Girl by Moonlight
♪ I wake up to a call put my frilly outfit on ♪
Genre: Magical Girls!... and mechs... and, Shared consciousness media?
Touchstones:Sailor Moon, Puella Madoka Magica, Diebuster, Visions of Escaflowne, Serial Experiments Lain, Paprika
What is this game?: Girl by Moonlight is primarily, a magical girl game, however its also about mechs, and about the shared consciousness of mankind
Ok so, this game deals in a lot of different genres, for the sake of simplicity, the transformed version of a character shall simply be referred to as a "Magical Girl", they could be a magical boy, or a mecha pilot, or whatever, the in-game term is "Transcendence", but i hate spelling that word
How's the gameplay?: The game uses a fairly simple BITD inspired dice rolling mechanic, characters roll die equal to their stat, can push themselves to roll better at the cost of greater consequences, etc. Characters gain better stats while transformed into their magical girl forms, but transforming can only be done once per mission, and has a limit on how much it can be used before it runs out. Girl by Moonlight's first step of character creation is selecting a series, this will determine the setting, tone, and what the magical girls are, the series are Brink of the Abyss ("normal" magical girl story), Beneath a Rotting Sky (Doomed magical girls fighting against an unfathomable opponent), Sea of Stars (Mech pilots fighting against an eldritch alien threat), and Maze of Dreams (Exploration of mass consciousness and crawling through people's psyche)
What's the setting (If any) like?: Depends on your series! it could be a futuristic crystal city, a modern day cityscape, a sleepy oceanic town, a military space ship colony, it all depends on what series you choose
What's the tone?: Also depends on the series, Brink of the Abyss leans on more optimistic, while Rotting sky is more doomed and pessimistic, while Maze of Dreams is more introspective and subtle, it fully depends
Session length: 3-5 hours should be good
Number of Players: 4-6 players should be plenty!
Malleability: As long as your idea fits within one of the series, you could probably run it in GBM!
Resources: Form fillable character sheets are available, and so are cheat sheets for moves
It's certainly an ambitious game! going for 4 different tones and settings works shockingly well for this, its a game to keep an eye on