Thia Halmades

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG I knew Passive Skills were gonna give me fits, but I like what I did here. It's very unconventional, to the point of being "wrong" if you use HERO through the traditional lens, but it is accurately reflective (HA!... you'll get that joke in a minute) of what the power should do and how it should do it. Counter: Barrier 30 PD, 0 BODY (up to 1m long, 1m tall, and 1/2m thick), Trigger: Physical Attack or Skill (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; +1/2), Backlash (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (120 Active Points); Requires A Roll (6-; -1 1/2), No Conscious Control (Passive) (Only Effects cannot be controlled; See Trigger; -1), Instant (-1), Only to Defend (-1), Only Works Against Physical Skills (-1/2 I can fiddle with the limitations at length and ad infinitum, but you get the idea: this isn't a summon based power, as long as you have this Persona equipped and active, you get the benefit of Counter, and Counter, when it works, is amazing. However, it only works on a 6-. Boo. But that 10% of the time your opponent is in for a world of hurt.

Re: How do GMs out there handle late arrivals Shoot zem. Shoot zem both. Wait, what?

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG I want the Persona skills -- especially in HERO -- to have more payoff than that, given that they also require STUN (and in the case of "Massive" damage, STUN + BODY) to use. My draft is closer to this: Small: 3-5 Moderate: 6-8 Severe: 9-11 Massive: 12+ One of the things I decided early on for this campaign is that I wasn't going to "charge" the players for their Persona, and instead treat them like equipment. This isn't that far from the canon, if you consider all the things that go into constantly picking up, learning, and rearranging your Persona stable. If I charged the players for every Persona, it would get out of hand quickly. Instead, I'm charging them to build their Social Links. I'm also going to give them two separate XP pools; one for themselves (the usual, organic, HERO XP) and one for their Personas, so they can actually improve the Personae themselves. My plan is to draft out the first 22 based on the Major Arcana, and in that include powers that are already unlocked (the starting abilities) and those that they can only unlock after spending time binding with the Persona in question. Reading through the wiki it also seems there are two kinds of Persona users: those who can are artificially created (?) and those who are "true" Persona users. Further and of equal interest is the idea that a Persona can be summoned outside of the second world if the proper conditions are met. This was news to me, but it evidently falls within the canon itself. I agree, NSG, that the powers need to be "sexied up" a bit. I did my baseline conversion, and now I'm carefully picking through and starting to reshape things into a more HEROic, slightly Western-influenced game, with more powers and more consideration for 3D combat instead of what is functionally an overhead look at traditional Final Fantasy, both sides line up sort of fighting. I want scenes where players are behind cover, in a dogfight, and they summon a Persona to use Muzzle Shot, then the Persona manifests, fires the shot, remains "hovering" for a few frames, then vanishes. While it's up, it's "susceptible" to damage. A Persona can never be destroyed, but it can be shut down temporarily. Also, going from the Wiki, I've given all powers that hit 100% of the time AOE/Accurate, because, well. They hit 100% of the time. 90% is my baseline, and I ignored the slight variations in the "spells" because it wasn't worth it. I've got a short stack of pre-fabs now, and next I'll start on the Passive abilities. I still haven't found a decent bestiary for Persona -- not the boss list on the Wiki, but a plain old monster list. I may say screw it and start ripping and adapting from the Asian Bestiary I & II, but I want to see what "the game thinks." Monster design is going to be a PIA. I had other ideas last night that I was going to discuss but got caught up in another conversation. So there you has it.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG I've begun a "mass conversion" for all of the original skills. The skills are... boring! Quite boring, in fact. Super boring. No status effects, some of them are just variations on the damage dealt. This is going to take longer than I thought, but at the very least I am well into developing a baseline. I set the costs for the Adder/Status Effect to "ridiculously low," but ironically, I really like it and it is working exactly as I intended. The project is rolling, I'm just in mid-assessment. Still figuring out the Persona thing, but. But. I have to admit there is an increasingly powerful argument for Summon.

Re: Tiered Equipment or "How to fit Arrows and Antimarter in 60-90 AP" Sidenote: I'mma hit you, GW. So hard.

Re: Tiered Equipment or "How to fit Arrows and Antimarter in 60-90 AP" Wow. This reminds me of my old posts. *wipes away a tear* Hang on. Playing fetch with the cat. Where was I? Oh, right. This is all way over complicated. A few points were made here, mostly by Mark, but I'll summarize: * You want all weapons to be in the 60-90 range. This isn't even necessarily a representation of the dice, this can be advantages, additional advantages from 5Es Dark Champions (Piercing) and heaven knows what else. One of the things I keep asking is that we stop being afraid of "power creep." Use the numbers and effects that make sense. * Still, I see your point. However, this is way, way too much book-keeping. So here's a simple solution: Do what the movies do. HERO is supposed to simulate genre fiction. If you have someone wearing standard armor, and they get nailed with a plasma round, or a maser, or a PPC, then just tell 'em their hosed. If you have armies clashing, illustrate it. At best, the Primitive (-1/2) limitation is your best bet, or more simply: Primitive (-1/4, slightly lower tech level), (-1/2, significantly lower tech) and of course (-1, blatantly inferior tech). Now you've covered the major bands without all that messy hassle and they can mean what you like. Like my cohorts, I have to advise against getting more complex than that -- and I'm guilty of unnecessarily complex builds.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Part of the fun of HERO for people who like building things from scratch is building things. Part of the major complaint of HERO is that it takes forever to figure out how the damn thing works. Took me forever. I may be considered a deft hand now, but it was not terribly long ago that I was a wailing n00b. I intend to strike a balance, but you have understood the intent correctly: NO FRANKENSONAS. I'm not going to build all of the powers then let a player take an extremely powerful Persona and have a solution for everything in their build. It happens too often for my taste.

Re: HERO: Combat Evolved [Equipment Posts & Comments] Oh Greywind. You know I'm easy to find. And yet everyone complains that I'm away too long. I feel like that guy at the party -- everyone misses him but no one knows why until he's not there, then he's back, and it's all BAU. Ah well. I appreciate you for making me feel appreciated. Right now I'm doing Persona Hero, the Fighting/RPG. HALO is actually pretty tight (I reviewed some of my builds) and shouldn't have many issues in 6th Ed. I'll have to redesign MJOLNIR VI armor, but the guns shouldn't shuffle much.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Hmm. They can never, ever, be taken away. Even as an IIF, that doesn't connect for me, since it should be "OIF" from that reasoning (it's very Obvious, it's inaccessible). Nothing can take away your soul in the setting. Walk me through your chain of thinking here, if you would.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Team: This post may be TL/DR, and is not terribly well focused. Written at "midnight" on Sunday, and not all of my thoughts are fully fleshed out, and there will be typographical and grammatical errors, as well as half-finished thoughts and sentences. I'm posting it anyway because a) I always feel I write better to an audience, for those of you who are interested in this project I want your feedback and thoughts. You may have a better way of solving a problem, or better, convince there isn't a problem where I thought there was. I know this is a niche project and if it has three or four people interested, hey, that's exciting for me. Finally, c) I really want this to be fully transparent, as was my spell conversion project, which was well received. HALO I did very much on my own because it was again very niche, and I was developing my skills. Here, I'm posting all of this to generate discussion, get ideas, and build the best conversion document that I can. Here's where I'm at. I've broken down the critical elements required to do a decent game of Persona, and I've started figuring out what amount of "Heroic License" I'm going to need to take to make this work, as this is going to be very much "a game built using the tools of HERO," rather than "A HERO game built using inspiration from Persona." For those of you who've read my work before, and know me to be a stickler for accuracy, this should come as little surprise. I'm always willing to take license and maintain the spirit and flavor of a thing if I have too, and in this case, I just don't see another way to solve a couple of key problems within the conversion if I don't take that route. The things this conversion will cover are: * The Persona Skills * The Personae themselves, and how they'll behave in this setting * Social Links * Treasure * Equipment (as necessary, but standard Hero equipment should be sufficient) * Martial Arts design/Fighting Game elements * How to conceive/run a Persona campaign Heroic License 1: Using the DV system from APG II (and a few other places) rather than the traditional skill system. Why? I think it's actually "more true" (or truer) to the spirit of HERO. Having 6 levels in a skill, and I assign the target a DV of 6 (we'll call that about "average" for my games) means you need an 11-. Simple enough! Just like combat. Now if I add "4 DV" you need a 7-. If you buy 12 levels of a skill, it's easier for me to adjust it and perceive it, rather than say "Make a skill roll" and you only fail if you roll an 18. It changes thing one: The GM always sets a DV on any skill test, as they should now, but it's more transparent. Second, when you unify skills and combat, learning the game becomes simpler, and I want this conversion to be UBO. Heroic License 2: Some Powers (what Persona calls "Skills," and I'm not going to confuse the hell out of everyone by switching those terms) invoke status effects. I am not going to do "plus Poison" on every Poison power, or "Confusion," or whatever. I'm also disinclined to level them up. They should be fairly set in their effect if I do it right. Given that, I'll be using Trigger in an unconventional way -- by not adding the cost of the Inflicted Status to the power, and instead only adding an Advantage "Inflict Status" that is Linked to the Trigger. This is more in line with how HERO traditionally does things, instead of trying to copy and paste every single effect every time, there will be one sheet that lists all of the effects and their results, and how to break them. One of my players of course -- INVARIABLY -- said "There's always Transform." No. I'm not even going to entertain that as a possibility unless the target is to be transformed. So that's right out. But you get the idea; this maintains the utility of Inflict Status, without the mess. It's an elegant solution, but well outside the canon. The Persona Skills: Will be an inaccurate but spiritually true conversion. The biggest attack I can see is around 20 dice (60 DCs). That's for things like "Almighty," and in fairness, no player will have it for a very long time. Powers that are flagged as being "less accurate" in the game will have advantages that make them worth taking; I'm using a fairly straight forward grid to convert the powers themselves, and now that I have a solution to the "status effect" problem so common in JRPGs, I should be able to skate through the list. The Personae: This is more challenging. There has already been some discussion as to how the Personae should work (are they summons? Are they duplicates?) so I want to clarify what my vision is for this setting. The Persona is one part self, two parts weapon. It manifests with every attack; all skills require Incantations (because of the status effect: Silence, which blocks all Persona skill usage). Skills are either Active or Passive; I need to research further how I want to handle Passives, because in HERO (and I believe in Persona 3: FES) the Passives still required an invocation, were built as UBO (Up to 4 targets) and had a set duration. But that's off topic. The Persona, then, is the character's supernatural ability, cannot act independently, and amplifies all of the character's statistics. In the RPG, the Main Character (In 3, "The Avatar," in 4, Yu Nagakami, in Arena, again, Yu) can wield and change Personas, while the supporting cast only get one Persona. The reason its important to build all of them is twofold: 1) "Frankensona" must be avoided at all costs. The PCs cannot just pick the best powers -- the system has to be carefully balanced or it all falls right apart. 2) Leveling up and gaining new Personas with different skills is really integral to the game, and I'm weaving it into Treasure Collection and the Social Link mechanics. If the players approach this like "a HERO game" and just throw XP at their Persona until it's all super beast powerful, a lot of the suspense and tone goes out the window. Social Links I'm particularly proud of this one. Social Links are really about player reward for being awesome, doing the thing, what have you. I know my thoughts aren't organized enough to explain it all, but I'll give you the bullet point edition, starting with the basics. In Persona, all social interactions (the "dating sim" part) is governed by Social Links, which are based on the 22 Major Arcana of the standard Tarot. As you meet people, and make the right decisions, you open up a Social Link to them that you then develop over time. Traditionally, the main character (Aigis, Yu, The Avatar) has the SL of "The Fool," or 0 in the Tarot. I have no problem with keeping this, but each player should also have their own personal Arcana (Sun, Moon, Lovers, etc). Implementing this into HERO at first struck me as incredibly daunting, and then I pared it back down to things that made more immediate sense: * No one will ever have all of the Social Links at a high level, it doesn't make sense * In a group, where everyone has free will instead of just the player controlled avatar, this makes far more sense, as different strengths and weaknesses can be managed much more easily * It's important to have a standing mechanic that doesn't "force roleplaying" on the people who aren't heavy into RP, and doesn't rob the RPers of their monologue/GM conversation Lastly. I wanted every player to be able to change their Persona. Why have one? You don't have one in any game except Arena, and that's because it's a fighter. This is a Fighting/RPG. So here's how we do it. * Social Links will be represented by Contacts. * The "Group" Social Link remains 0, The Fool. Everyone gets it. * Each PC selects an Arcana of their own, and the person whom that link represents * Each PC then knows the list of Persona associated with that Arcana that they may attempt to bond with. This is critical for tabletop, where it was a game of discovery in the RPG, truthfully it was a PIA. Much easier to tell people, "here's where this chain goes." * As the PCs complete major objectives as a team, their ranks in "The Fool" grow alongside them. * When the Contact of a Social Link contacts a PC, and they complete a mission/help them out/have a meaningful moment -- their ranks in it grow * As PCs meet new Major NPCs (not scrubs, but big boys) they have an opportunity to build a Social Link with them once they've earned their trust in some way. In other words, even if you know that Yukari Tanaba is a strong link to the Lovers (VI), you can't bully her into bonding with you to build your SLs. For the non-RP set, this can be represented by missions, or "I spend time with Yukari," "Make a Conversation Roll." For the RPers, they of course get the classic boost to their roll through strong play. In this way, the players are consistently looking for meaningful interaction opportunities to build their SLs. Building their SL sufficiently means a non-combat boost as the person is a Contact per HERO canon, and a mechanical boost as a higher SL means being able to adopt higher level Personae AND, it means being able to bond with Personae from that SL. So if you have Fool, Lovers, and The Tower, you can (as you can in Persona) bond with the appropriate Personae of your level. It also introduces a natural control instrument: Don't want players to have any Personae from The Tower? Don't introduce that SL. Don't want them getting Loki? Don't provide missions that level up that SL to that point. I'm also strongly considering a third mechanic operating similarly to Luck/HAP based on the SL and the Persona in use. I want there to be multiple avenues of reward for all players. Someone might just take Strength, and build up that SL. They might want variety, or they might review all of the Personae later and go "Damn, I really want Lilith!" -- great! Work with your GM and think of who in the game might represent that SL, and bond with them. This might all seem very complex and cumbersome on the outside (Who wants to keep track of 22 contacts?!) but I don't think it's any different than how most social/political games are run. You build alliances, you lose them (yes, you can lose Contact/SL rankings -- if you really blow it you can lose access to that SL completely for a while) and then you bring those alliances, represented by your Persona -- into battle. Treasure I Persona 3. To wit, Treasure will be handled by a Tarot Card system (or if you don't have a Tarot deck, a randomly generated set of numbers from 1 - 72). Treasure is divided into Suits and Major Arcana, with said Arcana giving an opportunity to bond with a Persona (that last bit is subject to further definition). But otherwise: * Wands: represent growth. They grant an XP bonus in Persona, and might do the same here. I'm open to your thoughts. * Swords: Gear. Classically weapons, but it could be anything (also: Wands can become weapons). * Cups: Healing. REC boosts, Aids, Heals, the sky is the limit here * Pentacles/Coins: Uh. Coin. Monies. Ducats. Denero. Benjamins. Non-gear associated lewtz. There won't be a single loot chart, although I will endeavor to make a one for the canon version of this ... conversion. And that's it for now. I need to work on the Skills first, because that's where I always get my grounding for power levels, and then build out from there. Feel free to post, and eventually I will edit this.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Steve: That's not a bad idea, but I also know from canon that, at least in P3, there were 108 Personae. I know this is HERO, but I want to actively avoid "Frankensona," I need to model a number of Personae and establish the fundamental build rules before I can take next steps. Csy: Summon crossed my mind, uncertain how to proceed yet. Much to do before this project realizes it's potential.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG I may remove "Reduced END" and change it out as just "Physical Skill," because the adder makes no sense; I've changed it, rather than remove it. And in fairness, that change is pretty rough. Things to ponder.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Okay, here's the first "big divergence" from the canon. In Persona, there are a very limited number of effects, which will take separate modeling later on. Right now, it's important to me, both as a HEROphile and as a MegaTen fan, to build powers that are within what I would consider the right range, and appropriate feel, but also that make sense in a P&P world that may not have been considered in the design of Persona, or that aren't that "interesting." Here you go with the first big compound power: Sonic Punch: (Total: 88 Active Cost, 30 Real Cost) Hearing Group Flash 6d6, Indirect (Source Point is the same for every use, path is from Source Point to target; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (31 Active Points); Physical Skill (Costs STUN = END/2, 10 STUN add 1 BODY; -1/2), Requires Persona (-1/2), Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/4), Frame Exposure (3 Dex Steps; -1/4), Unified Power (Sonic Strike; Unified Damage Set; -1/4), Inaccurate (-2 OCV) (-1/4) (Real Cost: 10) plus: Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Indirect (Source Point is the same for every use, path is from Source Point to target; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (52 Active Points); Physical Skill (Costs STUN = END/2, 10 STUN add 1 BODY; -1/2), Requires Persona (-1/2), Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/4), Frame Exposure (3 Dex Steps; -1/4), Unified Power (Sonic Disruption; -1/4), Inaccurate (-2 OCV) (-1/4) (Real Cost: 17) plus: +1 OCV (5 Active Points); Only to Improve Critical Chance (-1/2) (Real Cost: 3) You can already see the power creep, and this is a low level physical skill. That tells me that most Personae will wind up with Multi-Power Frameworks as part of their design, with a "Physical" bucket, and likely a "Magical" bucket. So that helps answer part of that development process.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Right, first draft. I actually lost my true first draft. Dammit. Cleave: Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Indirect (Source Point is the same for every use, path is from Source Point to target; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (52 Active Points); Physical Skill (Costs STUN = END/2, 10 STUN add 1 BODY; -1/2), Requires Persona (-1/2), Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/4), Frame Exposure (3 Dex Steps; -1/4) Why Indirect? -- Because the Persona, a separate "thing," is doing the attacking, not the character. But Thia, why is it HtH? -- Because the Persona does the actual "hitting," you see. In other words, you're always controlling two characters. One is "you." One is your Persona. This is hard to get your head around if you haven't seen it. Frame Exposure -- Means the Persona can get hit, and if it takes enough punishment, is out of the fight. I have not decided how the Persona takes damage or heals yet. What is "Physical Skill?" -- Unique in Persona is that Physical Skills from the Persona are taxing on the user. It costs no END, but instead incurs a STUN/BODY cost. Look for the collection to grow, but you have an idea of what this stuff "does."

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG That was very much my plan -- I didn't want to create a new SP stat since END already "does that." Even though Arena has SP, HERO (to my mind) already handles it. I'm still thinking about how much "super skill" I want to fiddle with, since I have yet to find a new mechanic for Amplifying skills that I like. As you know from P4A, you can pound two buttons to up an attack to a Super -- such as Aigis' missile attack. Normally it's a 10 shot volley, but amped she flashes & it goes to 15 or 20, and that calls for use of SP.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

Re: Mindcontrol: the dumber, the easier Heh. That might be fine for a Champions game, but "Class of Minds" is one of the cleanest rules IMHO. Ain't goin' anywhere for my campaigns.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Hey Csy, the idea is that a Persona is your own soul, so it moves as you command it too. That's part of the challenge is designing exactly how the Personae will manifest. The idea of Frame Exposure (or Disadvantage) is to give an opponent the opportunity to smack it. It's a mechanic I hadn't seen before, so I am really excited about getting it into the game.

Re: HERO: Combat Evolved [Equipment Posts & Comments] Wow. Just realized how old this thread is. A: Not all of the ships are finished, but me 5+ years of experience later would likely redesign it all anyway. Oh, wicked, wicked, irony. What's the demand level for HALO: Combat Evolved 6th Ed?

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG One of the things I want to do for this campaign is really streamline the presentation of the systems I'm building. As many are aware, I'm a sucker for building "frames within frames." I'll take a mechanic and then build a sub-system around it so that it behaves exactly as I want it too. This makes explaining it to new people obscenely challenging, because while I now have a thing that works properly, it's usually complex. Elegant -- but complex. Take, for example, my shield build. The way I built shields includes: Block Bonuses, Damage Reduction against Missiles, and a few other tricks. The whole beast is nightmarish to read and some would argue, unnecessarily complex. The design works perfectly for what I want shields to do in my campaign, however, so there's a certain finality to it. Now, I'm converting a Japanese RPG system with comparatively inconsistent numbers (damage for part one ranges from "130" to "2200" I believe) and that makes doing a whole number conversion difficulty. Second, all physical skills in Persona cost HP -- and this is a non HP system. So my FIRST system in system is this Custom Limitation: Taxing, (variable). Taxing powers cost STUN = END/2. Every 10 STUN incurs 1 BODY. Hence, a 20 END Physical Attack will cost you 10 STUN, 1 BODY to use. For my players, this immediately brings up this question: "Can I buy [extra STUN/BODY], only for PERSONA skills?" I guarantee it'll be the first thing on the table. The current answer is "no," although it's something I would consider for very advanced Persona users. It's going to take many more skill builds before I'm certain that the ratio is right, but there are certain things guiding me: * Using a separate-separate mechanic is a pain. No one wants to calculate, or have to reference "END Loss" everytime. 1/2 END is simple, you can note the page quickly, do it in advance, know exactly what each one requires. Nice and straight forward. * For the price, I want Physical Skills to be appropriately powerful. "Cleave" (below) is a Light Damage/Single Opponent attack, and I started it at 6d6 HTH (or 6 DCs). That's around the weakest Persona attack in the physical category, and I don't consider 6 DCs "weak," more a standard, no frills attack. It costs 4 END/2 STUN to use. Nice and simple. Once I get my head around what I want in terms of total power level, and how players will advance themselves and how to build the Personas, I'll have a clearer idea of the final design. Second mechanic. In fighting games (and remember, this is going to be a combat heavy interpretation with a lot of fighting game elements built in) there's a concept called "Frame Advantage," or simply "advantage" or "disadvantage." What it means is that every button press in a fighting game takes a certain number of frames to: Start: These are your opening frames, where you may have some limited invulnerability, or in fact be completely vulnerable, depending. Active: Where your attack actually "hits," and is dangerous for the opponent to come into contact with you. Recovery: All of the frames after Active where you are going back to "Ready." Disadvantage is the number of frames after active, before ready, where you are completely open. That's too much even for me to build. Not because I couldn't, but because it's irrational. What I did instead is create a new Custom Limitation: "Frame Disadvantage," specifically for the Persona itself. Every time the Persona is summoned, it's a physical manifestation that can be attacked (which suggests using 'Physical Manifestation,' but that's not how it works for instant powers). Then starting with Dex, depending on the attack, it's "out there" and eligible to be struck. This raises the same question, "How much do I put into the Persona itself from a design standpoint?" but I'll tackle that once I have some powers built and an idea of my ranges.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Aw, shucks guys. I'm easy enough to find, just follow the trail of sorrow, broken dreams and robot tears. I'm usually within screaming distance. My profile is set to auto-alert if I get an IM, so if you are EVER in doubt, just call out my name. And you know, wherever I am. I'LL COME SMITIN'. Whatever's keepin' you from readin' my posts ag'in.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG In the words of my father: "Yo."

So I thought, you know, I haven't run anything in a long time. I also haven't posted anything to the boards in a VERY long time. Perhaps I need to amend that! Hence I will be bringing to you, over the next few months, "Persona: The RPG," based on the MegaTen series. You can check out the wiki for such things if you're curious or need the background. The design will be heavily influenced by such things as Persona 3: FES, Persona 4 (which I will be buying a PS Vita just to play the Golden edition) and Persona 4: Arena. There will also be shades of Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2 and a few other bits and pieces in there as well. For those of you who don't know (or who may have forgotten) I'm a bit of a modeling freak, and I shoot for exactness in my design, so there'll be a lot of time spent building, first, the "powers" as they exist in the two core Persona games so they'll be available to my players. Second, I'l going to have to work in the various Personas (I believe that P3:FES had 108 discoverable Personae) and more importantly, how to incorporate them into mechanics as well as the game play itself. This is going to be a struggle in design, because I want each character to have their own purpose, and their own fighting style, in addition to wanting to be involved in the campaign proper, without changing the Persona concept into a GM fiat mechanic where the Persona "makes" the player do something. This is about investigation, not rewriting Curse of the Azure Bonds. What would you be looking for, in terms of the incorporation of a "soul weapon" or "symbiote" concept? The Persona (again, for the unitiated) is an extremely powerful manifestation of the soul, the commanded Shadow, the other self. I'm considering taking everyone through a solo campaign where they defeat their Shadow to make it into their Persona, then, when things are sufficienting ----ing weird, bring the party together to deal with the investigation/plot/villains. Now. I begin design.

Re: For your post-apoc learning needs Oh good, you're alive! I was seriously starting to wonder. Of course, I haven't been on either, so there's that whole pot/kettle thing we're always going on about.

Re: If you Had to Pick, ONE (already) Setting, to Run in, What is it? Here's the thing, though: when you break it down, HALO has all of the great elements that make a sci fi setting "go." Great tech, hate worthy villains, and a massive, unexplored universe that humanity needs to reboot and start exploring again. There will be races that want to cooperate (Sangheli) and those that don't (Brutes). So you have a lot of great options, from running gun fights, to exploration of other ancient races & relics, all that good stuff.