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Guilty Gear ValorX - Interest Check
The cruelest predator!
Three...
Two...
One...
Let's rock!
Graven Gear ValorX
Welcome to Graven Gear, the first entry in the highly-regarded Graven Gear series, brought to the Playstation One at the turn of the century 1999 and acclaimed for its pulse-pounding tag team battles using "Valor: The Heroic Roleplaying System" as its engine. If you want to know the story before tearing out the guts of your friends in this fighting game, here's a letter from the tournament's sponsor explaining what, exactly, the hell is up:
To many around the Earth, it still hasn't sunk in that humanity has finally vanquished the Gears. It is 2183, one year after the defeat of Apocrypha, and still the shadow of total human extinction looms so large over us that we still expect a Third Awakening to emerge and crush us once and for all. So we cower in pessimism, refusing to reach out to one another, hiding in our villages even as the corpses of the once-mighty Gears rot and rust on the horizon.
No more, I say! This is the dawn of humanity's new age, an age where we can valorously step into our future as one, an age where our best and brightest have triumphed over the worst of our sins! Even if a new threat should emerge, humanity will meet its potential to rise to the challenge as it always has before. And to show the world what we can be, what we are in this very moment... I present the First Apex Flame Trial Tournament! Come, one and all! Come, knights and dragons!
Come, singularities and chainers! Come, and unite as two to show the world what humanity can achieve with hands clasped together! Come! Ride, heroes, ride!
Come! And if you should triumph over all... grasp the chance to erase all of your regrets!
-K.C. Champion
Goofs aside, Graven Gear ValorX is a Valor campaign to be run by yours truly, Doom, and as evidenced by the title is heavily inspired by Arc System Works' Guilty Gear series. Familiarity with the source material is a bonus, but is hardly required, since at this very moment your lovely GM is still catching up with the games herself. Here's a summary of the campaign's premise:
In the twenty-first century on planet Earth, magic was discovered. While the circumstances of its emergence are largely unknown in the modern day, what is common knowledge is that shortly thereafter, a tectonic shift in the geopolitical landscape at the time followed as different countries all scrambled to take advantage of it. During this time, the United States of America, desperate to regain ground lost to other nations during this turbulent period, sponsored That Man to create the Gear Project: unthinking biomechanical monstrosities capable of unleashing magical devastation at the command of their master. Before a decade had passed this staggering display of hubris, an intelligent gear that made herself known as Apocrypha turned on her creators and declared war on the whole of humanity with the intent of wiping it out. After several years of losses to the Gears individually, what remained of the nations of the previous age voluntarily dissolved themselves to work as a single entity, and this new alliance issued a proclamation: the Sentencing of all Gears to death.
More than a century later, Apocrypha was finally struck down by the legendary K.C. Champion in circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery a year later, and this shocking turn of events only grew more suspect when they declared their intention to hold the First Apex Flame Trial Tournament, supposedly to demonstrate humanity's potential to a globe still reeling from a victory once thought impossible to achieve. The prize was even more shocking: the opportunity to regain anything that the winner had once lost. While on its face this seemed ridiculous, especially considering all that had been destroyed during the Sentencing, a desperate (and perhaps a little bit crazy) few took up this challenge, journeying to the Valley of the Damned that K.C. Champion had cut into the earth as the final blow against Apocrypha to vie for the chance to wipe away their regrets...
More than a century later, Apocrypha was finally struck down by the legendary K.C. Champion in circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery a year later, and this shocking turn of events only grew more suspect when they declared their intention to hold the First Apex Flame Trial Tournament, supposedly to demonstrate humanity's potential to a globe still reeling from a victory once thought impossible to achieve. The prize was even more shocking: the opportunity to regain anything that the winner had once lost. While on its face this seemed ridiculous, especially considering all that had been destroyed during the Sentencing, a desperate (and perhaps a little bit crazy) few took up this challenge, journeying to the Valley of the Damned that K.C. Champion had cut into the earth as the final blow against Apocrypha to vie for the chance to wipe away their regrets...
GGVX will start after the conclusion of Quinn's Meteor campaign and the end of Witch Busters' Season One. It will begin with a short-run "Season 0," taking place during the First Apex Flame Trial Tournament, where all characters will be level 6 until the conclusion of the tournament. The purpose of Season 0 is partially to establish that good ol' fighting game feel without taking too much time out of the campaign's main story, but mostly to test whether I can handle running two whole campaigns during a schoolyear with a heavier courseload than I'm used to on top of all my other TTRPG commitments. If the answer is "no," the game will take a long hiatus until I'm able to fully commit.
If you're curious about how magic works in the world of GGVX or the current state of the planet, check out this setting primer. Warning, it's wordy. Whether or not you want to bother with all those proper nouns, fill out this form and drop a comment below! Keep in mind that when making your character, a totally gonzo worldbuilding element that seems orthogonal to everything else in the setting heavily strengthens it. Think Slayer being a vampire out of nowhere and similar ideas that make you double take the first time you hear them passingly mentioned in conversation about the series. Each player will also create the "rival" to (note, not necessarily a rival but someone deeply connected to the backstory that has some kind of fraught relationship with) the PC of another player; while these rivals will mostly be run as NPCs, you may be expected to play them at times when an important scene is happening and none of the PCs can be present and similar circumstances.
WITCH BUSTERS
Magic is a fragile thing.
To hear most mages tell it, magic exists in the cracks in human reasoning, wedged in fractures within science and knowledge that grows increasingly slim as humanity advances. To know something totally and completely, to quantify it down to its last integer, is to strip bare every last iota of magic it has. What little is left in the world is fiercely guarded and protected from the wider human population, safe in its secrecy.
Which is made difficult when monsters ranging from the size of a small hill to a skyscraper appear and begin wreaking havoc.
These "Witchlings," named for the ancient adversaries of mage society, have been hellbent on destroying mage society inch by inch with their disastrous attacks on the institutions that form its backbone. Since they first appeared with the advent of the walking calamity Paradisio Witchling two years ago, mages have been losing the war. The destruction of the witchlings is barely contained within the moments shattered by the veiling organization Night's Hood, and even their great temporal power is losing ground inch by inch as the witchling attacks increase in strength and frequency.
A solution must be found before magic and mage society totally collapses under the weight of the witchling attacks. To that end, adaptable fighters capable of learning the very peak of combat magic must be trained from a young age to optimize their ability to fight witchlings... and so Archon Academy was formed.
And of course, once you've been contacted, enrollment is not optional.
Witch Busters is a four-season Valor tabletop campaign run on Roll20 about the eponymous busting of witch(ling)s by the Witch Buster squads of Archon Academy, inspired by the Fate/ series and other works by Kinoko Nasu, the early parts of the Bleach manga, and assorted webcomics such as Scoob and Shag* and much more loosely Kill Six Billion Demons.
Expect: Weird magic! Wacky school life shenanigans as the shadow of all-out war looms larger over your life! Asshole mage organizations and conspiracies! Road trips! Ancient secrets and world-shattering revelations! Fighting cool monsters! Being and meeting dumb queer teens with big queer feelings!
The campaign is for four to five players, running characters that are teenagers of ages 15-20. As far as scheduling goes, Monday, Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sunday could be squeezed into my schedule if necessary.
Witch Busters is also under consideration to be run in Valor Alter OR Valor. While Valor would better represent the ways magic works in this setting, Valor Alter has a number of new and interesting tools and less numbers for all of us to keep track of, so I leave the decision up to the players.
Your character doesn't necessarily have to know about magic before being "invited" to Archon Academy, but they have it whether they were aware of it or not and they sure as hell know now. A more in-depth look at the magic of Witch Busters and the organizations that hold it are here and here, but for a quick and dirty overview...
Interested? Then go ahead and comment below with the following!
1. Name and pronouns
2. Where to contact you, preferably Discord and/or Plurk
3. Character concept
4. Anything in particular you'd like to see in the game
5. Valor or Valor Alter
6. Questions about the game or setting
7. Favorite time you watched/read/played/etc. someone punching God
8. What days and times are you available?
*Yes, I mean this wholeheartedly. No, Witch Busters is not a crossover campaign or directly based on any existing property; Scoob and Shag is simply a shonen masterpiece whose stylings greatly influenced the campaign.
To hear most mages tell it, magic exists in the cracks in human reasoning, wedged in fractures within science and knowledge that grows increasingly slim as humanity advances. To know something totally and completely, to quantify it down to its last integer, is to strip bare every last iota of magic it has. What little is left in the world is fiercely guarded and protected from the wider human population, safe in its secrecy.
Which is made difficult when monsters ranging from the size of a small hill to a skyscraper appear and begin wreaking havoc.
These "Witchlings," named for the ancient adversaries of mage society, have been hellbent on destroying mage society inch by inch with their disastrous attacks on the institutions that form its backbone. Since they first appeared with the advent of the walking calamity Paradisio Witchling two years ago, mages have been losing the war. The destruction of the witchlings is barely contained within the moments shattered by the veiling organization Night's Hood, and even their great temporal power is losing ground inch by inch as the witchling attacks increase in strength and frequency.
A solution must be found before magic and mage society totally collapses under the weight of the witchling attacks. To that end, adaptable fighters capable of learning the very peak of combat magic must be trained from a young age to optimize their ability to fight witchlings... and so Archon Academy was formed.
And of course, once you've been contacted, enrollment is not optional.
Witch Busters is a four-season Valor tabletop campaign run on Roll20 about the eponymous busting of witch(ling)s by the Witch Buster squads of Archon Academy, inspired by the Fate/ series and other works by Kinoko Nasu, the early parts of the Bleach manga, and assorted webcomics such as Scoob and Shag* and much more loosely Kill Six Billion Demons.
Expect: Weird magic! Wacky school life shenanigans as the shadow of all-out war looms larger over your life! Asshole mage organizations and conspiracies! Road trips! Ancient secrets and world-shattering revelations! Fighting cool monsters! Being and meeting dumb queer teens with big queer feelings!
The campaign is for four to five players, running characters that are teenagers of ages 15-20. As far as scheduling goes, Monday, Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sunday could be squeezed into my schedule if necessary.
Witch Busters is also under consideration to be run in Valor Alter OR Valor. While Valor would better represent the ways magic works in this setting, Valor Alter has a number of new and interesting tools and less numbers for all of us to keep track of, so I leave the decision up to the players.
Your character doesn't necessarily have to know about magic before being "invited" to Archon Academy, but they have it whether they were aware of it or not and they sure as hell know now. A more in-depth look at the magic of Witch Busters and the organizations that hold it are here and here, but for a quick and dirty overview...
- Cartomancy: A generalist type of magic that defines different cards within a deck of any kind according to specific meaning and imbues them with power, either firing off each card individually as a spell when they're drawn or woven into a part of a spread with more powerful and complex effects.
- Glyphistry: Through creating any kind of art, the creator can find a complex glyph (unique to and only usable by them) within its patterns that gives them a unique, oddball, and highly specific power when inscribed on an object they hold or on their body. The more of a glyph is discovered and inscribed, the more their power evolves.
- Historical materialization: By studying a specific period or event in history back to front so they're more familiar with it than with their own life, a historian can cast spells that literalize the effect their object of study had on history, creating a concrete, magical effect within the world.
- Archaism: The discovery and use of artifacts belonging to great figures in history (direct descendants can count as artifacts) allows for an arcanist to borrow their power and heighten it to legendary, symbolic levels, manifesting effects similar to that of historical materialization that still play by different rules.
- Spiritual invocation: Spirits dwell in systems of any kind as long as they're not completely quantifiable by human measure, from a vast, ancient forest to a particularly unoptimized and tangled computer program. They make contracts with humans, giving them powers and lending them a fragment of their manifested self in exchange for their contractors making their birth system larger and more complex as to avoid quantification.
- Miracles: An ill-understood discipline that spontaneously manifests in people whose prayers and wishes to a higher power are consistently answered, giving abilities according to the strictures and structures of their faith.
- Witchcraft: [REDACTED]
Interested? Then go ahead and comment below with the following!
1. Name and pronouns
2. Where to contact you, preferably Discord and/or Plurk
3. Character concept
4. Anything in particular you'd like to see in the game
5. Valor or Valor Alter
6. Questions about the game or setting
7. Favorite time you watched/read/played/etc. someone punching God
8. What days and times are you available?
*Yes, I mean this wholeheartedly. No, Witch Busters is not a crossover campaign or directly based on any existing property; Scoob and Shag is simply a shonen masterpiece whose stylings greatly influenced the campaign.