Revue Starlight: Powered by the Audience

Dev blog for a Revue Starlight TTRPG, a hack of Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Open playtest coming soon!

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Revue Starlight TTRPG Discord Server

Hi, everyone! I hope your summer (or winter!) has been going well.

As this stage of development for Revue Starlight: Powered by the Audience wraps up, I want to begin moving on to the next by inviting you to join our community!

Click here to join our Discord Server!

Whether you want to find a playtest group, want to become more directly involved as a contributor, or just want to be in the loop, we invite you to join.

Let's all do Starlight together!

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The Revue Starlight Discord Carnival is on - and our first ever PUBLIC PREVIEW of Revue Starlight: Powered by the Audience!

As part of the Revue Starlight Discord's festivities, two sessions of the brand-new Shadows of Seisho one-shot will be held, both GMed by the designer & writer of the system!

This will be the first time that the rules material will be made available to the public, so please look forward to this event in advance of the official playtest launch!

Shadows of Seisho A group of friends in Niigata Girls’ Junior High School banded together to form the Hakugei Theatre Circle, an extracurricular club that yearned for the stage. Without numbers or funding, they practiced together to read over scripts, act out stories, and dreamt of a shared stage together. Now in their third year, they made a promise to aim for Seisho Music Academy to pursue their dreams together, leaving everything in their hometown behind. However, what happens when they receive the news that none of them made it into Seisho… except for one?

Group A will be held on Thursday, August 15th, 8 PM EDT, and Group B will be held on Friday, August 16th, 1 PM EDT.

Please join the Revue Starlight Discord for more information and details!

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Rules Preview: Progress Clocks & Rewriting the Narrative

Hi, everyone! It's been a little while since the last Revue PbtA preview. How've you been? (Tell me in the tags of your reblog.) (This is interaction bait.)

I'm here to share a bit more rules previews - at this phase of development, I'm just rounding out the edges of the core rules, for the most part. Including...

(As usual, text not final.)

You know it from Blades in the Dark; it's beef stroganoff progress clocks!

I wasn't sure whether to include these or not as core to the system, but after brainstorming scenario writing with the existing rules skeleton in mind, I thought to myself... "you know what'd be really useful for me to have here as a GM? BitD-style progress clocks." So I added 'em! Good artists steal and all that, right?

Speaking of shamelessly stolen mechanics...

Brilliance still remains a powerful, exceptionally centralizing resource to the system, and with this new move - Rewrite the Narrative - in every Stage Girl's arsenal, it'll only become more powerful.

This mechanic was largely taken from Fabula Ultima's Fabula Points system, which is also a very important mechanical & narrative resource in the system. I had the pleasure of playing that system for a bit recently, and I was enamored with the design of it... so much so, that I thought it'd be nice to have some of it for myself. Heheh. (I hope that's okay, Ema.)

In particular, I thought it rather suits the flavor of Revue Starlight as well. The stage responds to the audience's wishes, and as players at the table, you, too, are the sole audience of your story (unless you're recording a live play podcast or something). As such, the stage responds to you, too!

Well, that's all for today. Make sure to join the Discord for more news, discussion, and details - something tells me there'll be something brewing in the coming weeks!

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I've seen some of this mentioned in the tags on my last post, so, again, if you'd like to contribute to the Revue TTRPG in any way, message me! Whether it be on here or via the Discord, it's welcome.

I can always use more proofreaders, for one. If you'd like to be first in line when playtests start, hit me up. If you'd like to contribute anything else - rules elements, prewritten modules, setting fluff, flavor text, illustrations, literally whatever - tell me and let's take a crack at it. I've already come this far writing most of the content myself, but I definitely wouldn't mind having some of the remaining weight lifted off my back...!

-Yumi

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The Dev of Revue Starlight PbtA Rambles For A Bit

So, Revue Starlight ReLIVE has announced end of service.

It feels weird. People have joked about the game being on life support for so long as if it'd happen any day now, to the point where it started feeling like "if Starira was going to EoS, it'd have happened already!" So, now that the announcement has come, it's kind of wrapped back around to being shocking.

I was one of the first to play it when the global servers launched back in 2019, before I even touched the Revue Starlight anime, stage plays, or other media. Though I do have my qualms with how the game was run, to put it lightly, the stories it had to tell and the characters it had to share always had a special place in my heart.

I don't doubt that Revue Starlight as a whole is going to sunset anytime soon, as we still have tons of stage plays - the heart and soul of the franchise - coming out through the foreseeable future, as well as El Dorado coming out very soon.

However, what does give me pause is thinking about the stage girls that never really got their own footing outside of the mobile game: in particular, Rinmeikan and Frontier. Some of their characters have gotten the chance to play supporting roles in the stage play and other media, but they've never been able to assemble the cast necessary to give them a major focus compared to Siegfeld, Seiran, and, of course, Seisho. With Starira sunsetting, it makes me worry that they won't have a "home" any longer, nor will it be easy for people in the future to access the stories that they do have.

...With that in mind, it gives me renewed encouragement to continue working on the Revue Starlight TTRPG. I want this to be a vehicle for anyone to create & experience new stories with all of the Stage Girls for as long as people are willing to meet at a table and roll dice.

Creating a game that sits at an intersection between two already independently niche circles of interest - Revue Starlight and indie TTRPGs - is, simply, kind of a ballsy thing to attempt and drum up support for. However, Revue Starlight is a franchise that is near and dear to my heart. I might even be able to say that it saved my life, and gave me the strength to keep on going. I want to continue sharing my love for it through a medium that, too, is precious to me.

Maybe meeting up with your friends and pulling up character sheets isn't quite the same as emerging in a theater in costume and acting before an audience. Nevertheless, it's a way that we all can play characters and step on a "stage" of our own, as Stage Girls of our own design.

So, as ever - it's on to the next stage! Maybe I should write a prewritten Rinmeikan or Frontier one-shot...?

-Yumi

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Playbook Preview: The Scholar

Hello all; it's good to see you again! I apologize for the radio silence in the past months, as I have been busy trying to graduate. That being said, rest assured that I am still working on Revue Starlight: Powered by the Audience! To whet your appetite a bit (and prove that I'm not lying about working on it), here's a preview of a new playbook: The Scholar.

As usual, text not final.

You might notice that some of these moves are taken from my previous preview of the Challenger playbook. I eventually decided to create a Scholar playbook due to how crowded and overly broad the Challenger archetype was becoming. My goal is to make playbooks that can represent a wide variety of iterations on a common theme, but when that breadth becomes too wide, the mechanics start to lose clarity. Challenger seemed like it was splitting into two "sub-classes" anyway, so it was a prime candidate for splitting.

The Scholar represents the conflict between learnedness and experience. All Stage Girls strive to become the Top Star, and those who we may call Scholars seek their path by learning from others' example and studying those who came before. When the time comes for a Scholar to walk an untrodden path, however, will they know how to walk it? Will they be able to seize a star of their own? Will they put on a constructed facade based on their wealth of knowledge, or will they figure out how to be truly, earnestly themselves?

The "Reason Dice" mechanic notably has a rather pragmatic, gamist design compared to other core playbook mechanics, drawing some inspiration from Pathfinder's investigator class. Somewhat fitting for the (emotionally repressed) Scholar, perhaps. There's probably more room to create some mechanics that highlight more of the Scholar's character weaknesses, however.

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Playbook Preview: The Promise

Hey, guys! It's been a hot minute since the last dev blog. I've had a particularly busy week and haven't gotten a chance to keep updating, but I've still been working on the Revue Starlight TTRPG! We're actually very close to the game being in a bare minimum playable state. (It could probably be played right now, to be honest, so long as you're willing to do a little extra improvisation.) We'll be starting our closed playtests soon, with an open playtest following thereafter.

Anyways, here's the playbook! (As usual, all text subject to change.)

The Promise is another playbook that centers very tightly around a single other individual, similar to the Rival. (You might also see some more direct thematic similarities with the Vow of Achievement!)

Speaking of Vows, however, they're a way for you to put in your own personal color into the Promise playbook, having the form of your promise shape the mechanics of how you play your class.

They also feature an Anathema portion, representing how fate can close doors as easily as it opens them... The name and inspiration for this particular mechanic comes from Pathfinder 2e's fantastic deity system, which I enjoy. Does that mean to be promised to someone is to worship them...? I dunno. You can go unpack that one.

You might also ask "if I'm playing Karen, should I play a Promise or a Challenger? If I'm playing Hikari, should I play an Exile or a Promise?!" and the answer is "depends on what point in the timeline they're on." One great thing taken from Thirsty Sword Lesbians is the ability to swap playbooks with enough character growth (or XP), which entails switching focus from one core character conflict to another. It's a fantastic tool for long-term play!

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Preview: Character Sheets

You're probably going to want somewhere to put down your character information. To that end, I'll also be supplying Google Sheets-based character sheets for the Revue Starlight TTRPG, including the playtest!

Here's an example of the current working draft of the Challenger character sheet:

All the checkboxes are interactable, and, of course, you'll be able to type into the empty boxes and lines, replace the example text here, and so on and so forth.

I'd also like to create a form-fillable PDF (and, honestly, it'd probably be easier to design and work with), but my Adobe InDesign expired. Maybe sometime down the line?

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About looking for play testers, is experience with other ttrpgs preferred? or just whoever

When I release the open playtest, anyone and everyone is welcome to play! I will also supply a feedback form for players (including GMs) to give responses and their evaluation of play.

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Rules Preview: Defy Disaster, Figure Out a Person, and Soothe

Here's a preview of more of the Basic Actions that all characters will be able to utilize in the Revue Starlight tabletop RPG.

Mechanically, these are equivalents of TSL's Defy Disaster, Figure Out, and Emotional Support, and they serve much the same purpose (though Figure Out a Person's questions have been slightly altered!)

Defy Disaster is a versatile catch-all to many different situations you may encounter that don't particularly correspond to any other move. In some cases, you might liken it to a "saving throw" seen in other TTRPGs, but it also serves to mechanically represent a variety of different improvised actions the players may attempt. It takes a creative GM to make the most narrative impact out of it!

Figure Out a Person is a tool to help players understand the world and people around them, giving them insight on how to understand other characters that they can utilize to craft a strong narrative. It's definitely very helpful to allow you to play a smart & perceptive character without having to be all that clever in real life.

On the other hand, Soothe is a recovery tool great for providing aid and comfort to allies, whether through the form of a falling action post-Revue scene (like Mahiru and Hikari in the image!) or shouting words of support to an ally to help them keep going in the midst of a tense duel.

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Playbook Preview: The Rival

I've already shown off the Revue Starlight tabletop RPG's Strings of Fate and Admiration mechanics in previous posts, but out of all of the playbooks in the game, there may be none that revolve around using those mechanics to their fullest more than the Rival.

It's somewhat similar to the Promise in the respect that it's a character archetype about being very closely tied by fate to another Stage Girl, with many options allowing you to explore numerous facets of your rivalry and relationships with other people.

Another design aspect of the playbook I wanted to incorporate was the presence of "soft subclasses," with some Rivals emphasizing more of the Erudition ability score and perception of others (Claudine, Gekijouban Mahiru) and others emphasizing more of the Ambition ability score and the passionate desire to surpass your rival (Mei Fan, Rui, original series Mahiru). You might also choose to put points into both!

What kind of Rival will you play?

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Playbook Preview: The Exile

Here's another preview for the Revue Starlight tabletop RPG! This playbook draws upon the character arcs of Stella, Fumi, and Hikari to create a core character concept based around "past lives," themes of prophecy and tragedy, and the cyclic nature of living with trauma.

(Text not final.)

This playbook draws somewhat from aspects of TSL's Infamous and Seeker, but tying it more around the central theme of fate within Revue Starlight. Where other playbooks like the Challenger represent more of an classic "hero" archetype, the Exile is perfect for those who wish to play a more tragic character who is currently in the throes of fighting back against the cyclic nature of fate.

One of the ideas that I want to push with the design of this TTRPG is that "sometimes, your character losing is more interesting and entertaining than your character winning," which might be familiar to you if you're played other Powered by the Apocalypse titles, or perhaps Call of Cthulhu. The tragedy of the Exile is one way to enable that, but it also gives you just as much of an opportunity to fight for a better future for your character.

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By the way, I'm looking for:

Name ideas for playbook moves and the like. Song names, song lyrics, quotes, maybe even the names of Relive chapters or 4* abilities. I have so many designs for moves that I don't have a fancy Revue Starlight-related name for. (I think I'm currently sitting at a good amount of playbooks I want to release right now, so I just need to develop and flesh them out!)

Proofreaders and other contributors. I am trapped inside of my own brain. Help.

Playtesters! The system should be on track to have an open playtest within the month. Hopefully. I've only been working on this for, like, a week, so let's see if I can keep up my pace.

If any of that interests you, do get in touch!

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Rules Preview: Admiration

In the Revue Starlight TTRPG, one of the most powerful narrative tools at the Stage Girls' fingertips is the Admiration move.

Some examples of Truths Beyond the Curtain questions:

Challenger: What have they accomplished that you feel you may never be capable of?

Exile: Why would becoming closer to them only lead to tragedy?

Guardian: How do the feelings you have for them make it more difficult to selflessly serve your Charge?

Trailblazer: How does your Admiration of them make it more difficult to live a carefree life?

Other moves might also have unique interactions with the subject of your Admiration. For example, a Guardian may treat the subject of their Admiration as a member of their Charge.

The Admiration move is pretty much a reflavoring of Thirsty Sword Lesbians' Smitten move, serving the same function and a similar purpose, but with a less explicitly romantic, more Stage Girl spin on it. That being said... there's probably a lot of cases where feelings of Admiration also involve love, too... I mean, look at these girls. Dorks. Absolute losers, the lot of 'em. What was I talking about again? Oh, right. Mechanics. That.

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If you are taking suggestions for more playbooks, can you make one for characters like Maya or Akira, as in actors who already made it to the top

They’re kinda arrogant since they know they’re the best and they’ve already put in the work to get this far and got acknowledged for it, but there’s this pressure of being number one and how easily it can be taken away if they are slip up.

I don’t know too much about the mechanics so I’m not sure if this can work but I think it’d be cool to see

You're in luck, because I've already been working on something...

Playbook Preview: The Legacy

(Text not final.)

That being said, I kind of debated with myself for a while as for what I should name the playbook...

What name would be the most fitting for this playbook?

The Legacy

The Heiress

The Inheritor

The Thoroughbred

Something else? (Please reply!)

Voting ended onFeb 17, 2024

Three dev blog previews in one day? It's more likely than you think.

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Playbook Preview: The Challenger

One of the first playbooks I mentioned on this blog was the Challenger, represented by everyone's favorite Aijo Karen! Here's a sneak preview at the rules text for the playbook.

Of course, you could simply play this as the stock "spunky protag" archetype, but everybody at your table is a protagonist in their own right! You might just use this playbook to represent any Stage Girl who's got something to prove.

(Text not final.)

The "Trials" mechanic is based off of the Nature Witch mechanic of the same name from Thirsty Sword Lesbians, but with more of a classic Butai Shoujo spin on it. It's also been slightly tweaked mechanically to be more in line power-wise with all of the Brilliance everyone is slinging everywhere, though it'll doubtless need some actual playtesting to tell for sure...

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Rules Preview: Strings of Fate

"It's a promise!" "No, it's fate!"

In the Revue Starlight TTRPG, your fate will invariably be tied to those closest to you in the narrative. The insight you have about this intertwined fate is represented through Strings of Fate (or Strings, for short).

Alongside Brilliance, Strings offer a more interpersonal, relationship-specific resource you can use to advance the connection you have with someone - or, perhaps, push the edge you have against them.

Strings largely function mechanically like the Thirsty Sword Lesbians mechanic of the same name. However, in that system, they're flavored as "pulling on one's heartstrings." In this system, they've been garnished with more of an "unmei" flavor! As such, you might notice Entice and Influence with a String have been replaced with Beckon and Pull the Strings of Fate, respectively.

(However, you could still use these moves with a more romantic bent. Just sayin'.)