What is Monsters and Other Childish Things?

Monsters and Other Childish Things (MaOCT) is a roleplaying game written by Benjamin Baugh, based on Wild Talents by Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze, using the One Roll Engine (O.R.E.) that Stolze designed. In it, the players control school-age Kids (Elementary through High School, usually) who are accompanied by horrible, slavering, nightmarish Monsters that also happen to be a Kid’s best friend. They have adventures, deal with school bullies (hopefully with words, not by eating them), experiences crushes (again, hopefully without eating them) and discover the horrible secrets of other worlds on the fringes of human awareness. Good fun is had by all.

What is ?

Persona is a Japanese Roleplaying Video Game series made by . A spin-off of the Shin series, Persona focuses on high schoolers pitted jointly against other-worldly forces and the crushing gravity of their own social obligations and psychological trauma. Their instrument for dealing with these are Personas: manifestations of psycho-spiritual power that come to their aid and defense. In each of the Persona games, the player controls a group of Persona users who must unravel the mysteries of some supernatural phenomena that threatens the existence of their friends, town, or even the entire world.

What am I reading?

The Velvet Book is a conversion module for MaOCT designed to optimize its rules for running a game inspired by the Persona series. In truth, you can run Persona with MaOCT’s vanilla rules; the Drunk and Ugly Podcast did an entire series like that (check out “Shin Megami Tensei and Other Childish Things”) and it worked just fine. All you need to do is change “Monster” to “Persona” and you’re done.

This module, however, is designed for players who want to inject a little bit more Persona flair into their MaOCT game. It shows how to slip your characters more into the mold of a Persona ; has some new rules that introduces elements from the Persona series into the gameplay of MaOCT; and has some advice and ground-rules for GMs to help them run a game inspired by Persona.

So, then, without further ado... My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you–are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again....

Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you?

Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. ... My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude. C. G. Jung, 12 November 1913 Chapter I: Characters

Your Character

Not much changes in how a is built in this module from vanilla MaOCT. You’re still a seemingly normal adolescent. Persona characters are usually high-school age, though there’s nothing to stop a GM from running a middle-school, elementary school or even college Persona experience.

Your Stats

The Velvet Book uses the same fundamental Stats as MaOCT: Feet, Guts, Hands, Brains and Face. However, the process of fusing Persona into the mix has changed them somewhat; now each is coupled with a social stat inspired by those used in -5.

Feet are coupled to Diligence Guts is still Guts Hands are coupled to Proficiency Brains are coupled to Knowledge Face is coupled to Expression

This isn’t that much of a change from how Stats work in MaOCT. In that game, “Feet” represented your overall ability to move around without looking like a dorkus, and “Face” was both your sociability and your actual grill. We’re just surfacing those links because, in Persona, a character’s inner-self as more important than their outward ability.

Stat Details

Diligence is your self-discipline. Characters with low diligence are frail and shaky on their feet because they lack the focus and drive to strengthen themselves. Characters with high diligence are strong and steady regardless of how much strain they feel.

Guts is your moxie and bravery. It’s largely the same as in vanilla MaOCT. Gutless people snivel and retreat; Gutsy folks run in to save the day.

Proficiency is your talent and craftiness—usually involving stuff with your hands like painting or music. The Proficient love their work and take pride in it; a lack of Proficiency makes you clumsy or like your hands are always coated in potato chip grease.

Knowledge is how smart and alert you are. It includes both book learning and creative problem solving. Low-knowledge characters are easily stumped, while Knowledgeable ones figure can figure out complex puzzles.

Expression is your ability to deal with others tactfully, or sneakily. An Expressionless person is a wallflower, whereas a person full of Expression is the life of the party.

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Your Skills

Skills have been adjusted slightly to accommodate the style of play encouraged by Persona. Old Skills are listed as unchanged, new ones are described.

Diligent Skills

Beat Down: Hit things that can’t hit back. This includes inanimate objects like doors, lockers and crates, and living-but-helpless things like jerk Rico after your Converse to his groin flattened him.

Block: Stop things from hitting other things. Unchanged except now it’s under a different Stat.

P.E.: Running, jumping, climbing, carrying, etc. Unchanged.

Gutsy Skills

Courage: Standing up to bullies and elder gods alike. Unchanged

Fighting: Facing off against foes that can fight back. This is basically Kicking, Wrestling and Punching rolled into one skill. If your foe can’t resist you, roll Beat Down instead.

Wind: How healthy and generally in-shape you are. Unchanged.

Proficient Skills

Aim: How precise your eye is. Use this to throw a basketball, chuck eggs at the principal’s car or shoot your dad’s hunting rifle. Remember kids: guns are dangerous.

Reflexes: Getting out of harms way. It’s basically the same as Dodge, but under a different Stat.

Shop: How good you are with your hands, especially when it comes to making stuff. Unchanged.

Knowledgable Skills

Academics: Your books-smarts. It has the same function as Remember, and is basically unchanged.

Notice: Spotting things before they endanger you. Unchanged.

Out-Think: Figuring problems out. Unchanged.

Expressive Skills

Charm: Making people like you. Unchanged

Connive: Lying to and tricking people. Unchanged

Put-Down: Delivering sick burns. Unchanged.

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Relationships, Arcana and Archetypes

One of the reasons why MaOCT works so well for Persona is that both games feature rules by which a character’s relationship with another person can improve their ability to complete a task.

Persona introduces a new level to these interactions: Arcana. As in the Major Arcana of the Tarot Arcana and Gender Deck. Each Relationship is linked with one of the Arcana, which describes core aspects of that person’s nature or The following section uses gendered pronouns for each the nature of his or her circumstances. The section that Arcana. These are based on the traditional follows lists the 22 Major Arcana and what kind of interpretation for each Arcana’s psychological people they represent. For each of your Relationships, archetype (as well as the symbolism on the Arcana choose which Arcana best fits that character’s itself). It’s not absolute. You can have a male High personality or how you relate to that person. Remember, Priestess, a female Heirophant or, like, a genderfluid Relationships can be with Groups or Things; so your Lover. What matters is how they act, not what they are. Relationship with the Football Team could be of the Chariot Arcana (as the archetype of success in spite of resistance), and your Relationship with the Q’uran could be of the Hierophant Arcana (as the archetype of moral guidance and spiritual authority).

Each Arcana offers certain benefits to your character and your Persona that will be covered later in this module; for now just review the list and use it as a tool to match your Relationships to the Arcana they are archetypical of. Try and choose a different Arcana for each Relationship.

In addition, you must choose an Arcana for Arcana and Psychology your own character—something that resonates with who they are and what they want in life. Each player Atlus didn’t adopt the Arcana system for Persona just to character’s Arcana should be unique and, ideally, add another element of mysticism to their game. The unique within the game. That way the PCs psychologist Carl Jung, whose interpretation of the persona themselves can benefit from forging Relationships and shadow serves as the basis for this entire game, with each other. viewed the Arcana as “archetypes” for the human condition, and represented distinct, obvservable patterns of human behavior and mental conditions. His archetypes are listed in italics along side each Arcana.

(Page #) Arcana Archetypes Index

The Magician Surpassing the plausible The Magician represents a person with knowledge or skill that surpasses your own. He could be a mentor or a peer whose made it his mission to achieve some great feat. However, magicians tend to exhibit “magical thinking”—excess faith in the pursuit of an unrealistic goal (“surpassing the plausible”). Examples: A conspiracy theorist who knows the secrets of the Shadow World; a student pursuing a relationship with a teacher; an eccentric scientist who lives in the old mansion down the street.

The High Priestess Hidden influence The High Priestess is someone who’s got a secret or secrets. She often seeks positions of authority but prefers to run things from behind the scenes. She’s usually a tough nut to crack, but can be a valuable ally as you need to earn her trust before she’ll spill the beans. Examples: A guidance counsellor who’s got a whiff of the weirdness going on; the vice- captain of the cheerleading squad who knows everyone’s dirty laundry

The Empress Gentle power The Empress gets things done. She’s a politician who knows that an easy smile and a firm handshake can work where the threat of force fails. She’s smart and determined, and usually kind and genuine, but that doesn’t make crossing her any less unwise. Examples: The school principal who knows how to keep her kids in-line; the mayor elected on a reform platform; your mom.

The Emperor Irresistible power The Emperor demands respect. He’s in a position of power and he’s earned it, by god, so you better fall in line whether you like it or not. Not all Emperors are tyrants—a good ruler uses his might wisely—but tyrants are usually Emperors. Examples: The coach of the football team who hasn’t lost a championship in six years; the CEO who’ll do anything to raise stock value; the boss of the local gang of greasers.

The Hierophant Spiritual authority The Hierophant is who you turn to for moral and ethical guidance. You trust him when it comes to matters of right and wrong, good and bad. Sometimes though this goes to their head and they start thinking that they are the sole arbiters of morality. Examples: The parson at your local church; your English teacher who’s been through a lot and knows how hard it is to be a kid; your dad.

(Page #) Arcana Archetypes Index

The Lovers Intense affection The Lovers love, and love means having to make tough decisions. Who to date, what career to pursue, whether to move away for school or stay home and support the family business: this person a faces a hard choice that may determine the route her life takes. Examples: The cute but nerdy guy slipping “anonymous” notes into your locker; the child of divorce who must choose which parent to stay with; the graduate torn between moving off to school or staying to support the family business

The Chariot Success in spite of resistance The Chariot is one of the many Arcana that embody action. In particular, it means a person who struggles and perseveres in pursuit of victory even against significant roadblocks. If his goal seems out of reach, you may be the one who helps him grab it. Examples: The underdog football team who hasn’t had a winning season in a decade; the studious bookworm who maintains a 4.0 despite difficult family circumstances.

Justice The rule of law A person of the Justice Arcana is all about rules, regulation and doing what’s required, even in situations that would seem to require a more nuanced outlook. He’s rigid and inflexible and once he’s made up his mind there’s no budging him. Examples: The truancy officer with a firm three-strikes policy; the school gossip who keeps a book of every slight against her; the religious kid who keeps his beliefs in the face of challenges.

The Hermit Isolation The Hermit perfers to go it alone. Maybe she thinks she gets more done by herself and thinks other people will just slow her down; or maybe there’s something unpleasant going on behind the scenes driving her to recede from the social scene. Examples: Your poor trailer park friend who never invites you over his house; the egg- head who’d rather study than go to a party; the guy on probation trying to stay out of trouble.

Fortune The unpredictable The Fortune Arcana is actively trying to reroute his future by seizing a big opportunity. It’s doubtlessly a massive risk, and the dangers of failure match or even outweigh the reward he’s seeking, but that doesn’t matter. Sink or swim he’s got to take the shot. Examples: The kid who films himself doing dumb stunts on YouTube; a gambler who plays to pull himself out of crippling debt; a businessman who puts everything he owns into a new enterprise.

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Strength A great feat Strength is a person, not of physical might but of resourcefulness and inner fortitude. She looks for creative solutions to problems and doesn’t back down when confronted with severe threats—hence why its Arcana depicts a maiden holding a lion at bay. Examples: A streetwise punk who knows how to survive in the underground; a wife keeping her family intact while her husband is at war

The Hanged Man Sacrifice The Hanged Man is a martyr. He gives up a part of he for the greater good or in pursuit of some deeper enlightenment, usually of his own accord. He’s selfless and uncaring of the hardship he brings upon himself. Or that's what he wants people to think Examples: A terminally ill billionaire who turns to philanthropy; an overworked but devoted teacher; a criminal who tries to help others avoid his mistakes.

Death Coming to an end This isn’t as scary as it sounds. Ends can bring new beginnings, and a person of the Death Arcana understands this better than anyone, as he has changed after experiencing loss. Learning to cope with this and carrying on is Death’s burden, as change is an inevitable part of life. Examples: A surgeon who’s lost many patients; an office worker coping with financial ruin; a washed up and purposeless athlete.

Temperance Time passes Waiting is the nature of a person of the Temperance Arcana. She’s usually someone who’s got a lot going on and tries to balance all of it at once—and keeping those plates spinning is a full time job. She’s patient in looking for a solution, but time is a cruel mistress. Examples: A teacher who works a second job to support her kids; an overachiever involved in every after school activity he could sign up for.

The Devil Nemesis The Devil thinks with his heart (or his stomach, or…other parts) before his head. He’s often a pleasure seeker, trapped by his habits, and would love for you to join his party. Above all, a Devil is passionate in whatever he truly wants and pursues it hungrily. Examples: the food reviewer whose lost his faith in the food industry; your impulsive, troublemaking older brother; the classmate who grows and sells weed.

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The Tower Failure The Tower has experienced some great disaster, or seems to bring disaster on others. Whichever it is, he knows what it’s like to suffer. Towers usually fall into this state because of their doing, thanks to pride or a lack of foresight and outside counsel. Examples: a homeless man buried in debt; a street racer who lost his legs in a crash; a gangster who always gets his dues paid.

The Star Distance The Star’s got a dream that inspires her and fills her with hope, even if it’s far off and not terribly realistic. Inspite of whatever obstacles she faces she’s resolute in her pursuit, never losing sight of her objective twinkling in the darkness. Examples: an artist who wants to master his craft; an activist who wants to inspire hope in the government; an inner city teacher who wants her students to reach for a better life.

The Moon Longing The Moon has a dream, but instead of chasing it she tries to live in it. She longs for life other than her own and masks that longing with fantasy—sometimes to protect her mental state, or worse, as a way to deny the reality around her Examples: a rich girl who spends frivilously to hide her feelings of neglect; an artist with delusions of fame and grandeur; a bullied kid who retreats into a world of science fiction.

The Sun Triumph The Sun has a dream, and attacks it with a relentless, fiery drive. She won’t stop, won’t rest until it’s firmly in her grasp, and her confidence invigorates everyone around her. Even in the face of tragedy and defeat, she never loses her passion or spirit. Examples: the valedictorian applying for the country’s top university; a scientist pursuing a groundbreaking new theory; an aging artist who strives to complete his magnum opus.

Judgement Final outcome Judgement holds the future in her hands—yours, your family’s, the student body’s, the town’s or some other person or group. It’s up to her to weigh the options and evidence and make a call that will determine the shape of that future. Examples: a developer buying up parts of the city breathe new life into it; a town official assessing whether to liquidate a troubled school disctrict; your parole officer.

(Page #) Arcana Archetypes Index

The previous pages list the “standard” Arcana encounterd in Persona as characters the player can interact with. There are still two more, though, not covered. These are somewhat special in that regard as they have unique roles both as Arcana and in Persona.

The Fool Carefree ignorance In Persona, The Fool normally represents the main character, as controlled by the player himself. That’s because The Fool is a blank slate, utterly unaware of what’s about to transpire. It’s you, before all the craziness that is life happens to you. So a relationship with the Fool isn’t usually with a person but with your journey itself—your advance from being carefree and ignorant of the greater world to fully understanding it and your place in the cosmic scheme of things. Since this is a fairly big theme to deal with, a GM may want to make it easier on everyone and keep the Fool as a separate shared relationship that all players in the party can have. If the Fool is, indeed, a person, then it’s either the person who baptized you into all this craziness, cracking the shell of your ignorance, or it’s someone with a child’s knowledge of the world. Examples: your group’s crusade against the Shadows; the mysterious figure who taught you how to Evoke your Persona; your 5 year old nephew.

The World Success at hand If The Fool is the start of your understanding of the universe, then The World, fittingly, is its culmination. In Persona the World Arcana comes into play at the very end of the game, once the mystery at the heart of the narrative is laid bare and all other cards, literal and figurative, are on the table. One suggestion for GMs is that the World is the antithesis of the Fool: as one moves away from ignorance and embraces understanding, they cease to be The Fool and embrace the World. It’s not really an Arcana meant to casual use, but one that stands for the final road markers on the party’s journey to enlightenment and the fulfillment of their task. If you want it to be a person, then it’s the guy with All the Answers, or, conversely, the final boss at the end of the line. Examples: your group’s goal to reach the source of the Shadows and stop their incursions once and for all; the being of pure thought who oversees the unconscious realm; the living nightmare waiting for you at the end of your dreams.

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What is a Persona?

A Persona is a part of your character’s psyche and personality that manifests a physical form to serve and protect you.

One reason why Persona and Monsters and Other Childish Things go together like chocolate and peanut butter is because of how similar Monsters and Personas are-- but they aren't the same. This section addresses both points.

How Personas are the Same as Monsters

Personas aren't from around here. What exactly causes a character to manifest a Persona depends on the the GM’s backstory, but it's not a normal thing that happens to people. For you to have a Persona that you can call on, something seriously weird has happened to your life. Personas aren’t affected by hunger, exhaustion or any other physical strain that would endanger a normal creature.

Your Persona’s got your back. It’s your weaponized subconscious. It exists to protect you from otherwordly threats you’d otherwise be hopelessly unequipped for, and it’s the means by which you can combat those threats.

Personas have the same basic parts. You build a Persona the exact same way you build a Monster: with dice, hit locations and extras. There’s a few new bits but talk about those when we get to them, and they only add a couple technical details to the process.

How Personas are Different from Monsters

Personas don’t “exist” in the “real world.” These are in quotation marks because “existance” and “the real world” can be fluid concepts in Persona. In most versions of the game, a Persona can’t interact with the mundane world around you in any meaningful way. But stories taking place in a Persona setting usually travel between our world and other, stranger ones where Personas (among other, nastier things) are quite tangible forces. That said, we encourage a GM to freely bend or ignore this rule if they’d prefer their setting to be one where Personas can freely interfere with their user’s lives. It won’t break the game, we promise.

Your Persona is a part of you. There are some optional rules later in this module that tweak this axiom, but generally speaking you have one Persona, and it's special to you because it springs from some mysic recess of your mind. As a result, it normally takes on a form that’s significant to you, like a character from a fairy tale your grandma recited to you when you were little; a fictional or mythological hero you identify with; or a weird, non-euclidean mass of soccerballs and astroturf (astralturf?) congealed out of your love of sports. Whatever it is, it’s a fragment of your own psychic matrix. It may act like an independent, separate creature, but it’s still, in some way, the product of your own fears and aspirations.

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Should Personas have personalities?

In the Persona video games, a character's Persona can talk with its user and has a definite personality, but it never actually factors into the player's experience with the game. Most Personas have a few lines of dialog when they're initially summoned, and are silent for the other 50-100 hours of game time. You can certainly play this module that way, thereby making your Persona just a tool to solve puzzles and a weapon to vanquish evil. But we don't recommend it. Doing so ignores key features of the tabletop role-playing format and of Monsters and Other Childish Things in particular. We encourage players to treat their Personas like fully formed characters with their own voices, desires, frustrations, fears and needs. You'll get much more mileage out of the experience that way, trust us.

Forging your Persona

The Velvet Book uses the same rules to create a Persona as Monsters and Other Childish Things uses for making Monsters. In lieu of retreading those instructions, here's an example of how they can be used to create Arsene from Persona 5.

Arsene Arcana: The Fool

Favorite Thing: Stealing Evocation: Unmasking

Resist: Dark Weak: Light

1-2 Fancy Bladed Legs 6d Defends, Attacks, Awesome x1, Wicked Fast x2 3 Gentleman's Coat 4d Useful (bottomless pockets), Tough 4-5 Nimble Claws 8d Attacks, Useful (picking pockets and locks), Sweet 6-8 Wings of Darkness 8d Attacks (Dark, Wind), Useful (Windy Flight), Defends, Awesome x2, Gnarly x2 9 Glowy Eyes 5d Useful (see the invisible) 10 Dapper Tophat 5d Useful (magic tricks)

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As you can see, the process and end results are fundamentally the same, with only a few new details added. We'll get to those in a bit. First let's talk about Extras.

Extras, Old and New

This module is compatible with all of the Extras from Monsters and Other Childish Things as well as those added in Bigger Bads. Some GMs may choose to avoid Range, Bigness or other Extras but that's their call; none of MaOCT's Extras are inherently allergic to Persona.

Along with the above, this module adds as Extras two vital pieces to the Persona puzzle: Element and Healing.

Element: This Extra applies to an Attacks Quality. Normally, you can choose to add one Elemental effect to an Attacks Quality at no charge, but this Extra lets you add another. This was used on Arsene's Wings of Darkness location, where it says Attacks (Dark, Wind). It means that Arsene can use its Wings to launch either Dark- or Wind-based attacks. Each instance of this Extra on a location adds another Element to an Attack's Arsenal, so you could trade 4d to be able to attack with 5 different Elements

(We'll get into how Elemental attacks work in the next section)

Healing: This Extra applies to a Useful Quality. It allows that Quality to restore Width-1 dice to a Persona (including itself) that lost them due to damage. Height doesn't matter-- a roll of 3x5 can heal 2 dice anywhere on the target's hit locations. This is pretty powerful, so it's got limited uses. Each point of Healing you add to a Useful Quality lets it heal once per fight or scene. Healing x1 is a single use, Healing x3 has three doses.

Arcana

The first of the new design elements is Arcana. We talked about Arcana back in the Characters chapter, focusing on how they add another layer to your Relationships. Well, Arcana also affects your Persona. Specifically your Arcana.

Your Persona shares your Arcana. If you are a Hanged Man, so is your Persona. Why does this matter?

Personas are shaped by their Arcana. Just as a human’s Arcana is tied to her mental and emotional condition, a Persona’s Arcana shapes its physical form. Personas of the Emperor appear as powerful, imposing icons of irresistable authority, while Personas of the Moon manifest as avatars of illusions, dreams and, yes, as avatars and representatives of the moon itself. A Persona is almost always some character or figure from folklore, mythology or even popular fiction—anything implanted into the collective consciousness of human culture. You may not even fully understand why your Persona has a certain form, and learning its significance may be a major step towards understanding yourself.

On page [XX] there’s an index of features and qualities shared by Personas of each Arcana. Just know that Arcana is meant to be a guide to form, not a restriction on it. We encourage you to be as creative as you want in bringing form and life to your Persona.

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Evocation

Unlike Monsters, Personas don’t hide. They’re already hidden by default, squirrelled away within their user’s consciousness. So the normal rules about Monsters having a unique Way to Hide is flipped around: Personas have a unique way to appear. This is called their Evocation.

Depending on your GM’s story, all Persona users may have a common method of Evocation. This is how it works in Persona 3, where Personas are forcibly hauled from their user’s minds with devices called Evokers; and in Persona 5, where users wear masks that, when stripped off, call out their Personas. Persona 1 and 2 have no defined method of Evocation, and in , characters smashed hallucinatory tarot cards to unleash their Personas in various ways (kicking, crushing in one’s hand, shooting with a gun).

Elemental Resistance and Weakness

This is a big one. A key part of combat in Persona is that Personas and the threats they face can be weak against certain elemental forces and strong against others. Exploiting this system is essentially the core of Persona’s battle engine. It’s not quite as important in this module, simply because grafting those rules unchanged into MaOCT would blow the game’s flow of battle to smithereens. But it’s still present and accounted for.

What are they? The Elements of Persona

In Persona, Elements are the physical forces and natural energies Each Persona game has a unique batch of that Personas are subject to. They infuse a Persona, strengthening it Elements, and your GM can choose which against certain threats in exchange for exposing it to others. he wants to use for his game. He can also make-up any that suit his setting. Bear in Resistance and Weakness mind that the more Elements you have, the more unpredictable combat can become. Resistance reduces the damage a Persona takes to all locations by 1 when it’s hit by an attack of a particular element. Weakness is the Common Elements opposite: it adds 1 damage when the Persona is hit by that element. Fire Ice In Arsene’s example posted two pages earlier, it takes 1 less Electric damage from Dark attacks and 1 more damage from Light attacks. Wind (also called Force in some games) This in addition to any points of Tough a Persona has in the damaged Dark (also called Curse in some games) location. Light (also called Bless in some games) Uncommon Elements For each Resistance your Persona has, it must also have a Earth Weakness. You don’t need a Resistance, but it definitely makes the Water game feel more like Persona. Nuclear Psychokinesis Gravity

(Page #) Persona and Arcana Compendium

The Magician: Personas of the Magician are, as The Lovers: Personas of the Lovers are associated their name suggest, explicitly magical. They are with romance and affection, of both the pure and figures that have supreme mastery of some force tragic kind. They include gods and spirits of love of the physical world, whether as a nature spirit, as well as mythic and literary figures entangled in an elemental deity or a hero so exceptionally love triangles, forbidden romance and fiery skilled that his talents seem magical in their own passion. Examples: Aphrodite, Carmen, right. Examples: Djinn, Gandalf, Houdini, Jiraiya, Guinevere, Ishtar, Kushinada, Lord Byron, Tristan Nikola Tesla, Queen Mab, Susanoo, The Chariot: Personas of the Chariot are warriors The High Priestess: Personas of the High Priestess and heroes of extraordinary strength and skill. are normally feminine figures of wisdom and Their martial prowess dominates the battlefield strength, who wield their insight into the swiftly and completely, and are the things of mysteries of the universe as a powerful weapon. legend. Gods and goddesses of war are included They often take the form of maidens, princesses, within this Arcana. Examples: Ares, Athena, Davy witches and spiritual warrior women. Examples: Crockett, Hercules, Lu Bu, Miyamoto Musashi, Artemis, Konohana Sakuya, Lady of the Lake, Pope Thor, Joan, Pythia, Scathach Justice: Personas of Justice are towering icons of The Empress: Personas of the Empress are law and order, frequently at the expense of all renowned queens from folklore and antiquity and other concepts, which they smash beneath their high goddesses of mythology. Though they hold gavels or rend to shreds with sharp swords. They almighty power, they wield it with a maternal include those who craft the law; enforce it; and hand, though never with weakness. Examples: pass judgement against its violators. Examples: Durga, Echidna, Ellen Ripley, Freya, Hippolyta, Isis, Hammurabi, Javert, Judge Dread, Lady Justice, Titania, Zenobia Punisher, King Enma

The Emperor: Personas of the Emperor are, as The Hermit: The Hermit’s Personas exemplify the their name suggests, famous emperors and kings fruits of contemplation and inner strength built as well as the chief gods of different mythologies. through meditation and knowing one’s self. They Their power is absolute, dominant and include gods and wise men who gained spiritual overwhelming to stand against, forcing all to bend awareness through their own inward focus as well the knee. Examples: Alexander the Great, Caesar, as poets and artists whose isolation produced Gilgamesh, Jade Emperor, Oberon, Odin, Zeus works of genius. Examples: Baba Yaga, Chiron, Dante, Gautama Buddha, J.D. Salinger, Kurt The Hierophant: Personas of the Hierophant Cobain Yoda typify figures of profound wisdom and spiritual strength—prophets, gurus, holy men and saints. Fortune: Fortune’s Personas represent the cycles They are guides along the road to enlightenment of the world. Good luck and bad, rise and decline, and higher understanding. Examples: Confucius, the steady march of time. These Personas spring Elijah, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Pythagoras, Thoth, Virgil, from myths that seek to explain these cycles and Xuanzang help one cope with the inevitability of change and the randomness of life. Examples: Janus, Erwin Schrodinger, Fortuna, Norns, Pele, Persephone

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Strength: Strength Personas are warriors famed The Tower: Tower Personas bring doom or are for their unshakable bravery and resolve. Their themselves doomed, by fate or by their own legends have them stand against seemingly arrogance. Some are legends cursed by higher insurmountable dangers, driven inexorably by powers for impudence, others are gods or spirits faith, willpower or unbending devotion to a of wrath and destruction. Examples: Abdul cause. Examples: Beowulf, Boudicca, Hua Mulan. Alhazred, Cu Chulainn, The Fisher King, Macbeth, Jeanne d’Arc, Sif, Siegfried, William Wallace Odysseus, Set, Shiva

The Hanged Man: Personas of the Hanged Man The Star: Personas of the Star embody hope, are martyrs—gods and heroes who have suffered possibility, inspiration and virtue. More tremendous hardship and sacrifice in the pursuit specifically they may be gods or spirits of music of a higher cause, even to the point of death and and art, and even of the stars themselves, which beyond. Examples: Benkei, Frodo Baggins, symbolize the yearning of human hearts for , Socrates, St. Peter, Valentine distant desires. Examples: Buck Rogers, Calisto, Michael Smith Da Vinci, Galahad, Maat, The Pleiades, Sarasvati

Death: Death Personas are, naturally, beings of The Moon: Personas of the Moon are creatures of death, decay and the underworld—but not always illusion, dreams, trickery and the subconscious. malevolently so. These figures may stand for These traits align them directly with the Moon death as the passage from one life to the next, itself, and so many of these Personas take the and so are as often gentle guides as they are grim form of lunar spirits and gods. Examples: Baku, reapers. Examples: Anubis, Baron Samedi, Mothman, Morpheus, Princess Kaguya, Selene, Charon, Daisoujou, Hel, Osiris, Thanatos Tsukuyomi

Temperance: Personas of Temperance are The Sun: Sun Personas are beaming sources of stalwart icons of stability and fortitude. They goodness, beauty, vitality and positivity. They often represent elements of nature revered for very commonly take the form of solar deities or their reliability and resistance to the winds of heroes connected directly with light and purity. change. As mythic figures, they fight to preserve Examples: Amaterasu, Apollo, Baldr, Ganesha, life and order against forces of chaos. Examples: Horus, Phoenix, Quetzalcoatl The Four Chinese Symbols, Harmonia, Kali, Talos, Vishnu Judgement: Personas of Judgement are harbingers of The End of All Things. They stand in Devil: Personas of the Devil are diabolical judgement of men and the world in general and creatures of sin and temptation. By nature they decide whether to usher in destruction or rebirth. seem less friendly and more sinister, luring their As a result they are often linked closely with victims into ruin with honeyed words and offers revalations of the future, as well as of impending of gifts and power. Examples: Circe, Delilah, cataclysm. Examples: Ancient of Days, B’olon Emperor Palpatine, Mara, Mephistopheles Yokte’, Cassandra, Gabriel, Jormungandr, Maitreya

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The Fool: Personas of the Fool are special. In Personas 3-5 they are the domain of the Protagonist, who acts as a silent, blank slate for the player. As such, they normally have the form of protagonists various mythic stories. When not directly connected to a single main character, Fool Personas are jesters, mischief makers and heroes that walk a fine line between carefree innocence and hazardous ignorance. Examples: Anansi, Bugs Bunny, Candide, Coyote, Don Quixote, Loki, Puck

The World: Personas of the World are even more special. In the Persona games they are the culmination of the cast’s journey and struggle against the otherworldly forces threatening them. Thus, they aren’t “for public consumption”, so to speak, and take the form of creation deities and supreme, almighty gods. Examples: Ahura Mazda, Atum, Brahma, Gaia, Izanagi-no-Okami

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Preface: What Persona Players Should Know about Fighting

Since the core rules for staging fights in The Velvet Book e are the same as in Monsters and Other Childish Things, we’ll take a second to help those readers coming into this fresh from Persona to get acclimated.

The big thing to understand is that you’re not just trading a Playstation controller for some dice and paper—the translation from the TV to the tabletop means a whole new way of engaging with the mechanics. You’re not going to be getting into a hundred random encounters with Shadows on your way to some destination, and the fights that do erupt aren’t going to end in 16 seconds after your meticulously crafted and leveled team stomps them into the ground with Elemental Skills and All-Out Attacks. That works great as a single-player electronic RPG experience. It doesn’t work as a cooperative tabletop game.

Shadow Fights in MaOCT and, by association, this Persona module are more detailed, free- flowing and unpredictable. They don’t necessary take place in vast, empty hallways but in dynamic environments that both sides can use their advantage. Your GM isn’t going to throw wave after wave of identical encounters at you: he has the tools to make each fight unique, whether they’re against groups of weaker Minor Shadows or terrifying, The 3 Phase of ORE Combat solitary Major Shadows. We’re not reprinting the rules for Fights also take longer. Persona games are notorious for having combat in full here, since they’re in the blazingly fast combat for a turn-based RPG. The One Roll Engine is an MaOCT core book, but here’s the basic attractive fit to that because it’s quick and simple but even then, a outline. minor fight might take 5-15 minutes and a serious boss encounter could 1. Declare stretch on for over an hour. This isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. In going from Everyone in the fight says what they’re the TV to the table, your character and Persona aren’t shackled with a going to do, in order of lowest Brains + Out-Think to highest set of canned attack animations and scripted interactions. Players and GMs are encouraged to be florid and elaborate in how they describe 2. Roll what they are doing and how it works, not just to say “I attack. I got a Everyone rolls their dice pools at the same time and then sort out their Sets. 3x8. I do 2 Fire damage.” Each player is now a programmer of the game’s mental code and an animator of its cinematics. Go nuts. 3. Resolve Actions unfold in order of greatest to We have, however, taken great pains to incorporate as many least Width (so a 4x2 happens before a pieces from Persona’s combat architecture as possible. They don’t work 3x5, which happens before a 2x8). If you exactly as they do in the video games, because they’ve been adapted to get hit before your Action happens, you lose a die from your best Set. take advantage of how things happen at the tabletop, but they’ve been included to create as faithful a Persona experience as possible.

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Streamlining Monsters Combat for Persona

In MaOCT, the expectation is that in a fight involving Monsters, both a Kid and his Monster will have their own separate actions that they declare, roll and resolve. That’s not how this module works. During the declare phase, each player declares one action. So, either your Persona hurls a screaming ball of fire at an enemy Shadow, OR your Persona User tries to sneak around fringes the melee to snatch the treasure the Shadows are protecting. You can attempt to do both but declaring actions for a Persona and its User in the same Round requires Multiple Actions, which are explained clearly in the MaOCT core book.

This is a departure from those core rules, but there are some good reasons why.

Your Persona is a part of you. Depending on how your GM sets up the story your Persona may have its own will and a mind of its own, but no matter what it’s still a fragment of your subconscious rendered in stunning 3D technicolor, and it acts on your behalf. For it to do a thing you need to Evoke it, command it and infuse it with your own drive and will, which takes up a good chunk of the character’s focus.

It’s keeps fights brisk. When Personas and Users have separate actions you end up with twice as much rolling, dice and Sets to keep track of and it slows down the flow of combat. Battles in Persona are lightning fast, and by streamlining things this module brings the action of MaOCT a little closer to that.

Who’s the target?

Since the battle economy has been tightened up, the players have less options for what they can do in a fight. To compensate, your enemies also have a key restraint on their attacks: If you declare an action with your Persona, your Persona takes any damage coming at you that turn. In other words, if you attack with your Persona, your Persona will be the target of an enemy’s attacks. If your Persona User decides to do something else, he’s exposing himself to possible direct harm.

This means it’s generally a good thing for characters to rely on their Personas during fights. They’re tougher, hit harder and can soak up more damage than the flesh pink meat bags they’re attached to. But Personas can’t do everything and eventually you’re going to find yourself in a situation where that fleshy, pink meat bag will have to do something crazy and dangerous that the psychic monstrosity living his brain won’t be able to help with.

Battle for everyone’s souls

One last thought before we get into the nitty-gritty of this The Velvet Book’s combat adjustments, and it’s that Persona conflates martial combat with psycho-spiritual warfare even more directly than MaOCT. In the vanilla game, being embarrassed, terrified or demoralized is often more dangerous than being shot at or exploded, partly because the former is a lot more common than the latter. In Persona, that’s not really the case. Your very human, very mortal characters will be venturing into places that will imperil them physically just as much as they are tested mentally. Don’t expect them to come out of it without some real, tangible scars.

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Weapons

Personas are real good at fighting. They can conjure thunderbolts from clear skies and mash up smaller baddies with their toothy jaws. Their Users aren’t so lucky. To even the odds, they need a little outside help.

Weapons are updated a bit from the original Monsters and Other Childish Things ruleset. A weapon is really anything you can use to inflict severe damage on another person. A rock is a weapon the same as samurai sword, the same as a .38 snub-nose revolver. The explicit rules for using Weapons against people are detailed in gory detail in the MaOCT core rules.

Which skill you use for a Weapon attach depends on how you’re using it. If you’re going up against someone ready for a fight, roll Guts + Fighting. If you’re attacking a defenseless person, roll Diligence + Beat Down. If you’re throwing something or using a firearm, roll Proficiency + Aim but be careful: using weapons like this can escalate a situation very quickly, and guns tend to draw a lot of attention.

Most of the time using a weapon against a classmate (or any other human) isn’t necessary or even a very good idea, but it’s a different story when you’re fighting Shadows. In their world it’s kill or be killed, so don’t pull your punches. Human weapons deal Width-1 in Scars against Shadows. All othe other features of a weapon, like extra points of Gnarly or Spray that make them super lethal against people don’t really matter for Shadows. Physical Damage Types Plus, just about anything can be used as a weapon against One way that a GM might make weapons Shadows as long as you’re devoted enough to its use. Persona important is by adding physical damage types games have seen characters fight with shoes, razor blades, coins, to the game. These work like Elements do, fans, folding chairs, sling-shots and wrenches. What the weapon is but they describe the various nasty ways that doesn’t really matter. The important part is that you believe it will a man-made implement can inflict damage. protect you, and your psychological investment in it does the rest. Shadows (and Personas) can be weak or resistant to diverse types of physical When you attack Shadows you’re pretty much always damage, so if you have a sword and you come rolling Guts + Fighting or Proficiency + Aim depending on whether across a Shadow that’s Weak to slashing your attack is close quarters or ranged, respectively. You could also attacks, suddenly your Persona User’s create a custom weapon skill in the blank skill slot for each Stat; weapon becomes a valid offensive option. this is especially the case if your GM wants to make Weapons If you do add Physical Damage types REALLY important in the game. to the game, then they can also be applied to a Persona or Shadow’s attack qualities, the You should know, though, that most of the time your same as an Element can. Persona will be better at crushing Shadows than you are. After all Common examples that’s kind of the reason it exists. But if you, for some reason, can’t Evoke your Persona, or if there’s some specific advantage to using Slash (swords, knives, claws) Strike (clubs, staves, brass knuckles) a weapon, then you’ll definitely be glad you brought it with you. Pierce (spears, arrows, spikes) Firearm (guns, explosives)

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Elemental Warfare

We briefly talked about the Elemental forces in the Persona creation section. Since they mainly impact the combat rules, we’ll go into more detail here.

All Attack Qualities, whether on a Shadow or a Persona, can have Elemental effects added to them to alter the kind of damage they throw out, which looks like this: Attacks (Fire). Affixing a single Element to an Attack is free, but any additional Elemental effects count as Extras and need to be bought with dice, which look like this: Attacks (Fire, Ice)

An Attack Quality without an Element deals physical damage—crushing, chomping, carving to pieces. If you want an Attack to be able to inflict either physical or Elemental damage, you need to add the Element as an Extra, like this: Attacks (Physical, Fire). Most Personas don’t need to resort to this, since they have lots of nasty moving parts with their own Attack qualities, but it’s an option.

When you hit a target using an Element it is Weak to, you inflict +1 Damage. At the same time, if you hit a target with an Element it Resists, you inflict 1 less Damage. It’s like your foe has a point of Tough all over its body against that kind of attack. That’s why adding one Element to an Attack Quality is free: because it’s just as likely to hurt you as it is to help you.

Therefore, it’s a good idea not to turn your Persona into an almighty arsenal of Elemental force. It’s possible for Shadows to resist physical damage, but our advice to GMs is to keep them few and far between, since that shuts down a lot of a party’s options in combat. So as a tip, you should consider giving your Persona at least some ability to attack physically. In-fact, Persona has a long history of giving pure physical bruisers the spotlight, so don’t feel like your boy is somehow weaker because he can’t launch every element under the sun at the enemy.

In addition to extra damage, there’s another major advantage to attacking an enemy’s Weaknesses, which is covered in the next section.

Elemental Skill Names If you want to inject a little more Persona flavor into your game, you can use the traditional Shin Megami Tensei names for Elemental attacks, listed below Common Elements Skill Name Uncommon Elements Skill Name Fire Agi Psychokinesis Psi Ice Bufu Nuclear Frei Electric Zio Water Aqua Wind Garu Earth Magna Dark Eiha Gravity Gry Light Kouha Force Zan Almighty* Megido *Almighty is a unique element in that it cannot be Resisted, and is generally reserved for only the most powerful Personas and dangerous Shadows one might encounter as one nears the climax of the story.

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One More!

Persona 3 introduced the One More mechanic that, in many ways, has come to define the flow of combat in modern Persona. The Velvet Book integrates that mechanic into the heart of MaOCT’s combat in a form that takes advantage of the One Roll Engine’s unique conflict resolution system.

Whenever you hit a target’s Weakness, you’re allowed to use One More Set that you rolled as another action. So say your Persona is attacking a Shadow Weak to Fire with 8d with of fiery death. You roll and get the following result:

1,3,5,5,7,7,9,10

Out of that you have two Sets: 2x5 and 2x7. You barbeque the Shadow with 2x7, inflicting 2 Scars against it (Width-1 for base damage, +1 for hitting a Weakness). You describe how nailing that Weakness causes the Shadow to erupt into a towering pyre of flame for a few seconds, sending its fellows scattering from the intense heat and getting your character’s blood and neurotransmitters pumping.

And since you hit a Weakness, you can use One More Set that you rolled, so you put that 2x5 to work too. For that you have three options:

1. Knockdown the Shadow you just attacked. Your One More Set can be used as a follow-up action that flattens your target, leaving them sprawled and prone for Width-1 rounds. Downed characters take a -1d penalty to any actions as long as they’re in that condition and grant +1d to anyone that wants to go after them. A downed combatant can stand back up early if they choose, but it takes a full round, so most Shadows won’t even bother unless they’re down for more than 1 round.

Knocking down an enemy also gives you some other options covered on the next page.

2. Make another attack against a different target. You can channel your momentum from that righteous attack and use your One More Set as another attack against a different enemy in the fight. And if you happen to hit ANOTHER weakness, then get One More again, though you need a third Set for that to work. If you manage to roll 4 Sets, that’s potentially Three More actions you can take, as long as you keep chaining Weaknesses.

3. Use your One More Set for some other action. Heal someone, help a friend, call out encouragement, insult an enemy to draw their attention.

Naturally if you don’t roll another Set you can’t use One More, so Playing without One More you can never guarantee that you’ll be able to chain your way to a sweeping victory with One Mores (as you can in the Persona If you want to play more in line with Persona games), but it’s a nice bonus when it happens, and with enough 1 and 2, crop this mechanic out of your fights. It won’t break anything and will better dice it becomes statistically reliable that you’ll get at least two simulate the experience of those games. Sets. Also beware: your enemies can score One More as well by taking advantages of your Persona’s Weaknesses.

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Hold Up

Persona 5 introduced the ability to Hold Up Shadows that have been knocked down or so completely overpowered that they’ve lost the will to fight. This gives a Persona User the chance to negotiate with the Shadow for its surrender or even its cooperation, which it’s normally unwilling to volunteer.

During a Hold Up, a Persona User can use his other, generally non-combative Skills to try and sway, intimidate or amuse a Shadow. The Shadow will roll its dice to try and resist, counter or downplay the User’s action. If the User succeeds then the Shadow can be won over, but if the Shadow comes out on top it regains lost dice equal to its Width-1.

A Shadow’s nature influences how it responds to a User’s attempted Hold Up. A tough, physically imposing Shadow might demand a display of strength (roll Diligence + P.E. to arm wrestle it), while a more jovial spirit could ask you for a joke (roll Expression + Charm) and a cerebral, thoughtful creature may offer you a puzzle to resolve (Knowledge + Out-Think). Of course, giving a Shadow what it wants isn’t always the only option. You can threaten, flatter or lie to it the same as you would a person if you think it will give you a better result.

In a successful Hold Up, the Width of your Set determines the outcome.

Width Result 2 It’s open to your side of things. It won’t attack you in the next round and you may continue negotiations. Two of these in a row is the equivalent to a Width 3 result. 3 It’s on board with you. It will leave the fight, give you information or stuff or even let you benefit from a Useful ability it has. 4+ It wants to be your friend. It will side with you in the battle and might even follow you around for a little while.

Note that a Hold Up doesn’t pause or divert combat: while one character is Holding Up a Shadow, his buddies might be fighting the rest of the battle around him. On top of that, characters engaged in a Hold Up aren’t protected by their Personas, so any damage they take goes to their soft, squishy human bodies. If you’re determined to Hold Up a Shadow, or if your mission demands it, you may need to have your allies watch your back.

You can only Hold Up a given Shadow once per fight; after that it’s wise to your shenanigans and won’t listen to what you have to say.

Alternatives to Hold Up In Persona 1 and 2, you didn’t need to Knock Down an enemy to start talking to it, you could Negotiate right from the start. This could potentially allow you to avoid a fight altogether. In Persona 3 and 4, most Shadows were strange, abstract creatures lacking the means to communicate or, seemingly, any kind of higher intelligence, making conversation impossible.

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All Out Attacks

The other half of the lingering changes to combat brought into the game by Persona 3 is the ability to launch an All Out Attack when every Shadow on the battlefield has been Knocked Down. When a group of Persona Users agree on an All Out Attack, they charge in on their prone enemies and lay into them with their weapons, fists, feet, nearby objects and whatever else is at hand. Significantly, All Out Attacks don’t use their Personas—it’s the Users’ chance to attack freely without a protective psychic proxy for their aggression.

Here’s how it works.

1. Declare an All Out Attack. Usually the character who Knocks Down the last standing Shadow makes the declaration. When this happens the fight immediately switches into a special combat round in which the All Out Attack takes place. We encourage that player to be as dramatic, brazen and showy as possible when he or she announces the attack. If everyone in the party is onboard, move to the next phase.

2. Gather your Dice Pool. Start with 1d for each Persona User in the fight. Then add together everyone’s Beat Down dice. That’s your All Out Attack pool. If it’s bigger than 10d, that’s fine. This is one of the few chances you’re going to get to roll a giant pool of dice in this game.

3. Roll and Sort your Sets. The player to the left of the declaring player makes the roll. If you get a Set with a Width of 4 or greater, split it up into Width-2 or Width-3 Sets.

4. Take turns describing the attacks. Starting with the player to the left of whoever rolled the All Out Attack dice and moving clockwise, take turns picking out a Set and describing the action that went down. Remember, your Persona Users are directly attacking the Shadows, so take the opportunity to detail how they’re smashing them into the ground as a group. Each Set inflicts Width-1 Scars, and you should hit every Shadow in the fight once before cycling around and doubling up.

Once the last Set has been used, the fight resumes as normal and any Knocked Down Shadows are now back up and standing (or floating or flying or whatever they do).

You can only execute one All Out Attack per fight.

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Arcana Boosts

Like Monsters, Personas can suck up their User’s Relationships Dice to add to their own dice pools. This can dramatically increase the Persona’s ability to pull of actions, but it puts that Relationship into harms way. Those rules haven’t changed.

This module adds another layer to that: Arcana Boosts. Each Relationship has an Arcana, and each Arcana is linked to an Extra with which it has some thematic resonance. For example the Emperor is linked to Gnarly (as represents irresistable power) whereas the Magician is linked with Element (representing trickery and substition).

When you feed a Relationship to your Persona, you can use its dice buy points in that Arcana’s linked Extra. If you feed 2d worth of Emperor to your Persona, you can give it a +2d bonus, or you can give it Gnarly x2, or a combination of both (+1d, Gnarly x1). As with dice gained by chowing down on a Relationship, these persist until they’re knocked off by damage.

Playing without Extra Arcana Extra Arcana Arcana Boosts

These rules are Area Heal another addition made to the game to bring Empress Moon Lovers Star its more in line with the Persona experience, but they’re in no way required for Bounce Spray playing it. If you feel like this system is too Fortune Tower Sun Judgement fiddly, complicated or just doesn’t sit right with your group, you Burn Sweet can skim it right off without breaking anything. Temperance Devil Hierophant High Priestess

Freeform Arcana Element Tough Boosts

Another option is to let Magician Hermit Strength Hanged Man players assign Extras to their Relationship Wicked Gnarly Arcana any way they Fast want, as long as each one is unique. Emperor Death Chariot Justice

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Playing Dirty: Buffs and Debuffs

A major part of combat in Persona is using Buffs to improve your abilities and Debuffs to hamstring your opponents. This is normally accomplished by giving players access to an arsenal of oddly named skills that boost their attack, defense and evasion or lower those traits for their enemies.

Doing that in MaOCT requires a little lateral thinking, but it works just as easily.

Buffing yourself

Preparing Attacks: Improving your Persona’s abilities on the fly is very easy. Each turn you take to Aim or otherwise warm an attack adds +1d to your pool when you finally let it loose. This nicely emulates Persona skills like Power Charge or Mind Charge.

Eating Relationships: Eating Relationships to gain more dice or Arcana Boosts simulates the effect of Persona skills that apply lasting buffs. Adding dice to a location with an Attacks Quality boosts your attack power (like the Tarukaja skill), while boosting a Defends location has the same result as raising your evasion (the Sukukaja skill), and adding points of Tough from Strength or Hanged Man Arcana Boosts buffs your damage resistance (aka Rakukaja). In fact, due to the range of options made available with Arcana Boosts, you have a highly diverse array of buff options at your disposal.

Debuffing enemies

Pure damage: Since each hit you land on an enemy knocks dice out of its pool, you’re effectively debuffing them with each successful attack.

Useful debuffs: Persona locations with Useful Qualities can foul up an enemy’s ability to act by Stunning them (neutralizing a hit location for Width-1 rounds) and Tangling them (restricting their actions in a meaningful way for Width-1 rounds). Useful Qualities can also negate the effect of Extras for Width-1 rounds, provided you come up with a convincing explanation as to how it goes down (such as forcibly stripping away armor to reduce their Tough rating, or covering their Gnarly claws with deliciously soft cotton candy).

Buff and Debuff Skill Names As with Elemental Skills, you can add a little extra Persona flavor to your buff and debuff abilities by using the traditional Shin Megami Tensei names for them.

Ability Affected Skill Prefix Attack Taru- Toughness Raku- Defense Suku-

Buff skills add -kaja to the end of the skill name (Tarukaja) while debuffs add -nda (Tarunda)

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Shadows 101: What Players Need to Know

Shadows are the enemy. Whereas Personas are born from a person’s idealize sense of self and the need to be protected from the dangers of the world around them, Shadows spring from the dark side of the human soul. If your Persona represents what you’d most like to be, your Shadow is what you are afraid you already are.

The in-depth rules for how Shadows work are in the GM’s section of this module, The Velvet Room. But since the players are going to be face to face with Shadows on a regular basis, this section will prepare them for what they are and how to beat them.

Minor Shadows

Most Shadows are Minor Shadows. Minor Shadows are the maggots that hatch from humanity’s negative thoughts. They are simple, relatively weak and they populate the Other World like cockroaches. Destroying Minor Shadows might clear the path to your goal but they won’t solve the greater issues at hand: there are always more where they came from.

A Minor Shadow has an Arcana, a single dice pool, some Extras and Example Shadow an Initiative level that sets when they Declare their actions in combat. Added together, these are the Shadow’s Arcana Points (AP). Here’s an Jack Frost (Magician-7) 5d example of a 7 AP Minor Shadow. Attacks (Ice, *Fire*), Useful (Icy Tricks) Resist: Ice Weak: Fire Initiative: 2 Where it says *Fire* it means that the Shadow gets that Extra for Favorite Thing: Jokes free, thanks to its Arcana (like the Arcana Boost system). Each Quality after the first costs 1 AP, as does every 2 points of Initiative.

Since Minor Shadows only have a single dice pool, any hit they take will drain it away. As a result, a single Minor Shadow isn’t usually much of a threat. But Minor Shadows are rarely alone. Usually they come in groups, but sometimes they’re the minions of far stronger Major Shadows.

Major Shadows

The most dangerous Shadows are Major Shadows. Major Shadows are born of the complex desires, illusions, prejudices and vices of people in the real world, cooked together in a big psychic pot until it boils over into a tangible, menacing form in the Other World. Major Shadows may be attached to a specific individual, or they may be the congealed mental pollution of the collective subconscious. Either way they’re bad news. They can threaten both the real world and the Other World, and it’s up to you to stop them.

Major Shadows are built like Personas, with their own hit locations and dice pools. They also have gimmicks like being able to take more than one action per turn or summon Minor Shadows, which make them singular threats that need to be opposed by a whole group of Persona Users. This module discusses them in full detail in The Velvet Room section, starting on page [XX].

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What is a Shadow?

Shadows a creatures native to the Other World that want to do you (and the rest of humanity) physical, psychological and/or spiritual harm. They can take a wide array of forms and shapes, including figures of mythology and folklore and weird-yet-recognizable crystallizations of human fears and desires.

Most Shadows are simple, single-minded entities called Minor Shadows, which represent negative impulses and emotions common to people everywhere. But a tiny minor are Major Shadows: powerful, dangerous monstrosities born from unique, singular sources of ill-intent and misdirected will.

Personas and their Users are often responsible for hunting down and dismantling Major Shadows and the hordes of Minor Shadows that congregate around them like flies to a rotting carcass.

Where do Shadows Come From?

Various Persona games take different approaches to the origin of these species. GMs are encouraged to work out their own logic behind where Shadows come from. Here are some examples.

Shadows are the consequence of suppressed negative desires. Selfishness, greed, jealousy, self-hatred, intentional cruelty, pride—when people repress these feelings instead of working through them, they spawn Shadows in the Other World. In areas where these thoughts are concentrated, great masses of Minor Shadows congregate, potentially around a powerful Major Shadow that acts as a kind of dark Persona of one twisted individual.

Shadows are the natural citizens of the Other World. The act of venturing from our world to theirs makes a Persona User a target as an unwelcome invader. This does mean that Shadows aren’t universally hostile, especially if you know how to handle their idiosyncracies.

Shadows are created to serve a purpose. It may be a piece of a larger conspiracy, but sometimes bad people with the right know-how unleash Shadows just to get what they personally want.

Whatever their source, Shadows present a looming threat to whatever real space their fragment of unreality has intersected with. If the nature of the Other World allows them to influence the real world, they do so by infecting people with negative emotions and hostile thoughts, expanding the same darkness in the collective subconscious that they’re bred form. If the Other World is more isolated from our own, its Shadows occupy an alien ecosystem that the Persona Users must bushwack through to accomplish their objectives.

Shadow Styles In Persona 3 and 4 Shadows were weird, often amorphous creatures like giant masked boulders, floating mouths and bizarre animals. Shadows in Persona 5 are drawn from the standard stock of Shin Megami Tensei enemies like Pixie and Jack Frost. Shadows described in The Velvet Book are based on the latter approach, but both styles are valid and are available to the GM’s discretion.

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Chapter V: Shadows

Some Shadows are Helpful There’s precedent in some Persona games for Shadows with an unusual amount of self-awareness to help out the party or even join forces with them like Metis in Perona 3 and Teddie in Persona 4. These beings should be statted out like normal NPC characters instead of using Shadow rules.

Shadow Types

As mentioned briefly in the Combat Chapter, Minor Shadows are simple creatures with a single dice pool and a few basic attributes, whereas Major Shadows are constructed the same way that Personas are, with separate hit locations each housing their own dice pools. Minor Shadows are common foes that Persona Users will usually face in groups, while Major Shadows are designed to be drastic, unique encounters that require the party’s full focus and firepower.

Arcana Points

A Shadow’s strength is measured in Arcana Points (AP), which represents how much psycho-spiritual power the Shadow is infused with.

For Minor Shadows, AP is the sum of its various traits, including its dice pool, extras, resistances and other features. The greater its AP, the tougher and stronger it is. For Major Shadows, AP measures how much extra stuff it gets on top of its normal dice pools.

Minor Shadow Parts Example Shadow Here’s the example of a Minor Shadow laid out in the Combat Chapter so Jack Frost (Magician-7) 5d we can discuss each of its moving parts. Attacks (Ice, *Fire*), Useful (Icy Tricks) Name: What the Shadow is called. They could be a creature from myth Resist: Ice Weak: Fire Initiative: 2 or folklore or a figment of the GM’s imagination. Favorite Thing: Jokes

Arcana: All Shadows have an Arcana that informs what kind of creature it Description: A winter fairy resembling is. A Shadow’s Arcana also grants it a free use of a specific Extra (here it’s a jolly snowman wearing a purple cap. a free Element.) Normally friendly, if provoked he’ll kill his victim by freezing him in ice and AP: The -7 after Magician is the Shadow’s Arcana Points, which inform snow. everything that comes next.

Dice Pool: Each die in a Shadow’s dice pool is worth 1 AP.

Qualities: Since Shadows are born to fight and cause conflict, every Shadow gets the Attacks Quality for free. Additional Qualities on top of that cost 1 AP.

Extras: Each Extra is also worth 1 AP, except the Free Arcana Extra, which is contained by asterisks.

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Chapter V: Shadows

Resist/Weak: Each Resistance costs 1 AP, and each Weakness refunds -1 AP. In Jack Frost’s case, they cancel out.

Initiative: Initiative is the Shadow’s equivalent to Knowledge + Out- Think for combat declaration timing. Every 2 points of Initiative is worth 1 AP.

Favorite Thing: Shadows like things too. Leaning on a Shadow’s Favorite Thing can be helpful when you’re negotiating with them.

Description: This tells you about the Shadow’s appearance, disposition and personality. GMs pulling from the vast canon of Persona enemies can also find illustrations of the critters online.

Encountering Minor Shadows

The Other World is lousy with Minor Shadows. Sometimes they’re enlisted as henchmen and foot soldiers of Major Shadows, other times they just prowl the dark jungles of mankind’s collective consciousness, like animals propelled by inscrutable motives.

How a Shadow behaves when you run into it depends on how your GM interprets their role in the narrative. Traditionally, Shadows in Persona are universally hostile and their first instinct is to attack any outsiders they see, but that doesn’t have to be the case here. Shadows can have as wide a ray of reactions to meeting Persona Users so you may be able to vary up your approach. Or don’t and just leave a trail of ectoplasmic gore in your wake.

Fighting Minor Shadows

Since a Minor Shadow only has a single dice pool, any damage it takes will knock dice out of that pool, regardless of its height. Deplete that pool and it’s kaput, ripped to shreds that evaporate back into the ether of the collective subconscious from whence it came. If you manage to reduce to a measly 1d then you’ve physically neutralized it: it keeps its form but can’t successfully act until it gets some dice back through Healing or whatever other means your GM describes. In this state, the Shadow is at your mercy, and is usually highly pliable to your suggestions.

To balance this out you rarely encounter a Minor Shadow on its own. They tend to group together, and these groupings can offset the specific deficiencies of individual Shadows. Take Jack Frost above; it can only Attack and set up nasty frosty traps and tricks with its Useful Quality. It’s got no defense, but if it’s grouped up with a Shadow with a healthy Defense, the two can work together to cause a lot more havoc than either could accomplish individually. Sometimes you can simply overpower groups of Shadows with naked force, but often it’s prudent to divide and conquer. A timely Expression + Put-Down roll can sow dissent among the ranks of especially well synergized Minor Shadows (“What’s wrong, Jack? Too much of a wuss to fight me without your pal there?”).

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Chapter V: Shadows

The GM: Master of Shadows The Shadow Compendium This Chapter is about the rules for how Shadows The Appendices of the The Velvet Book work and what they can do. The GM’s Chapter, include the Shadow Compendium, a catalog the Velvet Room, has rules specifically for of read-to-play Shadows at the GM’s engineering Shadow encounters, so go check disposal. Feel free to use the Compendium that out if you’re interesting on the behind-the- to build Shadow encounters or as scenes of how these scenes are set-up. inspiration for your own nasty creations.

Minor Shadows as Threats

Another way of handling Minor Shadows is to treat them as Threats as laid out in Bigger Bads. In a sense, Minor Shadows already work this way: they’re a dice pool with some Qualities and Extras. But Threats are special because they represent widespread sources of danger instead of individual ones, like a whole horde of slavering nightmares.

When Shadows act as Threats, they’re switching out quality for quantity. Each Shadow that comprises the Threat is weaker, but there’s a whole lot more of them. Every successful attack against the Threat is erasing whole Shadows from the scene, but in exchange, the Threat gets to use every Set it rolls against the Players.

Building Shadow Threats is the same as building a normal Minor Shadow, but with a bigger dice pool. Each Threat Die costs 2 AP. A single Jack Frost is a 5d enemy worth 7 AP (5 AP of which is dice), whereas a 10d mob of Jack Frosts is 22 AP: 10d at 2 AP a pop, plus 2 AP for their Useful (Icy Tricks) quality and their Initiative. How many Jack Frosts are in this mob is up to the GM, but it’s usually based on the dice pool (1 Shadow per die or every 2d are fairly common) and ultimately it doesn’t really matter: the players’ goal is to blast that Threat pool down to nothing, whether it’s 5 Shadows or 20. Having the Players cleave through huge swarms of enemies is a pretty good way of making them feel awesome, though.

(The explanation for why each Shadow in a Threat mob is weaker than one on its own comes down to Arcana Points. On its own, a Shadow is a lightning rod of the collective consciousness, represented by AP, whereas in a mob that power is diluted.)

When should Minor Shadows be used as Threats? The Velvet Book assumes that Minor Shadows normally appear as individuals in small groups, with each counting as a separate combatant wielding its own dice pool. This allows the GM to assemble interesting, customized encounters of specific enemies working with one another to spoil the Persona Users’ missions. Shadowy Threats can be used when the GM wants to present the players with a massive, sprawling enemy force that highlights the enormity of the task that the characters are facing. They’re good for forcing characters to move from one place to another, for slowing them down or making them consider alternative forms of action or movement.

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Chapter V: Shadows

How Major Shadows Work

Major Shadows are the big mama-jama. The nastiest things you’ll face in the Other World. They’re congealed tumors of malice needing excision from the collective consciousness and the powerful, twisted dark Personas of corrupt humans from the real world. Once you start encountering Major Shadows it means you’ve started poking the Other World where it counts.

Major Shadows are built like Personas: 1-10 hit locations, 5d per Location, same Qualities and Extras. If you can know how to build a Persona, you’re 90% of the way there to building a Major Shadow. Here’s an example, based on the Shadow Priestess from Persona 3.

Shadow Priestess Arcana: High Priestess

Favorite Thing: Uncertainty Arcana Points: 8

Resist: (+3) Ice, Dark, Light Weak: --

1-2 (+1) Sacrilegious Gown 7d Attacks, Tough x2, Wicked Fast x2 3-4 (+1) Boaz and Jachin 8d Defends, Tough x3, Bounce 5-8 (+1) Heretical Scrolls 10d Attacks (Ice), Defends, Useful (Entangling grasp), Useful (Frightening verse), *Sweet x2*, Awesome x2, Gnarly x3, Spray x2 9-10 (+2) Shadow Mask 8d Attacks (Dark), *Useful (Gimmick: Summon Allies)*, Tough x2, Gnarly x2 Let’s analyze what we’re looking at here.

Arcana: Like Minor Shadows, Major Shadows have an Arcana that grant them a free use of a specific Extra. Unlike Minor Shadows, though, a Major Shadow’s Arcana gives it two levels of its signature Extra. So under “Heretical Scrolls” where it says *Sweet x2*, that means the Shadow Priestess didn’t have to spend any dice to score that Extra.

Arcana Points: Arcana Points work differently for Major Shadows. A Major Shadow’s AP is spent to boost its stats and give it extra dice. A 0 AP Major Shadow is identical to a baseline Persona, but every AP above can be spent to make it more formidable. Everywhere on the Shadow Priestess’s sheet where it says “(+ #)” is a place where AP was spent to boost its parameters so it can threaten an entire band of Persona Users.

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Chapter V: Shadows

Resist/Weak: Major Shadows don’t need to balance their Resistance and Weaknesses the way that Personas do. Instead they can buy Resistance for 1 AP each, as well as offset that cost by taking Weaknesses.

Dice: If you do the math for these Locations you can see that it doesn’t add up to the standard 5d per Location. Take its 1-2 Location, the Sacrilegious Gown. That would normally be 10d from Hit Locations, and then with 4 levels of Extras it would be down to 6d, yet its dice pool is 7d. That’s because Major Shadows can spend 1 AP to add +1d to a dice pool.

Gimmicks: Lastly, take a look at the 9-10 Location, the Shadow Mask. It has this *Useful (Gimmick: Summon Allies)*. Gimmicks are special abilities that are unique to Major Shadows. In this case, the Shadow Priestess can use her Shadow Mask to summon Width-1 in Minor Shadows to her aid, each with a dice pool equal to the Height of her roll. All Major Shadows get one Gimmick for free. Additional Gimmicks cost 2 AP each. Some Gimmicks are active qualities like the what the Shadow Priestess has which she has to roll to use. Other Gimmicks are passive traits that are always on and don’t require any dice rolls.

Initiative: Major Shadows don’t need to spend AP to buy points of Initiative the way that Minor Shadows do. The timing at Major Shadow Declares in combat can be determined in two ways. If a Major Shadow is attached to a human character, it declares using the human’s Knowledge + Out-Think pool. This basically means you’re fighting the equivalent of a hostile Persona. If a Major Shadow is not attached to a human, it’s Initiative is equal to half its Arcana Points. So the Shadow Priestess here would Declare based on a score of 4; this means any Persona Users with Knowledge + Outhink of 3 or less would Declare before her, and anyone with a 5 or better would Declare after.

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