Wartime Garden

A darklight magic girl game.

17 December, 197X. Trapped for months behind enemy lines, a small group of freezing, starving Civil Defense girls cling to a position on a frigid hill along the northern front. While digging foxholes in the snow, they find a tiny mysterious shrine. Eating the frozen offering buns in order to survive, the girls are drawn into another, magical war for the World Beneath the Dream.

Character Creation

Put your girl in the discussion tab.

Making a Person

Name
Only girls can be magic girls. No foreigners. Magic is sexist and racist. :(

Description
Physical and personality description. Try to include how being a child soldier in a losing war has affected you. Pre-war background is also good.

Stats

Things are done by rolling a pool of d10 derived from two stats – a "lead" stat plus a "secondary" stat (e.g. Fitness + Smarts). Ordinary people always have to roll these dice whereas having magic lets you cheat. Nevertheless, a magic girl's qualities as an ordinary human will tend to reflect on her powers. Everyone starts with a single dot in everything and has 7 further points to distribute. The starting stat cap is ●●●●.

Fitness
Speed, strength and overall physical conditioning. It is important for melee combat, ground movement, defensiveness and physical activity in general.

Wits
Reflexes and responsiveness in both combat and non-combat situations.

Precision
Fine control of physical movement. This prominently includes shooting but is also important for controlling tells, sleight of hand, fine manipulation and the most energy-efficient combat maneuvers.

Smarts
Cleverness, perceptiveness, practical creativity and book smarts.

Heart
Intuition, magical reserves and straightforward feeling.

Making a Magic Girl

Name: [your name/nickname] the [noun]. The theme is perceptual phenomena, e.g. Mei the Phantasm, Touka the Flare, Yuri the Aurora, Ehime the Echo etc.

Description and Colour
Under normal circumstances, the only indication of your power is heterochromia – your right eye is distinct from your ordinary left eye, it being of your chosen colour, possibly with a slightly larger pupil and scintilating light effects. During the transformation sequence, the special effects spill from it. You cannot choose the same colour as your regular eye colour – that would be silly. Costume design is up to you (but try to come to at least a modicum of stylistic consensus).

Signature Weapon
Should be fantasy equipment, not a gun.

You were the girl who:

...found the shrine.

Your lead stat is Fitness.

...proposed eating the offerings.

Your lead stat is Wits.

...ate first.

Your lead stat is Precision.

...noticed something weird.

Your lead stat is Smarts.

...said thanks.

Your lead stat is Heart.

General

Your lead/primary/base stat significantly defines the magic girl's dominant proficiency even if she starts with only one dot in it. It is always the easiest stat to convert dice into successes for and the Shard cost of raising that stat later will be reduced. Ignore this for the time being. Might not be able to balance for it.

In order to benefit from being a mahou shoujo, you must be transformed. A magic girl's transformation is an overt display of power and is obvious and detectable unless superseded by some other magical effect. Going into transformation requires a transformation sequence involving normal clothes dissolving and magical light bursting out your magic eye and congealing into the outfit. This forfeits initiative but can be started reflexively and cannot be interrupted. Any passive bonuses are only in effect while a magic girl is transformed.

Transformed mahou shoujo gain the following for free:

Basic Flight
Strictly non-combat flight. You are obvious, not particularly fast or maneuverable and cannot hover.

Barrier Dress
Magical girls never take lethal damage and only take oddities like wound levels or aggravated damage rarely. They only de-transform when "killed".

more tba?