Mod note: This post has been merged because it subject is Danmaku!! -Helepolis
(Weird, I could have sworn I had an account here already. Granted, I haven't been here in quite some time, but I digress...)
I Just got back from a weekend of hanging out with tabletop friends up in the mountains, and we gave Danmaku!, the card game by Mystery Parfait, a few whirls at the table. It's great, a very worthwhile and fun game. Being loudly drunk and blasting the game soundtracks helped a lot.
However, once the booze wore off, being a group of both aspiring and junior game designers (two of whom, myself included, were fresh off of hosting the Gensokyo Survival Guide panel at Touhoucon 2015 where we debuted our Touhou pen-and-paper RPG) started doing that thing we do... you know... "how do we take fun and make more fun?"
What we propose is a Co-Op format for Danmaku!.
Being a group who gets together to play pen-and-paper tabletops, the competitive element really turned off my peers in the long run. In addition, the "minimum 4 players" stipulation somewhat restricts when we can casually start up a game. Since it's not everyday one can get four friends into Touhou together, when we discussed when we could next play Danmaku! we found ourselves saying "well, we can either play Pathfinder set in Gensokyo as usual, or we can play Danmaku..." Game day shouldn't be about reminding us how limited our free time is.
Even if it becomes just a set of casual houserules and fancards, I intend to make a players vs board "fan expansion" for this game. Alternate formats worked for MTG, and new ways to play and increased accessibility are fun for everyone!
In the spirit of doujin, I want to make this a group effort. When I posted this at Mystery Parfait's Facebook, they pointed me here as a good place to start. I need ideas to play with, and other creative minds to help me chew over my own.
Ideas so Far
*Superincidents. Obviously, something bigger than the usual incidents would draw all the frenemies in Gensokyo to stop playing magical dodgeball and start playing magical dodgeball in (coordinated) teams. Whether it's the appearance of a huge labyrinthine dungeon, an invasion by a parallel Bizzaro Gensokyo, or even World War III, superincidents should feel grander in scale and require more to solve than simply a byproduct of fighting each other. These should set the mood and goal for the game, which we'll call a "Co-op Campaign." A Co-op Campaign can be won by solving either the, or a set number of, superincident(s). A game should be described in hindsight as "Reimu, Patchouli, Utsuho, and Cirno teamed up to [Stop the Concealed Conclusion]. Next game, they set out to [Quell the Lunar Invasion], but sadly in the third game the team of Nitori, Aya, and Youmu fell during a [Zombie Outbreak]."
*United we Stand... Obviously, there are no roles. It's the players against the board. Perhaps instead of role cards with game goals, Everyone plays as if they were a combination of the Heroine and the Partner and instead gain cards that modify their role in the "party," granting a new passive or spellcard. For example, a "healer/medic" role might have a passive that lets her use cards on behalf of her allies, similar to (perhaps broader than? narrower than?) Eirin's ability.
*No, Miss Hakurei, I expect you to DIE. So who do the players fight? There's still magical energy and far too many girls with itchy trigger fingers. You gotta shoot at bad guys. This could be fulfilled by Mini-Characters who pop up in a similar vein to how the old incidents did, and have a set amount of health that one can keep track of with counters, a range and distance, and a hand size of (typically) one. On their turn, they play their hand and attack a (randomly determined?) player(s), with danmaku cards having their usual effect and decisions being made by the player(s) affected (For example, if Sealed Away is played on a player with an item, they choose one of their items to be discarded)
Let's get brainstorming!
