Let's Make A Game: Smuush IT!

A random non-AI generated Magical Girl Cyberpunk I found on the Internet.

So, I’ve returned to the part of my ADHD Cycle of Epic Creation! Yeah, I’m back to developing my own Table Top Role Playing Game (ttRPG) after searching the piles of already completed media looking for the perfect game. To which, I say, it’s probably only perfect to me, only if I create it!

Previously on “Let’s Break Shit…” I attempted to create a Magical Girl role playing game. And then I quickly realized I was WAY OVER MY HEAD! I started seeing charts and tables about dice mechanics and mathematical probabilities, and all sorts of decisions I totally wasn’t ready to make. All in all, the last episode of this creative mania lasted about three weeks before I totally burned myself out.

But the problem was that although I had a product in mind, I lacked the rest of the vision. There were too many unanswered questions along the horizon, stalking me, in my dreams, racing my thoughts, and dooming me to mentally implode like OceanGate.

I’ve come back, risen from the depths of Hell itself (that being inactive boredom, by the way) with a new sparkle! You see, very recently, I began looking through my collection of role playing games. I’ve been prowling the Internet for interesting games. And I keep coming back to Science Fiction. Specifically, Cyberpunk. And while looking through my trove, I stumbled into Mekton. An ancient anime Mecha based role playing game. And while digging through the sparse YouTube commentary about this particular gaming system, somebody (I fail to remember who, dammit!) mentioned that you could theoretically create a Magical Girl using these rules— specifically using the Light Armor equipment. And that got me thinking… What’s the difference between a Magical Girl’s Love Beam Attack and a Mecha’s Mega Assault Cannon? Effectively, the results are the same: obliteration of your foe! One uses the nothingness of magic and internal mana energy, the other uses hardware and bullets.

Anyway, as I continued to research Mekton, (which is published by Mike Pondsmith ofR. Talsorian Games), I tripped over Cyberpunk Red. I’m a fan of Cyberpunk shenanigans . After all, my favorite character that I’ve ever played to date, Lindsey something-or-other was a ShadowRun character. I love the setting of ShadowRun, but not a fan of the mechanics. Way too many dice on the table and combat is not only lethal, but slooooooooooow! It’s too crunchy for me. I found my next Cyberpunk game. Now I just need to scrounge up $30 to buy it, because I absolutely refuse to be a pirate, matey and steal it. Not based on who I see Mike Pondsmith as. He’s a decent human being whom deserves all the love he can possibly receive. (Just search YouTube for him. You’ll see why, and trust me. He appears to be a true Stand Up Gentleman!)

Anyway, on to why I’m writing this massively long-winded post. Yes, I’m back to creating my own ttRPG. I’m going to actually build a fusion between the absurd craziness of anime comedy and smash it down with my Perv-Hammer-5003 Mark VI with Cyberpunk. I’m going to create a viable game that supports both Cyberpunk dystopianism with Sugary Magical Girl love.

And this makes total sense to my warped brain. Cyberpunk is classically a very dark, gritty, lethal edgy setting that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Whereas Magical Girls, and anime in general, tend to suspend realism in favor of the imagination— belief that anything is possible (especially with love!) And mixing a dark setting with the humorous tropes of Magical Girl anime, I think could be a real winner. Of course, I’m not just going to limit my idea to only the genre of Magical Girl. Oh no nononono! I’m also a fan of titles like Ranma 1/2. Gender Bending? yup. Romantic Comedy Harems like Tenchi Universe. Absolutely. And plopping this chaos into a dark, gritty world of Cybernetics, hacking and being corporatized coffee-bitches, I think would work well. Lots of humor to balance the grime of the Corporate Underworld.

So what am I up to right now?

Well today, I worked on the dice mechanics. You see, I have a problem. I don’t want just a typical table top experience. I want to be able to take my game system and plop in down on a random Internet Forum. You know, the old kind with text boxes and junk. I want to play Asynchronously. Email, hell, Snail Mail even. I’ll even tolerate Discord. And I also want the option to play with myself! No! Not like that, pervert. I mean Solo-play. Well to do that, I need to reduce the demand on the Game Mater (which would probably be me anyhow). And this calls for a Roll Under mechanic. There’s no need to set Target Numbers with a roll under dice mechanic. But it’s limiting, in several ways. I also wanted to incorporate Dice Tricks and Dice Pools and other really cool mechanics that I’ve come across during my game exploration adventures. Well, I after having a lengthy shouting match with AI (I happen to use DeepSeek when I’m bored), I’ve come up with some preliminary mechanics.

My system is going to use a 3d10 base mechanic. It’s going to have a limited Dice Pool function, and it’s also going to utilize Dice Tricks (sliding the size of dice—the number of sides of the dice) up or down based on a few factors. I want to give the players as much agency as possible. Included in my system is also a simple Oracle Chart— which I had loads of fun pointing and laughing at the goofy math AI attempted. I don’t know in what Universe the roll result of 103 is possible on a 3d20 chart. If you figure this out, please let me know!

The next stage is to figure out what Anime Tropes I want to include. I imagine this will probably become the fluff of the book—besides all the epic artwork I’ll have to commission for, because I know I can’t draw worth a shit! Giving lots of examples and details on how and when to use various Tropes will be critical. Another section will be the crunchy part of the book for the Gear design. Working on the Deez Nutz and Bolts so that everything fits together mathematically is also going to be rather exhaustive. Finally, I’ll circle back around and probably create some Trope classes for Character concepts to give inspirational ideas for players to create. Yes, I’m saving this part for last, because if everything else works, this should be the truly fun part!

Anyway, I’ve got a decent first draft of the first chapter done today. Much of it was explaining the five Stats of the game and the statistics of what’s a success and a failure, along with some very vague rules about how to handle successes and failures. I’ll come back around and layer on the humor to spice up this dry, bland text probably next week. I need to find my voice for this masterpiece. But I’ll need to determine who exactly would my audience be too. I don’t want to be shouting like a Sailor [Scout] to a bunch of fifth graders, right?!

At least I’ve got a name picked out!