I'd like to take the time to explain a few things about this RP a bit more in detail.
1. Mana: What is it, how does it affect everyone, why you should careSince several teams have escaped from the virtual Gensokyo, there's been this whole issue about mana, mana links, mana crashes and whatnot. Those who are just joining will soon acquire their partners as well, so the following Q&A ought to help explain some things.
Q: What's the story behind mana?A: Mana is commonly depicted in anime and video games as a magical or spiritual form of energy, something that is expended or utilized to cast magic, use spells or execute other special abilities. For both season 1 (WUFTD) and season 2 (Neo WUFTD) of this RP, mana acts as a form of energy that the Touhou characters need for the following purposes: 1) To maintain existence in reality, and 2) To utilize any superhuman powers. The premise of Waking Up From The Dream is that Gensokyo's residents require some sort of special energy or power
in order to do the things they usually do in Gensokyo. However, Gensokyo got destroyed, and the Touhou characters are now without the energy or power that being in Gensokyo gifted them with. Now finding themselves in reality, the Touhou characters needed to find a replacement, and they found it in the Original Characters (OCs) who were in Season 1. In WUFTD, mana acts as a form of sustenance for Touhou characters as well as any partner OCs that will grow to require mana (such as Ken's partner, Mayli Ayume, who is an OC herself). Which leads to the next question...
Q: What's a mana link?Simply put, a mana link is a connection between your primary OC and a partner. Per team, there is a single mana provider and one or more mana dependents. Partner OCs that have no superhuman abilities do not require mana (although as defined later on, they will eventually need to grow to depend on it somehow). As an example, here is a breakdown of Ken's current team:
*Mana provider - Ken Shojiki
*Mana dependents (require significant mana for sustenance) - Fujiwara no Mokou, Kaguya Houraisan, Yuyuko Saigyouji, Hatate Himekaidou
*Normal human (As of now, does not require significant mana for sustenance) - Mayli AyumeNote that Mayli is a special case, as she began to require a tiny bit of mana from Ken almost immediately after escaping into reality. This is because
*spoiler*. The word "significant" is used in this context to distinguish between those who require considerably more mana to maintain existence, and those that begin requiring it in small amounts at first.
Q: How does mana get used up?This is probably the biggest question on everyone's mind. Here's how it works: each mana provider has a pool of mana, and that pool is used up under two conditions: 1) passive mana requirements for maintaining existence, and 2) superhuman abilities. An example is probably the best way to describe this further, so I'll explain the general rules of mana consumption with the ongoing example of Ken's team.
Note: All numbers used in the following examples are arbitrary and used to represent the difference between mana costs.- The mana pool will not grow. Mana consumption will decrease over time.
It has been hinted at that mana use will become easier as time progresses in the RP; now it is clear that less mana will be consumed as your OC bonds more with your partner(s), but the mana pool will not grow. Assume Ken has a mana pool of 100. Over the course of time, he will presumably develop deeper bonds with his Touhou partners and Mayli. This means that any mana cost associated with their superhuman abilities will decrease over time, but his mana pool will always sit at 100. This also means that passive mana needs will shrink over time as well, but not considerably.
- Superhuman abilities cost mana.
If it's something a human in reality is not normally capable of doing (within reasonable limits), using an ability or power (including superhuman strength). Yuugi tapping into oni strength when throwing a punch? It will cost. Yuugi using normal strength to throw a punch? It will not cost (granted, it is still very strong). Yuugi flying/hovering? It will cost (yes, that's right: flying or hovering will cost mana, albeit a very small amount depending on how fast/intense it is). Why I used Yuugi as an example, I don't know. Multiple partners using superhuman abilities or powers simultaneously will individually affect mana, so if Mokou and Kaguya were to both shoot danmaku at an opponent, and the cost of doing so was 10 mana over time, then both attacking with danmaku in unison would cost 20 mana.
- Passive mana consumption is relative.
All Touhou characters, being from Gensokyo, will require a constant "passive" amount of mana to survive. The more powerful a Touhou character is, the more passive mana consumption he or she requires (the word "powerful" is used liberally; use your own judgment when determining how 'powerful' a Touhou character is). Let's say that Ken has a mana pool of 100. Yuyuko is very powerful (able to inflict death) and she is not human at all (even though she used to be), so her existence will cost about 15 at first. Mokou and Kaguya are immortals, Mokou is a human and Kaguya is a Lunarian. Their immortality does not affect how much mana they need for passive sustenance; if they need to revive it will cost considerable mana. But they are both quite powerful, and thus will cost about 12 mana each at first. Hatate (assuming she has a 100% mana bond with Ken for this example) is not notable for any extreme powers, so she will cost only about 8 mana of the 100 in Ken's pool to maintain. Lastly, Mayli is hardly even developed beyond that of a normal human, so her passive mana needs are at about a 3. Adding this all up, we get 15 + (12 * 2) + 8 + 3 = 50. Uh oh, that means Ken's team only has about 50 mana left to use for abilities, as half of his mana pool is being used up passively to keep everyone on his team alive! Now you see that having a lot of people on a team can become problematic...fortunately, the mana transfer will become more effective over time if he bonds with them more, which will decrease their passive mana consumption rates.
For the sake of comparison, Yukari and Yuuka would probably cost 20 passive mana from Ken if they were linked to him, because of their raw power and potential. Satori, having an "always-on" ability, likewise increases her starting passive mana cost a bit, and she would probably cost about 12 up from 10 passive mana if she was linked with Ken, due to that power. Generally speaking, the lower the stage boss the Touhou character is, the less passive mana consumption they have (this is not an iron rule).
- Active mana consumption is relative.
Oh yes, one of WUFTD's crowning clauses. Basically, active mana consumption means that using abilities or powers that go beyond the natural limits of humans (such as flight, spell cards and danmaku to an extent) will cost mana. This means that the more powerful (again, liberal use of 'powerful') a character's superhuman ability or power is, the more mana it will cost. Yukari's gap powers? Oh boy. Let's assume Ken and Yukari shared a mana bond. Creating a gap will cause an instant Mana Crash (see below for what that is) early on and throughout most of the first half of the RP (the cost would start at about 110 mana, which is an instant Mana Crash since it goes over Ken's 100 mana). Even later on, the cost may dip down to about 90, 80 or even as low as 30 or 40 if Yukari were to bond closely with Ken, which is still quite a bit. The longer the ability is "on" or power is used, the more it will cost over time as well.
Spell cards. Oh yes, spell cards. Be very, VERY careful about using them at first when you get your partners. In a previous post, Mokou tried to use a spell card to free Keine from her virtualization pod, and it resulted in Ken having a Mana Crash immediately. Spell cards are VERY expensive and are almost always not worth it in the early going. To put things in perspective, the spell card Mokou used when Ken got Mana Crashed in the above example used up at least 70 of his 100 mana, and combined with the 50 passive mana he had being leeched from him through passive partner costs, it put the total cost easily over 100.
EDIT: Clarifying for Sonae's sake: The more intensive or large-scale an ability or power is while being used, the more mana cost it will have as well. Let's assume Toyosatomimi no Miko has a bond with Ken, and he has the 100 mana in his pool. If she were to listen to the desires of two people, the cost would be only about 2 or 3 of his 100 max mana. However, if she was listening to the desires of ten people at once, it would cost more, roughly 12-15 mana of his max 100.
- Active mana costs increase the more work the mana provider is doing at the time of consumption.
This one is fairly obvious. If, for example, Ken is attacking someone with his sword, or using/casting magic, or otherwise is engaged in combat or some physically or mentally demanding situation, then there will be more strain if one of his mana partners tries to do something superhuman and the mana cost of what they do will increase very slightly. This effect scales over time.
Q: What's a Mana Crash?If you've played an arcade-style fighting game, you are probably familiar with the Guard Crush or Guard Break, which means that being attacked while defending for too long of a time period will cause the guard to be broken, leading to a brief period of dizziness or helplessness which gives the opponent an advantage to combo you. Or (one of my personal favorites) if you've seen or played the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 2D fighting game for the Playstation console, you know of the Stand Crash (example
here, happens very early in the video when the glass-shattering sound is heard). Either way, a Mana Crash is very similar to those things except it happens for offensive reasons instead of defensive ones. If too much mana gets consumed in too short of a time period (for any reasons), then a Mana Crash occurs. This causes the mana provider to suffer incredible pain for a brief moment and will render them unconscious for at least an hour if not more. No mana from the mana pool aside from passive mana may be used during this time. Sometimes, a Mana Crash may be the only way out if a situation demands a last-ditch effort to escape or solve a situation...at a horrible cost to the mana provider. Consider the pluses and minuses of mana "overdosing" carefully, as a Mana Crash will exhaust all partners afterwards as well due to shortage of mana. The above spell card example with Ken and Mokou is a good demonstration of a Mana Crash: If Ken has 100 mana, and 50 of it is covering passive mana costs, and Mokou's spell card "Immortal 'Fire Bird -Flying Phoenix-'" cost about 70 or 80 mana, putting the running mana cost at 120 or 130--easily over the 100 mana he has, so it was lights out.
Q: How do I form a mana link with a partner?That is the next topic in this post.
On a side note, you might be wondering why OCs are able to produce mana in this RP. It is currently not known if all or a small subset of humans in reality are able to produce and provide mana, or even establish mana links. This is something that may or may not be addressed in the future of this RP...
Q: My partner is a normal human. Will he/she need mana later on?The short answer is yes. Mana is a requirement for those that develop superhuman powers or abilities. Because Nemo Ma and I declared that all partner OCs MUST REQUIRE MANA, whether it be immediately, soon or much later in the story, this means that all partner OCs will eventually need mana. Human characters in the Touhou universe without any superhuman abilities (If there are any, and no, Maribel and Renko do not count) also fall under this rule. In other words, everyone is going to need mana sooner or later. Yes, this means that human OCs will become gifted in some way...
Q: Does mana replenish over time? If so, how quickly?Mana does replenish at a reasonable rate over time, UNLESS the mana provider is KO'd due to a Mana Crash. We say "reasonable" because we hope participants are reasonable about mana consumption in general.
EDIT: For Sonae's sake, let me clarify something else. We are not providing mana percentage costs of abilities/powers, nore specific costs of abilities/powers single-use or over time, nor the specific mana regen number over time, because that would make for too much need for calculations. The whole point of the mana system is to make sure players are reasonable in their usage of abilities and powers. We aren't defining nor requiring specific numbers for mana in general because this is not a math class, it's an RP. Relax, and just be reasonable with mana costs.If you have any questions about mana consumption, feel free to contact the GMs about it.2. Mana links: How they are formed, and why you should careNow that mana has been explained, it's time to discuss mana links. As discussed previously, a mana link is a bond between a mana provider and a mana dependent. Keep in mind that the mana link allows a
one-way transfer of mana from provider to dependent. The biggest question on everyone's mind is probably...
Q: How do I form a mana bond with my partner? (Warning: prepare for
trope overdose)
When you meet your soon-to-be partners (mostly Touhou characters), it will be in the virtual Gensokyo hosted inside the RAI Graveyard base. The way to form a bond with each of them is through a pact. In Season 1 (WUFTD), the only way to do this was with
a blood pact of sorts, which involved
having the OC spill some of their blood on the ground, and when announcing their intentions a magical process would occur and bond the two as partners. However, upon retrospect, due to
several reasons we have come up with an alternative to it, which is described next.
The alternative to a blood pact is a
spirit bond. Here is an overview of how it works:
- The two characters must be in very close proximity (hugging, etc) for this to work. No, not THAT kind of close proximity...although less exciting contact is certainly acceptable if written in well (i.e. not just thrown in out of nowhere).
- Once close, the initiator must announce his or her desire to aid the partner candidate verbally. When this happens, a vision will overwhelm both the initiator and the partner candidate. They will appear in a mysterious, empty light-filled cubic room together.
- When in this room, the initiator must explain to the partner candidate what is happening in reality and why the partner candidate should accept the offer of aid. The partner candidate may ask questions at any time during this time.
- If the partner candidate agrees to accept the initiator's aid, then the vision ends and the initiator and partner candidate return to their original places before the vision occurred, and are now mana provider and mana dependent respectively. In the random, unnecessary event that the partner candidate does not accept, the same will occur but they will not have a mana link (Don't do this).
Note: THERE WILL BE NO OTHER METHODS OF FORMING A MANA LINK. Blood pact and spirit bond are the choices.
Deal with it3. Group posting: Why you should do it, and howGroup posting is a fun endeavor if done properly. The literal definition of a group post is the inclusion of characters that are not a part of your own team in a post you write. Some people have a special term for it (such as "bunnying", which doesn't really make for much of a fitting term. According to Urban Dictionary,
bunnying doesn't even fit the definition of a group post I just gave, anyway. Seriously, "bunnying"? What kind of term is that?).
Here are some past examples of group posts in Neo WUFTD:
There are several ways to go about doing this. The easiest (but also riskiest) is to do all the post writing yourself. It's not very risky if you inquire about how certain characters may act before, during and even after you write a post. Another way is to co-write a post, as a collaboration either through Google Docs, or interacting via chat in IRC, MSN or some other chat network, then converting the interaction to a post. This is more time-consuming, but may be far less risky as mistakes can be corrected immediately. And of course, anything in-between those is fine as well. I definitely encourage anyone to first talk to those who have teams or team members that you plan on including, if you aren't sure of how they should be portrayed in your post.
So why should you include others in your posts? Because it's exciting! We want everyone to feel included and involved. You get out of this RP what everyone puts in as a whole, so be proud of your work and don't be afraid to talk to others about group posts!
