Changelog 3

Introduction 6

A Magical World 9 The Power of Magic 9 Magical Girls 9 The Tsukaima 10 The Darkness 10

Player Characters 13 Being a Magical Girl 13 Character Creation 14 Character Clocks 15 Death and Dying 15 Experience and Advancement 16 Advancement Table 16 The First Transformation 17

Core Mechanics 17 Golden Rules 17 The Conversation 18 Scenes and Episodes 18 Rolling Dice 18 Tests 19 Clocks 21 Downtime 21

Combat 22 Combat Overview 23 Combat Terms 23 The Combat Round 24 Roll Phase 24 Action Phase 25 Opposition Phase 25 End Phase 25 Combat Values 25 Actions in Combat 26 Enemy Abilities 27 Player vs Player Combat 29

Consequences 30 Magical Burst 32

Archetypes 33 The Knight 34

2 Knight Features 34 Knight Abilities 35 The Lodestar 36 Lodestar Features 36 Lodestar Abilities 37 The Muse 38 Muse Features 38 Muse Abilities 40 The Oathbound 41 Oathbound Features 41 Oathbound Abilities 43 The Seeker 44 Seeker Features 44 Seeker Abilities 45 The Tempest 46 Tempest Features 46 Tempest Abilities 47 Tempest Surge Table 49

Talents 50

The Game Master 52 Building a World 52 The First Session 52 Gamemaster’s Agenda 53 Running Combat 53 Gamemaster Moves 55

Glossary 57

Appendix: Tables 59 Magical Bursts 59 Area Phenomena 59 Magical Scars 60 Death Complications 62 Magical Girl Details 63 Magical Girl Theme 63 Magical Weapon 63 Costume 64 Magical Mark 64 Strange Happenings 65 Magical Artifacts 67

3 Changelog v0.4 ● General clarification/brevity pass on rules. Some reorganization of the sections in the book. ● Added some flavour text to chapter headers. Mostly quotes from playtest characters. ● New artwork from Larkine, Jun Oh, Dan Stewart, and Edel Altares. (See the credits section) ● Combat: Everyone now starts with zero guard tokens. Combat was kind of weird, where the first round would be overwhelmingly complex and the monster would either die, or the fight would turn into a war of attrition. ● Advancement, talents, archetypes, etc are overhauled. ○ Archetype experience triggers now award 3 experience and require more major story beats to trigger. ○ Experience is now tracked communally. Gaining (5*number of players) experience will cause every magical girl to level up. ○ Archetypes now have Features and Abilities. Features are for noncombat, abilities are for combat. ○ Start with 1 feature, all your level 0 archetype abilities, and 2 talents. ○ You pick 1 feature on even numbered advancements, you pick 1 of abilities on odd numbered advancements. ○ There are no longer archetype-specific talents. There’s a general list (Like D&D feats.) You pick a new one every even-numbered advancement. ○ Most talents no longer give any combat benefit. ○ Still too complicated? Maybe. Probably not too bad. ● Removed bonds system for a variety of reasons. Hopefully players will form and narrate bonds as a result of downtime. ● Revised downtime. New options for downtime actions. “Keep up with life” rolls now happen at the end of downtime. Downtime is now its own chapter too. ● New Opposition Abilities -> Potent, weak point, vulnerability, parting gift, carapace ● Added “How to read this book” section ● Removed the ability for enemies to “charge up” as it was kind of vestigial and rarely used. ● Removed “Curse” talent. Not very thematically appropriate. ● Lore: Youma now disappear when the sun is up. More excuses for downtime. ● Magical Bursts are now a little more concretely defined. Everyone takes a bane, and they add 3 dice to enemy dice pools. ● Enemy ability “Afflict” was buffed. No longer requires enemy power to use, and requires 2 guard tokens to prevent. It should now be actually threatening. ● Renamed “Personal Consequence” -> “Bane” ● Changed terminology around the staggered condition. v0.3 ● General RPG Mechanics ○ Changed from HEART/FURY/MAGIC/REAL to an entirely new Traits/Attributes system that feeds into combat differently. ○ Removed moves in favour of a general action resolution mechanic called Trait

4 Tests. ○ Renamed Trauma to Stress so it makes more sense as a general consequence (And seems less awful for your character to take.) ○ Rewrote initial lore blurb to be less Madoka-y ○ Removed Oblivion Seeds from the core rules. ○ Removed “Greatest Wish” as a roleplaying detail. ○ Made magic possible (but limited) when not transformed. ○ Trimmed down some fallout effects ○ Added more art. ○ Bonds now have 3-segment clocks that can be filled with character development. Each time they are filled, mark experience. ○ Reworked advancement and added an advancement table. ○ Fleshed out the Episodes and Scenes sections with some examples. ○ Magical Girls no longer heal harm at a rate of 1 per day. ○ Added Downtime Actions. Downtime can be a source of stress but it’s also how you fill hope and clear harm and work on projects and such. ● Combat ○ Removed Pressure and Protection as keywords. Replaced with Guard Tokens. ○ Inspired and Demoralized now affect 1’s and 2’s instead of just 1’s. ○ The “Immolating” opposition ability can no longer cause an unavoidable total party kill on turn 1 of combat. ○ Changed language around opposition. Discrete opposition is called an “enemy” ○ Consolidated all status effect enemy abilities into parameterized abilities. (Afflict and Retaliating) ● Balance Changes To Archetypes ○ Removed alternate effects of a magical burst for archetypes. ○ All archetypes now have a feature that interacts with guard tokens. ○ Reworked and reformatted experience triggers. ○ Renamed Archetype Abilities -> Archetype Features ○ Made some things less ‘wordy’. Things that you’ll have to copy onto your sheet are now phrased in a more concise way. ○ Knight ■ Knights are now slightly more focused on granting everyone else guard tokens. ○ Lodestar ■ Granting status effects is now much harder and creates a decision between self-preservation and long-term benefit. ■ Lodestar’s core mechanic now gives them bonuses when they don’t attack. ○ Seeker ■ Seeker’s straight ability now deletes enemy abilities for a turn. ■ Seeker’s guard token ability allows even more hand-fixing. ○ Muse ■ Can now deterministically alter enemy dice pool values with guard tokens.

5 ○ Tempest ■ Tempest can now spend guard tokens to gain additional uses of her Volatility die. ■ Slight buffs to Volatility die results. ■ Added more late game features that allow for interesting use of the volatility die. ○ Oathbound: ■ Renamed Abilities to be slightly less edgy ■ Changed Oathbound Smite to a more bounded (but still highly damaging) attack ■ Oathbound can now spend guard tokens to re-roll enemy dice and potentially remove them. ■ Tempered Soul now allows you to always change into a magical girl even when an effect says you can not.

6 Introduction HARDCAPTOR SAKUGA: FULL METAL PETTICOAT is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game about Magical Girls. Players take on the role of an adolescent girl who finds herself thrust headfirst into conflict with cosmic, unknowable evil. Player characters will battle against magical manifestations of the darkest parts of humanity, unravel the mysteries of the world, and struggle to keep on top of their schoolwork and personal lives.

The goal of this system is to tell a story about hope triumphing over insurmountable despair, with characters that form wholesome bonds as they struggle through adolescence to find their place in a vast and terrifying world. And also to narrate cool action-packed magical girl fight scenes.

You’ll have the best time playing if everyone at the table enjoys magical girls, anime, psychological horror, friendship, and coming-of-age stories.

How to Read this Book The length of this rulebook might be daunting, but you don’t have to read all of it, even if you’re the game master. Here’s a breakdown of the chapters.

A Magical World has some insight on setting concepts. Read this if you’re curious about the thematic foundations of the game as well as the plot devices it was designed with. Skip it if you don’t care or you’re inventing your own world. This game’s mechanics aren’t heavily tied to the lore I provided so you should be able to use it for whatever setting you have in mind.

Player Characters, Core Mechanics, Combat, and Consequences are the fundamentals of the system. Everyone should read these sections since they explain how the game works.

Archetypes and Talents contain character options. Nobody needs to read these sections in their entirety, but players will be referring to them when they build their characters and take advancements.

The Game Master contains more hand-wavy explanations on how to run the game, including guiding principles, campaign structure, how to run combat, et cetera. Game masters should read this. Other players don’t have to.

The rest of the book is references and random tables that you can use if you think it will enhance your game. If you have better or more relevant ideas, you should use those instead.

Mechanical and Thematic Roots This game got a lot of inspiration from the Magical Burst system by Ewen Cluney. I’m a fan of the concept and themes behind Magical Burst and Magical Fury, but neither hits a mechanical sweet spot for me. My goal here is to make a narrative focused, rules-lite game with a lot of character customization about Magical Girls finding hope in a grim and seemingly hopeless world.

7 The hope is the important part. I think people sometimes forget that even when Magical Girl stories are tragic and grim, they are still fundamentally optimistic stories about hope and friendship. The world is cold and uncaring. The people in it are warm and compassionate. Compassion is the stronger force, if only we can find it within ourselves.

What you need to play You will need one Game Master (GM) and 2-5 players who can meet regularly, character sheets, pencils and paper, some objects to use as tokens such as glass beads or poker chips, and a ton of six-sided dice. (6-7 per player, and the GM needs at least 10 per player.)

As with any Tabletop Roleplaying Game, begin by establishing your desired tone, player boundaries, house rules, et cetera. The game paints a rather grim setting with young female protagonists, so it’s especially important to establish what everyone is comfortable portraying in the story.

Additionally, Feel free to adapt the rules as you like. Want to transform into magical boys instead? Magical animals? Want an older party demographic? Want to be bears? Do it. Make whatever changes you need to make your group the happiest and most comfortable.

Credits ● Ewen Cluney for writing Magical Burst and Magical Fury ● Dan Stewart (@BlueDustbunny on Twitter) for the artwork of Poncho the Tsukaima, the archetype characters, and the cover girl ● Jun Oh for the cover art and artwork of the nightmare ● larkine for the artwork of their original characters Amelia Byrnes and Tabitha Rosen ● Edel Altares for the magical girl in the Player versus Player section ● Ashley Moni and Techhead for giving mechanical advice and coming up with the absurdly stupid title ● Mark Sampilov for initial playtesting ● The Pilot NET discord for opening my eyes to the wide and diverse world of tabletop RPGs.

The game has been playtested only on fairly small groups. This document is meant to serve as our fourth stable playtesting version. If you run this game or have any feedback at all, please let me know. I can be reached at [email protected], Ironykins#3999 on discord, or @Ironykins on Twitter.

This game is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Feel free to share, modify, hack, or remix it, but please give credit where credit is due. And link me because I’d love to see whatever you come up with.

Inspirational Works Narrative: Symphogear, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Futari Wa Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura, Sleepless Domain, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Flip Flappers, Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, FLCL.

8 Design: Magical Fury, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Yahtzee, King of Tokyo, The raw Primal Desire to roll 40d6 at once, Gunmetal Sonata.

Music: Corpo-mente, Plini, Portishead, Haru Nemuri, The Pillows, Nier Automata (OST), Hollow Knight (OST), Night in the Woods (OST), Moonlighter (OST), Igorrr, The Protomen.

A Magical World Magic is real. It is dangerous and terrible and beautiful. It is a flame that burns at the hem of reality, threatening to set it all ablaze. It is an integral part of you, and it is your only weapon against the darkness.

The Power of Magic “As soon as you stop thinking about it, it starts to make sense.” - Angelina Crane, Muse

Magic is Drawing on the Canvas of Reality Magic is not a logical practice. It is not a system of spells and incantations, nor can it be broken into a series of steps. It is an art form, informed by emotion, intuition, and a myriad of other cosmic, unknowable forces. Those who are versed in its practice feel it more than they understand it, and no two people interact with it the same.

If reality is a canvas, those who use Magic are painters, each with a unique set of brushes and pigments. Reality itself can be recolored, retextured, even overwritten into a maddening jumble of streaks, angles, shapes, and colors. The trick lies in finding out how to apply brush to canvas.

Magic is Powerful Because Magic is something that alters reality itself, the mundane world is all but powerless against it. As a rule, the only thing that can meaningfully stand up to Magic is Magic.

Magical girls find, often to their surprise, that the mundane is far too weak to pose any threat to them. Killing a magical girl with mundane means is possible, but requires a dizzying amount of destructive force.

Magic is Unnatural The natural order of the universe is upset by magic. The canvas fights the brush at every turn, attempting to twist the creative beauty of magic into something corrupt and ugly. Perhaps this is because Magic is a disruption to an otherwise perfect and logical system. Or perhaps the universe opposes magic for more nefarious reasons. For better or worse, Magic defies the status quo of existence itself. Once a girl forms a pact, the universe disowns her. She is not a truly magical being, but neither is she fully mundane.

Magical Girls “That thing told me I’d be able to help my friends. I didn’t realize what I was signing up for.”

9 - Princess Zoe Linneas of the Tanuki Kingdom, Seeker

“Magical Girl” is the term for humans that are capable of using magic. This is a colloquialism. In practice, anyone may use magic, regardless of age or gender. But to become a magical girl, one must make a pact with a being called a Tsukaima, and for some reason the Tsukaima rarely offer pacts to anyone aside from adolescent girls.

A Magical Girl is given a pendant or bracelet that she can use to transform. Transformations are near-instantaneous, and a transformed magical girl often wears a garish and colorful costume. While transformed, her magical potential is fully unlocked. A girl’s magical powers revolve around a specific theme or element. This is the pigment with which she paints on the canvas of reality.

Poncho the Tsukaima The Tsukaima “Poncho says he’s here to help humanity win the fight against darkness. Once you buy into that, you get used to the fact that he’s a tiny winged goat.” - Susan “Sizzlin” Schrimpz, Knight

The Tsukaima (“familiars”) are magical beings capable of awakening the magical powers of those who possess The Spark. They are usually small in stature, and look like fantastical imaginings of ordinary animals, often with brightly colored fur, large eyes, and wings or other accessories. They are often mistaken for stuffed animals, so long as they sit still and stay quiet.

The Tsukaima are sentient and capable of human speech, but they are certainly not human. It’s unclear if they aim to help humans or exploit them in some greater conflict. Sometimes their values and motivations are difficult for humans to comprehend.

The Darkness “Don’t think about what it is, just think about killing it. Before it eats anyone else.” - Hikari Lumos, Oathbound

Youma Magical Girls are tasked with fighting and destroying monsters called Youma. These monsters are twisted, warped things that gnaw at the minds of those who encounter them. Where the magic of Magical Girls is beautiful and feminine, the magic of the Youma is twisted, dark, and destructive. In a sense they are beautiful, but only because there is some painfully resonant aspect of humanity reflected in each one.

Youma surround themselves with distortions in reality called Nightmares. Mundane folks can not directly perceive these nightmares, but they are affected by them nonetheless. If a nightmare is a Youma’s spider web, the people that wander in are the flies. The Youma

10 feeds off their life force, devouring their emotions, energy, and memories until there is nothing left of them.

A Magical Girl can enter the heart of a Nightmare by finding its entrance. This is usually as simple as allowing her instincts to lead to the threshold and stepping inside. The heart of the nightmare is a surreal mess. It is a maddening jumble of objects and images, a perversion of reality viewed through a cynical and terrifying lens. It is here that the Youma resides.

Magical Girls are equipped to battle the Youma, though it is often traumatic. The laws of reality break down within the nightmare, and the devoured memories and emotions of the Youma’s victims swirl around and fill the minds of those present. When magical girls kill a Youma, its Nightmare collapses and the girls return to the real world.

Strangely, most Youma need to rest. Many are nocturnal, though this isn’t always the case. If the magical girls fail to strike them down, they’ll be returned to the real world and will have to wait a day or more to venture into the nightmare again.

Witches As beings that are neither truly human nor truly magical, Magical Girls walk a razor’s edge. A Magical Girl that loses her sense of place in the world becomes listless and disconnected from reality. Eventually, she can lose her humanity entirely and become a Witch. Witches are Magical Girls who have abandoned their humanity and taken on the twisted power of the Youma. They are terrifying and powerful foes with unknowable motives. Perhaps not all Witches are irredeemable, but their hearts are frigid and their goals are self-serving or nihilistic. Returning a witch to her former self is a monumental undertaking.

Reavers Reavers are ordinary humans who have succumbed to the darker influences of magic. Their minds are intact enough to function, sanity nonwithstanding. Many reavers are self-serving,

11 but they are just as likely to serve a witch or other, greater evil. They are capable of masking their magical power so that they may blend in as ordinary humans. Often they enlist the help of Youma or Imps to do their dirty work, and prefer to concoct cunning and sadistic plans from the shadows.

Imps Imps are diminutive magical creatures. Though they are trivial foes for Magical Girls, they are still more than a threat to ordinary people. Imps take many forms, are rarely found alone, and often serve greater magical creatures such as Youma or Witches. When left alone, Imps can sometimes manifest into Youma.

12 Player Characters “A forced smile isn’t a dishonest smile. Just one you had to work for.” - Umi Aoko, Seeker

Players will take on the role of Magical Girls. What this means is largely up to you, but generally this means they are urban teenage girls who are ordinary kids by day, and magical warrior-sentinels by night. This section attempts to explain what magical girls are and guide you through the process of creating one.

Being a Magical Girl Transforming: A magical girl has a “normal form” and a “magical form.” The normal form is still fragile and human, but a magical girl can transform into her magical form in the blink of an eye (though some may experience it as a more elaborate transformation sequence.) While in normal form, a girl’s magic has very limited effects on the world. She must transform to have any hope of keeping pace with other magical forces. When a girl returns to her normal form, she must rest for an hour before transforming again.

Fighting: Magical girls have a natural ability to fight. Magic is so potent that non-magical things are nearly useless against it. Magical girls likewise become durable enough to stand up to the incredible destructive force of magical attacks. Tabitha Rosen, Oathbound

Athletic Feats: A transformed magical girl is capable of certain superhuman athletic feats, most notably leaping huge distances. Some magical girls take to leaping across the rooftops as they patrol the city for youma.

Sorcery: Finally, magical girls have a limited ability to use their magic for other purposes. This takes some time and concentration, and is constrained by the girl’s magical theme and talents.

Note that your character may not start as a Magical Girl. If they are not a magical girl they can not transform, and can not do magic until they make a pact with a Tsukaima and have their first transformation.

13 Character Creation 1. Determine Roleplaying details 2. Set Traits and Attributes 3. Pick an Archetype and archetype feature (See Archetypes) 4. Pick two Talents (See Talents)

Roleplaying Details A good place to start is with your character concept. There are a number of things you should decide about your character before you play them.

The following are details about your magical girl that have no strict mechanics attached, but are important nonetheless. They may affect the narrative in some way, or give situational bonuses. You should at least answer these questions about your character: ● What is your name? Do you use an alias when you’re doing magical girl things? ● What Magical Mark was left on your normal form when you first transformed into a magical girl? ● What does your costume look like? Does it ever change? ● What magical weapon do you wield? Does it transform? Do you have more than one? ● What is your magical theme or element? Do you have more than one? ● What ties you to the world? Who and what do you care about? What do you spend your time on when you’re not being a magical girl? ○ These can be people, organizations, ideals, social struggles, or hobbies. ○ A Magical Girl without ties to the world can become listless and disconnected from reality. She may be in danger of becoming a witch.

If everyone at the table is cool with it, all of the above can change with zero consequence. If you picked a certain magical weapon but you’re finding it hard to narrate its use in combat, pick a new one. If your character goes through some emotional change, maybe her color scheme and costume change to reflect that. If you don’t like any of the decisions you made, you can even ask to retcon them. Talk to your group and see what they are okay with.

14 Traits and Attributes Magical Girls have 9 Traits, grouped across three different categories called Attributes. Traits are aspects of a magical girl’s personality, and they describe her mental and emotional strong points.

● Passion - Your raw vigor and determination ○ Nerve (Courage, righteousness, dealing with adversity) ○ Defiance (Reject authority, despair, and the unfairness of the world) ○ Imagination (Creative thought, bright interest in the world) ● Logic - Your capacity for complex thought and rationality ○ Analysis (Logical deduction, rational thinking) ○ Observation (Awareness of surroundings, pattern recognition.) ○ Subterfuge (Deception, misdirection, maintaining a web of lies) ● Devotion - Your connection to the world and other people ○ Adaptability (React, follow instincts, deal with the world on its terms.) ○ Charisma (Express feelings, sway others, make friends.) ○ Empathy (Relate to and understand others, communicate meaningfully.)

When you create a character, you have 6 points to assign to traits. Each trait begins at 0, and can have up to 3 points assigned to it. An attribute’s value is equal to the number of its traits that have at least one point assigned.

When your success is called into question, your traits are put to the test. If the outcome of an action your character takes is uncertain, and both success and failure would tell interesting stories, you will roll a trait test based on a relevant trait. (See the section on Tests for more info.)

Unlike traits, your attributes are used in combat. Passion governs the number of dice you can reroll at once, Logic governs the number of times you can reroll, and devotion governs the amount of guard tokens you’re allowed to keep between rounds. For more information, see the Combat chapter.

Character Clocks Magical girls have three special six-segment clocks that count upwards: Overcharge, Stress, and Hope. These are her Fallout clocks. When an effect says to mark points on one of these clocks, fill that many segments. Some effects may also clear segments from these clocks. When these clocks are filled, erase all filled segments, and the girl suffers fallout based on the type of clock. (See Consequences for more information on fallout) If she would fill more clock segments than she has available, she fills the remaining segments after clearing the clock and experiencing fallout.

When a magical girl experiences fallout, she selects one of the options from the appropriate type of Fallout and checks off the box next to it. If all four boxes are checked, she instead has the Extreme Fallout for that type and erases the checked boxes.

Magical Girls also have a 4-segment Harm clock. Harm can be healed through the use of

15 certain talents, or by taking the Mend downtime action. When her harm clock fills, a magical girl transforms back into a normal girl, and her life becomes untenable. (See Death and Dying below.)

Death and Dying When a Magical Girl’s life becomes untenable, she must pick one of the following. She can never pick the same option twice. ☐ The Magical Girl dies. ☐ The Magical Girl cheats death. After the scene ends she crawls away, battered and beaten but very much alive. People will be surprised to see her again. ☐ The Magical Girl is reborn, but at a cost. She comes back different. Pick from or Roll on the death complications table in the appendix.

Dying in Combat If a Magical Girl fills her harm clock in combat, the players can all agree to lose the combat instead. If they do: ● The Magical Girl who filled her harm clock rolls 1d6. On a 3-6, she clears 1 point of harm and her life is no longer untenable. On a 1-2 her life continues to be untenable. ● The Magical Girls barely escape with their lives. Set their harm clocks to 3. ● Each Magical Girl transforms back into a regular girl, and she can not transform back or use magic until her harm clock is empty. ● Combat ends. The opposition continues as it pleases, wreaking whatever destruction it wishes.

Experience and Advancement Magical Girls share a communal experience pool. Whenever something calls for a magical girl to mark experience, she adds it to a central pile. This is best tracked with tally marks or by adding tokens to a pile.

Magical Girls gain experience via the following: ● Gain 1 experience when you roll a miss on a trait test ● Gain 1 experience whenever you experience fallout ● Gain experience when the group defeats certain monsters. Each monster is worth 1 experience unless otherwise listed ● Experience can also be rewarded at the GM’s discretion, for good roleplaying or character growth.

Once the experience pool contains an amount of experience equal to 5 ⨉ the number of players, clear the experience pool and then each magical girl takes an advancement.

Magical Girls start with zero advancements. When a magical girl advances: ● On every odd numbered advancement, add +1 to any Trait to a max of 3, and gain an Archetype Ability. ● On every even numbered advancement, gain a new Talent and Archetype Feature. ● Whenever you take an advancement, you may also replace a talent, ability, or

16 feature with an alternative one, so long as you meet the prerequisites.

Consult the following table for your first 10 advancements. There is no limit on how many advancements your character can take, but you should consider retiring characters once they exceed ten advancements. You have a maximum of 5 archetype abilities and 4 archetype features.

Advancement Table Advancement Traits Talents Archetype Abilities Archetype Features 0 6 2 0 1 1 7 2 1 1 2 7 3 1 2 3 8 3 2 2 4 8 4 2 3 5 9 4 3 3 6 9 5 3 4 7 10 5 4 4 8 10 6 4 4 9 11 6 5 4 10 11 7 5 4

The First Transformation When you transform into a magical girl for the first time, Test your Devotion, Logic, or Passion. ● 1-3: The change is agonizing and traumatic. Mark 1 Stress. ● 4-5: The change is strange but invigorating. You have a vision of things to come. ● 6: The change is ecstatic and leaves you feeling invigorated. Mark 1 Hope, and you have a vision of things to come. ● Critical: The change goes a little out of control, and it scares you. Mark 1 stress and 1 hope, and the GM reveals a mystery about the world or answers one of your questions honestly.

No matter the result, describe what your transformation looks and feels like to everyone. Additionally, your transformation gives you a magical mark. This is a Tattoo or other minor physical change that manifests itself after you become a magical girl.

17 Core Mechanics “Due to recent events, the beginning is no longer a very good place to start.” - Jehanne Bennet, Tempest

Golden Rules These are general rules that should help run the game in all situations. ● Specific Beats General. Rules with more specific wording override rules with more general wording. ● Don’t Hide Numbers. Clocks and enemy power values and abilities are public knowledge. Certain narrative elements should obviously be kept secret, but game mechanics should not. Knowing these things helps players make informed decisions and direct the story where they want it to go. ● Story trumps rules. Rules are supposed to enhance the fiction, not stifle it. When they’re not doing their job, they should be temporarily ignored.

The Conversation Fundamentally, roleplaying is a conversation where everyone is involved. People introduce ideas, build on the ideas, and follow them to their logical conclusions. When something in the conversation triggers a rule, resolve that rule and continue the conversation based on its results.

Begin in the conversation, resolve rules when they are applicable, and then take their results back to the conversation. That is how you play the game.

Players should not be afraid of chiming in with story details or building on what anyone else has said. Players can introduce and roleplay NPCs, invent complications, and assert facts about the world. Remember that this is a game of collaborative fiction. The GM has final say over what makes it into the narrative, but they are encouraged to be open to player ideas.

Scenes and Episodes The game is divided into scenes and Episodes, like a play or a TV show. A scene is a block of action that takes place at a certain time and place. An Episode is a small story arc or (more commonly) a single game session. Scene framing is a tool to keep the game focused on the action. The GM often takes a lead role in framing scenes, but since the players control the protagonists of the story, their choices will determine what kinds of scenes the game includes.

It is important to know when to end a scene. Once narrative tension is no longer present in the scene, or a resolution has been made, or the scene has conveyed all its meaningful information, think about whether you could end the scene and cut to the next one. There’s no reason to roleplay mundane activities and downtime unless something interesting happens along the way. Players can fill in the gaps between scenes without explicitly

18 roleplaying them, and they can fill in important details with flashbacks.

If it is narratively appropriate and they have ideas, players can always ask to set their own scenes when one of the GM’s scenes ends. For example, the GM narrates a scene in which the players learn that their teacher may be a member of a crime syndicate. A player may then ask to cut to a scene in which they have broken into the teacher’s home and are looking for incriminating evidence.

Rolling Dice In this system there are no modifiers on dice results, and dice values are not added together. This game only uses six-sided dice, which we commonly refer to as d6s. Players roll a number of dice, and the resulting values are called the “result set.” Sometimes, a roll may call for exploding dice. This means that for each 6 rolled, you must roll another die into the result set. Additional dice you get this way can also “explode” if they roll a 6. Exploding dice are used to resolve actions that are magical in nature.

This game uses additional dice mechanics for Combat which are described in more detail in the Combat chapter.

Finally, we use a d66 to generate random results from tables. To do this, take two dice, designate one as the tens digit and the other as the ones digit, and roll them. Putting the two digits together will give you one of 36 results numbered 11 to 66. For example, if the tens digit die comes up as a 5 and the ones digit die comes up as a 1, your result is 51. Most of the d66 tables in the game are optional, and are there to help provide inspiration.

Tests “It's okay to be scared of the dark—it's scary in the dark! But maybe, if we shine a little light, see that it's just stuff and things, it won't be so bad. Scary things can be fun things too” - Beatrix Sanderson, Lodestar

When your character takes an action in the conversation, ask the following questions: ● Is the outcome of the action uncertain or is the action dangerous? ● Are success and failure both interesting outcomes for the action? If the answer to both is a yes, resolve the action by rolling a Test.

A Test involves rolling a number of dice and checking the result set. The most common type of test is a Trait Test, in which your character rolls a number of dice equal to one of their traits (See the Player Characters chapter for more info.) Characters can also roll Attribute Tests (with a number of dice equal to the relevant attribute) and other, more specific tests. (These tests will tell you how many dice to roll.)

When a GM tells you success is not guaranteed (By saying something like “That’ll be a test” or “You’ll need to roll for that”) you should describe your approach and which of your traits you think is most applicable. The GM may allow or disallow any traits from being used based on the situation, but it is best if all players can generally agree that a trait is applicable to

19 your approach. To roll a Trait Test, roll a number of d6s equal to the number of points you have in that trait. If the action is magical in nature, these are exploding dice. If you would roll 0 dice, roll 2d6 and discard the higher result. If it’s a magical action, the remaining die can still explode.

For example, if you are trying to create an illusory magical effect, you might test your Imagination trait, which has 2 points in it. You would roll 2d6 exploding dice because this is a magical action.

The outcome is based on the die with the highest value in your result set. ● 1-3: A miss, meaning you fail and something bad happens. ● 4-5: A weak hit, meaning you succeed but there is a complication or a cost. ● 6: A strong hit, meaning outright success. ● Two or more dice with the value 6: Critical. You succeed decisively, but if it’s a magical action, you also have a magical mishap.

Players are encouraged to get creative and collaborate on what potential complications or consequences their actions can have. Narrating your own failures is fun, and you shouldn’t let the GM have all the fun.

A given action may have many applicable traits. For example, if a character were to stand up to a parent, they could test their Bravery to keep calm and rational. Or they could test their Defiance to lash out against their parent’s authority. They could also try to test their Empathy to see their parent's side of the story, or Charisma to meaningfully convey something to them. The trait you use will affect your test’s outcome. A parent who has been defied will react differently to one who has been empathized with.

Characters in this game never make tests based on their physical characteristics or honed skills. If a character is put to the test, it is always something about their heart, mind, or soul that determines whether they succeed or fail. This is especially true for magical tests, as a girl’s magic is shaped by who she is and what she feels. Remember: this is anime. You don’t succeed at swimming because you’re a good swimmer, you succeed because you have enough passion to carry you forward.

Magical Mishaps If you roll more than one 6 on an action that is magical in nature, you have a magical mishap. A magical mishap means you succeed at your action, but with a twist, a cost, or a side effect. These effects are magical in nature.

For example, if you test your Observation to patrol the city, looking for magical anomalies, and you roll two sixes, you may broadcast your own existence and have something notice you as well. If you test your imagination to create a magical effect, perhaps the thing you created gains a mind of its own and causes havoc after it’s done obeying your orders.

For each additional 6 in your result set, the GM may add an additional magical mishap or consequence to the results of your action. If a large number of mishaps occur or it is narratively appropriate, the GM may even call for a magical burst. (See the Consequences

20 chapter for more details.)

Additional Dice You can gain additional dice on tests by pushing yourself, accepting assistance, or accepting a dark bargain.

When you choose to push yourself, mark 1 Stress or 1 Overcharge, and you may take +1 die on your test.

Another player can choose to assist you. That player describes how they help, and if the GM deems it plausible, they mark 1 stress or 1 overcharge and you may take +1 die. A player may also interfere. If they do, take -1 die instead. Interference does not cost stress or overcharge.

When making a roll, you may also request a Dark Bargain. If you do so, the GM or other players may collaborate to offer you a consequence that you can take in order to gain an additional die. You suffer this consequence regardless of the outcome of the test. The consequence should have a meaningful narrative effect. For example, “You will leave an innocent person to go mad in the nightmare.” or “regardless of the outcome, you will overexert yourself and miss your math test tomorrow morning.”

Clocks A clock is a way to indicate progress towards a certain event. Normally, a clock is a circle divided into some number of segments. Clocks can be filled at the GM’s discretion in response to things in the narrative, and they should never be hidden from anybody at the table. They are a way to establish stakes and follow through on them. You may represent them as circles, tally marks towards a maximum, piles of glass beads, numbers on a die, or anything else that is convenient.

Four special clocks are tracked by each player: Overcharge, Stress, Hope, and Harm. These clocks fill in response to events in the narrative, and have consequences when they are filled. See the Player Characters section for more information on these clocks.

Downtime “I can’t patrol tonight, I’m already late for both of my jobs.” - Alice Nakari, Seeker

The GM will periodically declare downtime. As a guideline, the GM should call for downtime whenever the players return to their daily lives, usually between patrols, youma encounters, and other adventures.

When downtime is declared, each player may take a downtime action. The following actions

21 are available to all players: ● Find Hope - Mark 1 Hope ● Indulge a Hobby - Clear 1 stress ● Relax - Clear 1 overcharge ● Mend - Clear your harm clock ● Worldbuild - With the GM’s consent, narrate a scene in which you do something like: ○ Introduce a new NPC that’s relevant to your character. ○ Develop or change a detail about your character ● Work on a Project - Start a clock for your project if you haven’t already. (See projects below.) Describe how you work on the project, and roll a relevant trait test. 1- 3: Fill 1 segment, 4-5: Fill 2 Segments, 6: Fill 3 segments, Critical: Fill 5 segments. ● Deal with Life - Remove a source of stress. Take +1 die to your next keep up with life roll.

At the end of downtime, each player must roll a test with their highest attribute to keep up with life. ● 1-3: Gain a source of stress. Take one stress at the start of each downtime until it is removed. ● 4-5: Life is overwhelming. Mark 1 stress or overcharge. ● 6: You are on top of things for now. ● Critical: You earn yourself some free time and can take an additional downtime action.

Players should narrate what they are doing to perform these downtime actions, and set scenes to act them out where applicable. Think about what everyday things your Magical Girl does to relax, find hope, or stay on top of things. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of downtime actions. Feel free to improvise or create your own. The GM can also reward players with bonus downtime actions. These actions don’t require a keep up with life roll and don’t cause you to take stress from sources of stress.

Sources of Stress A Magical Girl can have a maximum of 3 sources of stress at a time. As long as they have at least one, they mark one stress at the start of downtime. Try to describe your sources of stress as things happening in your life that you need to deal with. For example, your mom could be suspicious of your nighttime outings, or your grades could be slipping because you haven’t had time to study.

Projects Any long-running activity your character works on that takes more than one downtime activity is a project. When you start a project, discuss what it entails and what will happen when it is finished, and start a project clock. Your GM decides how many segments it has. In general, a small project is a 4-segment clock, medium is 6-segment, and large is 8-segment. You fill the clock by making trait tests as part of the work on a project downtime action. Once the clock is filled, the project is finished.

22 Combat “Stop! Crime is Bad!” - Rin Baio, Muse

When magical girls fight against youma, witches, imps, or enemy magical girls, combat occurs. The opposing force that the magical girls fight is called the enemy. The enemy has a dice pool and a power rating, and optionally a list of Enemy Abilities. They also have an experience value. This is how much experience the group marks when they defeat it.

Note that the enemy can represent a single foe (such as a youma, a witch, etc) or a collection of foes or something more vague. (A large force of imps, a canopy of hostile magical plants, etc.)

Combat Overview The GM describes the combat scenario, the enemy (including narrative descriptions, statistics, and abilities), and any other relevant things. If there are NPC bystanders, crowds, structures, or other things that may need protection, the GM enumerates each of these as a liability.

Most liabilities are destroyed as soon as they are attacked, but some (eg. A sealed panic shelter, an important NPC) may have a harm clock that fills with each attack. Any time you may grant a guard token to a magical girl, you may instead grant it to a liability to protect it until the next end phase. Protected liabilities can not be attacked or harmed.

To begin combat, the GM rolls all the dice in the enemy’s dice pool, then Amelia Byrnes, Knight gathers the rolled results into the middle of the table. The enemy is alive and a threat as long as it still has dice in its dice pool.

Optionally, the GM can choose to represent multiple different entities as distinct enemies, each with their own dice pool, set of abilities and power value. This can add flavour and some strategic depth and difficulty. All enemies act during the opposition phase, in whatever order the GM decides.

Combat has its own dice mechanics. In general, once a die is rolled in combat,

23 it takes on the value that it rolled, and persists with that value until something causes it to be removed or re-rolled. This is true for dice in the enemy’s dice pool, as well as dice in the player’s hands.

Combat Terms Attack - When a Magical Girl is attacked, she must either spend a guard token to negate the attack, or take a bane. A magical girl can be attacked multiple times in a single round.

Cancel - When a player cancels a die, it is removed. Certain enemy abilities may trigger when players attempt to cancel certain dice values, and certain abilities may outright prevent them from canceling dice.

Remove - When a die is removed, it is taken out of combat. Put it back in your dice bag or shove it to the side.

Guard Token - Guard tokens are resources that players can use in combat. Players start each combat with zero guard tokens. At the end step, each player discards tokens until they have no more tokens than they have Devotion. A guard token can be spent to negate an attack. Guard tokens are best tracked using physical objects such as poker chips, glass beads, or pennies.

Staggered - Negative Status Effect. Your passion and logic become zero for the purposes of determining rerolls in the roll phase.

Weakened - Negative Status Effect. Your reserves decrease by 1 die. (ie. Roll 1 fewer die when rolling your hand.) Cancels out strengthened.

Strengthened - Positive Status Effect. Your reserves increase by 1 die. (ie. You roll 1 additional die when rolling your hand.) Cancels out weakened.

Demoralized - Negative Status Effect. You may not reroll 1’s or 2’s during your roll phase. Cancels out Inspired.

Inspired - Positive Status Effect. During your roll phase, you may reroll any of your dice with value 1 or 2 at any time for free. Cancels out Demoralized.

Branded - Negative Status effect. At the start of the opposition phase, the enemy may attack you once without spending any power. Cancels out Warded.

Warded - Positive Status effect. At the start of the opposition phase, you gain 1 guard token. Cancels out Branded.

24 The Combat Round 1. Roll phase. All players roll a hand. 2. Action phase. Players may spend combinations of dice to perform actions. 3. Opposition phase. If any enemy still has dice in its pool, it performs its actions. 4. End Phase. Narrate! Decide if you’re doing another round or there is some other resolution.

Roll Phase All players roll all the dice in their reserves. By default, every player has 5 dice in their reserves. ● They may then reroll a number of dice up to their Passion a number of times equal to their Logic. They may pick different dice to reroll each time. ● They may mark 1 overcharge to reroll any number of dice once. ● Finally, they select up to 5 dice from the dice rolled to be their hand.

Players may roll in sequence, or simultaneously. They can look at other players’ dice when deciding whether or not to re-roll their own. The only thing they can not do is ‘undo’ a re-roll that they have made.

If an effect says it happens at the start of the roll phase, it happens before the players roll their dice. If an effect says it happens at the end of the action phase, it happens after all players have declared their hands.

Action Phase Players may spend combinations of dice from their hands to perform actions. (Available actions are detailed in Actions in Combat below) Once a die is spent, it goes back to that player’s reserves. Once dice are spent, the player must resolve their action before anyone else can take an action. Players get to decide the order in which they spend their dice and perform these actions.

Certain archetypes and talents will allow you to spend combinations of dice to do different things.

If an effect says it happens at the start of the action phase, it happens before the players spend their dice. If an effect says it happens at the end of the action phase, it happens after all players have finished spending their dice.

Opposition Phase Each enemy that still has dice in its pool can do one of the following for each point of power it has: ● Attack every Magical Girl. ● Attack a single liability ● Reroll two dice in its dice pool

25 Certain enemy abilities will give them extra actions during this phase. (eg. Enemies with the regeneration ability may roll new dice into their dice pool during this phase.)

If an effect says it happens at the start of the opposition phase, it happens before the enemies act. If an effect says it happens at the end of the action phase, it happens after the enemies have finished acting.

End Phase Clean up the results of the round. If dice were temporarily exchanged, give them back to their owners. Tidy up the table. The players continue to describe what they’re doing during the fight. If the opposition is capable of communication, they can converse with it. This step can prompt other non-combat or narrative resolutions. If appropriate, end combat, but persist the enemy’s dice pool just in case it starts again. Otherwise, start a new round.

At the beginning of this phase, players discard guard tokens down to their guard limit.

All status effects and guard tokens are removed at the end of the scene.

Combat Values Power rating scales as follows. It is not dependent on the number of players or the number of advancements they have taken. ● 1 = A weak youma or an imp ● 2 = A standard youma, a magical monster ● 3 = An elite youma, a rogue magical girl. Encounters can quickly become lethal. ● 4 = An especially powerful witch, an army of imps ● 5 = Apocalyptic destructive power. An army of Youma, an elite Witch.

The size of a dice pool is a little harder to get right. Ignoring all special abilities, the general recommendation is to have 5 or so dice in the pool per player. A larger dice pool means a longer fight, and a higher power rating means a more destructive foe. Certain abilities, such as armored and regeneration can make it harder for dice to be removed, prolonging the fight.

Your mileage may vary on both these values. Experiment and see which combination creates the combat pace you want. Your goal should not be to kill your players, but to give them triumph or hardship that enriches the fiction.

Actions in Combat Certain combinations of dice in a player’s hand can be spent to perform certain actions. Spending dice to perform actions must be done during the action phase. Certain archetype features and talents can give extra options for spending dice, but the following options are available to anyone.

Set A set is any group of two or more dice with the same value. A set’s strength is one less than the number of dice it contains. (A pair has strength 1, a triplet has strength 2, etc.)

26 ⚁⚁ ⚃⚃⚃ A set may be spent to perform any of the following actions a number of times equal to its strength. You may pick the same action multiple times. ● Cancel a single die of lesser or equal value in an enemy dice pool. ● Reroll any die in an enemy’s dice pool. ● Give 1 guard token to a Magical Girl or liability.

Small Straight / Rally A small straight is a sequence of 3 dice that show consecutive numbers. ⚂⚃⚄ You may spend a small straight to rally. When you rally, you may perform one of the following rally actions: ● Remove a status effect from yourself. ● Reroll any die in an enemy’s dice pool. ● Distribute 2 guard tokens among magical girls and liabilities.

Additionally, if an ally rallies, you can immediately spend a small straight to rally with them. Certain abilities may trigger if multiple magical girls rally together.

Straight A straight is a sequence of 5 dice that show consecutive numbers. ⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄ ⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅ You may spend a straight to remove any 3 dice from an enemy dice pool.

Bust A bust is any group of 4 dice. ⚀⚁⚃⚄ You may spend a bust to do one of the following: ● Reroll any die in an enemy’s dice pool. ● Distribute 2 guard tokens among magical girls and liabilities.

Finisher A finisher is a set of four of a kind in at least three players’ hands. A finisher can be spent to allow each of these players to remove five dice from an enemy dice pool. ⚅⚅⚅⚅ ⚃⚃⚃⚃ ⚁⚁⚁⚁

27 Enemy Abilities In addition to their power, dice pool, and experience value, an enemy can have any number of special abilities that allow it to do extra things, usually on the opposition phase. Note that none of these abilities should be kept secret from the players. They are public knowledge. An enemy can not have more than one copy of the same ability unless otherwise noted. Enemies may also have additional rules associated with them, inserted at the GM’s discretion.

Afflict X - Where X is any status effect. During the opposition phase, the enemy may inflict the X status effect on a magical girl. They may spend two guard tokens to prevent this. An enemy may have this ability multiple times, but each instance of the ability must specify a different status effect. (eg. An enemy can have both Afflict Weakened and Afflict Branded)

Armor X - Dice values that match X can not be cancelled out of the enemy’s dice pool. Eg. Armor 1 means that dice in the pool showing their 1 face can not be cancelled, and must first be re-rolled to another number. An enemy with armor 1-3 means that dice showing 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s can not be cancelled. (Note that these dice can still be directly removed.)

Binding X - During the opposition phase, the enemy may pick up to X unspent dice that are in the hands of players without guard tokens. Those dice persist their current values into the next roll phase, can not be rerolled, and must be included in the player’s final hand.

Bolstering - During the opposition phase, the enemy may spend 1 power to roll an additional die into their dice pool

Carapace X - A maximum of X dice can be canceled from the enemy dice pool each round.

Cunning X - During the opposition phase, the enemy may re-roll X dice in their dice pool without spending power.

Defensive - During the opposition phase, the enemy may change the value of one die in their dice pool to 6.

Devour - During the opposition phase, the enemy may spend 1 power to devour a magical girl. The magical girl can spend a guard token to negate this. That magical girl rolls 5 of her dice into the enemy’s dice pool. Other dice in the enemy’s dice pool may not be removed until these dice are removed. A devoured magical girl rolls 1 less die on her roll phase for each of her dice in the enemy’s dice pool. Once they have all their dice back, they are no longer devoured. During the roll phase, a devoured player may reroll any number of their dice in the enemy dice pool. The enemy may only devour one magical girl at a time.

Diminutive X - When the enemy’s dice pool is first rolled, they must immediately reroll any dice of value X or more.

Ferocious X - When the enemy’s dice pool is first rolled, they may immediately reroll any dice of value X or less.

28 Immolating X - Once per round, during the opposition phase, the enemy may remove X dice from their dice pool to gain 1 extra power for this round.

Parting Gift X - When the opposition is defeated, each magical girl gets attacked X times.

Piercing - At the end of the opposition phase, if a magical girl spent a guard token to negate an enemy attack this round, she must discard an additional guard token.

Potent X - This enemy’s power is equal to the number of dice in its dice pool with value X.

Power Steal - During the opposition phase, the enemy may take a single die from a player’s reserves and roll it into their dice pool. That player may spend a guard token to negate this. When this die is removed, it goes back to that player’s reserves. The enemy may only steal one die at a time from each player.

Regeneration X - During the opposition phase, roll X new dice into the enemy’s dice pool

Retaliating X (Y) - When a player cancels a die with value X from the enemy’s dice pool, they are afflicted with the Y Status Effect. They may spend a guard token to avoid this. An enemy may have this ability multiple times, but each instance of the ability must specify a different status effect. Eg. An enemy can have both Retaliating 1 (Branded) and Retaliating 2 (Weakened)

Second Health Bar - When all dice in the enemy’s pool are depleted, re-roll the enemy’s dice pool at the start of the opposition phase and the enemy loses this ability.

Spiked X - When a player cancels a die with value X from the enemy’s dice pool, they are attacked.

Undying X - During the opposition phase, if the enemy has less than X dice in its dice pool, roll dice into its dice pool until it contains X dice.

Volatile X - At the start of the opposition phase, if X dice were removed from the enemy’s dice pool this round, a magical burst occurs.

Vulnerability X - Specified with a list of dice. A magical girl may spend these dice to instantly remove X dice from the opposition’s dice pool. (eg. Vulnerability 5: [1,1,3,5])

Weak Point - Specified with a list of dice. Any player may spend these dice to activate the weak point. Players may not remove dice from the opposition’s dice pool unless the weak point has been activated this round.

29 Player vs Player Combat The life of a magical girl is hard, and player characters may find that they come into conflict with one another. This can be resolved in a variety of ways. First and foremost, a narrative resolution should be used wherever possible. If the conflicting players can agree on what an interesting outcome for a fight is, or offer a bargain or compromise or ultimatum, or even agree to a fair coin toss, allow them to do so. Player-driven conflict is best settled through roleplay.

In some cases, the players may be content with sabotaging one another’s actions by interfering. For example, if a player decides to lash out at an NPC, and another player doesn’t like that, she can choose to interfere, giving the first player -1 die on their test. This is good if the characters are bickering or getting in each other's way.

Finally, if players are determined to escalate the conflict between their characters and prefer to let the dice do the talking, then you may have each participating player roll a dice pool equal to 8 + Passion + Logic + Devotion. Combat proceeds as normal, but all players treat other magical girl dice pools as enemy dice pools, and you must skip the opposition phase. During the end phase, all participating magical girls are attacked twice. Guard tokens can also be spent to prevent a die from being removed or cancelled from a dice pool.

At the end phase, if all dice have been eliminated from a player’s dice pool, that player loses the combat. They set their harm clock to 3 and transform into a normal girl until their harm clock is empty. When players decide to leave combat, the magical girls who still have dice in their pool decide the fates of the other participants. If all players have an empty dice pool, it is a draw and everyone loses.

Conflict between player characters should be interesting and fun for everyone involved, and if the conflict is escaping the narrative and players are genuinely getting mad at one another, stop playing. This game system has no mechanics for solving real world interpersonal conflict.

30 Consequences “Us and God can call it even after this.” - Emilia Gaston, Oathbound

Fallout When a magical girl fills her Hope, Stress, or Overcharge clock, the corresponding type of Fallout happens, she picks and checks off one of the listed consequences, and the clock resets. She also marks 1 experience for the group. If all consequences under that fallout type are checked, she instead has the Extreme Fallout for that type and erases all checked boxes.

There won’t always be a good spot to fit in a given kind of Fallout into the current scene. When this happens, the player can mark off the points and boxes as usual, and then the GM can fit the Fallout in whenever seems appropriate

Overcharge Fallout ☐ Your magical girl form gains a permanent Magical Scar ☐ Your normal form gains a temporary Magical Scar ☐ A Magical Burst causes an area phenomenon ☐ There is a Magical Burst based on your character’s theme at an inopportune time

Extreme Overcharge Fallout A Magical Burst takes place. In addition, pick one of the following: ● Your normal form gains a permanent Magical Scar. ● A nightmare based on your magical theme engulfs the surrounding area. ● Your magical girl loses her powers completely. She stops being a player character.

Stress Fallout ☐ Develop an unhealthy coping mechanism until you fill your hope clock. ☐ Lash out at someone or something. Endanger one of your relationships. ☐ Your insecurities and fears cause a Magical Burst

Extreme Stress Fallout ● Lose touch with the mundane world. The things that tie you to the world and give you purpose are null and void until someone proves their value to you again. ● A nightmare based on your character’s fears and anxieties appears. The others must rescue you from inside. Narrate what they see as they delve into this nightmare. ● Your magical girl becomes a Youma or a Witch. She stops being a player character.

Hope Fallout ☐ Clear a character’s Overcharge and Stress clocks ☐ You experience a lucky break or small miracle ☐ You are able to heal someone. Heal a serious injury (mental or physical) or remove an effect caused by Fallout

31 Extreme Hope Fallout Pick one of the following: ● You cause a miracle to happen. This may permanently change the world. ● You fully heal a character and may remove any magical effects on them. ● Your magical girl stops being a magical girl, whether by ascending to become something else or simply retiring to be a normal girl. She stops being a player character.

Bane When a character suffers a Bane, the player selects one of the following. If you suffer multiple banes at once, you cannot take the same one twice unless you’ve taken one of each. ● Mark 1 Stress ● Mark 1 Harm ● Mark 1 Overcharge

A bane usually describes how your magical girl deals with a potentially lethal situation. Players should be the ones to narrate how they deal with the situation. For example:

“Umi hears the bombs before she sees them drop. She points skyward and unleashes a massive blast of ice energy, freezing them solid. They crash harmlessly into the ground around her, but the magic expended costs her 1 overcharge.”

“Standing under the storm, there isn’t anywhere to dodge the lightning strike. Emilia attempts to ground her shield to redirect the electricity, but the metal becomes red-hot, burning her badly. She takes 1 harm, but it could have been much worse.”

“Hikari locks blades with the animal mascot. As she looks into its eyes, she catches a glimpse of what’s inside the costume. It’s her homeroom teacher. His eyes are bloodshot, and his face is scrunched up and sobbing even as he pulls away and gets ready for another strike. Hikari takes one 1 of stress, because that image isn’t going to go away any time soon.”

32 Magical Burst When magic goes out of control, it causes a Magical Burst. A Magical Burst is an unpredictable mass of magical energy that can be devastating, horrific, euphoric, or just downright strange. Whatever it is, it is unpredictable and rarely desirable. Magical girls who undergo emotional trauma or overexertion will experience magical bursts more frequently.

When the rules call for a Magical Burst, think about the severity of the effect and the circumstances surrounding it. Generally, the stronger the emotions and magic magical power involved, the stronger the effect. If the burst comes from something innocuous, do something relatively innocuous. If it comes at a point of high emotional energy, crank up the severity of the effect. Whoever caused the magical burst has first dibs on narrating how it manifests. It’s fueled by their character’s magic, after all, and probably reflects their character’s emotional state!

A Magical Burst causes everyone present to take a bane, adds 3 dice to each enemy dice pool, and then does one or more of the following: ● A destructive explosion of magical energy ○ Eg. An anguished scream so loud that it knocks down buildings, a singularity that appears for an instant, or an effect that simply deletes everything in the vicinity from reality and memory. ● A magical phenomenon that alters the surrounding area ○ Eg. Gravity is nullified, plants grow at impossible speeds, a nightmare opens up, mirrors cease working, or people begin speaking backwards, birds fly backwards, it begins raining candy. ● A Magical Scar on a character’s normal or magical form. ○ Temporary scars on a character’s magical form are a fairly minor effect, while permanent scars on a character’s normal form are a major effect. ○ Eg. A character grows cute cat ears, has several manically darting eyes open all over their body, or becomes the center of attention wherever she goes. ● An instantaneous effect happens to someone ○ Eg. A character vomits up a stream of human teeth, sees a vision of every moment of embarrassment that someone else has experienced, or faces an overwhelming compulsion to start eating grass. ● A magical foe is summoned. By default, it has Power 2 and a Dice Pool equal to 3 x the number of players. ○ Eg. A nearby train grows a vicious set of metal jaws and begins slowly chugging towards the party with a terrible grinding noise.

If you wish to randomly generate Magical Burst effects, use the tables in the appendix.

33 Archetypes “Like it or not, your magic says something about who you are.” - Ichiga Akino, Oathbound

This chapter details character options for magical girls. When a Magical Girl is created she picks an archetype. An archetype dictates the emotional root of her power and the ideals that support it. A girl’s archetype may not necessarily reflect her current values and competencies. Rather, it is the nature of the magical power that the fates picked for her. It is something she must grow into if she wants to harness her powers fully.

Remember that Magic is fickle and poorly understood. Treat archetypes as guidelines and interesting narrative devices for the conversation. They should not limit characters or shoehorn them into strict tropes. A summary of the basic archetypes presented in this book is found below.

The Knight - Protection and Martyrdom. Nearly unkillable. Selfless and devoted. To endure so that others may find peace. The Lodestar - Leadership and Sincerity. Menders of mental and physical wounds. Inspire and Unite. Banner-carriers. To see the good in all people and encourage it to shine. The Muse - Creativity and Inspiration. Artists, Dancers, and Musicians. To create the things that bring light and colour to the world. The Oathbound - Willpower and Conviction. Quest undertakers. Vengeance Seekers. To pursue a worthy cause with single-minded devotion. The Seeker - Logic and Curiosity. Truth-seekers, spell-weavers. To understand and alter the laws of the universe. The Tempest - Chaos and Emotion. Harbingers of turmoil. Those whose magic gifts are wild and uncontrollable, yet still strive to do good. To find purpose amidst chaos.

Mechanically speaking, an archetype governs: ● Some narrative triggers for marking experience ● Features - These are special powers, actions or qualities related to your archetype that your character has access to. ● Abilities - These govern what tools you have access to during combat.

A newly created Magical Girl begins play with an archetype, one feature from her archetype, and all basic abilities from her archetype. Whenever she gains a new archetype ability, she picks one of the two abilities listed for that level. She can not have two abilities from the same level.

34 The Knight You struggled all week with things you didn’t know: differential calculus, Japanese history, organic chemistry. Now, you take comfort in the one thing you do: no monster will get past you until your friends are safely outside of this nightmare.

Knights are selfless protectors. Their magical power has blessed them with unbelievable resilience, and they use this resilience to shoulder the harm that would be done to others.

Mark 3 experience when you… ● Experience a major shift in worldview as a result of protecting something. ● Fail to protect something important to you and lose it.

Knight Features Begin with one of the following. Gain another at your 2nd, 4th, and 6th advancements.

Claim Suffering - Whenever an ally you can see would mark a point of overcharge, stress, or harm, you may suffer two banes instead.

Knight’s Vigil - As a downtime action, you may designate a person or object to be your Ward. They remain your ward until you fail to protect them or you designate a new ward. If the GM puts your ward in danger, they must tell you, and you can decide to start a scene in which you show up at the last possible moment to try to save or protect them.

Petrifying Seal - You may spend a minute and mark 1 overcharge to turn a willing or helpless being into a stone statue. While in this state, they cannot be detected or harmed by magic. They remain in this state for 1 year or until you end the effect by marking 1 overcharge and touching them. While in this state, they are unconscious, but they can still dream.

Knight’s Reward - Whenever an ally activates an experience trigger for their archetype or has hope fallout, you may mark 2 hope.

35 Knight Abilities

The Knight

Vanguard - During the action phase, an ally of your choice may spend a single die from your hand as if it were their hand. If they do, grant them a guard token.

Shining Armor - During the action phase, you may spend a straight to grant 3 guard tokens to each player and liability.

Aegis - At any point during combat, you may spend 1 guard token. If you do, your allies may spend your guard tokens as though they were their own this round.

Shieldbearer Champion

Be my Sword - Whenever you rally, 1 Blindside - Whenever you rally, if at least each other ally that rallied may reroll one other ally also rallied, your allies may one die in the enemy’s dice pool. spend your guard tokens as though they were their own this round.

Interpose - At the start of the action 2 Painful Clarity - During the end phase, if phase, as long as you are not branded, you marked 2 or more total points of Stress, you may grant the warded condition to harm, or overcharge this round, you may another magical girl. If you do, remove gain that many guard tokens. the warded condition from yourself and gain the branded condition.

Aura of Courage - Magical Girls who 3 Second Wind - Once per combat you may can see and hear you gain one guard spend 1 die to clear 1 point of harm from token at the end phase if they took at yourself or gain 2 guard tokens. least one bane this round.

Bulwark - You begin combat with 2 4 Indomitable - When you grant another guard tokens, and allies that can see player a guard token for the first time in a and hear you begin combat with 1 round, you may also gain one guard token. guard token.

Barrier - During the action phase, you 5 Grin and Bear It - Whenever you would fill may mark 1 overcharge and spend a your last harm clock segment, roll a d6. On straight to create a barrier. Enemies a result of 4-6, you may choose not to fill the may not attack liabilities or magical segment. girls until the barrier is destroyed. The barrier is destroyed when it takes 4 harm, and the opposition may spend its power to inflict harm on the barrier.

36 The Lodestar Earlier you told me that you didn’t believe in happy endings. Well, I’m about to show you the one where we all make it out of here alive.

Lodestars are socially and empathetically gifted. Others are naturally drawn to trust them, and that trust is rarely misplaced. They are dear friends, healers, listeners, and social lodestones.

Mark 3 experience when you... ● Create a place of belonging for people that previously didn’t have one. ● Learn from a mistake you made that hurt someone.

Lodestar Features Begin with one of the following. Gain another at your 2nd, 4th, and 6th advancements.

Healing Wave - Once per episode, you may mark 1 overcharge to clear up to 1 harm from any number of characters in the vicinity. This ability also repairs buildings, trees, structures, et cetera. If you do this in combat, roll 4 dice into each enemy dice pool.

Second Chance - Once per scene, you may mark 1 overcharge to allow an ally who can see and hear you to reroll a test they just made. They make this reroll with 1 fewer die.

Empath - You can read the emotions of ordinary people, and you always know when they are lying to you. If you attempt to read the mind of a magical girl or magical creature, they know immediately. They can either allow you to read their thoughts, block your attempt, or lie to you and feed you false information.

Overwhelming Charisma - Non-magical strangers perceive you as incredibly charming, charismatic, and attractive. They are well-disposed, inclined to trust you, and will happily do favours for you. Additionally, take +1 die whenever being charming would aid you in a test.

37 Lodestar Abilities

The Lodestar

Rear Guard - At the end of the action phase, if you removed less than 2 dice from an enemy dice pool this round, you may grant 1 guard token to a magical girl or liability.

Carry the Banner - You may spend a straight to do all of the following: ● Clear a status effect on a magical girl ● Grant a status effect to a magical girl ● Distribute 2 guard tokens to magical girls or liabilities ● Clear 1 harm from a magical girl’s harm clock ● Remove a die from the opposition’s dice pool

Bolster - During the action phase, you may spend 2 guard tokens to grant a magical girl any status effect.

Captain Medic

Believe in the Me that Believes in 1 Magic Salve - When you rally, you may You - Gain the following rally action: clear 1 harm from each ally who also rallied. Grant an ally a positive status effect if they don’t already have one.

Call the Shot - The first time you reroll 2 Adrenaline Aura - At the end of the roll a die in an enemy’s dice pool during phase, Magical Girls with at least one guard the action phase, an ally may token may increase or decrease the value of immediately spend a die matching its one of their dice by 1. new value to cancel it.

Stronger Together - At the end of the 3 Sympathetic Bond - The first time in a action phase, each magical girl with a round that you gain a guard token, another status effect may flip one die in the ally of your choice may also gain a guard enemy’s dice pool to its opposite side. token.

Press the Advantage - During the 4 Do No Harm - Once per round, during the action phase, you may remove a action phase, you may grant 1 guard token positive status effect from a magical to a magical girl or liability. If you do, roll 1 girl. That magical girl may then remove die into an enemy dice pool. a die from the opposition’s dice pool.

Seize Victory - If all players have a 5 Coordinated Feint - Once per combat, at status effect, a finisher requires three the end of the roll phase, you may suffer a of a kind in each player’s hand instead bane to go back to the start of the roll of four. phase. Players re-roll all their dice as normal.

38 The Muse The house went quiet as Arietta raised her violin. Her performances were critically acclaimed, breathtaking, awe- inspiring, but never before had they been so aptly described as ‘enchanting.’

A Muse’s magical gift enriches her soul. Her magic works best to enhance her creativity and passion. She delights in merriment, kindles the light in her own soul, and inspires joy and belief for those around her. To her, life itself is something that should be celebrated.

Mark 3 experience when you... ● Inspire someone else to make a drastic positive change in their own life ● Regain your inner light after losing it

Muse Features Begin with one of the following. Gain another at your 2nd, 4th, and 6th advancements.

Muse’s Revelry - When you perform music, display your art, make a speech, or otherwise express yourself to a group of people, roll a test with 3 dice. ● 1-3: You do not have the desired effect. The crowd’s energy fades, and the meaning of your performance is somehow lost or twisted. ● 4-5: You evoke strong positive emotions in your audience. They are enthralled by you and your performance will have a lasting impact on them. ● 6: The group’s inspiration becomes magical in nature. A group of ordinary people inspired this way can even stand against a magical foe. If this group is present in combat, they are not considered a liability. Instead, they may remove your choice of 1 die per round from an enemy dice pool. ● Critical: As above, but the group is excited to a fervor. They will need two days rest after the performance.

Illusionist - You may create and control realistic three dimensional images complete with sound. You may also alter your own voice, face, and costume to anything you desire. Physical interaction with any of these effects reveals them to be incorporeal illusions.

Safehaven - You gain access to an extradimensional space. The space is about the size of a large loft apartment, and you can choose exactly what it looks like. You may travel to this space from anywhere by spending 10 minutes in quiet concentration, and you may take any number of willing entities with you. The space is comfortable and well-equipped with any mundane supplies and tools. You may also designate a space in the real world that can be used as an entrance to this extradimensional space, but only for the characters you specify.

Talk to Anything - With your magic, you can speak to anything, including animals and

39 inanimate objects. You might ask a playground what it felt last night, ask the squirrels if they have heard any rumors lately, or ask that the crows bring you specific objects. Though effective, communication with these entities is often cryptic and obtuse.

Muse Abilities

The Muse

Muse’s Inspiration - Up to twice per round, you may let any ally spend a die from your hand as if it were in that ally’s hand.

Crescendo - During the action phase, you may spend a straight to reduce an enemy’s power by 3 until the end of the round.

Eloquent Sway - During the action phase, you may spend a guard token to increase or decrease the value of one die in an enemy dice pool by 1.

Harmony Discord

Harmonize - Whenever you rally, all 1 Captivate - Whenever you rally, enemies magical girls that rallied may freely are captivated during the next opposition spend each other's dice this round, as phase. While captivated, an enemy can not though those dice were in their own re-roll or change values in its dice pool hand. without your approval, and whenever it targets a magical girl with an ability or attack, you may pick a different magical girl for it to target.

Refrain - At the end of the action 2 Fermata - Once per round, you may spend phase, if at least two of your dice were a single die to reroll a die of equal or lesser spent by other players this phase, you value in an enemy’s dice pool. may gain 1 guard token.

Adagio - At any point during the roll 3 Half-Step - Whenever you would reroll a die phase, you may remove one die from in an enemy dice pool, you may instead flip your reserves to allow any ally an extra it to its opposite side. reroll.

Cadenza - During the action phase, all 4 Leitmotif - Whenever an ally spends a die magical girls may simultaneously from your hand, set its value to 1 and return spend a pair. If they do, grant each it to your hand. Allies may not spend that die magical girl the Inspired status effect. again this round, even if an ability would otherwise permit it.

Ensemble - Once per combat, at the 5 Power Chord - You may spend three of a start of the action phase, you may kind to reroll up to five dice in the declare that this round, you and all your opposition’s dice pool. allies may spend dice from any ally’s hand as though it were their own.

40 The Oathbound When Kimiko regained consciousness she rose to her feet, silhouetted against the softly glowing mass that was now devouring the evacuation shelter. “You weren’t listening.” She said, drawing a pair of slender knitting needles from a holster. “These people are under my protection. You can’t have them.”

An Oathbound is a magical girl whose powers come from a promise she has made. When you create an Oathbound, pick an Oath. This can be a vendetta, a moral code, a promise, or otherwise. (Eg. Find out how to stop the Youma from being created, eliminate the cult that took your family from you, resurrect your friend, etc.) If you somehow complete this oath, immediately experience hope fallout. You may pick a new Oath when narratively appropriate, or play without an Oath.

Mark 3 experience when you... ● Forgive someone who you came into conflict with as a result of your Oath ● Jeopardize your Oath by prioritizing another worthwhile cause

Oathbound Features Bloodhound - You may mark 1 overcharge to leave a bloodhound’s mark on a target you can see and hear. You always know where to go in order to pursue a marked target, though you may not automatically know its exact location. Additionally, you have a sixth sense for things related to your oath, and are able to tell within a couple minutes of study whether a person is involved, supports it, etc.

Tempered Soul - You are fully aware of your surroundings when you sleep, you can survive for up to a month without food or water or rest, and you are immune to any magical effects that would beguile or charm you. If an effect says you can’t transform into your magical form, you can instead do so by taking 1 Stress.

Oath of Protection - If you allow someone to comfort you, and you have a moment of emotional vulnerability in front of them, you may add ensuring their safety to your oath. You always know when they are in danger and can track them down with an hour or two of investigation. Additionally, they gain a magical mark that grants them minor powers based on your magical theme, and can use this mark to communicate with you from anywhere.

Memory Magic - You are adept at manipulating the memories of others. When you attempt to alter the memory of a willing, helpless, or non magical entity, roll a test with 3 dice. ● 1-3: your memory manipulation fails. The target is aware of your manipulations as a half-remembered dream. ● 4-5: you may manipulate the target’s memory, but you may not touch memories that are particularly important, cherished, or traumatic to the target.

41 ● 6: you may rewrite major details about the target’s memory. Altering important memories will have drastically negative effects on the target’s mental state. ● Critical: As above, but segments of their memory bleed into yours, and you find yourself remembering things from the target’s life as if they happened to you.

Oathbound Abilities

The Oathbound

Oathbound’s Fury - At the end phase, if you removed at least 2 dice from any enemy dice pools this round, your reserves increase by 1 until the next end phase. (ie. you may roll 1 additional die during the roll phase)

Oathbound’s Smite - During the action phase, you may spend a straight to remove any number of dice from an enemy dice pool, as long as none of those dice share a value.

Reckless Attack - You may spend a guard token to reroll any die in an enemy dice pool. If that die rolls a 1, you may remove it.

War Maiden Tactician

Frontrunner - Whenever you rally, you 1 Formation - Whenever you rally, you may may cancel a die from the enemy’s choose an ally who also rallied. That ally dice pool for each other ally that rallied. gains the strengthened status effect.

Overextend - You may take 1 harm to 2 Fight For Friends - During the action remove a single die from an enemy’s phase, if every other player has given you a dice pool. guard token this round, you may spend 4 of a kind to cancel one die from an enemy dice pool for each guard token you have.

Furious Rebuttal - At the end of the 3 No Movement Wasted - At the end of the opposition phase, roll 1d6 for each action phase, if you spent all the dice in your segment of Stress and Harm you took hand, you may gain 1 guard token. this round. For each 4-6, cancel a die from an enemy dice pool.

Tempered Focus - As long as you 4 Power Strike - During the action phase, if have a negative status effect, gain +1 you have four or more dice with the same reroll during the roll phase. value and you spend them as a set, they may cancel dice of any value from the enemy’s dice pool.

Execute - You may spend 5 dice with 5 Incursion - You and at least two other allies total value 25 or above to cancel all may each spend a set of 2 and any number enemy dice with even values, or all of guard tokens. Each player may cancel a enemy dice with odd values. (Your number of enemy dice equal to the number choice) of guard tokens they spent.

42 The Seeker Despite how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned, it still feels as though I know nothing at all.

A Seeker’s magical gift allows them to paint on the canvas of reality with some semblance of logic. Their interaction with magic is less emotional and more scientific and quantifiable. A Seeker can experiment, alter, and apply magic in ways that others simply cannot.

Mark 3 experience when you... ● Experience a major shift in worldview as a result of pursuing your curiosity. ● Use cleverness to overcome an enemy that previously defeated you.

Seeker Features Begin with one of the following. Gain another at your 2nd, 4th, and 6th advancements.

Tinker - Your downtime projects can create magical artifacts, alchemical concoctions, or impossible contraptions. Describe the properties of your creation, start a 6-segment project clock, and then mark 1, 2, or 3 overcharge depending on the power of the effect. For example: ● 1 Overcharge = A clockwork bird, a love potion, a nail that magically seals a door. ● 3 Overcharge = An extra dimensional storage trunk, a magic motorcycle, a lantern that reveals the invisible, a permanent teleportation circle ● 2 Overcharge = Something in between

Mastermind - You gain the following: ● Take +1 die on any trait test where you are looking for evidence or investigating, and the GM may tell you something unrelated but important that you discover along the way. ● Once per scene, you may mark 1 overcharge and describe a flashback in which your character made specific preparations for something that has arisen in the narrative. The preparations must be something your character could feasibly have done, though you don’t need to explain how you knew this would happen. You’re just that smart.

Applied Science - Whenever a youma is defeated, you can choose to take a sample of its remains. These samples are unstable, and you may only safely keep one at a time. You can spend a sample to fill an extra project clock segment when you work on a project, or to take +1 die on a magical trait test.

Divination - You may mark 1 overcharge to do one of the following: ● Scry - Specify any location you have previously visited, and perceive it as if you were

43 there. If the area is magically protected, your perception is clouded, hazy, and sometimes shows false information. ● Augury - Describe an entity, location, or course of action. The GM will give you a sign of weal if the future of the entity aligns with your goals and wellbeing, or a sign of woe if it does not. Alternatively, the GM can decide to give you more specific visions or premonitions about the entity.

Seeker Abilities

The Seeker

Pull from the Veil - In combat, before your first roll phase, roll one extra die separately. This is your Seeker die. At any point, before finalizing your hand, you may swap your Seeker die for a die in your reserves. The die you swapped out becomes your new seeker die.

Silence - During the action phase, you may spend a straight to disable any number of enemy abilities until the end of the round.

Stack the Deck - During the action phase, you may spend 2 guard tokens to change the value of one of the dice in your hand to any value.

Logician Schemer

Jamming Field - Gain the following 1 Like Clockwork - Whenever you rally, if rally action: Choose one ability an another ally also rallied, you gain the enemy has. It loses that ability until the inspired status effect. next end step.

Overthink - During the roll phase, you 2 Guide Volition - In combat, you may spend may suffer a bane to change one of a set of 3 to increase or reduce the value of your dice to any value. You may use up to 3 dice in an enemy dice pool by 1 this ability once per round

Cunning Maneuver - At the end of the 3 Calculated Strike - You may spend a set of roll phase, you may flip one of your 3 to remove a die of equal or lesser value dice to its opposite side. (This applies from the opposition’s dice pool. to your seeker die as well)

Seeker’s Mark - Whenever you would 4 Seeker’s Gambit - Whenever you reroll a cancel a die, if that die has the same die in the enemy’s dice pool, if the die’s new value as your seeker die, you may value is equal to your seeker die’s value, remove it instead. you may cancel it.

Tandem Assault - At the start of the 5 Mind Control - You may spend five of a action phase, if you have exactly the kind to take up to 5 dice from an enemy dice same hand as any of your allies, you pool, roll them, and then spend them as if may remove three dice from an enemy they were in your hand. Then remove these dice pool. dice.

44 The Tempest I shoulda known something was wrong when Poncho gave me that cracked pendant.

Maybe you don’t have a knack for magic, maybe something went wrong in your first transformation, or maybe you’re actually supposed to be the harbinger of the apocalypse. No matter how hard you try, you can’t fully control your powers.

Mark 3 experience when you... ● Succeed at a very high-risk and low-reward endeavor ● Fix a terrible situation that you ultimately caused.

Tempest Features Begin with one of the following. Gain another at your 2nd, 4th, and 6th advancements.

Tempest Alchemy - Describe a magical effect of any sort, then roll a D6 and consult the following: ● 1 - A Magical Burst occurs based on the described effect. ● 2 - The desired effect occurs, but it is horribly twisted and backfires in some way. ● 3 - Roll on the Tempest Surge table. ● 4 - Roll on the Tempest Surge table twice and pick either result. ● 5 - The desired effect occurs, but with reduced effect or a new complication ● 6 - The desired effect occurs.

Harbinger of the Weird - As a downtime action, you may mark 1 Overcharge, and collaborate with the GM to describe an unlikely coincidence that happens to you. eg. Perhaps you meet your archnemesis in line at a coffee shop, or you trip over the entrance to the lair of the evil cult you’ve been pursuing, or you are mistaken for someone very important and find yourself giving orders to a group of shady henchmen.

Local God - You are attuned to the forces of nature around where you live. The weather reflects your mood, people tend to have misfortune befall them when you think ill of them and have lucky breaks when you think positively about them. The clothing that you wear and the way that you speak inadvertently set trends. If these facts are discovered, ordinary people may start banding together to worship you as a cult deity.

Cataclysm - Once per episode, You release any control you had over your magic and allow it to run wild. You rip fissures in the earth, cause earthquakes, and generally tear the environment up. All characters in the vicinity including you suffer 3 banes, you may remove up to 5 dice from each enemy dice pool, and non-magical structures, objects, and people are destroyed.

45 Tempest Abilities

The Tempest

Tempest Surge - Whenever you critically succeed on a magical test, or whenever you fail a magical test with 2 or more of the same value in your result set, your magic goes more out of control than normal. Roll on the tempest surge table. The GM can also make you roll on the table whenever they determine it’s narratively appropriate. If they do, gain 1 experience.

Storm’s Volatility - You gain a Volatility die. When you roll your volatility die, roll 1d6 for a random effect. You must roll this die at the beginning of each action phase. ● 1 - A Magical Girl of your choice is attacked. ● 2 - Your choice of enemy rolls two dice into their dice pool. ● 3 - A player of your choice gains a status effect. Roll 1d6 to determine the effect. ○ 1-2 = Branded, 3-4 = Inspired, 5-6 = Strengthened ● 4 - You may reroll up to 3 dice in an enemy’s dice pool. ● 5 - Grant 1 guard token to a magical girl or liability. ● 6 - Remove a die from an enemy dice pool.

Distort - During the action phase, you may spend a straight to reroll any number of dice in an enemy dice pool. You may repeat this action up to two times.

Invoke Unpredictability - During the action phase, you may spend a guard token to roll your Volatility die.

Stormchaser Catalyst

Stormchase - When you rally, an ally 1 Volatile Rally - When you rally, roll your of your choice who also rallied may volatility die once for each other ally that reroll up to 3 dice in an enemy dice rallied. pool. For each 6 rolled this way, you or the ally may gain 1 guard token.

Nullifying Front - You may spend any 2 Unstable Vector - You may spend a bust to 3 dice whose values sum to 10 to roll 3 dice. If you roll doubles, you may remove any 3 enemy dice whose remove two dice from the enemy dice pool. values also sum to 10. If you roll triples, you may remove five dice from the enemy dice pool. Otherwise, gain 1 guard token.

Ionic Accumulation - At the start of 3 Aftershocks - At the end of the action the action phase, if all values in your phase, if you rolled your Volatility die 3 or hand are even, you may remove an more times this round, you may cancel up to even-valued die from the enemy’s dice 2 dice from an enemy dice pool. pool. If all values are odd, you may remove an odd-valued die.

Storm Battery - When you experience 4 State Disruption - If you would gain a

46 fallout during combat, you may remove positive status effect, you may instead get a die from each enemy dice pool. attacked and remove up to 2 dice from an enemy dice pool.

Storm Body - At the start of the action 5 Additive Interference - Whenever you roll phase, you may choose to activate your storm’s volatility die, if the value rolled Storm Body until the next end step: is equal to your current number of marked ● Whenever you suffer a bane, overcharge segments, you may cancel or you may remove a die from an re-roll a die in an enemy dice pool. enemy dice pool. ● You must discard all guard tokens and may not gain guard tokens. ● You suffer a bane at the end of the action phase.

47 Tempest Surge Table d66 Effect d66 Effect 11 Lightning strikes whatever you last 41 Magic ceases to function around you. pointed at Youma temporarily disappear, and all magical girls transform back for 1 hour. 12 The area is covered in a thick and 42 Plants around you immediately grow ominous fog massive 13 You explode. Everyone in the area 43 The area becomes brightly lit, and marks 1 harm, including you. flowers bloom on every surface 14 Gain a suit of magical armor that 44 The nearby landscape becomes protects you from your next bane or covered in graffiti that reflects your point of harm most recent prominent thoughts 15 Your body turns to living metal 45 You have a brief glimpse of the future 16 You say something unsettlingly 46 You grow a prehensile tail. The tail can personal and comforting to an ally. be cut off without harming you. They mark 1 hope. 21 You are immediately intoxicated, as if 51 You grow antlers and can by alcohol communicate with animals for 1 hour 22 The next character you speak to falls 52 Your skin glows blindingly bright for the in love with you next minute 23 A weaker copy of you appears nearby 53 You become terrified of the sky for the and attempts to kill you next hour 24 You catch fire. Mark 1 Harm 54 You learn a secret about the world 25 A blast of cold snap-freezes the area 55 Your make Nerve, Defiance, and Imagination tests with 4 dice for the next hour. 26 You teleport somewhere within 100m 56 You are energized with magical power, of your current location take +1 to your next roll this scene 31 A magical bird appears and offers to 61 For one minute, time freezes for deliver a message to anyone for you everything in the world except for you 32 You and all your allies may clear 1 62 For the next week, animals follow you harm around. 33 Music loudly begins emanating from 63 You suffer temporary amnesia for 1 your body for the next ten minutes hour. 34 Someone deceased appears and 64 You turn a random character invisible encourages you. Mark 1 Hope. for the next minute 35 You desire blood. If you drink 65 You become supercharged with static another’s blood in the next hour, clear electricity. The next thing you touch 1 harm or Stress marks 1 harm. 36 You summon a horde of imps that is 66 Pick a person you care about. They loyal to you for 1 hour teleport to you

48 Talents “I’m selectively competent. Can’t touch my toes, but I can turn invisible” - Gardening Club President Periwinkle, Lodestar

Talents are traits, powers, or qualities that your character has access to.

Binding - You may mark 1 Overcharge to bind something in place with magical ropes, chains, glue, or similar. It remains bound until you dispel the effect or lose consciousness. Youma and other strong magical creatures are usually immune to this effect.

Door - For you, doors don’t always lead to what’s on the other side of the door frame. You can mark 1 overcharge to make a door lead to any other door you’ve seen or interacted with.

Dream Walker - You can enter and affect the dreams of others, so long as you are within 50 meters of them. When you manipulate another person through their dreams, Roll a test with 3 dice. ● 1-3: The person notices you, realizes what has happened, and can either wake up or take back control of the dream ● 4-5: The person is unaware of your involvement, and you can twist their dream to show them anything you can imagine. ● 6: As above, but they believe the dream is prophetic and has meaning in their everyday life. ● Critical: The person becomes obsessed with the dream, and goes to insane lengths to prove its significance.

Fly - Your magic lets you actually fly; this could be with wings, by magical force, by skating on the air, etc.

Healing Touch - Once per scene, you may mark 1 Overcharge to clear up to 2 harm from yourself or someone else.

Invisibility - You have the power to turn invisible. You can do this effortlessly for a few minutes, or mark 1 overcharge to remain invisible for up to eight hours.

Magical Pet - You have a magical pet, no larger than a wolf. You can decide what it looks like. It is not capable of speech, but it has the intelligence of a fairly smart animal. Ordinary people can’t see it unless you choose to allow them to. It can perform tasks for you.

Shadow Pluck - For you, each person’s shadow contains objects derived from the substance of their soul. You can draw out all manner of amazing and impossible tools from people’s shadows.

Shapeshift - You have both a human form and an animal form, and you can transform between them at will. Your animal form should be no bigger than an elephant, and unable to fly. Otherwise, you can do whatever the animal can.

49 Super Strength - You can pick up, throw, and carry absurdly heavy things, such as tanker trucks and stone statues.

Supportive - You may spend a downtime action to clear 1 stress or overcharge from an ally.

Team Mom - You may spend a downtime action to grant yourself and each ally +1 die on their next roll to keep up with life.

Telekinesis - You can move some objects with your mind. Your weight limit is around one or two adult humans.

Telepathy - You are capable of two-way communication via thought projection.

Teleport - Teleportation allows you to instantly move from one place to another. You can freely teleport short distances, though this isn’t much faster than walking. You may also mark 1 Overcharge to teleport up to a kilometer away.

Thrive Under Pressure - As long as you have a source of stress, make Keep up with Life rolls with +1 die.

50 The Game Master “If there really is a God, we are going to have words.” - Ember Autumn, Tempest

This section will give you some pointers on how to run this game specifically, but if you want more general advice on running tabletop roleplaying games, I suggest you read the gamemastery sections in Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, and Fate Core. They all have wonderful insights on how to run any tabletop roleplaying game.

Building a World The setting details of this game are deliberately vague. Where do the Youma come from? What do they want? What are the goals of the Tsukaima? When is a Magical Girl finished fighting? Did the universe always hate magic? What happens when a magical girl dies? Who knows about magic? Is the world in danger? Is it dangerous for a magical girl to reveal her identity?

As the game master, you should think of answers to questions like this. These become the secrets of your world, and your magical girls can choose to pursue and explore them. It’s okay if you don’t have all of this prepared from the very beginning. Try to make the secrets into things that will unsettle or evoke strong emotions in the player characters. Tailor them to the characters. Having these secrets differ from game to game means that players themselves can be surprised at each reveal.

The First Session Your goals in the first session should be to establish the world, allow the player characters to establish themselves within it, learn about them, introduce weirdness, and make sure they are pulled into it. Don’t be afraid to have the players start the game as magical girls! This lets you jump right into the action. You can fill in the blanks through flashbacks. If you want more of a slow-burn game, you can start the players as normal girls and follow their lives until they make a pact with a Tsukaima.

Try to get your players to answer some of the following questions: ● What is your daily routine? ● How do you know the other player characters? ● How are you involved in the world? What role do you play? ● Why did you make a pact with a Tsukaima? ● What do you fear more than anything? ● What is your greatest wish or ambition?

Once the status quo is established and the players have some idea who they are, you should introduce strange happenings. You can find some examples in the tables in the appendix, but they should be odd incongruities in reality that prompt further investigation. This is the springboard into further adventures.

51 Gamemaster’s Agenda ● Talk to the characters, not the players. ● Apply pressure and see what happens. ● Ask pointed questions and build on the answers. ● Be a fan of your players and their characters. ● Let everything flow from the fiction. ● Paint a bright and terrible world, devoid of hope. ● Encourage your players to reject that world, and plant the seeds of hope in it. ● No good deed goes unrewarded. ● Celebrate femininity and youth. ● Everything has a cost. ● Keep it weird.

Magic is terrifying and unknowable, but most perceive it as impossibly twisted reflections of the mundane. Describe magic as smelling like abstract concepts or evoking powerful emotions. Bombard your players with hordes of madly rustling origami wolves, surveillance cameras with human eyeballs, and oceans of caustic cotton candy sailed by intrepid peppermint pirates.

Your probing questions for the magical should be disturbing, and encourage disturbing answers. For example: ● “You mark a point of harm. Does your magical girl bleed? What does she bleed?” ● “You stare into the acrid purple water of the nightmare. Does it smell like anybody you know? Do you see anything below the surface?” ● “The reporter stops his broadcast to address you directly through the TV set. What is the most unsettling thing he could say to you right now?”

The world is dark, but it desperately desires light. Your players have the potential to be that light. As the gamemaster, give them a painful and grim world where hope tends to fade into despair, and reward them whenever they do kind things, help others, perform acts of creation, and otherwise rebel against the overwhelming darkness of the world. That, after all, is a magical girl’s job.

The golden rule for setting the tone of this game is that no good deed goes unrewarded. If players actively seek to do good, some good will come of their actions no matter what. Even if it seems like it was all for naught, there will always be some silver lining. Naturally, you can ignore this if you want to run a darker, grittier game. But I think striving to do good is a fundamental theme in Magical Girl stories, and structuring a game to enforce that theme is a good idea.

Running Combat When designing combat encounters, your combat should stem from the fiction. Start with an idea for a monster, encounter, hostile environment, or something else that the magical girls

52 can fight. If your encounter isn’t something that can be conventionally fought, then skip combat entirely, and allow the players to narrate their way through it instead. Maybe instead of fighting the youma that takes the guise of a haunted house, they must traverse it to find its heart.

Mechanically, a complete combat encounter is described by: ● Size of enemy dice pool ● Enemy Power Value ● Enemy Abilities ● Arbitrary additional rules

The enemy dice pool size, power value, and abilities are outlined in the combat chapter. You may add arbitrary rules to your enemies to make combat more interesting. Note that you still need to make these rules known to your players. Here are some examples: ● You have to finish this fight in 5 rounds or less. ● You can’t remove dice from the enemy dice pool each round unless each magical girl spends a single die from their hand. ● Only one magical girl may remove dice from the enemy’s dice pool per round.

This is meant to be an easy way for you to tie custom gameplay elements to the narrative elements of your monsters. Especially when there’s no relevant enemy ability to use as a shorthand.

Encounters are designed to fit nicely on a single index card. This way, players can read it and pass it around easily without having to remember specific values. Here is an example of a combat encounter with a youma, complete with a name and some flavour text.

As a GM, there is very little decision making during combat. During the roll and action phases, the players have full knowledge of the monster they are facing, and full control of what they spend their dice to do. During these two phases, they can run the game without you, so you should let them strategize and execute their plans. You should encourage them to touch the dice in the enemy dice pools when they need to cancel, re-roll or remove them.

53 During the opposition phase, it is your job to use any of the enemy’s applicable abilities, and decide what to do with its power. In general, enemies will tend to spend all their power to attack magical girls, but if unprotected liabilities are present, they will attack those instead. If attacking magical girls isn’t at all advantageous, the enemies can always spend their power to reroll dice in their pool.

Finally, remember to narrate and encourage players to describe their actions! If a player runs out of guard tokens, describe how the enemy breaks their defensive stance. If they take a bane, ask them to describe how they narrowly escape a lethal hit. Don’t let combat mechanics become disconnected from the fiction. Every die removed from an enemy’s pool is a blow to that enemy, every guard token bestowed is a manifestation of a girl’s magic, every group rally involves magical girls regrouping and supporting one another. Each end step, characterize your enemies. Allow for some dialogue, describe how horrible the Youma is, and try to let your players take the spotlight.

If you find yourself running combat that you haven’t prepared for, a good rule of thumb is to roll a handful of dice into the middle of the table (4-5 dice per player), declare that it has power 2, and optionally pick 1-2 abilities that this enemy has. This is a good way to make combat that, while not particularly challenging, adds narrative tension and runs the risk of the magical girls taking a bane or two. It’s quick to run, too!

Gamemaster Moves When the action slows down, or the players are looking at you expectantly, do one of the following things:

Declare Downtime Just tell the players that they have downtime. This hands narrative control over to them, and allows them to go back to their daily lives, manage their resources, get some R&R, and be ready for the next adventure.

Advance a Threat When there is an active threat somewhere in the city, decide how many stages it will go through before it comes to pass. When it seems appropriate, move the threat forward, introducing new issues arising from its presence. It’s a good idea to use progress clocks for this.

Complicate Life Introduce something that makes a magical girl’s life more difficult, whether it stems from something magical or mundane. When you introduce complications in a character’s life, you can tell them to mark hope, overcharge, stress, or harm, or even give them new sources of stress.

Endanger Put something a magical girl cares about in immediate danger, and put pressure on them to make split-second decisions.

54 Reveal a Secret Put one of the secrets about the game’s setting out in the open for the magical girls to react to.

Introduce Consequences Show the consequences of a player’s previous action. Perhaps they saved someone, and later stumbled across them living a happy life. Perhaps they wronged someone, and that person shows up to exact revenge. Good deeds are rewarded, and mistakes and bad decisions are punished.

55 Glossary “Aye, I was just noddin’ and smilin’ the whole time. Didn’t catch a word o’ that.” - Janitorial Club President Wanda, Knight

Ability - A mechanic that affects combat. Players are granted abilities by their archetypes, and enemies have innate abilities.

Advancement - When magical girls accumulate enough experience, they take advancements. These are analogous to levels in other RPGs. (See Experience and Advancement)

Area Phenomenon - A magical anomaly that alters a location.

Attribute - One of Passion, Logic, or Devotion. An attribute’s value is equal to the number of its traits with at least one point assigned. (See Player Characters)

Bane - When a magical girl takes a bane, she marks her choice of harm, stress, or overcharge and narrates how she mitigates the bane. See the Consequences section.

Downtime - A phase in which players can take downtime actions. See the Downtime section.

Episode - A small story arc or (more commonly) a single game session.

Fallout - A consequence resulting from filling a magical girl’s overcharge, Stress, or hope clock.

Feature - Traits, powers, or qualities granted by a character’s archetype

Hand - A player’s spendable dice during the Action Phase in combat

Imp - A minor, usually malicious magical creature

Liability - A bystander, structure, or other non-player entity that can be harmed in combat.

Magical Burst - An unpredictable explosion of magic. See the consequences chapter.

Magical Form - A magical girl’s transformed state, in which she can use magic. Usually complete with an alternate costume and other magical effects.

Magical Girl - A girl who wields the power of magic. She is given a pendant that she can use to transform into a magical girl.

Magical Scar - A magical anomaly that alters something about a person.

Nightmare - The spatial distortion in which Youma or other magical creatures reside. The inside of a nightmare is warped and impossible, and is often an onslaught to the senses.

Normal Form - A magical girl’s untransformed state. She can not use magic unless she transforms.

Ordinary Person - An ordinary or non-magical person is a human being that can not wield magic. Almost everyone that isn’t a magical girl, witch, or reaver is an ordinary person.

Reaver - An ordinary person who has succumbed to dark magic, but retained their mental

56 faculties.

Reserves - The dice a player has available to roll a hand in the roll phase.

Scene - A block of action that takes place at a certain time and place

Source of Stress - Magical Girls with a source of stress take 1 stress at the start of downtime. (See Downtime)

Talents - General traits, powers, or qualities that your character has access to.

Test - A roll of the dice to determine how successful a character is in a narrative endeavor. See the section on Tests.

Trait - A stat value value grouped by an attribute. (See Player Characters)

Tsukaima - An animal familiar capable of forming a pact that turns normal girls into magical girls.

Youma - A nightmarish and evil monster that corrupts and kills ordinary humans.

Witch - A corrupted, twisted, or evil magical girl.

57 Appendix: Tables “Once we’re in there, there’s no telling what will happen. We may as well be rolling the dice.” - Ember Autumn, Tempest

This section contains tables for randomly generating character details, death complications, magical bursts, and other narrative hooks. They are wholly optional, but hopefully they make good springboards for storytelling.

Magical Bursts If you can’t think of an appropriate magical burst, looking at (or rolling on) one of these tables may help. d6 Effect

1-2 A phenomenon takes place in the surrounding area

3-4 Temporary or Permanent Magical scar on a character’s normal or magical form. Scars on a character’s normal form are more severe than scars on their magical form, and permanent scars are more severe than temporary scars.

5 A magical foe is summoned (By default: power=2, dice pool=4 per player)

6 There is a particularly destructive explosion of magical energy. Destroy the surrounding area, and highlight casualties or losses.

Area Phenomena d66 Phenomenon d66 Phenomenon 11 A door in the area doesn’t take someone to 41 Mirrors show their surroundings from an hour the right place. in the past. 12 An exceptionally large fruit tree appears. It 42 Objects in the area become brittle, and grows a particularly nutritious and addictive crumble into dust when not handled delicately. fruit under its canopy. 13 A sudden gust of wind fills the air with slips 43 A clone of everyone in the area emerges from of paper that state claims about the area’s the ground. Each clone can walk and say past, present, and future. Not all are true, basic phrases, but appears to be made of though most are. animated, colored clay. A new clone emerges when someone enters the area for the first time. 14 It constantly rains choking ash. 44 It is always night time within the area, and the visible stars do not match up with any known charts. 15 All sound magically ceases within the area. 45 Time passes strangely within the area. Stay for an hour, and ten hours will pass for the world outside. 16 A sandstorm rages constantly and buries the 46 Animals perform all their actions backwards.

58 area in sand. They walk backwards, regurgitate food, etc. 21 Buildings in the area are bigger on the 51 Written language stops working. inside. 22 Animals speak nonsense words. 52 Man-made structures in the area are turned into candy. 23 Lost things from all over the city, and 53 Small objects start hopping around as though potentially the world, end up here. alive. 24 Drawings in the area become animated and 54 Ordinary people in the area firmly believe that cause mischief. leaving the area is mortally dangerous. They distrust anything that came from outside. 25 Gravity is drastically increased. 55 Buildings grow like living bacteria, an impossible jumble of brick and mortar and windows and doors. There are low grinding noises as they slowly expand. 26 Electronics play strange voices from their 56 The area becomes a vast and complex jungle speakers. gym, spanning over a dark foreboding pit. 31 The area magically censors certain words, 61 When it rains in the area, it rains blood. phrases, and visuals. 32 Every phone in the area receives wrong 62 The area flickers like a software glitch. number calls, many from untraceable sources. 33 People in the area are compelled to blurt out 63 There is a small pocket of zero gravity. truths that they have been hiding 34 Indoor areas are now outdoors. Outdoor 64 There is an endless, unnatural snowfall. areas are indoors. Eventually the area is buried. 35 The sun’s intensity is doubled or tripled. 65 Plant life in the area grows at an alarming rate. It quickly becomes overgrown and wild. 36 Magical writing randomly appears on any 66 Knowledge of the area is deleted from the available surface. collective consciousness of those outside it.

Magical Scars d66 Scar Description 11 Doll Limbs Your arms and legs are apparently artificial on the inside, like those of a doll. They can be reattached if they fall off. 12 Body Swap You swap bodies with an ordinary person. This person can be someone you know, or a total stranger. 13 Magical Flu You gain a sickness that is magical in nature. You are weak, feverish, and tired. Your feverish hallucinations manifest in reality. When you sneeze, anomalous magical effects take place. 14 Vampirism Food does not sustain you. You grow fangs and must drink blood for sustenance. 15 Pull of the Abyss Whenever you are alone and in the dark, hands reach out from the shadows and tug at your clothes, try to steal your belongings, and sometimes attempt to pull you into a realm of darkness. 16 Moss A magical moss attaches itself to your body, and seems to feed off your magical power. It starts as a small patch, but grows larger with each

59 expenditure of magic. 21 Catgirl You have the pointed ears, slit irises, and long tail of a housecat. 22 Weak Bearings You frequently get lost. Without knowing how, you can end up almost anywhere, from the tops of skyscrapers to restricted military areas to the middle of a rural forest. 23 Age Change Your apparent age changes. If you were an adolescent girl, you might become a young adult, middle aged woman, or even an old lady. 24 Crystal Rash Translucent crystals start growing out of your skin. They can easily break off. 25 Lost and Found Random things, such as live slugs, human teeth, or loose change from a foreign country frequently appear amidst your possessions. 26 Lycanthropy During the full moon, you lose control of yourself, and magically transform into a beast based on your magical theme. If you take 4 points of harm or your allies fight you (You are an enemy with Power = 2, dice pool = 8 + DEVOTION) you transform back into a normal girl, but remain unconscious until dawn. 31 Curse of Poverty You and have a curse that ensures you will always have a difficult time finding food, water, and shelter. This curse can affect anyone who attempts to help you, and anyone whose charity you accept. (Including family and friends.) 32 Voracity You need to eat an absurd amount to sustain yourself, but what you eat doesn’t necessarily have to be food. You can metabolize anything with caloric value. 33 Compartment There is a compartment with a simple door on your back or stomach. It seems to have random objects in it when opened. 34 Hollow Body Your body is hollow inside. It’s not immediately obvious unless someone physically harms you or checks your acoustics. 35 Possessed Limb One of your limbs has a mind of its own. When you are not actively paying attention, it may do something to attack or sabotage you. 36 Magical Reflection Your reflection in any given surface has a mind of its own. 41 Vermin Kinship Spiders, insects, rats, and other creatures viewed as pests adore you. You can always find a few nearby, often crawling on you. Additionally, you begin to grow harmless mushrooms out of your skin. 42 Maw Somewhere on your body is a large mouth with many sharp teeth. You can conceal it with normal clothing, but sometimes it gets hungry and restless. 43 Solid Words Sometimes your words manifest physically in front of you, and briefly float before falling to the ground. The shape and physical makeup of these words depends on your tone of voice. 44 Untouchable When you touch an ordinary person, cuts and bruises spontaneously appear on them. Sustained touch leads to more severe injuries. 45 Prehensile Hair Your hair becomes prehensile, and will move on its own when you get emotional. 46 Haunted A vengeful spirit or poltergeist haunts you. It is not powerful enough to touch or harm you directly, but it can cause havoc in your surroundings. 51 Rubber Body Your body can stretch as though it is made of rubber. It looks unsettling if

60 you’re not careful about how you move. 52 Scarred You are torn apart and magically stitched back together. It leaves scars all over your body. 53 Scroll Body Your body becomes covered in magical writing. 54 Unmemorable Non-magical people struggle to remember anything about you. They frequently forget that you exist moments after you leave their sight. 55 Statue If nobody is present to observe you, you turn to stone and stop moving. 56 Wings You sprout a pair of wings, large enough to be conspicuous but not large enough to fly. 61 Lizard-like Patches of your body are covered in shiny, lizard-like scales. You also grow a tail, which will regrow if removed, and you become slow and lethargic when it’s cold. 62 Horns Your head sprouts horns, like a goat, bighorn sheep, or devil. 63 Third Eye A third eye opens up in your forehead. You can not see out of it, and it seems to have a mind of its own. 64 Paranoia You think the world is out to get you, and you are right. Ordinary people are compelled to attack or rob you, police will harass you, etc. 65 Blurry In photos, mirrors, and in the peripheral vision of others, your features are blurry and indistinct. 66 Open Minded You telepathically broadcast your thoughts to everyone within 6 feet of you.

Death Complications d6 Complication 1 You are reborn in the body of another person who also recently died. They may be a coma patient, a victim of a heart attack, a stab victim, or something similar. They are gone, but you can use their body, and perhaps even assume their identity. 2 You are reborn, but your magical theme changes to match whatever killed you. Mark 1 Stress the first 3 times you use your powers. 3 You suffer amnesia. Key details of your life, the people you knew, and the circumstances of your death, are completely missing. 4 Your body continues to operate without a soul, like a clockwork automaton. You can still think, converse, and have emotional responses, but you feel hollow inside. Other magical characters can plainly see this difference, and how you continue to function is a mystery. 5 Your normal form dies. It leaves a corpse. You become your magical form, and cannot transform back. Your presence fills ordinary people with severe terror and anxiety, and they do not recognize you. 6 You are reborn in your own body, but so is something else. Your body houses two souls now. One is yours, and the other is something ancient, mysterious, and/or not- quite-human. It occasionally attempts to seize control. These tables can be used to randomly generate certain roleplaying details for your magical girl, or to give you inspiration to come up with your own. You are not restricted to the values on these tables.

61 Magical Girl Theme d66 Theme d66 Theme 11 Animals 41 Light 12 Blood 42 Lightning 13 Butterflies 43 Love 14 Chains 44 Magnetism 15 Gems 45 Metal 16 Earth 46 Moon 21 Food 51 Nothingness 22 Feathers 52 Rainbows 23 Toys 53 Ribbons 24 Fire 54 Winter 25 Flowers 55 Shadow 26 Force 56 Stars 31 Fabric 61 Wounds 32 Gravity 62 Autumn 33 Tarot 63 Time 34 Spring 64 Water 35 Ice 65 Wood 36 Leaves 66 Wind

Magical Weapon d66 Weapon d66 Weapon 11 Magic Wand 41 Sword 12 Magic Staff 42 Shield 13 Crystal Ball 43 Mace 14 Tome 44 Frying Pan 15 Bell 45 Axe 16 Shovel 46 Pole Arm 21 Handgun 51 Nunchucks 22 Sporting Equipment 52 Brick 23 Shotgun 53 Ladle 24 Rifle 54 Mop 25 Boots 55 Baseball Bat 26 Musical Instrument 56 Tea Ware 31 Explosives 61 Flashlight 32 Umbrella 62 Animal 33 Gauntlets 63 Ray Gun

62 34 Dagger 64 Cannon 35 Bow 65 Microphone 36 Scarf 66 Ribbon

Costume d66 Costume d66 Costume 11 Sailor Suit 41 Fairy 12 Sundress 42 Witch 13 Skirt and Blazer 43 Greek Heroine 14 Frilly Dress 44 Professional Wrestler 15 Jumper Dress 45 Red Riding Hood 16 Tokyo Fashion 46 Sci-fi Heroine 21 Harlequin 51 Nurse 22 Swashbuckler 52 Maid 23 Ballet 53 Plague Doctor 24 Circus 54 Bunny Suit 25 Gymnast 55 Shinobi 26 Idol Singer 56 Nun 31 Wedding Dress 61 Jumpsuit 32 Kimono 62 Armor 33 Gothic Lolita 63 Martial Arts 34 Ball Gown 64 Military Uniform 35 Opera Diva 65 Boy’s Uniform 36 Victorian Gown 66 Winter Coat

Magical Mark d66 Mark d66 Mark 11 A magic sigil appears somewhere on your 41 You become cold-blooded. body 12 You no longer need to eat, and regular food 42 One of your eyes becomes milky white. You makes you sick can occasionally see spirits 13 Your proportions are a little too perfect, 43 Your hair is made of transparent strands that your skin looks photoshopped, your eyes display countless different colors when they become just a little too large, and your hair catch the light looks like a cosplay wig 14 You have tattoos that move and change on 44 You have heterochromia. Both your eyes are your skin vivid, unnatural colors 15 Your physical features are indescribable. 45 Your body is toxic to ordinary people. Your This isn't noticeable unless someone blood is poison, and physical contact with actually tries you gives people rashes 16 You do not show up in photographs 46 You glow softly in the dark

63 21 Your blood changes color 51 Occasionally you sleepwalk in your magical form 22 When you are frightened, lights around you 52 When you get angry, your body temperature are extinguished. increases drastically. Hot enough to give 2nd degree burns to someone 23 You lose one of your senses, but your 53 You gain a very acute sense of smell. About magic compensates for this somehow. as good as a dog’s 24 When you cry, your tears flow like a running 54 You can hear frequencies that humans can’t faucet. normally hear 25 You can understand all languages, though 55 You develop an aversion to iron, silver, you may not be able to speak them garlic, and rosemary. They make you dizzy and sick 26 You gain an outlandish hairstyle that you 56 Animals are attracted to you. They tend to can’t seem to get rid of follow you around and act friendly 31 Your voice becomes uncannily beautiful to 61 Your body loses 50% of its mass. You are everyone who hears it extremely light, though your outward appearance is unchanged 32 Electronic devices tend to malfunction 62 Your body is dense. Your weight doubles, around you though your outward appearance is unchanged 33 Your body becomes slightly magnetic 63 Your skin becomes hydrophobic 34 Your body smells of fresh blood. It is a 64 When you are stressed, windows and fragile coppery, unnerving smell objects tend to spontaneously break 35 Ordinary people have a hard time not paying 65 Plants tend to wither and wilt when you touch attention to you. them 36 Your body smells strongly of sweet candy 66 You no longer have a detectable heartbeat

Strange Happenings d66 Strange Happening d66 Strange Happening 11 A classmate suddenly went missing. 41 Recurring dreams of a crystalline castle. 12 Archaeological artifacts keep getting 42 Something you thought you’d lost long ago discovered in the city. turns up in an unlikely place. 13 A large sinkhole opened up near the center 43 Clocks occasionally tick backwards. of the city. 14 A lot of people have been getting sick lately. 44 The cherry blossoms are blooming out of season. 15 A lot of small objects seem to be going 45 The movie you’re watching is going totally missing lately. differently from how it should. 16 A major corporation built a new 46 The news is talking about the discovery of an headquarters in town shaped like a ancient statue. It looks uncannily like you. household object. 21 A nonsensical fashion trend has been 51 The number 6 seems to be turning up all the sweeping the city. time lately. 22 A website is accurately announcing who will 52 The plots in the popular magical girl anime die in the next 24 hours. have been getting really weird.

64 23 All of the computers at school are messed 53 The water is oddly still. up because of some kind of virus. 24 An email that seems to come from the 54 The weather has been odd for this time of future. year. 25 An empty red train comes every night at 55 There are no birds in this city anymore. exactly 1:11 a.m. 26 Animals have been agitated lately. 56 There are persistent rumors of a ghost haunting a shopping mall. 31 Electronic screens keep showing messages 61 There have been a lot of insects around lately. that seem to address you. 32 Graffiti of what looks like some kind of 62 There have been a lot of minor earthquakes magical runes has been showing up all over lately. the city. 33 It seems like every time you get near a 63 There have been an unusually high number of street light it goes out. traffic accidents lately. 34 Men are building a strange structure that you 64 There seem to be cats watching you all the remember from a dream. time. 35 More and more businesses are showing up 65 There’s a popular new app that seems to be with a penguin logo. able to predict the future. 36 People have spotted strange lights in the 66 Your diary has several pages in the future night sky. written in an unknown language.

65 Magical Artifacts Certain magical artifacts may spring into existence when magic comes in contact with everyday, mundane objects. Here are a few examples of such objects. d66 Artifact Description 11 Magical Glock A pink and ornate firearm with a heart-shaped barrel. Fire it at someone or something and roll a test with 2 dice. ● 1-3: The gun jams and backfires. Everyone “remembers” something about someone else in the vicinity. ● 4-5: Only the person’s closest loved ones may remember anything about them. They will feel like a long-forgotten friend. ● 6: All people in the person’s life forget about them. ● Critical: The person temporarily forgets things about themself.

The weapon has limited effect on magical targets. The memories of such targets will return after a few days. 12 Pithing Needle A needle that is about twenty centimeters long, and very sharp. If hammered into the brain of a corpse, the corpse comes to some semblance of life and can be spoken to and interacted with. Each time the needle is removed, it has a 20% chance of breaking. 13 Glass Eye Must be inserted into the user’s empty eye socket to function. The eye instills crippling fear in whoever it is focused on. Continued exposure can lead to madness. It is advisable to cover it with an eye patch. 14 Chalk Things drawn with this stick of chalk become real. Things like small animals, doors, holes, etc. Created objects are generally two-dimensional and only live for a few hours to a few days. 15 Scarf This scarf is stylish and can resize and recolor at the wearer’s will. It is a living thing, though it is simple and quite content to obey its master as long as it is fed. It’s carnivorous, and prefers fresh meat in the form of small animals or human limbs. It is loyal to whoever feeds it, and will act as a stylish garment or a helpful extra limb. 16 Ladle When held, this ladle does not seem to collide with solid matter. If dipped into a solid object (eg. A tree, a building, a chair) and removed, it may be full of liquid. Drinking the liquid grants some insight into the ‘memory’ of the object. (Who last interacted with it, how old it is, what it has witnessed.) Drinking the liquid is risky, as parts of the user’s memory and identity may swap with that of the object. 21 Seed of a City A chunk of rough concrete with rebar sticking out from all sides, it gives you a very uneasy feeling. When planted, it will grow a large, sprawling, brutalist city. All buildings in this city will be unoccupied, and the city will grow until it is bounded by roads, mountains, or water. The city will grow healthy and fast if people come to make their home there. It may wilt and die if left unoccupied. 22 Teddy Bear An unassuming, cute teddy bear. It is silent but radiates friendship. It will

66 rush to take a lethal hit for whoever it imprints on. This teddy bear is full of slugs and snails if cut open. 23 Magic Bean Eating this bean causes time to freeze for the person who eats it. They can interact with the environment, but anyone they touch will become aware and able to move around in suspended time with them. They have about 10 minutes before time begins moving again. Slowly at first, and then exponentially faster. 24 Fifty Year The ornate hilt of a sword. It can not inflict harm traditionally. It can, Sword however, cut more abstract things. Bonds between people, memories, and ideas, which manifest as ethereal strings and tethers that hover in the air. Seeing these things is its own challenge, however, so swinging the sword recklessly is not advised. 25 Can of Nuts This is an expired can of peanuts. It is an extradimensional space. The user can open this can of nuts to be pulled inside it. The space is cramped but livable. They may exit at will. 26 Memory This handkerchief remembers all the bodily fluids it absorbs. If the Handkerchief handkerchief is held at arm’s length and given the name of someone it remembers, it will sway in the direction of that person, as if a small wind is pushing it. 31 Microphone A microphone that can amplify your voice a great deal. It gives you the power to distract evil, or sway ordinary people with your words. With the use of the microphone it gradually sucks away your voice, causing you to become mute. Breaking it, will cause the restoration of the vocal cords. 32 Broken Locket This broken golden locket makes whomever wears it an inspired and extraordinary artist. If they ever lose possession of the locket, they will fall into a creative slump, believing they will never again create anything of value. 33 Arcane Heart This is a human heart, affixed with wire and brass and a collection of small lenses and gears. The heart whispers truths into the mind of whoever befriends it. Where did it come from? Who did it belong to? Each heart has a unique origin. 34 Fool’s Gold A bank note, gold coin, ingot, or other object associated with wealth. Ordinary people perceive this as an object of incredible value. They will trade nearly anything for it. 35 Moon Scepter A small rod with a crescent moon affixed to the end. Its use allows a normal person to transform into a magical girl, though their powers are limited, and it takes a major toll on their body. 36 Pastel Tome A thick, pastel pink bound book. The pages inside are covered in runic inscriptions. Studying the book reveals a secret about the world, and causes you to mark 1 Stress. 41 Mortal Grimoire If an ordinary person’s name is written in this magical book, along with a description of their death and a rough sketch of their face, they will die in whatever way the user specifies. 42 Face Cream This innocuous tube of moisturizing cream does exactly what it says on the package. When applied it allows the user to, temporarily, absorb knowledge from an object or ordinary person by pressing their face against them. As a side effect, your face becomes withered, burned, and generally horrifying

67 for the duration. 43 Cupid’s This heart shaped crossbow can fire love filled bolts. Causing a shot target Crossbow to fall in love with the closest being with a soul. With every shot fired by the handler, they become numb to a person they connect with. 44 Magazine A colourful magazine created specifically for the first person who touches it. The imprinted owner will be able to see misfortunes that have yet to pass. If they interfere with any of the events outlined, the magazine will destroy itself by lighting on fire. 45 Crown When chosen by the owner the crown will attach itself to the top of the head, never falling off. The crown grants the ability of clairvoyance, being able to see through the eyes of the target you so choose by name. For every target the crown becomes tighter and tighter, to the extreme of crushing the skull. The only way to be able to remove the crown is for the owner to apologize to every living individual for spying on them with such an ability. Upon completion the crown disintegrates. 46 Doll This small doll becomes an identical copy of whoever owns it. The owner can concentrate to swap places with the doll, no matter how far away it is. Every time they do, the doll grows in size. Once it reaches the size of its owner, it comes to life as a copy of them, with the desire of eliminating its owner and taking their place in life. 51 Key A key that opens any non magical lock, and exactly one specific magical lock. 52 Time Oven This is a full-sized gas stove, likely from the 80s or 90s. The dials have temporal units rather than temperature. When an item is placed inside and the oven is turned to a specific time range, the item is restored to an earlier state. 53 Deck of Cards This deck of cards is always stacked perfectly in your favour when you use it to play a card game. Additionally, if given to an ordinary person, that person will sit and play solitaire, neglecting all else until they pass out from exhaustion, or are broken out of their stupor. 54 Geist Greaves While you wear these boots, you become semi-incorporeal, and can walk through walls and other solid objects. However, spirits and ghosts do not take kindly to this, and will attempt to attack you while you are incorporeal. If you take off the boots, particularly vengeful spirits will continue to haunt you, waiting for you to return. 55 Hand Mirror This mirror will show you the answer to any question you have about yourself, but unless you are very good at deciphering cryptic visual depictions of complicated psychological states it is utterly inscrutable. Beware of obsession. 56 Golden Apple Some say this apple will make you immortal if you eat it, others that it will kill you instantly. The one thing you do know for sure is that, if given as a gift, it will become immensely desirable and provoke envy and jealousy from anyone who did not receive the apple. 61 Knit Gloves It is impossible for you to take someone’s life so long as you are wearing these gloves. 62 Friendship When worn by you and another person, this matching pair of bracelets Bracelets forms a magical link. When the person wearing the other bracelet feels intense emotion or pain, the bracelet shakes, tightens, changes color, or otherwise attempts to signal what is happening.

68 63 Eerie Effigy This is a small stone effigy, worn unrecognizable by the passage of time. If you keep it on your person, it will whisper advice to you and bring you good luck. After a week, its presence becomes a comfort, and you mark 1 point of Stress if you cast it away. 64 Liar’s Mask This is a ceramic, plain white mask. When you put it on and envision a real person, your body will transform into a perfect copy of theirs. This change lasts for 24 hours, and during this time you cannot use your magical powers or transform into a magical girl. 65 Flip Phone This archaic flip phone is bubble gum pink, and the voice on the other end of the line is always friendly and ready to lend a supportive ear. It gives good advice, though its motives are unknown. 66 Hair Dryer An innocuous looking hair dryer. It has the power to blow dark thoughts out of one’s mind. However, those dark thoughts do not vanish. Once free, they will seek a new host.

69