Disgaea: Campaign of Darkness a Fanmade Guide to Roleplaying in the Disgaea Multiverse
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Disgaea: Campaign of Darkness A fanmade guide to Roleplaying in the Disgaea Multiverse. Alpha Version 0.1 Formatting and text not final Contents INTRODUCTION 4 What is this? 4 What is Disgaea? 4 Using this Guide 4 I Don’t Want to Use 4e 5 Contact 5 PLAYING IN THE NETHERWORLD 6 A Brighter Darkness 6 Making A Demon 6 Monster Equipment: 8 Playing An Overlord 8 Geo Panels 9 Using Geo Panels in Encounters 12 4e Specific Rules 13 Prinnies 13 Prinnies as monsters 13 Prinny PC Stat Block: 14 Geo Panels (cont) 15 Geo Symbol Stat Block 15 Example Geo Symbol Effects. 16 Game Artifacts 19 Character/Item World 19 Lifting and Throwing 20 Magichange/Fusion 20 2 Reincarnation/Transmigration 21 NETHERWORLD LORE 21 Magic 22 Netherworld Geography 22 Demons 22 Humanoids 23 Monsters 23 Prinnies 23 Netherworld Society 24 The Overlord 24 Demon Lord 25 Dark Assembly 25 3 INTRODUCTION What is this? Like the subtitle says, this is a guide to roleplaying in the universe of the Disgaea series. This is not a complete ruleset, and can not be played on its own. This guide was written as a mod primarily for Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, however, very little of it is system specific rules, and while a few things will probably require additional tweaking on your part, you could pretty safely use this as a starting point for your system of choice (see “I don’t want to use 4th Edition”, below). What is Disgaea? Disgaea is a series of strategy RPGs developed by Nippon Ichi Software. As of this writing, there are 6 main line Disgaea games (Disgaea 1 through 5, along with Disgaea D2, a direct sequel to Disgaea 1). Disgaea 5 has presently only been released in Japan, an international release is scheduled for later this year. There have also been a handful of spin off games such as the Action Platformer “Prinny: Can I really be the hero?” and the Visual Novel “Disgaea Infinite”. The Disgaea series takes place primarily in one of the various netherworlds, and its main protagonists are primarily Demons. While at first glance this may seem like a dark setting, the games are primarily comedies, and while the characters would be quick to remind you of how “evil” they are, the tone of games is fairly light hearted. Using this Guide The intent of this guide is to facilitate roleplaying in a netherworld not unlike the ones you can find in the Disgaea series. Much like the Disgaea series, the main characters of this story, the PCs, will mostly take on the roles of demons that inhabit this netherworld. This guide is mostly focused on giving advice on how to adjust your game to promote this. Many systems that attempt to adapt an existing tabletop RPG to work with their favorite setting try to do so primarily through house rules. This guide attempts the opposite, and tries to use existing mechanics as much as possible, with any house rules that we do add remain optional and don’t replace existing rules. The primary technique employed will be refluffing, or simply using all the existing mechanics as is while imagining them as a comparable effect when describing and imagining the game world. A good example would be taking the mechanics for a grenade, and describing that as a fireball spell. This approach, not only keeps players from having to learn both the base system, and then the homebrew mods, also allows all options from the base game to remain viable. Lastly, while the house rules listed within this guide are for the 4th edition of 4 Dungeons and Dragons, the hope is that with a minimal focus on system specific rules will allow this guide to be useful to those who wish to run Disgaea games in systems they like better. This guide is divided into two sections (discounting the introduction section you are presently reading), “Playing in the Netherworld”, and “Netherworld Lore”. “Playing in the Netherworld”, contains (mostly) system agnostic advice for running a Disgaea game, making demon PCs, and incorporating some Disgaea elements into your favorite system, along with a subsection for a few 4e Specific Rules. “Netherworld Lore” is a brief primer on the Disgaea universe. The layout of this guide assumes that the reader is already familiar with the Disgaea series, if this is true for you, start with the Playing in the Netherworld and then optionally read Netherworld Lore as a refresher. If you are not familiar with the Disgaea series, you should probably skip ahead and read the Lore section first and then go back to Playing in the Netherworld, as that section assumes at least a passing familiarity with the Disgaea series. While this guide may offer suggestions for rules, tone, and setting for your game, it is not intended to be used as a replacement for regular group discussion about such things. It is intended as a jumping off point, and groups should tweak the suggestions in here to better facilitate their fun. It is possible, if not likely, that the author’s idea of how to make a game Disgaealike will not align with how your group views the series. As long as everyone is on the same page, and understands the change, feel free to tweak anything in here to suit your needs. I Don’t Want to Use 4e That’s fine, most of this advice can be adjusted to a system of your choosing. The “4e specific rules” subsection is an obvious exception, and there are a few examples or suggestions in other sections that are 4e specific. But if you want to refluff a different system, the “Playing in the Netherworld” Section should get you started. When selecting an alternative system, there are a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost, while you can refluff almost any system, systems that are focused on the mechanical effects of actions, rather than the narrative result of actions, generally make it easier, as the narrative is more easily separated from the rules text in those games. Second, the characters in Disgaea mostly use a mix of medieval weapons and magic, so a fantasy system that allows for that will likely have the best results. Use your own common sense, evaluate if your chosen system is suitable. These Rules Suck, Grammatical Errors are Everywhere, and/or I Have a Better Idea Cool, send any and all questions/comments/complaints to [email protected] please include the version of the guide you are referencing (In this case Alpha 0.1) just in case you have an older 5 version of this guide. If you are referring to specific typos or errors, page numbers would also be helpful PLAYING IN THE NETHERWORLD A Brighter Darkness The netherworld is the place where demons reside. It is the place where sinful human souls are sent to be punished. It is a place where the weak are ruled over by the strong. It is also a place where you might encounter a Sentai team and make snarky comments about how they should have more colors if they want to be called the prism rangers. A place where actually going to class while you are a student makes you a badass rebel. And a place where, despite their protests to the contrary, most of the residents aren’t actually that bad. The Disgaea series is primarily a comedy series, and while most demons claim to evil most are rather really eccentric. Evil is presented mostly as a goal, or an ideal to strive for, and while there is certainly real evil in the netherworld, the evil that is idealized is mostly on the level of indulging in bad habits or juvenile pranks. The Demons in Disgaea are mostly on the level of villains from cartoons aimed at children where their minions refer to them as things such as “your evilishness”, or perhaps more accurately their wacky minions. The world is evil to the extent that evil is funny, and most demons are evil to the same extent. But Disgaea demons are capable of being compassionate, standing up for what is right, and even falling in love. The protagonists in the games are, at least by the end of the games, antiheroes at the very worst. While the comedic focus does not exclude serious moment, the tone of the games is light, fluffy, and fun. While you are free to play your games with whatever focus and tone you want, this guide recommends you play a game in which you could find a netherworld tax auditor who makes sure you are cheating on your tax return enough. Making A Demon The netherworld is an interesting place filled with a wide variety of demons, which come in all shapes and sizes. From giant moths, to exploding penguins, to Zombies, to strange flower people, to things that look not unlike human beings. These creatures mostly tend to not line up with the standard character race options in most RPGs, even fantasy ones, yet they often can still be represented by the same mechanics. Mechanically, Making a demon is a lot like making any other character. Follow the character creation procedure as laid out by the system and modified by any house rules your GM may have. In addition to the normal mechanical steps, there is an important additional step from a flavor perspective, the demonic concept. 6 The demonic concept is very closely related to your character concept, however, the demonic concept is less about what makes your character unique and more about what their species as a whole is like.