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This is a
passion project I wanted to work on, and I do not own any of the
properties associated with or pertaining to the Persona franchise. As
such, this document is not for reprint or distribution. This is for
private use only.
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1. What is Persona
If you’re unaware of Persona, I’m not entirely sure why
you’re here, but, let me explain. Persona is a JRPG series
from Atlus, and has managed to find it’s popularity in both
Western and Japanese audiences. Usually based around a
group of highschool students, they have powerful entities
they can summon called “Personas”, but only under specific
circumstances. In Persona 3, it was during “The Midnight
Hour”, a hidden hour of time that only certain people are
conscious during. In 4, there was the TV
World, where there were Shadows and
dungeons based on the suppressed emotions
of real world people.
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2. Persona As A
Tabletop
I’ve wanted to play Persona in
tabletop form for a long while now.
Unfortunately, the ones I found I either
didn’t gel with or were not finished.
So, I opted to take matters into my own
hands, and start working on this
project. There isn’t a usual game
system in place, though it is heavily
inspired by the Powered By The
Apocalypse system, at least during
social situations.
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3. Finding Your Own
Identity
Persona is a series that builds itself on it’s themes
and characters, and as such, when you’re a GM writing your
story or designing NPCs, fitting a theme is something
that’s important to designing a campaign. Persona 3’s
themes are based around Death and coming to terms with
traumatic experiences, and as such the central story and
characters in Persona 3 are based around coping and
dealing with death of those close to them. When designing
you story and world, these are things you need to think
about. Which leads into the next section of this chapter.
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Social/Character Stats:
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Kindness: Some things need a gentle touch. Whether it’s
comforting a grieving person, threading a needle, etc.
Anything regarding a player character’s gentleness will use
this stat.
Combat/Persona Stats:
Strength: This is your Melee attacking stat. Any melee
weapon or skill will use this stat.
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SP: This your Spirit Points, and it equals to how many
spells you can cast per dungeon run. Like HP, this stat is
always double your Magic stat.
2. Choosing An
Arcana
“The Arcana is the means by which all is
revealed...” - Nyx
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0: The Fool
"The Fool Arcana does not mean that it can be taken lightly. The Fool
is number zero. It is the void from which all other things begin."
The Fool Arcana is a jack of all trades, and as such the player with
The Fool Arcana gets a +2 to any stat of their choosing, and may
break the initial max of 13.
Personas of the Empress Arcana are commonly associated with high rank
and women of great importance, and as such, the player with The
Empress Arcana gets to automatically succeed any social check once
per session (This does not include Demon Negotiation). Additionally,
they can also choose to re-roll any social check once per scene.
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05: The Hierophant
"It is indeed a precious gift to understand the forces that guides
oneself..."
08: Justice
"To find the one true path, one must seek guidance amidst
uncertainty..."
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09: The Hermit
"It requires great courage to look at oneself honestly, and forge
one's own path..."
10: Fortune
"Alongside time exists fate, the bearer of cruelty."
Personas of the Fortune Arcana tend to make their own fate, and have
luck on their side, and as such the player with the Fortune Arcana
has a pool of 5 "Fate Points". They may spend these points at any
point to re-roll a single roll (once per roll). The player gets 1
more every level up, and the points restore at the end of a session.
11: Strength
"Only with strength can one endure suffering and torment."
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13: Death
"Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. It matters not who you
are... Death awaits you."
Personas of the Death Arcana tend to be a grim bunch, but use the
inevitability of death to their advantage, and as such the player
with the Death Arcana may sacrifice their own health to benefit.
During combat, the player may sacrifice 5, 10, or 15 HP. The player
may either increase their next roll by 1, 2, or 3 respectively, or
restore health to another player by the amount sacrificed.
14: Temperance
"Only those with the purest hearts have the means of truly finding
the answer..."
15: Devil
"Making the wisest of decisions requires one to escape from the
desires of temptation..."
Personas of the Tower Arcana tend to have fallen from grace in some
form, but still have that notoriety, and as such the player with The
Tower Arcana can use their former fame to give them a +3 during
Social situations. (This can only happen once per scene.) However, if
a player still fails at this roll, they get a flat -1 penalty to all
Social rolls during the rest of this session.
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17: The Star
"One's destiny, his fortune, his temperament, and even their answer,
are influenced and determined by the stars."
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3. Allocating Points
As with a lot of tabletop RPGs, point distribution is
what individualizes characters. Here, you have two sets of
stats to distribute points to, so let’s go over them.
Now that we’ve taken care of your stats, let’s get into
the most free-form and creative part of character creation:
Spell and Skill Creation.
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4. Building Your
Spells and Skills
There is no spell list to pick from in this tabletop.
Due to the vast nature of Persona’s spells, I’ve opted to
take a different solution. Players create their own skills
and spells. If you’ve never played Persona, the difference
between Skills and Spells is this: Spells are Magic, and
Skills are Physical. Spells cost SP to use, and Skills cost
HP to use.
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4. Now it’s time to begin allocating points. For Damage
Spells/Skills, you can increase the Damage, # of Targets, or add an
additional effect. (point value for the last one is dependent on your
GM) For Healing Spells, you can increase the Healing or # of Targets.
For Buff and Debuff Spells, you choose the affected stat, then you
can increase the Strength of the Buff/Debuff, the # of Targets, or
the Length.
Skills are the same, more or less. However, as said before, Skills
can only deal Damage or Buff the user. Skill Buffs cannot have it’s #
of Targets increased.
5. Keep in mind the limitations that you have. Aside from the
aforementioned 3 points, you cannot increase a Spell or Skill stat
past your related attribute bonus. For example, if your Magic is 13,
you cannot increase your Spell’s damage beyond +3.
7. Name it!
Agi (Spell):
Type: Damage
# of Targets: 1
Damage: + 2 (2 Points)
Element: Fire
Additional Effect: Roll a
1d10 after dealing damage. If
it is a 9 or higher, the
target is burned. (1 Point)
Dia (Spell):
Type: Healing
# of Targets: 2 (1 Point)
Healing: + 2 (2 Point)
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Heat Wave (Skill):
Type: Damage
# of Targets: 3 (2 Points)
Damage: + 0
Element: Fire (1 Point)
5. Flavor and
Characteristics
There’s very little left to do with creating your
character. All that’s left is choosing your personal
weapon, and defining your character and Persona. Weapons
are pretty much cosmetic; only your stats affect your
damage. The only thing that’s not cosmetic about weapons is
their range. Melee weapons (swords, axes, fists, etc.) are
based in the Strength stat, and use Melee skills. Ranged
weapons (guns, bows, slingshots, etc.) are based in the
Agility stat, and use Ranged skills.
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We talked about this at length during the last chapter;
your Persona is an integral part of your character. This is
all flavor and cosmetic, but when your group is discussing
the themes of your campaign, I want you to discuss a theme
for all your Personas. In Persona 3, the base Personas were
all Greek myth figures. In 4, they were all Japanese myth
figures. And in 5, they were all anti-heroes of folklore.
Your Persona can be anything, as long as it fits the theme
that you and your group has decided.
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1. Social Rolls
Now we get into the game mechanics of the actual game.
As mentioned before, all rolls in this game are 2d10 – take
the highest. However, now we get to talk about bonuses. For
every point over 0 you have in a stat, you get a bonus
equal to that number. So, let’s say John Persona has a 3 in
Guts. When he’s rolling dice, he’d roll
2 d10s, take the higher number, then
add a 3 to it. There we have John’s
Guts roll! Unless your GM wants you to
for randomization factors, or some
other aspect they want to utilize,
every Social roll is done like this; no
exceptions.
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Dice Are Below the Difficulty Check: Fail. The player does not
succeed at whatever they are attempting to accomplish. Sometimes
something negative will happen to the player due to the failure.
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2. Gaining Social
Links
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3. Benefits of Social
Links
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1. Designing the
Dungeons
And now we arrive at Persona’s second half, dungeon
crawling. Designing dungeons isn’t easy, and there’s no
real concrete answer as to what a good dungeon looks like.
However, there are several things I would advise against.
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Now, there are several ways you can go about creating
your dungeons. The first being doing it by hand. This takes
a lot of effort on your
part, due to the fact that,
depending on how big you
want your dungeon to be,
you’d have to design and
create everything by hand.
This is a difficult task,
especially if this is your
first time GMing this game,
and especially so if this
is your first time GMing in
general. There is another way to handle this, however:
https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
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dungeons take multiple days or “Dungeon Phases” (the
concept of the Social/Dungeon Phase will be explained in
later chapters). But that’s not to say you should make them
annoying to get
through; as mentioned
before, not padding
the rooms with simple
encounters is a good
way to avoid this.
Finally, and this is
another part where I
harp on themes, make
your dungeon fit a
theme. I don’t know
what kind of dungeons you’ll be aiming for, whether based
on a person like 4 and 5, or have it be a mysterious tower
like 3. If you’re going for the former, the dungeon should
fit the person. For example, if the person in question is a
DJ, then the dungeon should follow suit. Club lights,
pulsating music, stuff like that should follow and give
your dungeon a nice atmosphere. If you’re playing on an
online service like roll20, you can even play said music
while your players are exploring.
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2. Combat
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Now, let’s talk about how rolling attacks actually
works. When a character declares an attack, they’ll roll
their associated stat. (Magic for spells, Strength for
melee, etc.) The character then rolls 2d10 – take the
highest, plus whatever bonus their stat gives (Ex. If you
have a 12 in Strength you get + 2), plus whatever other
bonuses your Arcana, Spell/Skill, etc. gives. This all
equals to your base damage. To put it into an equation to
simplify things:
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Initiative (or turn order) is handled very simply. When
combat begins, each participant will roll their Agility +
Proficiency. The person with the highest roll goes first,
the person with the second highest goes second, and so on.
3. Demon Negotiation
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4. Elements and
Status Effects
Certain enemies are weak and resistant to certain
elements; this happens in both Persona the game, and other
tabletop RPGs. However, as being Knocked Down is caused
differently in this than the actual game, if an enemy is
weak to a certain Element, they’ll take double damage.
However, if an enemy is resistant to a certain Element,
they’ll take half or sometimes even no damage. Below is the
list of elements in this game.
Fire
Psychic
Ice
Nuclear
Thunder
Wind
Rage: Victim can only use a normal attack, and must attack a
single enemy until it dies, but damage is increase by 10.
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Stunned: Victim loses a turn. Victim can also not be stunned
again next turn.
Down: Victim loses a turn, and also takes double damage from
next attack. Cannot Dodge while down, and any Guard rolls are
halved.
And that
will conclude
this chapter. Next chapter we’ll be talking about character
progression and leveling up.
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1. When to Level Up
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2. What Leveling Up
Entails
So, now that you know when to level up, let’s talk
about how to level up. When a player levels up, they get 3
points to spend on combat stats, and 2 points to spend on
Social Stats. As a reminder, the maximum for stats is 25 on
Combat, and 10 in Social. As a player, one thing that’s
important to keep in
mind, is not to dump
all your points into a
single stat. For
example, if you’re a
Magic based character
who puts all their
points into MAG and
ignores the rest of
the stats, you’re
going to cast some
incredibly powerful
spells, however, if
you get hit you’re going to go down very quickly. That
being said, being a glass cannon is a viable strategy, but
not if you go down in one hit.
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4. Ultimate Personas
The second requirement you can play fast and loose with,
but the first I would highly recommended sticking with.
Now, what exactly entails an Ultimate Persona?
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Once you decide to upgrade your Persona, there a couple
things you need to do. First, is your Persona becomes a new
character, so to speak. For example, let’s say John Persona
decides to upgrade his Persona, Friar Tuck. He’ll have to
choose a different person to represent his Persona when he
upgrades it. These upgraded Personas, however, don’t have
to follow the theme set beforehand.
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1. Building a Universe
I talked a bit about world
building in previous chapters,
and while you you’re not
building a world to the extent
of other tabletop rpgs, there’s
still some things to consider.
Namely ways to make your town
or city lively. You need to
make sure the city in question
is fleshed out, with shops, restaurants, people, etc. While
your players will only see part of the city at a time,
making it seem alive is a goal you want to strive for.
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2. Things to Do
During the chapter with Social Links, we talked a lot
about The Social Phase. Now, let’s get into actually
discussing what this entails. There are two phases in this
game, the aforementioned Social Phase, where players meet
with their Social Links and do things around the city. The
second is the Dungeon Phase, which involves going into The
Shadow World and going through the dungeon your party is
currently trekking through. We’ve talked about the Dungeon
Phase at length, so, let’s discuss the Social aspect.
Beef Bowl Shop: The Beef Bowl Shop nearby has a special
challenge: The Big Bowl. A player can roll their Guts to see if
they succeed. If they succeed, they get a +1 to all rolls during
the Dungeon Phase. If they fail, they still feel accomplished,
and thus can re-roll a single roll during the Dungeon Phase.
Part Time Job: By working part time at the ramen shop, players
get some extra spending cash, and also free Ramen, which is an
item that recovers 15 SP.
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Much like several things in this tabletop RPG, a lot of
the side activities are decided by the GM. Hopefully the
instructions and examples give you solid ideas to build in
your own campaign.
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