell you if it's a problem.
• Information Sharing: I presume (and the other players may therefore presume) that PCs share relevant information at the earliest reasonable opportunity, unless the player informs us otherwise. If I suspect that information is likely to be concealed, I may or may not PM the player. However, secrecy and intra-party intrigue is strongly discouraged.
• We're all adults, and I will typically expect that people can talk about any issues that arise. If there is an element that you really don't want to have appear in the game, or there is another issue that you want raised anonymously, bring it up with me.