Just play Monsterhearts.

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>>57183726
I find most men who play female PCs are either playing lesbian fetishbait waifus or the protagonist from their unpublished YA epic journey trilogy. Really any narrativist system works because YA novels always follow basic bitch Heroe's Journey tropes.

>>57183726
Use FATE? It's great for basically everything that's not too combat-heavy or dungeon-crawly.

>>57183785
>or the protagonist from their unpublished YA epic journey trilogy
fuck, that was me

>>57183832
What's it like being a YA protagonist?

>>57183726
What dose "YA" stand for? Young american?

>>57183977
young adult

>>57183726
What’s your definition of “modern”? Does Harry Potter count? Do the Animorphs?

thanks to this post >>57184016 i can ask
>>57183993
what defines "young adult"? are "percy jackson" and "artemis fowl" YA novels?

>>57184025
Yes, those are YA novels.

Basically any book written for the 12-16 age bracket is YA at this point. Which is amusing considering their most rabid fans are people in their 20s.

>All these uncreative bitches ITT

>>57183726
>All stats are fixed except Sue. Sue is sort of like the wild die from SW except it grows over time, mimicking how these characters start off balanced stock archetypes but go on to be great at everything (especially martial arts). Sue also directly determines physical attractiveness.
>PCs are referred to as "inserts"
>Relatively extensive romance mechanics. Normally I hate those, but making romance tacked on yet intrusive is exactly the tone we're going for. Half the point of the game should be collecting a harem of potential waifus and husbandos. However, as your Sue stat increases, so does competition between the harem. Also some kind of mechanical incentive against actually dating/fucking any of them (or doing it for too long). Remember, who your insert should fuck is more dramatic and important than saving the world
>Inserts are students at post-apoc wizard school. They're chosen from the surrounding communities of oppressed dirt farmers in an elaborate ceremony. After being inducted, they're forced to wizard battle each other for the amusement of the rich (OMG DEEP POLITICAL COMMENTARY) but also secretly to keep their skill sharp in case the great evil that caused the apocalypse comes back it will
>Inserts can be a wide variety of movie monsters- werewolves, vampires, zombies. However, these are only minor stat bonuses and maluses

>>57184140
>only minor stat bonuses and maluses
I disagree with this, I actually believe that the maluses should be minor, yet heavily over-dramatised, while the bonuses should be massive. This way certain relationships that should be harder to mantain (e.g. Vampires with werewolves) would both require more time to develope and create stronger tensions between the various members of the insert's harem thus giving in return a greater increase in Sue

>>57184140
>However, as your Sue stat increases, so does competition between the harem.
I can't believe I'm taking this shit so seriously, but I should point you to a very good little indie game called "Hero's Banner" which has a mechanic which might be relevant here. It essentially assures, in a mathematically interesting way, that as the hero's journey progresses they'll be forced into choosing between one of several ideals, ultimately locking into one of them and forever forsaking the other (just replace "ideals" with "love interests").

>>57184212
Good point. What do humans get bonuses in? Also, building your harem increases your Sue? I like it

>>57184140
>All stats are fixed except Sue
Isn't that counter to the point? Sues unlock new powers/master new skills constantly.

>>57184025
>>57184091
YA is really just teenagers in general. Its really a genre that's far too broad, because it encompasses romance, adventure, mystery, and pretty much any other genre, but then just aims it at teenagers.

>>57184262
You gain one new ability every game session, but your stat block never goes up. Again, the idea is to represent going from relatable stock character to perfect at everything supergenius combat master

>>57183816
FATE is bad.

>>57184140
IMHO, it shouldn't have a default setting. In fact, I think you might do something like Jewish Anon's WANG system suggested (in fact, I believe the suggestion was specifically called something like the "Lazy GM's Young Adult Science Fiction Novel Style Plot Generator"): at the beginning of the game you roll randomly for a "theme", which is inevitably some sort of middle-school tier bit of "social commentary" or "philosophical statement", like "consumerism is bad", "people fit into cliques", or "beauty over brains", then you roll randomly again for some/several setting element/s, like "young mutants", "vampires", "nanotechnology" or "oppressive regime".

You mix and match to make the setting. The whole point is that it's arbitrary, superficial and weak.

>>57183726
There's a Mary Sue. This is a DMPC.

Players are either friends or romantic interests of the Mary Sue. Instead of classes, you have cliches, which are things like Jock, Book Nerd, Frat Boy, whatever. Their goal is to help the Mary Sue progress in her story (the MAIN story) while also trying to progress in their own B-plots. However, if a player starts stealing the spotlight from Mary Sue, they'll get punished by the game.

>>57184016
>Does Harry Potter count?
Yes, Harry Potter certainly is in leagues with Twilight and other modern YA fiction.

>Animorphs
Never read those books.

>>57184487
>Never read those books.
Didn't miss much, it's a painfully generic 90's YA series /tg/ is obsessed with for some bizarre, most likely fetishistic reason.

>>57184016
>>57184025
In general, if the protagonists are a group of teenagers, it's almost certainly a YA novel. So Potter, Animorphs, anything else by Applegate(even though they tend to be pretty dark), etc. are all YA novels.

>>57184524
>To Kill a Mockingbird
>Lord of the Flies
>The Kite Runner

>>57184540
>In general

>>57184540
I said teenagers, not children. And yeah, there are some exceptions.

>>57183726
>why did he emphasize 'white'?

>>57184513
Probably nostalgia more than fetishism. They were popular books when a lot of the late 20-somethings here were kids.

>>57184480
>character classes based off classic highschool clique stereotypes
>Jock, Nerd, Prep, Freak
>Specialize into activities like sports, fighting, computers, music, etc
>Struggle through teen insecurities and lack of motivation to navigate the social landscape while looking to meet objectives
>Vie to be noticed by Mary Sue

I'd play it

>>57184569
Muh soggy knew and ess jay double(you)s

>>57184242
Direct bonus to Sue, I would imagine.

>>57184680
That doesn't really cover the breadth of YA, though. Even if you're only focusing on the specific cliches of the genre, you still need to take into account not just supernatural romances but also the venerable "turns out I'm actually a [powerful sort of person], I'm going away to learn how to use my real powers", or the new trend of "in a dystopian future society based on [teenager's misconception of social norm], a plain but brave, individualistic girl must fight against convention to save everyone from themselves and an evil authority figure who hates rebellion because it thinks freedom is bad".

>>57185025
That works. Something like, all the monster races get +2 to certain stat plus a non-mechanical weakness (vampires with sunlight, werewolves with silver), humans get +1 Sue with no downside?

>>57184435
Any idea where I could find this?

>>57185139
Sure, though without knowing the other stats I can't tell how balanced that would be.

World of Darkness

>>57183726
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG was pretty much this.

>>57185159
I was thinking
>d20
>4 stats, strength, agility, charisma, intelligence
>Players get 3 points to distribute any way they choose, plus the bonuses from their race
>Each point grants +1 to rolls
>Each point of Sue grants an additional +1 to every roll
>Sue score is equal to the number of love interests, or that number +1 for humans

>>57185151
It's a really shitty game, you shouldn't bother with it for the most part. It has an interesting gimmick in that a lot of actions in game are resolved by requiring the player to do something challenging/funny around the table (like pushups or saying tongue twisters or making up anagrams on the spot), but the presentation is nothing short of abominable and really, really reeks of appeal to reddit.

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>>57185151
>>57185251
In case you're still interested, here's the relevant "expansion page". Just refer to the textbox in the bottom right.

>>57184569
Because America is an awful mysterious place where being white isn't the normal default state. Think about London or Paris (or whatever the hated big city of your country) but all the continent is either like that or empty untamed land.

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Okay, I'm cribbing a certain RPG about small equines that I possess at the moment for this, but I think it's simple enough to work.

1/?

Characters are Inserts; the GM is the Narrator.

There are four Attributes:
- Mind
- Body
- Charm
- Sue

Charm starts at a d6. Sue starts at a d4. You pick one of Mind or Body to start with a d6, and the remainder gets a d4. Thus a starting Insert could be Mind d4, Body d6, Charm d6, Sue d4.

You start at level 1. Each time you gain a level, you can increase the die size of Mind, Body, or Charm by one step (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20). However none of these can be more than two steps better than the others (so as to prevent crippling overspecialization); so if you have Mind d4, Body d6, and Charm d10, you can't improve Charm to d12 unless you improve your Body or Mind to at least a d8.

At each odd-numbered level after 1st, your Sue trait automatically increases in die size by one step, to a max of d20 at 11th level. This ignores the limits on die size increase for Mind, Body, and Charm.

You also have Skills; you start with your choice of two at d6 or one at d8. You can create your own Skills. Skills should represent specific talents, such as Basketweaving, Magic Shield, Magic Missile, Kung Fu, Guns, Mathematics, History, Flight, and so on. What can and can't be a skill is adjudicated by the Narrator. Whenever you gain a level, in addition to increasing an Attribute, you can increase a Skill you have by one die step instead; or you can pick up a new Skill at d4. Skills ignore the restriction on increasing them that Attributes have; they cap at d20.

Certain game events may bestow free Skills on you, such as gaining a magic book that gives you Read Minds d6.

>>57185340
>small equines
Falabellas?

2/?

>>57185340
When attempting to do something, you first determine whether you need to use Mind (for mental stuff), Body (for physical stuff), or Charm (for social stuff). You roll your Attribute plus the relevant Skill if you have it; for example, to make an attack you might roll Body plus Kung Fu.

(Each Martial Art is its own distinct skill. For the most part this is purely for flavor, but it might become relevant if the Narrator decides; for example, if your Insert knows Kung Fu, s/he can't compete in a Boxing tournament)

Tasks you attempt have a Difficulty that ranges from 2 to 20.

2 - Very Easy
3 - Easy
4 - Quite easy
5 - Quite hard
6 - Hard
7 - Very hard
8 - Extremely hard
9 - Unbelievably hard
10 - Indescribably hard
11 - Almost impossible
12 - You gotta be kidding!
13-20 - Has anyone ever done this?!

Inserts have Stamina that is equal to their Mind die size plus their Body die size (10 for starting Inserts). Whenever your Mind or Body die increases, your Stamina improves by that much as well (Mind d8 plus Body d6 equals 14 Stamina). Stamina decreases whenever something strenuous happens: trekking long distances, taking damage, eating bad food, etc. When Stamina reaches 0, you fall unconscious until you recover 1 Stamina. Stamina is recovered at a rate of 1 per day, or 2 per day if you're in a comfy environment.

Hitting another Insert requires an attack (Body + a Martial Art you know) against a difficulty that is equal to the target's Body die size (d6 = Difficulty 6). Each hit deals damage based on your own Body die size:

d4: 1
d6: 2
d8: 3
d10: 4
d12: 5
d20: 6

Mental or Magical attacks might instead involve rolling Mind. Damage calculation is unchanged.

3/?

>>57185500
You can perform "Social Combat" with the Charm skill against the target's Charm skill like an attack, although never during physical combat. This inflicts points of Anxiety equal to the damage of an attack outlined above. If an Insert's Anxiety is ever equal to their current Stamina, then they are Shamed and their Insert must leave the scene at the first available opportunity and not contest any Charm roles you make for the remainder of the scene. Anxiety decreases at a rate of 1 per day, or 2 per day if you Insert recovers in their personal Safe Space (such as their favorite café, their room at home, or so on)

You can aid a character in a check. If you do, then their Attribute die improves by one step for that check; for example, aiding someone with Body d6 making an attack improves the die to d8 for that attack. Two or more characters aiding you do not cause your die to further increase.

The Sue Die functions as a bonus die. You may roll it once per scene per the Sue Die's size (like with damage above; d4 = once, d6 = twice, and so on), and add the die result to your other die rolls. For example, when making an attack, you could roll Body + Kung Fu skill + Sue.

When attacked, you can also as a reaction roll your Sue die and add the result to your Body to determine the difficulty to hit you with that one attack. For example, if you have Body d8 and roll a 4 on your Sue die, then the attacker must roll a 12 to hit you with that attack.

>>57183726
>I'm very plain, but also gorgeous

Wat

4/5

>>57185621
Your Sue trait also determines the number of Love Interests you have, as with damage above (d4 = one, d6 = two, and so on). Love Interests are Narrator Peon Characters (NPCs) who desire you for your beauty, charm, wit, unreachability, or whatever else you like. Your stable of NPCs is collectively referred to as your Harem. NPCs in your Harem can also be part of another Insert's Harem, which may be a source of drama and inter-party conflict. Members of your Harem may also occasionally fight each other for your affections, requiring you to intervene - or stand aside and watch them duke it out.

NPCs in your Harem can be presumed to aid you in any check you make in a scene that you are both it. If the NPC is part of multiple Inserts' Harems, then they aid the Insert with the higher Sue trait. If there is a tie, the Inserts involved roll their Sue traits against one another until one rolls the highest number.

An NPC who is mistreated may leave your Harem, but only if the NPC's Charm is equal to or greater than your own Charm. NPCs in your Harem can also die. In either case, you do not automatically recover lost NPCs. Instead, whenever you gain a level, you can gain a new Love Interest in lieu of upgrading an Attribute or Skill. This new Love Interest can be an existing NPC (including one who had previously left your Harem), or a new one.

Finally, your character begins the game with one or more Quirks. Quirks are flaws or drawbacks possessed by your character. They rarely (if ever) have mechanical effects, however; rather, they are expected to be roleplayed, but if you forget to roleplay them on occasion, it's no big deal. Quirks might be something like being loud, random, shy, self-centered, nearsighted, asthmatic, and so on.

5/5

>>57185720
Finally, some sample Races. Not every game includes Races, and your Narrator may make up his or her own.

HUMAN
- Your Sue trait starts one die larger, at d6 instead of d4. At 11th level, increase of increasing in size, you gain an extra use of it per scene.

ELF
- You begin with your choice of one of these skills in addition to your other skills
- - Magic: Detect Magic (d4): Lets you detect nearby magic with a successful Mind + Detect Magic roll.
- - Woodland Survival (d4): Allows you to survive in the woods
- - Archery (d4): Martial skill; can be rolled alongside Body in an attack.

VAMPIRE
- Your Charm starts at d8
- You gain the following Skill, in addition to your other skills:
- - Bite (d6): Martial skill; can be rolled alongside Body in an attack.
- You gain the following Quirks:
- - Sunlight Sensitivity (You take 1 point of Stamina damage for each round that you are in direct sunlight)
- - Blood Addiction (you must feed on blood daily to survive, represented dealing at least 1 point of Stamina damage with your Bite skill to a living creature. Each full day (24 hours) without blood inflicts 2 automatic Stamina damage that can't be recovered by resting unless you have drunk blood that day. If you reach 0 Stamina in this way, you die)

CAT PERSON
- You gain the following Skill, in addition to your other skills:
- - Catlike Reflexes (d4): You can roll this whenever you need to do something catlike, such as jump long distances or run along walls.
- You gain the following Quirk:
- - Short Attention Span

>>57185368
MLP: Tails of Equestria, dude, come on. Do I have to spell it out?

Side note, according to the latest ToE adventure, Equestria has an Underdark. With flumphs, identical in appearance and temperament to D&D flumphs.

>>57184513
>painfully generic
The ghostwritten ones sure, but you could tell which ones were actually written by the author because they were body horror + genocidal space war with child soldiers and everyone's dying.

>>57185668
It's a very common feature of Mary Sue characters, which are themselves a common feature of bad YA literature. Basically, the character THINKS that they're ugly (so they come off as humble, and the reader can identify with them - because if there's one thing common to every teenage girl who has ever lived is they felt ugly), but the narrative makes it patently obvious that they're OBJECTIVELY gorgeous (which also helps with the aforementioned self insert gimmick since it gives the reader a confidence boost)

Nowadays it's ever-so-slightly less common since it's become such a cliche it's becoming hard to do unrionically.

>>57185972
When you come down to it, is it really all that different than anime/light novels about a "plain otaku loser" who inexplicably has every hot woman he runs into fall madly in love with him?

>>57186085
Not at all, but that's a bit of a boring cliché too.

>>57185340
>>57185500
>>57185621
>>57185720
Shouldn't this system also include a fairly robust mechanic for handling special powers and such? Given their prominence in the source material? It's true you could model all of them with skills but if we're talking Mary Sues, I think it's important to note exactly WHAT "unthinkable feat" of "extremely rare type of magic" your character could perform at an "unbelievably young age" to show they're the chosen one.

>>57186159
You can feel free to add one, if you like, but I've got a D&D session in 45 minutes that I need to prepare for.

>>57186159
Absolutely not. Think about Harry Potter: What you(or any specific character) can do with magic is actually pretty vague. Sure, some people are better at magic than others(or at least, better at a given specialty, but what someone can/can't do is not really well defined.

>>57186085
>When you come down to it, is it really all that different than anime/light novels about a "plain otaku loser" who inexplicably has every hot woman he runs into fall madly in love with him?
They're exactly the same, but since most of the criticism of YA that you see on 4chan is coming from males who read manga, they will treat them differently.

>>57184394
So is YA fiction. They're made for each other.

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>>57184569
Whilst like many internet cartoonists the original author probably has SJW tendencies, I think the criticism stands to reason. Why? Because end of the day you're appealing to a shallow-ass market of teenagers, most of whom are white or the products of Western anglosphere culture. And let's face it most people ain't fantasizing about a sexy Asian or black or Indian brown dude; theres some exceptions but a teenage chick is gonna want a white Calvin Klein model. And it's not like male-oriented YA fiction is free from this: Ginny Weasley is a redhead, Annabeth Chase is a stereotypical blonde bombshell, Betty and Veronica are white (or at least white-looking latina). And hey there's nothing wrong with that I'm not into black chicks but it is basically a fact: you will cater to your audiences desire.

As for OP I feel that it would be fun to have it be a story in a story: you're all fighting for "limelight", which is an expendable resource. Aside from that the guy r ecommnding calling PCs inserts etc are cool

Btw anyone read this delightfully iconoclastic YA series and think it would make a cool RPG?

>>57184569
Because he's a butthurt leftist who hates his own race?

>>57186572
Read the first one of the series. It was pretty good but I don't remember much except that the ministry was after something or someone wanted something from the ministry

>>57184569
Probably another emphasis of how ultimately similar the two love interest tend to be.

>>57186572
I read the trilogy as a young boy. I was quite taken with the setting, how magic worked in it and whatnot. There are several aspects of the story that'd make for neat RPG aspects. the wars, the political intrigue, demonology. I think it'd be a neat setting to play with.

>>57184569
Americans are obsessed with race and think that ones race is a significant, if not the most important, quality.

>>57183726
Alright, let's make it a fantasy setting.
>A long time ago, the empire of Prologuia was brought down by an evil immortal wizard
>The Prophecy of Prologuia foretold that a lone daughter of noble blood would forever smite all evil
>The Wizard tries to exterminate the entire royal family but fails to kill the king's baby daughter
>She's adopted by a young monk in some village in bumfuck nowhere
>Everybody hates her because of her purple eyes, which are a halmark of the royal family but one somebody nobody points out except to mock her
>The only one who understands her is her crush who's also a tall, muscular, traditionally handsome stud
>By the time she's 15, the immortal wizard's legions burn down her entire village (ironically setting the whole prophecy in motion whereas nothing would've happend if the immortal wizard just ignored her)
>Only the protagonist and her handsome love interest survive, the monk who raised her as if she were his own child can survive long enough to tell her that she's actually the rightful queen of Prologuia
>She and Stud go on a magical trip, along the way they discover a badboy Hedge Knight with a dark streak but a soft heart
>Love triangle, final confrontation blah blah blah
>MC marries Stud and they live happily ever after
>She's also the most magnificent queen ever despite having lived her entire life as a dirt farmer with zero understanding of politics

Also she's like 1/16th dragon, 1/64th fey and 1/4 French or something.

>>57186872

YA Dystopian protagonists are different from fanfiction Mary Sues. They aren't special because they are destined or half-dragon or their father was actually the King. They're just awesome, a genetic aberration - an ubermenschen from unlikely stock who overthrows their inferiors and creates a new world order. Mu-tants. You could make a YA novel about the early years of The Mule from the Foundation series.

>>57184569

Well, they are.

>>57183726
So, what are the obligatory expy sample settings gonna be? Not!Harry Potter, Not!Twilight, Not!Hunger Games, Not!Percy Jackson and the Olympians? Anything crucial we’re missing?

>>57187141
Eragon?

>>57187141
Needs a proper space sci-fi. Jupiter Ascending?

>>57186872
The main issue with this is that it depends upon a single Main Character, but we probably want a game where you have a group of people.

>>57187141
The mortal instruments

Does Fiasco have a playset for YA tropes?

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>>57183726
This comic is forgetting the classic YA dystopian staple of an evil government who implements a policy that is just plain absurd, over the top evil and for some reason only ever involves pre-teens and teens. Some shit like "on everyone 13th birthday they put on a mood ring and if it ever turns purple they arrested and their organs are harvested". Double points if the policy is about "conformity" or has a hamfisted racism analogue without understanding how racism actually operates (though this is a problem in most sci-fi).

Also the world suffering an apocalypse caused by an adjective.

This turned out to be a neat thread

>>57183726
Risus, done

>>57186872
Kinda reminds me of Jade Empire.

Does the Monk turn out to be evil too?

>>57188603
>Also the world suffering an apocalypse caused by an adjective

An adjective?

>>57190736
What, anon's explanation isn't descriptive enough?

>>57186960
Yeah, basically this. Very rarely are YA Heroines actual descendants of noble blood (though an important ancestor or relative is a common trope). They're generally just Plane Jane nobodies who fall into something bigger than themselves. Sometimes she obtains magical powers, but mostly she just quickly become physically competent.

If she does get powers, then it's because she came into contact with some artifact/person or because she was subjected to genetic modification.

>>57186872
Love Interest being a childhood friend of the Protagonist only happens if he's a dorky, awkward kind of dude. If he's a studly SoldierGuy then he's someone she meets after she starts her adventure. Most likely he's some kind of officer in whatever resistance movement she joins, and he reluctantly takes on the task of training her green ass. The romance develops when she inevitably beats him in a sparring match.

>>57187141
You know, jokes aside, trying to come up with those could be a fascinating literary exercise. Whether or not you want the end result to be *parodic* (which would require it to be a certain kind of "funny"), you are still looking to create a setting which would be UNMISTAKABLY recognizable as based on a particular work, yet not close enough as to be it with the serial numbers filed off (God forbid, it might actually have its own merit). Accomplishing that would require a somewhat in-depth analysis of each text to be imitated/lampooned, in order to isolate those elements which are most characteristic of it, and then figuring out ways to not replicate, but recreate them in a way that is original yet recognizable.

For example, let's say we want to make a Not!Harry Potter setting. Obviously, it's going to be about a wizarding school. But would any kind of wizarding school work? The idea itself isn't exactly rare in literature - what would make it obviously a "Harry Potter" thing? Would it still work if the wizarding school is, say, a college instead of a high school? Does it have to have four competing houses, each with an animal mascot? Does the setting have to prominently include a team sport played on brooms (would it change significantly if the brooms were changed for, say, flying carpets?)? Or are qualities of the cast what makes Harry Potter what it is? Does the main character have to have had some past brush with the forces of evil which left them with a distinctive bodily marking? Do they have to have a genius opposite sex friend and an annoying same sex hanger on? Does the Headmaster have to be a wacky yet wise Mr. Miyagi archetype?

etc.

>>57191687
I think at this level it'd be more efficient to just identify a number of (sub)genres and detail them. Maybe include a set of optional rules for each (if you want the game to be that serious), and if you really want to go the whole way, make a sample setting for each of them without having to draw from one single source. Off the top of my head, it seems like the YA novels we're dealing with here have a tendency to fall into one of the following genres:

Supernatural Romance (iconic works: Twilight, Blood and Chocolate, The Mortal Instruments): Stories dealing either with the relationships between human and humanoid (or human seeming) supernatural creatures, or with the relationships between said supernatural creatures as they pretend to be human. In any case, it's important that the main characters experience what is essentially a dramatic high school life, with the supernatural elements layered on top of it. The main characters may be simply humans, supernaturals, or turn into supernaturals towards the end. The romance is the core of the plot.

Teenage Superheroes (iconic works: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Artemis Fowl): 12-18 year old kids receive/find out they have superpowers of some kind (or the equivalent, e.g. are suddenly given superspy training, as in the Alex Rider books). They are pulled away from their normal lives and are forced to participate in adventures representative of other genres (fantasy, spy fiction, science fiction, etc) with the YA element coming merely from the age of the main characters and the fact that they have a connection to modern day teen life through their past, making them identifiable. The adventure elements are the core of the drama. A prominent sub-subgenre focuses on their activities in a special school for kids with their kind of power, but the important thing is that the focus is still on their adventures, not just school life and teen romance.

cont.

>>57191687
Obviously an RPG doesn't lock in character dynamics. I'm of the mind any specificity should be avoided. Instead of making archetypes, boil it down to the shared core components of all.
>Teenagers
>Player characters have inherently different mechanics than NPC's
>Binary alignment system

>>57191916
Rebellion at Dystopia (iconic works: The Hunger Games, Divergent, the Maze Runner): Usually taking place in a post-apocalyptic future and depicting an absurd, oppressive society which is supposed to serve (usually not overly successfully) as commentary about some aspect of modern day existence, especially ones that teens care about (or think that they do). The teen main characters fight against the oppressive regime through the power of their individuality and nonconformity. Relationship drama is prominent but themes of rebellion and the struggle to bring down the corrupt society are at the core of the story.

"Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World" (iconic works: Animorphs, The Midnighters, the Kitty Norville books): A sort of distinctive hybrid
of the above genres, these feature superpowered kids who are able to go on adventures or are forced to fight some kind of evil force, but focuses on their struggle to maintain a normal life as they do so. Adventures and romance/drama elements are equally important. Interestingly, for whatever reason, thisseems to be the genre most prone to having teams of main characters of roughly equal power, rather than a more standard "main character plus support" arrangement.

>>57183785
can you be honest with me please I think i'm doing that but I'm not sure

>born poor to farmers
>explorered ruins with her brother
>joined a gang
>brother executed for going into ruins
>starts war against cops in his name
>wins war with archeotech
>off planet crime syndicate moves in
>kills her husband
>she can't win the war so she makes peace and gets an arranged marriage with the planetary governor
>she still runs most of the organized crime on the planet
>husband falls to chaos and plans on make her home a daemon world
>she poisons him and the entire upper class to be sure
>knows that the inquistions and the crime syndicate are going to fucking kill her for this so she sneaks off planet
>get stranded on a desert planet and captured by slavers
>gets rescued by a rogue trader
>she explains her situation and he hires her on the spot to be his seneschal

>>57192133
since the game has started she has
>tortured numerous people against her rogue traders wishes
>become a psyker by fucking around with alien shit
>joined the inquistion
>been mind wiped
>fought a demon prince to a stand still (with the entire crew actually helping)
>fell off a railing knocking herself out
>enters scenes by stepping out of shadows almost exclusively
>realized that killing alot of people about to do a chaos ritual is in fact a chaos ritual
>told her shipmates 3 different aliases

she's fun but I feel like I'm not being very creative. what does /tg/ think?

>>57191916
I think The Mortal Instruments overlaps with what you called "Wake up, go to school, save the world" more than Twilight or B&C.

>>57196027
Twilight does certainly turn into that with the later books though. Breaking Dawn is basically Buffy with weirder sex.

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>>57183785
Yeah, and I play my characters as the typical stereotypes associated with that class done so straight and honest, it actually feels refreshing.

Farmboy turned fighter? You better believe he's going to be starry-eyed and kinda dumb.

>>57191916
>>57191941
You could boil that down into four different archetypes, even.
>The Romantic: A person motivated by little more than love and fueled by some diffuse "desirability" or "virtue". They're very weak compared to other characters and have few supernatural powers, but have higher social stats, more fate points and start gaining hefty experience as they level.
>The Experienced: A character who's been in it for a longer time than the others or was born as a supernatural creature or other kind of special caste/occupation. They have high skill scores and physical/practical stats as well as supernatural powers and access to weapons and special tools from chargen, but have extremely low fate points, lower social stats and a low willpower/grit stat (to reflect the fact that these people almost always snap halfway through and allow the "normal" characters to take up the reins).
>The Rebel: Motivated by being diffusely "different" than everyone else, these people have low social stats and average scores in other stats. They have the highest fate point equivalent score of anyone, though, and are unaffected by a large variety of social/mental powers straight out of chargen.
>The Prodigy: These characters handle a normal life and their cover job at the same time, and are generally balanced in most areas, being especially good at everyday skills. Their powers are relatively strong, but they have only average fate points and mainly specialize in crossing the border between human society and the supernatural repeatedly without breaking down or getting busted.

>>57196253
And if you want to tack on another one, you can go with one that crosses over with most of the others, but can be made into a separate splat.
>The Fated: These characters look like millstones. They have average fate points, low stats, no supernatural powers and a tendency to get everyone else into trouble by being kidnapped or fucking something up. When they run out of fate points, though, they're removed from play from half a session to a whole session (or just taken care of/searched for/captured as the villain's hostage), and after that become some sort of supernatural creature or expert from the experience. Not only that, but they can choose one of the following: negate one major weakness of their supernatural type, gain one major power not normally available to them, mix and match normal powers and decide what kind of special new supernatural creature they become, become an overnight master in a large number of restricted mundane skills or gain a huge clump of fate points.
Those should pretty much cover all general character archetypes in YA fantasy, and let's be honest all of them usually show up in one book.

>>57196027
Percy Jackson is just like that as well, which is why I suggested mortal instruments.

>>57192148
Yes. The first sign was when she was literally a gangland scum, who beat the cops with a magic weapon, then lost her family tragically, only to replace them. She is the lowest class possible, who married the planatery govenor, and then singlehandedly wiped out the entire upper class of a planet. She then evades the crime syndicate in charge of her world, and THE INQUISITION. Her backstory is 100% Mary Sue. Her in game actions, that just rogue trader. Hell, its tame by the standards of some of my characters.

>>57196362
Do we really need two sample settings for the same kind of story?

>>57183726
What’s the name of the FUDGE Shoujo supplement? HeartQuest? Wouldn’t that do more than fine?

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>>57183726
>white dudes
>white

was this really fucking necessary?

>>57183726
That graphic demonstrates everything that is wrong with young adult novels.

>>57197402
Check the top right corner of the image.

>>57196253

Congratulations, you are writing a Powered by the Apocalypse game and you don't even know it.

>>57184540
>Lord of the Flies
The oldest people in this book are around 12-13 if im not wrong, most of the children are 10-12.

>>57197416
there is nothing wrong with YA novels anon, they are ment to be the gray paste that drives you into books and teaches you how to realte to cherecters, the problem is when grown people think YA addults books are good and deep

>>57185905
... Y'know, Flumphs actually fit pretty well in that setting.

>buffy style Masquerade
>teens fighting the forces of evil
>get edgy team name, like Scarlet Razors/Black Night
>use black magic against black magic
>hide from the adults who do nothing
>0 competent authorities other than other teens

>>57198468
Its generic and boring, but I think it'd be financially successful and palatable

>>57191687
I think 4 competing houses is definitely an identifying characteristic of the Harry Potter series. Like you said, wizarding schools are a dime a dozen but soon as you have 4 competing houses, I don't think there should be any mistaking what specific series you're trying to imitate.

>>57196167
One of the reasons why I actually like Rey in Episodes VII and VIII is that it's been a long, LONG time since Hollywood gave us a protagonist who was just a good person who did good things for good (if occasionally stupid) reasons. She's a wee bit of a Sue, but I can forgive it just as much as I can forgive Conan for being a wee bit of a Sue (though for different reasons).

>>57198151
A book that stars children is not the same thing as a Young Adult novel.

>>57198507
Now, if you're really into that (seems like a bit of a hassle to me for what I figure is a joke game, but whatever) it's just a matter of coming up with 4 alternative houses, their associated traits, their mascot animals, maybe some alliteratively named founders or something. Once you've done that you're practically half done.

You know, it's funny. I was bitching to someone that /lit/ is useless for writing advice if you're not a philosophy major dropout hipster, until I realized that's literally the reason I still go to /tg/.

>>57192148
Ask yourself, is my character's backstory something that a level 1 character could actually do? If not, you've given yourself an overly complicated mary sue backstory.
Ask yourself, has my character definitely done the coolest things at the table? If so, you're probably stealing the limelight too often, and should give the other places chances to be the "main" character sometimes.

>>57186572
I read it and I really like how magic works. I must have thought the actual events were a bit dull, because I don't remember much of the details.

What the hell time period did it take place in anyway? British people are going from talking about current American colonial rebellions to flying in airplanes in the same book. I don't know if British demons kept the colonies in line longer or if airplanes were invented quicker.

>>57198942
What animal would you replace the Slytherin mascot with? I honestly can't think of one that carries the same connotations of ominousness and cunning without either having already been used (i.e. the Ravenclaw raven) or the kind of vermin that doesn't have enough positive connotations to have been believably used as a heraldic symbol by some noble wizard (e.g. a rat). A fox or wolf could work, but I feel like a set of two mammals, a bird and a reptile creates a sort of aesthetic balance, and there aren't all that many symbolically significant reptiles besides the snake.

I guess you could change it for a fish, but those aren't the most impressive.

Maybe a more Celtic mythology inspired set of animals for the houses? Say, bear, stag, salmon and swan? It would make sense if the school is still located in Scotland.

Of course, if we place the magic school somewhere else, anything goes.

>>57186572
I go back to it sometimes to reread Nathaniel's last chapter

>>57199117
>What animal would you replace the Slytherin mascot with? I honestly can't think of one that carries the same connotations of ominousness and cunning without either having already been used (i.e. the Ravenclaw raven) or the kind of vermin that doesn't have enough positive connotations to have been believably used as a heraldic symbol by some noble wizard (e.g. a rat). A fox or wolf could work, but I feel like a set of two mammals, a bird and a reptile creates a sort of aesthetic balance, and there aren't all that many symbolically significant reptiles besides the snake.
Spider. Arguably more virtues than a snake (patience, industry, subtlety), just as on the nose as a symbol. Fox and wolf should be Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, with Gryffindor being an eagle

>>57188603
Like the Bad guy banning fire in some hamfisted political allegory?

>>57199344
No real prominence in Northern European mythology, though (unless you count Robert the Bruce' spider, which is indeed related to Scotland but not exactly well known). Same reason I didn't go with scorpion, which was my first thought.

>>57199348
Yes, and the protagonists have to "steal it back," because referencing classical mythology is a cheatcode to making dullards feel smart
>The new scifi action adventure trilogy from Penguin Press
>PROMYTHIA
>Book 1: Forethought
>Book 2: Firebringer
>Book 3 Eagle's Rock

>>57199458
Depressingly, that example wasn't just a hyopthetical.
Terry Goodkind unironically had his bad guy ban fire as a Pro Libertarian allegory.
Its the same series that has his protagonist butchering pacifists for their lack of moral clarity.

>>57186592
>>57184772
I liked /tg/ better when it wasn't full of /pol/tards constantly searching for things to get upset about.

>>57183726
Every bestiary entry starts with "We call them the"

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Best YA series you've never read coming through

Someday I'll be able to genetically engineer a group of players who'll want to play MonsterHearts, and then I'll make playbooks for all the main archetypes (cyborg, werewolf, Lunar, etc.)

>>57200158
>Every bestiary entry starts with "We call them the"
Laffs were had.

>>57199117
>>57199344

Just making it up as I go:

House Arthgrym (Red and Black, Bear): Selected for loyalty, perseverence and courage. Darker qualities are brutal honesty and gullibility in equal measure. They are not subtle. Stereotypically caring and mellow, but also prone to fucking shit up when provoked. Arthgrym produces the people who make wizarding society work from outside the limelight: from architects to managers to doctors. Founded by Arial Arthgrym, a hirsute mountain of a witch who was renowned as both a fighter and healer, as well as having had more children than the rest of the founders combined.

House Raithiad (Copper and Green, Deer): Selected for fair judgement, cool, and a sense of duty. Darker qualities are detachement, ruthlessness and arrogance. Raithiad guides the herd. Stereotypically wise, noble and capable of seeing the "bigger picture", but also prone to sacrificing pawns and making questionable decisions for "the greater good". Raithiad produces those members of wizarding society who guide others, or make tough decisions in public: politicians, judges, teachers, etc. Founded by Ryan Raithiad, an ancient wizarding lawmaker, general and king whom historians can't decide if was betrayed by his own son or killed by the same in self-defense.

House Arthgrym (Red and Black Bear): Their best qualities are loyalty and courage. Their worst are equal measures honesty and gullibility. Stereotypically good natured, uncouth but also very friendly. Arthgrym produces the people who make wizarding society work from outside the limelight: from architects to managers to doctors. Founded by Arial Arthgrym, a hirsute mountain of a witch who was renowned as both a fighter and healer, as well as having had more children than the rest of the founders combined.

>>57200578
Goddamit, shouldn't have copied and pasted from a notepad. Continuing:

House Goldenfirth (Gold and White, Salmon): Selected for creativity, intelligence and open mindedness. Darker qualities are flightiness and impulsiveness. They are something between nerds and artists. Stereotypically philosophical and innovative, but also prone to creepiness, lack of sensetivity and general autism. Goldenfirth produces wizarding society's intelligentsia, from the obvious scientists and philosophers to fine craftswizards and explorers. Founded by Griselda Goldenfirth, an ancient witch famous for delivering prophecies, forging a number of mythical artifacts, and (some say) scandalous relations with merpeople.

House Wynbluen (Silver and Blue, Swan): Selected for generosity, elegance and kindness. Darker qualities include emotionality and superficiality. Wynbluen are everyone's friends. Stereotypically, they're the beautiful, the rich and the popular, as well as the greedy and vapid. Wynbluen produces the members of wizarding society whose job is to work with people, from merchants and lawyers to entertainers and service industry workers. Founded by Wilferth Wynbluen, an ancient wizard who, for all his power, lived as a vagabond and was most notorious as a heartbreaker, homewrecker and trickster.

>>57200598
Some comments:

Since this is meant to serve as setting for a game, I wanted the houses to have roughly similar player appeal, without an obvious "hero house", "villain house" or "boring NPC house". I also wanted them all to have both good and bad traits, and for all of them to select for at least some trait which one could imagine might produce a helpful member of society. For nominally being the primary educational institution of magical Britain in the Harry Potter books, it's really odd to me that Hogwarts seems to direct 25% of its alumni towards, essentially, being "heroes" (which is a great role for INDIVIDUALS to have when times are tough, but doesn't really make upstanding citizens, much less something like "policemen" or "emergency services personnel" since its seems to come with a certain self-centered recklessness) and 25% towards flat out being bad guys. "Realistically speaking", it seems to me like 95% of wizarding society should be made of Hufflepuffs, with maybe 4% Ravenclaws and the Gryffindors and Slytherins sharing the last 1%.

As is, both Arthgrym and Raithiad have obvious Gryffindor qualities, but instead of making up one house of "brave leaders" (of which society can only handle so much), they're divided between Arthgrym's "brave followers" (sort of a Gryf/Hufflepuff hybrid) ad Raithiad's "fair leaders" (a Gryf/Slyherin combination equally capable of producing wizarding society's Roosevelts and Hitlers). Goldenfirth is probably the closest to a Harry Potter house, being a more aesthetically inclined version of Ravenclaw (hence the name that stands out amidst the Celtic gibberish as a combination of English words). Might need some more work in order to give them some distinction.

>>57200608
Finally, Wynbluen is the "socially inclined" house - Arthgrym has empathy and comaradarie and Raithiad has charisma and leadership but to interact with people as equels takes something else. In a way, it's both the most glamorous of the houses (the iconic Wynbluen is probably a rich, pretty, popular prep) and the least (which subsequently goes on to be a store clerk).

As a final note, you may notice none of the houses produces menial laborers, which you'd think a society would need some of. Who cleans the streets? Who drives the carts? Who cooks the food and fixes the plumbing? But here's the thing: these guys are magic. They want their streets cleaned, they just have their brooms do the Mickey Mouse routine. As I imagine this "wizarding society", virtually all the jobs are either intellectual, social, or political.

There. I've given more thought into this bullshit than it by any right deserves. Take it from here, leave it, I don't really care.

>>57200578
I know it's a typo, but I rather like the idea of two houses with identical names and heraldry but completely different outlooks and goals, and they spend most of their time fighting over who the REAL House Arthgrym is.

>>57200623
That's what happens when you work off of notepad. Never work off a notepad. You'll try to copy and paste some kind of end result and make an idiot out of yourself when you realize you've highlighted half of your draft and half of random scribbling.

>>57200653
It's called "half measures", and you got what was coming for you. If you're going to put thought into something, it deserves a proper document.

>>57198193
Honestly, even then I'll never really begrudge adults who exclusively read YA fiction. It's better than watching Netflix all day, which is what most

>>57186853
American, can confirm. This is doubly important if they are not white, as they tend to become a caricature of said race even more. Especially if they are clearly there to increase the diversity qoutient so the writer can express how progressive they are.

The only exception is if the character is gay, in which case that overrides any race and becomes the entire character.

>>57200578
>>57200598
>>57200608
Typos aside, I think it's definitely a step in the right direction to combine Gryffindor and Hufflepuff into something that's neither an obvious "main characters go here"/"unimportant schmocks go here", and Gryffindor and Slithrin into one that's less "bad guys go here".

The other two you came up with are far less inspiring, imho.

>>57186853
Americans aren't obsessed with race, they're obsessed with colour.

>>57183785
>YA novels are only female
Percy Jackson is YA as fuck
>your stepfather is abusive which means setting him up to magically kill himself is A OK
>your real dad is an actual god
>which makes you a demigod
>your dyslexia is actually your brain being hardwired for ancient greek

>>57200578
>>57200598
>>57200608
>>57200620
>>57200623
>>57200653
>>57200687
https://pastebin.com/w9UKERpt
There you whiners go. Put it all up in a pastebin for you. If this takes off I suppose someone will make a Google Doc. I'm not going to bother.

>>57186085
No but everyone knows that harem and isekai are cancer

>>57187141
Itd be really hard to parody Percy Jackson because what the fuck do you do? They already confirm that all gods except Yahweh are real. Roman? Norse? Egyptian? Already published as their own seri s within the universe.

>>57201023
Hey, come on, I love Love Hina.

>>57191687
4 houses only makes sense as a riff on British Boarding Schools and British Boarding School Stories.
I’d make it a riff on an American Public High School Story.

>>57201089
Montezuma "Monty" Rodriguez, troubled youth from Austin with some serious anger management issues, finds out his real dad was actually the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. Alongside a wisecracking hummingbird nagual, a friendly Ahuitzotl, and his new friends Theresa and Miguel (children of Tlaloc and Mictlantechuti), they set out to stop an evil plot by Tezcatlipoca, who has been driven insane by star demons due to a lack of sacrifices.

>>57201089
>>57201153
Wow, I was in the middle of writing something similar. Main character named "Gil" (short for Gilgamesh) whose dad died in the gulf war to keep with the requisite "childhood issues are actually just an indication you're special!" finds out he's actually the result of an illicit affair with a local woman who was actually Ishtar in disguise.

This is probably better.

How bout Skulduggery Pleasant? That counts as YA, right?

Also that setting would actually make a pretty badass one for an RPG.

>>57183726
>Tongue lodged firmly in cheek, let’s try to make a (theoretically workable) RPG covering modern YA fiction.

Play oWoD or Monsterhearts.

>>57200158
>>57200540
I don’t get it

>>57201272
But then you're not covering the ever so important "nonconformist girl saves dystopian future" genre.

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>>57183785
>when your female PCs have included a former gangbanger explosive-sexual adrenaline junkie, an inept cocktease thief, and a surly blacksmith's-daughter-who-was-raised-like-a-son

>>57201124
That seems to be an obvious direction to take, but I'm concerned that in that case it'd be much more difficult to characterize as a "Harry Potter imitation" rather than one of any number of other wizard school themed YA novels. The British Boarding School type setting is extremely central to the entire feeling and possibly even themes of Harry Potter.

>>57187141
For Not!Hunger Games, we just need to find an alternative social issue to base our dystopia on. Or would that make it more like Divergent Or Uglies for that matter, but I'd hate to mindlessly imitate the last one since it's actually good?

>>57201124
That school closed down when this one Hufflepuff went nuts and Aveda Kadevra'd everyone with his dad's wand

Gonna need some serious race mechanics to accommodate all those half-vampire, half-werewolf demigod wizards with the souls of dragons and cyborg implants.

>>57201283
>I don’t get it

>Flowername Weaponheart trudged through the freezing-cold water, stumbling and slipping, biting her bruised and bleeding lips to stop from crying out as she fell and her knee collided with a rock midstream. Sweat and fear matted her long red hair to her forehead even though the night was frigid and cold. She risked a glance back over her shoulder and gasped as she saw the swiveling lights of an Enforcerate hunting patrol. Flowername's adopted stepfather had told her that the Enforcerate soldiers had machines that could see the heat of your body, even without any light. Terror overtook her completely, freezing her in place in the freezing water, and she forced herself to remember why she had fled in the first place. In Flowername's town, children were still allowed to be raised by their parents, or someone else who wanted to take care of them if their parents were dead, which was usually the case. She had heard that in other towns, the Enforcerates were taking babies away from their parents to raise as mindless soldiers. Her adopted stepfather had said it was because they weren't getting enough soldiers from the towns. When a juven like Flowername turned sixteen, the Enforcerate determined what that juven's career was going to be. Usually this meant an Enforcerate squad took them away from the town and no one saw them again.
>Flowername had turned sixteen last week. Her adopted stepfather had tried to hide the birthday party, but the Enforcerate had spies everywhere. The thought of seeing him shot by an Enforcerate laserbullet and slumped over dead next to the birthday cake he had spent all night working on flashed briefly in her mind, and the shock was enough to tear her out of her shock.

>>57202900

>Finally, Flowername scrambled up the edge of the bank, bloody hands feeling the rough, flat false-stone of the Before People. A rusted chain-link fence revealed itself in the moonlight above her, with a faded and rusting sign whose letters Flowername could not read, but the black skull and lightning emblazoned on the flaking yellow metal made its intention clear. Grasping a stick, she stretched out her arm and prodded the fence. At the last instant she thought that if the fence still had lektrik, the sparks might alert the Enforcerate hunters, but the fence was inert and not dangerous. Quickly, Flowername pulled up a section that had come loose from the rusted metal fencepost and scrambled underneath.
>Gasping for breath, Flowername lurched and fell to her knees, gasping with exhaustion. A brief smile crept on her lips at the thought of having escaped the Enforcerate, when suddenly a bright flashlight shined on her, spotlighting her body against the trees.
>"There she is!" a voice yelled, but Flowername was blinded by the glare of the flashlight and fell backward, holding one scraped and bloody hand in front of her face to shield her eyes from the light. She squinted as other lights circled in around her.
>"Don't move!" someone shouted at her, and she heard the click and whining noises of laserbullet guns warming up.
>Flowername dug her bootheels into the ground and pushed herself backward as one of the Enforcerate hunters stepped forward in her direction. A human shape resolved out of the harsh glare of their lektrik lights, but Flowername could only see a black mask with bulging glass eyes and a fat snout like a mosquito. You never saw the face of an Enforcerate soldier.

>>57202915

>Flowername pushed herself back farther, jarring her back painfully as it banged up against a tree. The Enforcerate hunter reached out his fist toward Flowername, and she saw he was holding some kind of small machine that gave off lektrik sparks. "This will only hurt for a second-" the Enforcerate began to say, when suddenly, a shape sprung from past the edge of their flashlights and tackled the Enforcerate soldier. Flowername's ears were overwhelmed with the sudden stinging whines of laserbullets filling the air as the Enforcerate soldiers began firing their guns at the mysterious attacker. One laserbullet struck the tree directly behind Flowername, leaving a glowing trail of embers less than an inch from her cheek. Flowername gasped and threw herself to the ground, clutching at the dried leaves of late autumn with bloody hands as she scrambed around the tree trunk away from the fighting. There were fewer whines from the laserbullets, Flowername realized, and also something else. Loud, high-pitched screaming, not out of fear or pain, but anger. As the whines of the laserbullets dwindled, the screams multiplied and intensified. Flowername clamped her bloody hands over her ears and dared to peek around the edge of the tree, where her eyes widened in the dark as she watched one lone Enforcerate soldier swinging his flashlight from side to side wildly, spraying laserbullets randomly as he stepped backward. Flowername could see other Enforcerate flashlights lying on the ground, unmoving.
>Suddenly, Flowername heard a leaf rustle behind her, but just as she began to turn, a hand pressed itself over her lips. "Don't say anything," a voice whispered in her ear.
>"Mmmph!" Flowername exclaimed, clutching at the hand with bloody hands.
>The hand let itself be pulled away from her lips, and as Flowername turned, her eyes widened as she was surprised to see a handsome juven only a year or two older than her!

>>57202926

>"Who-?" Flowername began to ask, when the juven put his hand back over her mouth to silence her. Flowername felt a lektrik tingle in the center of her chest as he did so and realized that she didn't exactly mind him doing it.
>"We're not with them," the juven whispered. "Come on, before they notice us!"
>"We-?" Flowername began to ask as he took his hand away from her mouth and grasped her slim wrist, pulling her up and deeper into the forest.
>"Don't look back, just follow me," he told Flowername, leading her forward confidently. Even in just the moonlight Flowername could see that he was at least a head taller than her, with broad shoulders.
>Finally, after what seemed like five minutes, they finally slowed to a stop. "Where are we?" Flowername asked.
>"Don't you live around here?" the older boy asked her.
>"The Enforcerate doesn't allow our town to cross to the other side of that river," Flowername said, and suddenly the unfairness of that statement struck her, and she felt her face begin to burn with anger.
>"There's an old road near here," the boy said, and directed Flowername's gaze through the trees toward where she could see a break in the woods and some low walls of false-stone. "A big one, from the Age of Plastic. An interstate. I'm surprised you don't know about it."
>Flowername's face began to burn with anger again as she began to realize how much the Enforcerate had kept secret from her town. The thought of this older juven knowing how ignorant she was made her face burn for a different reason that she couldn't quite understand. Why should she care what he thought of her? She would probably meet a lot of people before she finally escaped the Enforcerate.
>The older boy realized he had said something to upset her so he kept talking. "My name's Tradegood. We were camping here for the night. Didn't realize there would be any Enforcerate patrols around here."

>>57202954

>"Who's 'we'?" Flowername asked again.
>"My grandson and myself," came a gruff voice from out of the woods. Flowername gasped and realized that she was clutching Tradegood's jacket. When an old man with a beard picked his way out of the trees into the moonlight of the clearing they were standing in, Flowername felt her fingers relax.
>"Who are you?" she asked him.
>"My name's Familiarname," the old man said gruffly.
>"What town are you two from?" Flowername asked.
>"We're not from any town," Familiarname replied gruffly.
>"We live on our own, free from the Enforcerate," Tradegood said, looking down at Flowername.
>"What were those... things... that attacked the Enforcerate soldiers?" Flowername asked, gazing up at Tradegood's face in the moonlight through her long red hair that had begun to curl as it dried.
>"We call them nightscreamers. No one's ever seen one in the daylight. No one who's lived, anyway," Familiarname explained gruffly.
>"Has anyone ever tried talking with them?" Flowername asked.
>"Talk to a nightscreamer? Ridiculous," Familiarname said, waving a hand as he dismissed her question gruffly.

===

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE EXCITING YOUNG ADULT DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

FREEDOM BURN

COMING FEBRUARY 2018

>>57202983
Watch her become mother of nightscreamers

>>57200540
I read Cinder and Scarlet, and the robot is best girl

>>57203335
What's it about?

>>57203335
How well does AW handle "disembodied AI limited only by its teenage girl programming that splits its consciousness between a spaceship and a robot"

>>57203821
The first book is about a teenage cyborg named Cinder with (among other components) a prosthetic foot, who lives with her wicked stepmother and her two bitchy stepsisters. Through a series of interesting circumstances, she meets a prince, and future books have her encounter a girl with red hair who runs her grandmother's delivery spaceship, a girl with very long hair locked in a satellite, and an evil queen from the moon who can exhibit seemingly supernatural abilities that are beyond what you or I can do.

Also her maidbot and only friend gets scrapped and resurrected as a spaceship.

>>57202900
>>57202915
>>57202926
>>57202954
>>57202983
Never use this power for evil.

>>57202983
That's a goldmine you have right there mate, I know many people that would love it

>>57202900
>>57202915
>>57202926
>>57202954
>>57202983
Now do a pastiche of another subgenre!

>>57204018
>>57204083
>>57204597

I haven't even gotten to the part where Flowername infiltrates the capital of the Enforcerate and meets her friend from her hometown named Passive who was assigned to the scrapfields to the brutal career of pulling pieces of scrap metal out of the ruins of the Before People nearby but was supposedly killed even though nobody ever saw the body and is now working as a conscripted pleasure girl for high-ranking Enforcerates and Flowername has to get dolled up in uncharacteristically racy clothing, hairstyle and makeup and pretend to be working there too and then later gets to kick a lot of ass while wearing racy clothing in public right before she sees Tradegood again for the first time since he caught her kissing Cityguy.

>>57204018
Alternatively, use this power exclusively for evil.

>>57196366
yeah your'e right. thankfully my gm is better than me and made it so she thought she evaded those 2 organizations and she killed alot of key people to the planets government but its fine.

I was going for a character that was 1 part Indiana Jones, 1 part violent criminal, 1 part Jugantar revolutionary.

>>57183758
fpbp

So are we making this into a thing, or is this just another one of those "/tg/ talks about theoretically maybe creating a game, nobody picks up the glove" threads?

>>57207181
>So are we making this into a thing, or is this just another one of those "/tg/ talks about theoretically maybe creating a game, nobody picks up the glove" threads?

Go for it.

>>57203966
This actually sounds totally rad.

>>57184540

The Kite Runner is one of the worst written books I have ever had the misfortune to read. It should be purged from earth so no one else has to suffer.

>>57207470
Yeah, I never read any of the Twilight books and I only read the first Hunger Games, but I really got into the Lunar Chronicles.

>>57201121
I'm sorry anon, but it's terminal for you

>>57202900
>>57202915
>>57202926
>>57202954
>>57202983
I look forward to when Inferno Dawn--the third book in the Enforcerate Trilogy--is adapted into a two part film for some reason.

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>>57208768
Thanks anon

Bigger version of OP pic

>>57184513
I like them because I grew up with them that and I'm a degenerate furry fuck

>>57208768
Honestly it drew me in

>>57205236
You do realize you could be making money on this?

>>57209001
There's some cool ideas in there I won't lie. Like I like how they're living in the bones of the actual present day instead of the bones of some vague near future. And while Flowername is intentionally bland I appreciate the fact she's not a moron. She questions the things she should questions and understands what she should already know.

Honestly if anon changes the prose from deliberately bad to deliberately good and adds in a few twists to the story then I think he has the makings of a fun story here. Probably not the next Harry Potter but teens will definitely eat it up.

>>57184140
>>All these uncreative bitches ITT
Fucker I will write you this system.
You have six D6s. This is your dice pool, and every one is associated with an adjective. You get another one every time you level up, but you have to think of a different adjective for every die.
When you roll, you roll as many D6s as you can justify the adjectives applying to your action. The DM rolls against you, adding a D6 to the pool for every adjective he uses to describe the obstacle. Shallow obstacles are easily overcome, clusterfucks of description much harder to beat.
Every time you roll a 1, you add a complication. That means that either in between the action or at the end of the session, you have to roleplay or write a description of your character brooding/angsting/trying to fuck an NPC, and MUST include at least as many adjectives as complications. Otherwise you can't use the adjective you rolled the complication with until you do.
Done. I want my no-prize.

>>57187154
I don't think Eragon has the same effect on YA fiction that the other examples did. But then, I can't think of a YA fantasy setting that has in recent memory.

Rolled 4, 1, 3, 6, 1 = 15 (5d6)

>>57209328
Character:
Flowername Weaponheart
>Redheaded
>Sixteen
>Bloodied
>Naive
>Hunted
>Scared
She tries to escape from the Enforcerate, but is faced by a frigid river and the swiveling lights of the patrol (2 adjectives). Sixteen, Hunted, and Scared apply here, as she is beginning to develop into someone who can defend herself and she's desperate to escape.
>Rollan, first three hers, second two opposition

>>57209436
Historical Fantasy doesn't have as much representation, true. My theory is teenage girls just don't enjoy it as much as Modern Fantasy or near-future Science Fiction. When you're a teenaged girl who literally lives and dies by what happens in high school then it's kinda hard to project yourself into a universe where high school doesn't exist.

>>57209519
Boom. She succeeds, but she also rolls a complication. We'll call it the fence.
Hell, let me add in a DM mechanic: Deus Ex Machina. When the DM rolls a 1, a die is added to the Deus Ex Machina pool. Any player can use the dice in this pool only once, before it is used up and more need to be added. However, you need to describe the Deus Ex Machnia, however improbable.
So her Hunted turns into a Complication and the Deus Ex Machina pool increases. We'll say she uses it to boost her roll afterwards and escape the Enforcerate.

>>57209590
>>57209519
Nice

>>57209436
It has the same basic characteristics, though.

>>57209328
Wouldn't that run into the so-called "Fate problem", though, where someone with the adjectives "smart" and "capable" would break the game while someone who settled for "redhead" or "lanky" is going to be left in everyone's dust? There needs to be some kind of mechanical incentive to take adjectives that aren't as widely applicable or positive. YA literature lives and breaths characters who are "awkward", "introverted", or are described using very specific physical terms (e.g. "piercing green eyes") that wouldn't logically help in too many kinds of rolls.

>>57212386
It's a game about Mary Sues. Balance was not even remotely considered in my idea.

>>57212404
Perhaps, but it would also result in very boring games and very samey characters, and while you can argue that this is "faithful to the source material" you have to keep in mind that in the end of the day the game also needs to be enjoyable to play.

(also, like I said, if you want to honestly "model YA lit Mary Sues" that still doesn't work since it gives players no reason to describe them the way YA lit Mary Sues are described)

>>57212428
Man, I don't fucking know, it's 4 in the morning where I am after I got woken up because my family needed to hit the road.
A list of character traits that you have to pick from for each genre or archetype of character? With a buncha flowery words like someone threw a thesaurus into a paper shredder and then taped the result to the page?

Animorphs best YA novels. Prove me wrong.

>>57199059
It's an alternative history

>>57212386
>>57212404
>>57212428
Solve it the same as the Fate problem, then. Have it run on some sort of resource pool that needs to be tapped into to use your adjectives and which only gets refilled by accepting complications because of them. That way, someone with a "strategically impeccable but boring" adjective like "smart" will quickly run out of points (since it's applicable to anything but can't receive too many complications) while someone with a more balanced character, with niche advantages AND disadvantages, will play better in the long run.

Of course, by that point you should be asking yourself why you're not just playing Fate.

>>57186960
>Mu-tants
>Missing the obvious pun of 'Sue-tant'

>>57183726
what is YA?

>>57212518

Young Adult.

>>57212518
"Young Adult" literature. Books written for teenagers

>>57212518
>>57212531

It's ended up a genre because well, there are some large emotional touchstones that most teenagers run into that make it an easy sell.

>Being unsure of your place in the world.
>Wanting to feel special in a world you are increasingly realising is so much bigger than you are.

That sort of stuff.

>>57183726
nWoD
Mortals, vampire, or werewolf. Check out Liberation Industries Crescent Coast Werewolf actual play podcast.

>>57183726
Do girls really find that shitty Hitler Youth haircut attractive? It looks terrible.

>>57201534
IIRC, someone on /tg/ once presently an actually rather clever critique for Bush era panic/public ignorance fueled politics using radical enviromentalists as a metaphor (that is, a freak hurricane destroys a major city, but instead of putting things in perspective and understanding the situation in context all the political parties just jump the bandwagon and turn "solving the environmental crisis" into the number one political/media/discussion issue, eventually resulting in the country collapsing into an insane "green dystopia" where people can get shot for littering and nobody is allowed to own a private vehicle for fear of emissions).

/tg/ being what it is, they of course missed the point entirely and thought the critique was of enviromentalists themselves.

Still, does it work as a concept? "Panic fueled politics" definitely sounds to me like the kind of shallow social critique a teenager might get behind without understanding the nuances of and easily decide on whom the "good" and "bad" guys in are.

>>57212840
Aren't undercuts in vogue right now? I don't know how fashion trends change, they just do.

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>>57212904
Here is it, minus the posts of idiots completely missing the subtext and praising anon for telling it how it is to those silly environmentalists.

>>57201534
What is even the social issue that the Hunger Games dystopia is based on? I really should probably read the first book, but I just have never been interested enough to even look up it's setting. I know there's the battle royale blood-sport, obviously, but that's a result of a dystopia and not the cause.

>>57212960
It's actually less obvious than a lot of other examples, but ultimately the books heavy handedly deal with:

1. Social Stratification, i.e. "the one percent are selfish idiots who live in a technological paradise and care only about petty pleasures while the 99% are hardworking peasants toiling away under their heel"
2. People's morbid fascination with reality television, allowing horrible things to be done to children because as soon as something is shown on TV with a colorful presentation it becomes "entertainment" and thus isn't something to worry about or criticize.

>>57212959
It's nice. I could see it selling to teens. Enviromentalism is a hot topic without being volatile and something teens like to *think* that they've given deep thought but without having any real opinion either way, so they can't be insulted. They're just at the age where they start doubting what they know on such subjects (since children's oriented media usually has very simplistic, one-sided messages about environmentalism and teens are both more capable of judging complex issues AND inclined on principle to dismiss what they've so far been told), and are automatically supportive of anything that goes against what they've come to think of as the mainstream opinion. So long as you make it relatively clear that environmentalism itself isn't bad, alarmism and dictatorship are, they'll feel like absolute geniuses for reading such a "deep" and "controversial" book where what they've always been told is "good" isn't just "good"!

For extra effect, maybe make it so that on the surface the eco-alarmist dystopia actually looks like a pretty nice place to live, "but", etc.

>>57213123
>eco-alarmist dystopia actually looks like a pretty nice place to live, "but"
Not even that difficult, honestly. Of the top of my head you could easily write it to look like that.
Since electricity has been cut off from most people, outside cities people have gone back to a rustic rural life which can be portrayed as being very comfy. Fieldwork and shit would still benefit from contemporary technology, it's just more regulated. The protagonist would come from a sleepy farming community from the sticks.
Then completely in contrast the cities have a lot of squalor. While rural communities haven't regressed, cities have suffered an explosive growth of urban poverty. It's just hidden under spick-and-span spit-shine cleanliness that the administration enforces.

>>57213123
>>57213283
Wouldn't it be more effective (not to mention simpler) to just go with a bog standard "eco utopia" image then just show how it's maintained by brutal enforcement? You know what I'm talking about: all those green, rolling hills, those shining white wind turbines/solar collectors, buildings that all look like they were designed by Apple...

>>57213326
Of course that would be a part of it, but aesthetic on its own isn't enough yet. You need to depict how the people feel about living in that world to create the kind of bait-and-switch/mood turnaround of appearances belying the reality of the situation.

>>57213123
>>57213283
>>57213326
>>57213436
If the main issue is "alarmism" itself, rather than specifically ecology, would the world still be that primitive? Or would this just be yet another YA dystopia where "it turns out" (surprise, surprise) the common people are living in hovels farming algea for "maximum sustainability" while the richest 0.0000001% enjoy the fruits of their labor from a bona fide technological utopia where they're served by robots/make use of advanced technology to keep the people down/fight against the inevitable populist rebellion?

>>57213511
It would follow the norm, but that would be more or less boring. I think it would be far more interesting to create a genuine disparity between urban and rural lives, as in that in the countryside people genuinely live happy and good lives, but I can't come up with a narrative to build around that which would not fall into actually being really pro environmentalist and going too light on the dystopia. After all, excessive population and heavy urbanization are destroying the environment.
You'd have to really go into the alarmist angle. Make the enforcement excessive and sanctions brutally harsh, but that would have to affect the rural communities as well, at which point it becomes hard to create the outwardly pleasant appearance.

>>57213614
Well, we're not exactly trying to reinvent the wheel here.

Make it so that choosing a splat is always a crucial element of character generation, whether it's picking your Harry Potter House, your Hunger Game district, or your supernatural race, BUT creating new splats is effortlessly easy so every player can make themselves the "first member of House Justmadeuponthespot in 700 generations", or "the only survivor of District 14", or a "one of a kind half vampire, half angel".

>>57199059
Magic is used to keep the underclasses down. It was pivotal detail in several story arcs. A bunch of unruly merchants wanting to go their own way for economic and political freedom is easy to squash when you can literally create black holes.

>>57213614
Needs more government troopers in faceless, shining armor suits with some technological weapons the heroic rebels could slaughter by the dozens without remorse.

>>57201298
>an inept cocktease thief
How are they inept? They can't get anyone interested or they get too horny and end up in bed with their target? Or they can't find any cockteasing skills to steal?
Or are they multiclassing as a cocktease/rogue? I presume cocktease is some kind of bardic variant who grants the rest of the party superpowers through repressed sexual urges, or something. Perhaps they get paladins to white knight them? That would explain why they have a hard time succeeding as a thief.

>>57212840
for some reason it's either
a: very popular for boys and girls right now
or
b: unusually popular in media and not in actuality

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Superior YA settings, go.

>>57216462
I live in a town in the rural Midwest with a population of fewer than 900 total residents.

At least three girls at the high school have a sidecut.

>>57216652
that's evidence enough for me

>>57185279
>Deep South Psychic Powers

Sounds pretty cool tbqhwy

>>57197389
That's actually perfect, I think. It's a pretty flexible, technically generic system that isn't too rules heavy and does have some amount of focus on character relationships and such. It's just what we need.

>>57184569
The guy who made the comic works for buzzfeed so he's probably criticizing the lack of interracial relationships in YA.

>>57212386
>"redhead"
You tap into your fiery passion to deliver a rousing speech and initiate a riot as a distraction. / The guards haul you off, being the only ones aroused OR The riot starts but you get caught in it too.
>"lanky"
You use your slender build to appear obviously nonthreatening and not worth questioning. / You try to appear inconspicuous and thus make yourself extremely suspicious.
>"awkward"
The guard gives up interrogating you as a waste of time. / The guard gets furious with you for wasting his time.
>"introverted"
The time you spend by yourself has allowed you to learn how to forge IDs well enough to fool this lowly guard. / Your fake cannot fool electronic scanners, which sound an alarm.
>"piercing green eyes"
Your keen senses notice some possibility of action. / You notice a possibility of action. It has unintended consequences.

You can use any adjective to overcome any obstacle. The results of success or failure are up to the DM, as is the challenge rating of the obstacle. You level up adjectives by using them and add your per-adjective level to your roll. Every five such level-ups you may pick a new adjective or level-up the old one twice. So character builds story and story builds character.

>>57213614
Rural life is comfy when you stay in the (lead-free) painted lines, but any attempts to change anything, develop anything, or just acting out of line in some number of ways get you brutally punished.
Like, the overpopulation laws. So what happens when your farmboy and farmgirl have an impulsive roll in the hay? If they're caught they get harshly punished, with a side of potential forced abortion.

So how do you model the character relationships that are so central to the genre? I don't think I've yet to see a game that does it mechanically in a way that doesn't come off as extremely, well, mechanical, but the prominence of the theme means it probably needs mechanical representation nevertheless.

I think the thing about most games with mechanics for social interactions, among them seduction, is that they're very... "goal oriented", so to speak. The fact that they're often termed something like "social combat" is quite illuminating: they're treated like the two sides are fighting and each one wants to achieve a very clear goal at the cost of the other's.

It's one thing that I think Monsterhearts, which is supposedly ABOUT that, doesn't get well. Rolling to "turn someone on" is just so... artificial. And you always do it for a clear, mechanical purpose, whether or not your character is actively engaging in seduction or you're just invoking the narrative.

In YA fiction, the heroine almost never actively "seduces" her love interest (odds are she doesn't realize she can, what with being so "plain" and "awkward" and him being "totally out of her league"...), there are no clear boundaries to when, where or under what circumstances "romance is active", and nobody has a specific "goal" in the first place (beyond some very vague "be together with ______"). Even "I want to sleep with _____" doesn't usually come up.

So reducing the relationships to something like a roll, or even a contained series of rolls, with clear and objective results sounds like it might not be the best way of going about it.

Ironically, if we want to mechanically model the formulaic romances of YA literature, we really need to think outside the box.

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I've not seen this mentioned anywhere in this thread.

Just about EVERY dystopian/apocalyptic YA setting has a color-coded caste system that looks to be based off of Brave New World's. I don't know if that's normally meant to be some sort of racial allegory or a way to make things feel a bit more like the high school politics of grade levels, but it's always there to one degree or another.
Red Rising is the most overt example I can think of, but even things like the strata in Hunger Games have associated colors.

>>57217058
That ties into my comment >>57214931
Teenaged girls are only slightly behind neckbeards when it comes to loving to be able to classify characters. The more classifications are possible (What's their House? What's the shape of their Patronus? What type is their wand? What's their animagus form?), the more they enjoy, especially if they can be characterized based on them. "Oh, he's from House X/District Y, that means he probably looks like Z, his favorite classical element is M, and his strongest point is N".

>>57217325
If your Chosen Element isn't M then get the fuck outta here

>>57217325
I'll tell you the secret: teenage girls absolutely fucking love personality quizzes. Every such classification is just one more excuse to have one. What's MY house/animagus/wand? What's MY district? What's MY element?

Hell, if you want to go all in about this, I say this game should DEFINITELY make players fill out a quiz of some sort to decide their character splats. Making one could be difficult, I admit, but it would certainly fit the spirit.

>>57217325
>>57217373
This. It's almost like in astrology (incidentally, teenage girls used to love astrology back when I'm from). Your sign has all those associations attached - it has an animal, a flower, a type of food, a type of gem, a color, an element, a bird, a weapon, an object... Girls would love that.

Look at what Rowling did with the Houses of Hogwarts: each one has not just an animal and a color scheme, but also a symbolically significant placement of their dormitories (and the shape of the dormitories themselves), elemental and astrological connotations, their own characteristic ghost, their own characteristic teacher, their own strengths and weaknesses...

>>57209148
I argue that the opposite would be hilarious as a parody YA novel. Have her be the ONLY person treating her situation as most YA protags do, and have her tell the story from her perspective. The people live normal lives, there are no all-powerful megainstitutions (buisness or gov’t) with overt evil intentions (though some corruption and evil does exist; it’s real life after all), and nothing is actually wrong on a massive scale. Protag just doesn’t go out much and doesn’t like what she sees when she does.

>>57216966
>So reducing the relationships to something like a roll, or even a contained series of rolls, with clear and objective results sounds like it might not be the best way of going about it.
>Ironically, if we want to mechanically model the formulaic romances of YA literature, we really need to think outside the box.
What if (just a suggestion here) our hypothetical game has something that I'll refer to in this post as "Romance Points" or RP. Whenever your PC succeeds in a difficult story-relevant task, you get an RP that you can choose to immediately invest in an NPC who's in that scene with you, or keep it to use as a bonus to a roll during the next scene (if you don't use your RP for either of these, the RP is lost). If you invest it in that NPC, they have a more favorable impression of you because of your recent success. If you don't invest it in that NPC, they weren't particularly impressed.

NPCs have unique thresholds that are kept secret from the players. Example thresholds:

RP RESULT
2 NPC will reveal a secret
5 NPC will kiss PC
8 NPC will risk danger to aid PC
10 NPC will reveal all secrets

Attempting to get a result that's above your threshold with that NPC will result in the NPC getting upset at your PC and your RP total with them will drop by a number equal to the difference between your current RP total and the threshold of what you were attempting. Example: if your RP with NPCB is 4, and you try to kiss NPCB (threshold of 5), NPCB not only refuses to kiss you, but your RP with NPCB is reduced by 1 (5-4=1), so your new RP with NPCB is 3. If you want them to kiss you back, you'll have to put a lot more effort into making yourself look good in their eyes.

>>57217769
For simplicity's sake, how about something like an "intimacy ladder", where various actions have various ratings, and to gain EXP/RP/Beats/whatever useful game currency you need you simply have to play out a scene of the next highest intimacy level? That way if you want to get more, you got to open up more (heart or legs) to your love interest, or find a new one (since at first so much as accidentally running into and having a conversation with them is enough to merit a point).

Some nuances:

There is still some kind of advantage for playing out romance scenes of the same intimacy level (with maybe a token reward for scenes of a lower one). In fact, there might even be some kind of penalty for trying to leap too fast across the intimacy levels - good YA lit relationships take UNBEARABLY long to move from the 'kissing' to 'fucking' stage, if at all, and if the heroine has sex with a guy she's just met it's almost NEVER seen as a good thing. They got to spend at least 3/4ths of a book talking about their respective childhood traumas first.

>>57217873
Explain this; I like what you're saying but I want more.

>>57217761
Well obviously. I'm just pointing out Flowername is a tad smarter than most YA protagonists act. But that trend is rooted in the fact most YA authors don't think very hard about how normal people act

>>57199038
That only works for dnd backstory.

Rogue Trader expects that your characters were above average and had lives before the game started. This includes having retired from wars or being expirenced in your field of study. Shadowrun has you as someone who spent their life learning to survive as a shadowrunner. WoD characters can end their story arcs with only minimal advancment in their skills unless given a load of xp per chapter.

The level 1 backstory shit falls apart with almost any system besides dnd.

>>57218071
Let's say, for simplicity's sake, that the intimacy levels are 1, 2, and 3,and 4, where "1" is a belligerent/witty dialogue showing how they don't get along, "2" is an angsty dialogue about the past, "3" is a desperate kiss, and "4" is implied offscreen sex.

If the main character meets a love interest, they can gather a point (with some mechanical value, say XP for the sake of this example) by advancing from their current relationship level (0, they don't know each other) to 1 by engaging in a level 1 interaction (belligerent dialogue). Once they've done that, they could continue taunting each other for as long as they want but from that point on, they'll no longer receive XP for it, only a lesser reward (say, bennies. Maybe even specifically make it different so as to incentivize more interactions between each "intimacy level up"). If they want another XP, they have to move up the ladder and have an angsty dialogue about the past. Once they've done that, further angsty dialogue will only gain them bennies and belligerent dialogue will get even less. The next XP they'll only get with the desperate kiss, etc.

If the main character can't afford to go up to the next level (maybe there's some kind of mechanical cost to this, to represent the weight of the decision in YA literature?), her only other choice to continue racking XP is to meet a new love interest and start again from "belligerent dialogue"...

Maybe the ladder can even have sections that work more like a "tree", so you can only claim some rewards if, say, you're in a number of simultaneous relationships...

In all of these cases, skipping levels of the ladder either offers no reward (arguably, more faithful to the source material since relationships that move too fast [by genre standards, of course] are almost always depicted negatively there), or has some bad consequences, making it a tough decision for the players to make. Do we move straight from angsty dialogue to sex?

>>57216966

When a scene in which your character wasn't present ends, put an emoji sticker on the shipping chart for every pairing present in that scene, representing how you (the player) felt about the two characters' interactions in that scene. Then, all players who were in the scene take turns* copying one of the newly-added stickers onto one of their Feels traits. This may be used to create new Feels traits if desired. When all newly-added Emojis have been claimed, the current MC sets the next scene.

For example: Flowername and Tradegood have a scene together in which Flowername is saved from the Enforcerate by Tradegood. The players of the non-present characters, Cityguy and Passive, react to the pairing with a sad face and a heart respectively. Flowername's player, being the current MC, chooses the heart and writes down "Crush on Tradegood" as a new Feels traits on her character sheet. Tradegood's player declines to take an emoji, as Tradegood isn't quite sure what to make of Flowername yet. Claiming rights then passes back to Flowername, who adds the sad icon to the Feels trait she just added and revises it: "Crush on Tradegood (but won't admit it because she's afraid of opening up)".

* Starting with the current Main Character and proceeding clockwise

>>57184394
Yeah but it works real well for some things

Shall we build more sample settings? I'm finding this oddly enjoyable.

>>57219451
Trips says that not only does this happen, but Flowername Weaponheart RPG becomes the next big commercial product initially developed as a /tg/ thing.

>>57218417
>Once they've done that, they could continue taunting each other for as long as they want but from that point on, they'll no longer receive XP for it, only a lesser reward (say, bennies. Maybe even specifically make it different so as to incentivize more interactions between each "intimacy level up").
I like this a lot.

>>57216966
>Ironically, if we want to mechanically model the formulaic romances of YA literature, we really need to think outside the box.
>>57218440
>When a scene in which your character wasn't present ends, put an emoji sticker on the shipping chart for every pairing present in that scene, representing how you (the player) felt about the two characters' interactions in that scene. Then, all players who were in the scene take turns* copying one of the newly-added stickers onto one of their Feels traits. This may be used to create new Feels traits if desired. When all newly-added Emojis have been claimed, the current MC sets the next scene.

I *really* like this. While most YA has a single central protagonist, we ARE looking at a collaborative RPG with multiple player characters because that's going to be the most fun for the most people, and a lot of YA has different chapters focus on fleshing out different characters besides the MC, so the idea of a rotating MC who gets their own special rules during "their chapter" is pretty solidly on-point for this genre.

I think we should focus some attention on what could be built around this concept. Also,

>Present Characters
>Non-Present Characters

>>57220513
My only concern with this system is that while it's absolutely perfect for futuristic dystopia themed games (being a jab at social networking culture, which is exactly the kind of thing a Shallow 16 Year Old Who Thinks She's Deep is going to love), it doesn't really seem to fit into the other genres we've described. Does it really work for a game modeling, say, Twilight? Harry Potter? Eragon?

>>57220591
tee bee aych I wrote the Enforcerate Trilogy and I'm mostly just interested in the dystopian shit like OP's image or >>57200540

>>57220671
I agree that it's nice, but the OP does specifically ask for a more generic system.

>>57217415
Look at Homestuck.
It’s all about self-insertion at the end of the day. These kinds of readers, women and men, want to be able to create their OC, and they rightly intuit that the more variables there are to a person’s place in the world of the narrative, the more robust it is.
So just make sure you classify and people will flock to it.

>>57220798
This
While YA fiction doesn't explicitly feature the kind of blank slate self-inserting that you can find for instance in some trashy Japanese light-novels, if the world has features according to which you can define personalities, it will be interesting to people.
It's Anno Domini 2018 and I see grown-ass women around the university with Hogwarts house patches on their bags. Granted they are the weird types regardless, but still. Just goes to show.

>>57220798
>>57220975
Who's up to grab the madeup Celtic wizarding school houses anon made yesterday and trying to assign them qualities like that? I want to see if we can end up with something markedly different than the Hogwarts houses while still being appealing.

>>57218256
YA PCs shouldn't have complicated or long backstories at all, anon. If they have any kind of extraordinary power, it should come from heredity, fate, or from raw, inborn talent.

In D&D terms, they should be even lower than level 1 when they start out desu.

>>57220513

>Present Characters
>Non-Present Characters

Totally missed that. That's pretty amusing.

Admittedly I was mostly just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what stuck with that mechanic. I have no idea how you would go about passing the torch of MC and what actual mechanical distinctions is possesses, or how to use the emoji thing to try and introduce meaningful tension.

Character creation should definitely be nothing but a series of x/y splats ala WoD. No skills, no merits, just grade-A OC fuel. Maybe just throw a shit-ton of splat variables appropriate for various genres in the book and have the group decide on a subset of them to play with.

>>57220591

It's more of a reference to tumblr fandom culture. I picture a complete game going totally ham with this motif - personality quizzes as character creation like >>57217373 described, giving players bennies for drawing fanart of other player's characters, etc.

>>57221216
Yeah basically this. YA protags have extremely humble origins. Sure they may discover some secret about their past and by the end they'll definitely be one of the most accomplished persons in their world's history, but that all happens during the story. When the book starts, she's just dumbfuck kid.

I need to go to sleep, but I really hope this thread goes somewhere. It'd be really neat to see it continue. If we end up actually making a game out of this, hell, I'm going to play it.

>>57221293

I think Maximum Ride breaks that formula, but even then the backstory pretty much just boils down to "we were genetic experiments, we escaped, now they want us back".

>>57221369
Even then it was always up in the air why The School cared as much as they did. Jeb was twisty as fuck too.

To understand YA literature, you need to understand the psychology of its primary target audience. One of the biggest things about being a teenager is the idea that you're "no longer a kid": you can, do, and developmentally speaking SHOULD start doubting everything you know so far. So what if your teachers, parents and TV have always said one thing? What if they're wrong? You're 12 now, you've just realized that mom and dad aren't divine and the teacher is just another human being. TV is filled to the brim with lies.

This manifests, among many other ways, in a systematic rejection of those literary conventions seen as being "childish": all your childhood media was filled with them so clearly, they have to be wrong.

One of these conventions is the idea that main characters have to be princes and princesses. Those don't exist in real life! Real life isn't a fairytale! You know! You have all of 12 years of experience of it behind you, you're practically an expert on real life!

Hence, the protagonist from humble origins.

>>57184680
That's just MAID.

>>57183977
>tfw no literary genre formed around bowie songs

>>57221429
But of course these people still hold to their preconceptions: everybody is equal, but the protagonist is special for some undefined reason. It’s always something they have zero control over, and is rarely skill-based. “There’s just something about you”

>>57220798
Homestuck is extremely good at having all characters follow a template listing dozens of random traits and characteristics

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>>57202900
>Her adopted stepfather had tried to hide the birthday party, but the Enforcerate had spies everywhere.
>The thought of seeing him shot by an Enforcerate laserbullet and slumped over dead next to the birthday cake he had spent all night working on flashed briefly in her mind.
I like to imagine he went down valiantly, birthday hat and all, clutching onto some party poppers to the very last.

>>57223667
>Lives in a society where the government abducts kids when they turn 16
>Hosts a Sweet Sixteen for his step daughter

Adoptive Stepfather is an Enforcerate spy and isn't really dead.

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I tried my best!

>>57224821
needs several large badges for children's literature awards, and "Now a Major Motion Picture" too

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>>57224893
I'll see what I can do.

>>57207753
Thank you, finally someone else who can't stand the damn thing!

>>57212959
Doesn't really work post-Sandy.

>>57225413
What’s so bad about it?

>>57198124
They haven't mentioned mechanic yet, so there's still time to avoid using a rubbish system.

>>57217373
>I'll tell you the secret: teenage girls absolutely fucking love personality quizzes.
Anyone who remembers Quizilla knows that's not a secret.

>>57183785
I wrote a lengthy reply about how you must be wrong because I dont play my occasional female character that way, and far as Im aware I dont.

That said I can recall several very distinct cases where what you described happened. In fact, she was the chosen one, had also seduced the royal family of her homeland and enslaved them, and was a dhampir.

...

I mean, shit, fair point I guess?

>>57225496
It's just a poorly written guilt-trip story with unappealing characters.

>>57183726
>white boys
Time to miscegenation, goy.

>>57224821
>Red font on red graphic

Other than that pretty good. Though desu from the way anon described the world I figured Freedom Burn would have a green/brown graphic scheme for its cover.

What are the other books titled?

>>57226140
second book has a blue and gray scheme, fascist freeze

>>57226140
>What are the other books titled?
Working on them now

>>57183758
Don't do that. Monsterhearts is SJW garbage of the highest order.

>>57226158
Weird, my thought was "Tyrant Shock" and I also imagined a blue/grey scheme.
>>57226228
Earlier in the thread I suggested "Inferno Dawn" for Book 3 but I don't wanna push ideas onto another anon's work

>>57202900
>>57202915
>>57202926
>>57202954
>>57202983
Just change the stupid-ass names, anon, and you could make fucking millions.

>>57209564
Replying near a fucking day later, but I have to agree, look at how much fanfics have ModernAU tags on them.

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>>57226314
>>57226158
You're both wrong, but I can see why you thought that was the title.

>>57201153
I hate how accurate this is.

>>57225544
What’s Quizilla?

>>57228162
It was a community site where users could generate and post their own personality quizzes. Basically imagine fanfiction.net but instead of Avatar slash it's "Which Simpsons Guest Star Are You?"

>>57221222
Creating the quizzes would require that every setting usable with the game be extensively detailed with a great deal of depth, plus for us to create the quizzes themselves. That’s:

A. A ton of work for a joke game.
B. Would require the settings to be a lot more serious than the obviously parodic Enforcerate trilogy. Are you up for making genuine settings like Scottish Harry Potter or Ecoalarmist Dystopia above?

>>57228905
I’m all for it, but I don’t think most people here want that.

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>>57226937
>Flowername Weaponheart
My sides.

>>57228905
Those are two very different flavors of game, however.

>>57227038
How so? It's just the same formula with the names switched around.

>>57223025
Son, I have some things to tell you about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure...

>>57183726

...but Jacob was native american.

>>57206033
>>57226232
Two recommendations. Cheers.

>>57230501
And members of District 12 are described in the Hunger Games books as being vaguely Middle Eastern (it'd even fit with the baker's son being named "pita", the ubiquitous Middle Eastern bread).

The movies seem to affect the image more than source material, desu.

>>57230447
Like I said earlier, it’s impossible to make a parody of Percy Jackson that isn’t just “Rick Riordan’s actual next 5 books”.

>>57230447
All the specific choices with names, characters, etc. have that authentic Riordan feel especially since he's a Texasfag. If you told me this was his next series, I wouldn't even bat an eye.

>>57228905
Alternatively have the quizzes be completely unrelated to the setting in an incredibly comedic way, exactly like some personality quizzes actually are. They should either be just actual personality questions (that the player can answer from their characters perspective or from their own perspective) or be a complete grab bag of settings without any connection that takes you out of it completely (a question about dealing with the dystopian regimes killsquads, a question about brewing magic potions, a question about vampires, etc.)

The quizzes should also occasionally include the obvious dumbass answer that only exists as a clear way to farm some points for a specific result. Like the the retardedly cruel/evil option that's there to put you into Slytherin if you pick it. The bad quizzes ALWAYS have at least a few of these.

>>57201298
Yeah we get it, you erp.

>>57202900
So, basically Duncan Idaho's childhood?

>>57230558
>>>57230501
>And members of District 12 are described in the Hunger Games books as being vaguely Middle Eastern (it'd even fit with the baker's son being named "pita", the ubiquitous Middle Eastern bread)

I don't remember this. I got the feeling they were in West Virginia and the name was just because everything in Panem is bread-themed.

>>57230501
>...but Jacob was native american.
Twilight wasn't a dystopian future setting.

>>57231435
Yeah, in the books it was very much eastern hill/woods people in District 12. Also, Panem is America in the future. East coast is the capital, west coast is district 13.

>>57231651
Many of the districts are racial stereotypes. America does have members of all races. For example, it’s painfully clear that District 4, the fishermen, are Irish (with names like “Finnick O’dair” and “Old Mag”, and references to them being green eyed redheads), or District 3 (electronics) being Asians.

District 12 are described in physical terms which could refer either to Latinos or middle easterners (dusky/olive skins, dark hair, green eyes, etc.), which combined with the pita references makes people believe the second.

Some even go as far as to theorize that the middle easterners were originally placed in the shittiest District due to the rest of the country hating them after WWIII. Because let’s face it, they’d be at fault for it.

>>57231753
Also District 11 (agriculture) are negroes and District 1 (luxury goods) are blue eyed blondes.

>>57230638
Make the main character a child of Yog-Sothoth

>>57232110
A fictional pantheon would sidestep the “oh so x mythos is legit but y mythos is the parody? What are you racist?” angle.
But Lovecraft tends to defy that sort of classification that YA loves.

>>57231651
I got the feeling that the Capitol was in the Rockies and District 14 was the obliterated ruins of the DC-Virginia area.

Edit: Wikipedia confirms that the Capitol is in the Rockies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games_(novel)

I was hoping for a YA FLASK rpg. Wasn't disappointed reading through the thread

>>57232388
There’s actually a fair bit of sense behind the location of the Districts which is only implied in the books. Iirc, the prevailing theory (possibly even confirmed by the author) is that they Capitol grew out of remains of the government, military high command and social elites who fared WWIII better than everyone else from their bunkers in the Rockies.

Someone opening a new thread? We can’t let that die, can we?

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>>57184513
>painfully generic
You didn't get very far into the series, did you?

The Yeerks are still some of the most frightening and alien aliens in that Genre, and do pretty well even stacked up against more mature books. The Andalites were full sue, but you read Animorphs for the Yeerks and Cassies black ass.

>>57232827
FLASK could be the generic name for this system, with YA FLASK being the version flavored around Flowername.

>>57187177
Red Rising, how about? Less popular, but filled to the brim with the necessary elements.

>>57234096
What’s FLASK?

>>57234762
I would also like to know

>>57234762
FLorida Anglo-Saxon Klan

>>57235245
You tried.

>tfw no FLANSAK RPG

>>57233568
>Someone opening a new thread? We can’t let that die, can we?
Go for it anon

>>57184345
Hell YA doesn't even have to AIM at teenagers. Getting stuck in the YA genre can be as easy as having a teenager protagonist.

>>57234078
Andalites are evil as fuck tho. Yeerks live a legitimately awful existence and are naturally symbiotic, not parasitic. They could have just partnered up with willing bipeds like the Trill, but the Andalites were like “fuck that” and started a war.
Also lots of super weapons and genocide for a peaceful people.

>>57235697
Yeah, Applegate really heavily implies that the peaceful, serene image of the andalites we get from Ax is mostly just propaganda he's been fed all his life and is now regurgitating, and that andalite history is actually an incredibly bloody affair (I mean, they're ruled by a warrior nobility, and they had a fleet of warships with PLANET KILLING capabilities before ever meeting the yeerks. The last one is important, since planet killers are very definitely NOT a defensive weapon. Their fleet wasn't just meant for home protection)

NEW THREAD Y'ALL

>>57235900
>>57235900
>>57235900
>>57235900
>>57235900

>>57234762
>>57234866
"Ye Flask" is a gag from an old series of web cartoons from back when Flash was a very young software, and the existence of relatively long-form animation on the internet was itself novel. The phrase, specifically, is part of a send-up of text adventure games.

>Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS. What wouldst thou deau?
--GET YE FLASK
>You can't get ye flask!

>>57236167
>gag from an old series of web cartoons from back when Flash was a very young software
>Homestar Runner was in its heyday over 10 years ago
OH GOD IT'S HAPPENING
I'VE BECOME OLD

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>>57236301
>we have to explain flash cartoons as a relic of a bygone age to children now

>>57236372
>Flash has an End of Life date set just two years from now.