And it has a name. Super Destiny High School Rumble!!
We were hanging out with some of our roleplaying friends after a gaming session and someone said, “Wouldn’t it be great to do an RPG where everyone is anime high schoolers?”
Since it was a room full of anime and JRPG fans–their guest room is the largest manga library we’ve seen–everyone thought this was a fun idea and we started throwing around character types. We had someone who loved sentai, and another who loved magical girls. Someone wanted to play a Lolita-type, and another a glasses-type. Someone liked vampire hunters, and another vigilantes. One of us loves lab experiments. We also had some fans of superheroes, both in anime and manga and in Western comics.
But what system to use? We all have D and D experience, but it didn’t suit our needs, even if we made custom classes. We needed something with a relationship mechanic because everyone knows that anime high schoolers are powered by their feelings, whether that’s the power of friendship or the power of love. We thought about other pre-existing game systems, but none had the combination of fast, fun character generation and play; a significant relationship mechanic; and an anime flavor that we were looking for. So we decided we would create our own system.
In the car on the way home from gaming we did a little internet research and verified that no, our ideal system hadn’t already been created. There are several anime-influenced games out there but none had quite what we wanted in terms of theme and mechanics.
We also named the system, on that same car ride. So it’s got a concept and a name. That’s enough to start with.
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