Aggretsuko: A GURPS Adventure v0.1

Aggretsuko (or Aggressive Retsuko) is a little anime about an ordinary Japanese accountant  who has a dark secret ... she loves singing death metal! Oh, and everyone is an animal.

This week is a little different as it describes how a game of Aggretsuko could be played. While it's not required to have watched the show, this game will probably be a lot more fun if you have (and it's only 2.5 hours long in total!)

NPC cards for Aggretsuko: The RPG

You will need:

• 2-3 players (1-2 GMs, 1 player)
• GURPS rules (GURPS Lite should be fine)
• Retsuko character card (see pdf below)
• Aggretsuko NPC cards (see pdf below)
• 10 Tokens representing stress (a Google spreadsheet should be fine)
• 3 Tokens representing character points (for use as GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys)

The Aim

Poor Retsuko is having a hard time of life! Every day she has two goals:

1. NOT reveal her metal alter-ego to the world
2. ???

Every day, her second goal changes. Does she need to 'Fall in love'? Or maybe she feels the need to 'Quash rumours of her pregnancy'? Whatever the goal, she must achieve these by the end of the day, or else!

5 story rounds

The game is played in five story rounds. At the beginning of each round, the GMs roll to see which of Retsuko's allies and enemies appear. Each NPC may take a single, quick contest, action (e.g. giving Retsuko more work, taking her to a mixer, etc.). This action may lead to more rolls on Retsuko's part, e.g. completing given work or impressing someone at the mixer.

Stress!

Life is stressful! When Retsuko fails any roll or quick contest, she gains a stress token which reduces her Will by 1. If someone wins a quick contest against her, she must immediately roll Will to not burst out into death metal screaming.

If she wishes, Restuko can spend a character point to change a failure to success. In doing so, the player should narrate the way she takes it (usually heading to the bathroom and screaming to death metal). There are only 3 character points per game, so they should be used wisely!

When Retsuko's stress hits 10 (i.e. Will-10) any failure automatically triggers her death metal singing.

Example game

Alice, Bob and Charles set up a game. Alice is the ally GM, Bob is the enemy GM and Charles is playing Restuko. Together, they agree that Retsuko's second goal should be 'Finding another job without Ton, her boss, finding out.'

They roll their first round with the following results:

• Alice rolls Fenneko
• Bob rolls Ton and Komiya

Alice and Bob decide that Ton takes the first action. He  gives Retsuko an unreasonable stack of work! This is a quick contest between Ton's Intimidation (12) and Restuko's Will (14). Retsuko wins by 3 and politely takes the work without screaming.

Since Alice is worried about what Bob will do, she lets Bob go next with Komiya. Komiya then tries to give Retsuko even more work but Alice steps in with Fenneko uses her action to make an excuse! A quick contest of Fenneko's Fast Talk with Komiya's Will and Fenneko wins. Fenneko tells a tale of how Retusko has a serious doctor's appointment and couldn't possibly have more on her plate right now. Komiya believes her, so leaves Retsuko alone!

Charles then rolls to see if Retsuko completes the task using Finance (12), but fails! This adds a stress token and means Retsuko's next Will roll will be at 13.

A couple of rounds later, Retsuko's Will is at 10, and Kabae appears asking if it's true that Retsuko is looking for a new job. If Kabae finds out, it's only a matter of time before Ton knows. If Retsuko is going to get through today, she needs to win this. A quick contest between Kabae's Fast Talk (13) and Retsuko's Will (10), and Retsuko fails! This triggers a concentration roll not to sing ... and she fails again!

*cue music*
WHY DO YOU KNOW HOW TO PERSUADE! YOUR STUPID HEAD LOOKS LIKE A SPADE!!!

Retsuko reveals herself as a death metal singer and loses! Oh well, better luck next time Retsuko!

Conclusion

This game is not playtested yet, so if you do play it let me know how to goes in the comments!

Download the PDF here

See the source code here

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Ash Ketchum from Pokemon: Indigo League (100 pt)

Ash Ketchum from the town of Pallet! Pokémon was a large part of my childhood so it was good fun to design him in GURPS. This is mostly based on the TV show, but it has a little bit of the game in it.

PDF download

Ash GCS download (save with Ctrl-S)

Pikachu GCS download (save with Ctrl-S)

Source code

Designer’s notes

Since there is no official Pokémon adaption for GURPS, designing Ash meant defining how a Pokémon game could be played. Most interactions can be boiled down to persuasion rolls (e.g. ‘persuade’ them to get into the pokéball to capture them, etc.)

For this build, I added a couple of things. First, this wildcard skill:

Pokemon Trainer!  Use this skill in place of Animal Handling (All Pokémon), Expert Skill (Pokémon Trainer), rolls to persuade Pokémon and rolls to catch Pokémon.

Second, Reputation as badges. Pokémon seem to magically recoginise a trainer with badges (at least in the game) so if you have sufficient reputation and manage to capture a Pokémon, then they will simply obey you. (This can be ruled as +4 (Captured) to persuasion roll, but I would probably handwave it.)

Pokémon trainers in the original games had 6 Pokémon which they could carry around at a time. I’ve modelled this as Modular Abilities (Chip Slots) where each ‘slot’ is actually 8 points of Ally (at least it’s 8 points at Ash’s initial level).


What do you think of this build? How would you have done things different?

Saitama from One Punch Man (100 000+ pt)

One-Punch Man is about Saitama: a hero who kills in a single punch. Unfortunately, this has made life incredibly dull for him! The anime follows him as he struggles to find meaning in a world where he has achieved his every goal ...that is until he meets Genos, a cyborg obsessed on being his disciple whether he wants to or not!

The following is a fully playable character, or ally, or enemy (if you really hate your players).

Basic Attributes ST 9999 [99890]; DX 40 [600]; IQ 10 [0]; HT 10 [0]

Secondary Characteristics HP 9999 [0]; Per 10 [0]; Will 10 [0]; FP 450 [880];
Basic Speed 375 [7250]; Basic Move 375 [7250]

Other DR 0; Dodge 378; SM 1; sw 1003d; thr 1001d

Advantages Ally (Genos) (Appears almost all the time) [3]; Ally (Mumen Rider)
(Appears quite rarely) [1]; Enhanced Time Sense [45]; Luck, Ridiculous (Defens-
ive) [48]; Regeneration (Extreme) [150]; Reputation 2 (Recognized occasionally) [3]; Weapon Master (Unarmed) [20]

Disadvantages Dependent (Cactus on windowsill) [-3]; Enemy (Speed-o-sound Sonic) (Appears fairly often; Rival) [-2]; Reputation 3 (Class B Hero, Recognized occasionally) [-5]

Quirks Ennui about boring life [-1]; Sensitive about baldness [-1]; Trademark (kills in a single punch!) [-1]

Skills Brawling 40 [1]

Download pdf, gcs and TeX here!

Designers notes

The first challenge for designing Saitama was where to limit the power of build. GCS maxed out at ST 9,999 so this seemed a good place to stop. This left his default damage much lower than I'd like (at one point he punches an asteroid to save the city, which traditionally takes a nuclear explosion with ~ 6d x 90,000, but this build has default thr damage around 1000d)

HP was interesting. In the show, it's never clear whether Saitama is just very very strong or if he is truly invulnerable. Since he doesn't seem to slow down even when in a fight for a long time, I opted to give him Extreme Regeneration and let his HP 9,999 carry him pretty much all the way. (Side note: with such high HP, Saitama essentially never suffers shock or a major wound) 

Basic Speed is set at 375 as the speed of sound is 375.25 and Saitama doesn't cause sonic booms everwhere he goes. This also gives a dodge of 378, but effective dodge of 16 felt too low, so Saitama has Luck to compensate.

DX is set at 40 because higher seems ... futile? At this level he should be able to deal with even -20 modifiers without breaking a sweat!

HT and IQ are set to 10 because apart from super speed and super strength (and endurance, more on that later) Saitama seems like an ordinary guy. So much so, that when he and Genos had an eating contest, he couldn't finish without vomiting!

FP is tuned up to 450 because in the last two episodes, he has basically an extended fight with lots of monsters, followed by a huge fight which lasts at least 25 minutes with a single opponent basically without slowing down. If we assume he loses 1 FP every 10 seconds, he needs around 300 FP to make it to the 1/3FP cutoff for slowing down.

Allies are pretty standard, the high point build of Saitama means that basically everyone is ~ 1 pt enemy or ally.

What did you think of this build? How would you have done it differently? Let me know in the comments below!

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Spike Spiegel (150 pt)

In celebration of Animay (following the lead of Total Party Thrill), this month I will be creating an anime character in GURPS every Friday. As an anime, Cowboy Bebop is often a 'gateway drug' into anime so it seemed appropriate to start the series here. Needless to say, the following may contain spoilers!

Spike is a new take on the classic lone ranger archetype who is as deadly as he is unassuming. Purposefully designed to look 'uncool', when he springs into action his Jeet Kune Do flows his feet and fists into a formidable armament. When he's not kicking his way through enemies he uses a Jericho 941 pistol (or two!) with amazing accuracy, betraying his dark past as a member of the Red Dragon Syndicate.

He lives as a legal bounty hunter in order to stay low and avoid unwanted attention from the Red Dragon Syndicate. Forced to fake his own death then abandon his true love, Julia, to escape them, he is often overcome with purpose whenever there's a whiff of Julia's name mentioned. Spike is the kind of man that could've done a lot of good if he'd been dealt the right cards by life...

I've chosen to make him a 150 point character (with -58 in disadvantages/quirks) as this feels about right for the series; the protagonists of Cowboy Bebop are exceptional but the world itself is fairly realistic.

Stats

Basic Attributes ST 13 [30]; DX 12 [40]; IQ 10 [0]; HT 12 [20]
Secondary Characteristics HP 13 [0]; Per 10 [0]; Will 13 [15]; FP 12 [0]; Basic
Speed 7 [20]; Basic Move 7 [20]
Other DR 0; Dodge 10; SM 1; sw 2d-1; thr 1d
Advantages Daredevil [15]; Hard to Kill 3 [6]; Hard to Subdue 3 [6]
Disadvantages Enemy (Vicious) (Equal Individual; Appears quite often; Rival) [-
10]; Hates animals [-1]; Hates kids [-1]; Hates women with attitudes [-1]; Obsession (Find Julia) [-10]; Secret (Faked death to escape Red Dragon Syndicate) [-30]; Stubbornness [-5]
Skills Acrobatics 12 [4]; Free Fall 14 [8]; Gambling 10 [2]; Guns/TL9 (Pistol) 16 [12]; Karate 18 [28]; Piloting/TL9 (Aerospace) 12 [2]

Download the pdf character sheet here (gcs)

Download the NPC card here

See you Space Cowboy... 🦆🦆🦆