{HENSHIN!} I need a resolution mechanic...

[ElliottBelser MKII]

I'd like to make a game about teenaged magical girls juggling relationships and a normal life against thier duty to fight the monsters menacing their school and town.  Mostly Sailor Moon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired, with perhaps a smidge of Powerpuff Girls, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Power Rangers.  I'm calling it "...HENSHIN!"

I'm thinking of a resolution system where you gain dice and/or some sort of "plot coupon" tokens to use against the monsters and villians by testing and straining relationships and traits representative of a normal life.  Similar to the way you smack around your own Aspects in With Great Power. 

Say you have the magical girl Faye, secretly the Nightmare Rouser.  She needs to get dice to drive off a Nightmare Monster FAST.  So she Strains her d8 Relationship with Ms. Coultier, the teacher with the acid tounge, to gain a d8, explaining that when she gets home from the fight, she'll be too exhausted to do homework.  She also Strains her d6 trait On The Soccer Team tp get a d6, saying, again, she's exhausted from jumping around like a superball.

Then you can frame scenes that reflect on the strained relationships and traits, which give you some kind of token that can be used to defeat the monster or otherwise advance the plot.

I'm not sure how much of this makes sense.  I suppose I want a nice system for fighting monsters that doesn't skimp on making fighting monsters hell on a magical girl's mundane life, and the Straining idea is key to that...

[Kesher]

Howdy, Elliot, and welcome to the Forge.

I think you've got a strong basic idea here, something that feeds back into what you want the game to be about, so that's good.  Idefinitely agree that Straining is the key.  Given that, here's a question:

So you gain your d8 by Straining your relationship with your teacher, which helps you defeat the monster.  The next day you frame the scene and play it out, probably getting humiliated and doing one of those cute little anime-blushes.  So... then what?  What effect does the "Straining" have?  It seems to me that it should then affect you, mechanically, in some other way.  Maybe it now drops your d8 resource down to a d6?  Since you strained the relationship, it's now weaker; does that make sense? 

A game you might want to take a look at is Bliss Stage by Ben Lehman.  It's ALL ABOUT straining relationships (well, destroying them, really) to gain resources in conflicts.  It's also very anime-inspired, so I imagine you'll dig it.  Do a search for it on the AP forum.

Aaron

[Kintara]

Hmm, I like the basic idea. I think I need more information on what the relationships and traits represent, though. Are the dice values on the relationships only an indicator of how much is gained when straining the relationship, or do the relationships function in some other capacity as well (like you roll on the relationship when you are attempting to convince that character of something)?

In either case, I think that there's definitely something to this idea. A lot of what I might suggest is taking me to different possible aspects of the system. For instance, how do you envision the relationship between the different players? Is there a GM? Do the players alternate control in some other fashion? In any case, I think that when a relationship is strained, that should mean that the player who strained the relationship should have to deal with another player introducing the complications from the strained relationship. From your post, it sounded like the player decides to strain the relationship, then frames a scene about the strain, and then receives a reward. I think the framing should probably be handled by another player, someone who can act as the other side of the conflict. You might also want to consider how that reward ultimately given out. Maybe the reward's size somehow relates to the details of the conflict that resulted from the strain.

[ElliottBelser MKII]

The relationships also represent how strong your connection to this person / idea / place / thing is, and yes, the possibility that it should get weakened should be there if you Strain your Relationship with it.  Not the certianty, but the possibility:  Perhaps you can Strain multiple times, but if you roll the number of times or under that youve strained in a scene you drop a die size.  Under d4 is "cross that relationship off the character sheet: you can no longer exert influence meaningfully with this relationship"

You know? I'm not even sure I WANT traits.  Except in as much as to differentiate Ami, the brain of the team from Makoto, the tomboy ass kicker.  And that can be done with the relationships, can't it?  Just give Ami a relationship to The Cram School d6 and Makoto to The Karate Dojo d6.

So I think you should definetly get to roll dice when one of your relations is the target of your conflict or what's at stake.  For free, no Strain required.

I see a need for a GM inasmuch as someone needs to create the monster or villians, make them interesting or silly, unleash them on the town, and give them interesting victims.   The monsters would gain power from crushing or destroying Relationships in some fashion.

Other players should at least be other magical girls, of course - and you get free relationships with the other magical girls on the team, rated at least d6 and likely much higher.  I can see a lot of potential with the other players getting to frame scenes with the strained Relationships of other players.

The reward for a "fighting monsters is wrecking my social and academic life!" scene is some kind of plot coupon, perhaps one that the players themselves decide the nature of.  The usefulness of it could indeed vary depending on how the scene plays out...  you first roll for Strain, then roll a conflict to see what clues about the monster you pick up or if you can learn someting valuable from the experience.