So I and veekie picked up the Dresden Files RPG. What's the first thing you do with a new system? Stat Touhou characters, of course! So veekie, me, and Nick got together and brainstormed aspects for some of the girls.
Preface for the uninitiated: Aspects in DFRPG are short phrases used to capture your character concept. Every character has a High Concept (the base) and a Trouble (the fatal flaw, if you will). Beyond these two, every character should have another five or so aspects. The suggested method of arriving at these is through brainstorming your character's background and their relations with other people - one aspect from their childhood or beginning days, one describing how they took their first few levels in Badass, one for their first adventure, and two for their connections to other people. If you know the Ten-Minute Background scheme that originated on the WotC forums, it's pretty similar to that. In-game, Aspects define what you can spend Fate points (basically an analogue to Action Points) on to improve a roll. If you can describe how one or more of your aspects applies to a particular situation, you can get a reroll or add a bonus to a roll - once per aspect that applies. The GM can also invoke one of your aspects to give you trouble - which is a good thing, actually, because you get Fate points out of the deal.
Since many Touhou characters have relatively thin backstories, we tried to stick mostly to canon, but filled out holes with liberal application of plausible, funny or cool fanon. For the characters it concerns, we also mixed PC-98 and Windows games with little inhibitions.
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Patchouli KnowledgeHigh Concept: Seven-Day Magician
Trouble: Locked Girl
Childhood: Born Witch
Coming Into Power: Trickster Familiar
Baby's Day Out: Philosopher's Stone
Teammates: Unmoving Great Library, Witch Coven
Locked Girl as Patchy's Trouble stands for her asthma, anemia, general social incompetence/awkwardness, and anything and everything else that results from her being a shut-in amidst tons of books covered in dust. Trickster Familiar stands, of course, for Koakuma if we assume Patchy bound her relatively early in her 'carreer'. We put the Philisopher's Stone(s) as her first adventure here mostly because we figured it was the best place to fit the things. It's not much of a stretch to assume they were hard to get or make. Unmoving Great Library refers to Patchy's station in the SDM, as Remilia's friend and librarian. Witch Coven references her sort-of fanonical connection to the other two witches and is more or less filler. It's hard to come up with connections for a hikikomori.
Yukari YakumoHigh Concept: Youkai That Lurks In The Boundary
Trouble: Suspicious Figure
Childhood: Self-Chosen One
Coming Into Power: Onmyouji
Baby's Day Out: Space Invader
Teammates: Shikigami Ran's Lazy Master, Shikigami's Shikigami Chen's Gran[gap] Big Sis
Most of Yukari's aspects are pretty straightforward. What we had the most trouble with was her childhood, so I decided to just riff off of one of my favourite doujins (Yukari vs. Ran).
Reimu HakureiHigh Concept: Hakurei Miko
Trouble: Just Let Me Drink My Tea
Childhood: Barrier Maiden From Birth
Coming Into Power: Yin-Yang Orbs
Baby's Day Out: Homing Shrine Maiden
Teammates: Bothersome Sukima, Freeloaders At Hakurei Shrine
Reimu has a lot of friends. Bothersome Sukima covers Yukari, who acts as her employer, voyeur, troll, and omnipotent buddy. Freeloaders At Hakurei Shrine covers all the people who come over for parties or basically live at the shrine. Homing Shrine Maiden here refers to her explicit ability to find culprits just by flying in a random direction and beating up people until someone tells her where to go.
Marisa KirisameHigh Concept: Kleptomaniac Magician of Love
Trouble: Mima's Apprentice
Childhood: Perfectly Ordinary
Coming Into Power: Mini-Hakkero
Baby's Day Out: Marisa Stole The Precious Thing
Teammates: Dynamic Duo, Power Of Love
Don't act like you didn't see the Precious Thing joke coming. In this case, the Precious Thing refers to the original spell she stole - Yuuka's Master Spark - as well as, to a lesser degree, her other stolen spells. Dynamic Duo reflects her tendency to team up with Reimu - they both show up in all Windows main titles, and work against each other only in IN and PoFV (sort of). The Power Of Love is... the
other Precious Thing, and can be milked for Master Spark and Malice Cannon as well as relationships. Mechanically, a lot of these aspects can be stacked when she fires off Master Spark.
Alice MargatroidHigh Concept: Seven-Colored Puppeteer
Trouble: Screw People, I Have Dolls
Childhood: She Came From Makai
Coming Into Power: Dolls' War
Baby's Day Out: Grimoire Of Alice
Teammates: Artificial Children, Malice Cannon
Alice's Trouble refers, of course, to her "Creepy Doll Otaku"-dom (I still love that quote). Both Dolls' War and Artificial Children reference her dolls, with Dolls' War referring to the Zerg Rush tactic and Artificial Children to her named, unique dolls, whether canon (Goliath) or sort-of semi-canon (Shanghai, Hourai). When she uses her named dolls together, she gets to stack them.
Suwako MoriyaHigh Concept: Forgotten Suwa God
Trouble: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
Childhood: Native Faith
Coming Into Power: Iron Rings Of Moriya
Baby's Day Out: Frog Eaten By Snake
Teammates: Mishaguji-sama, Moriya Shrine Family
Suwako was easy, because she has a well-established background. If you know her background most of these are easy to understand.
Fujiwara no MokouHigh Concept: Everburning Hourai Figure
Trouble: Dish Best Served Piping Hot
Childhood: Scarlet Sister, Avenge Thy Father
Coming Into Power: Possessed By Phoenix
Baby's Day Out: Steal The Curse
Teammates: Protective Werebeast, Thousand Year Flame For The Moon Princess
Steal The Curse and Possessed By Phoenix refer, respectively, to Mokou stealing the Hourai Elixir and her fire magic. While it's squarely in the realm of fanon that her powers are in any way related to phoenixes (personally, I don't buy into it), it's a cool name so we decided to roll with it. Her coming into power and first adventure aspects are also sort of reversed chronologically. It's likely she got fire magic only after becoming immortal, but stealing the Hourai Elixir first "first adventure" much better than "Coming Into Power". Oh well, they're just guidelines.
Flandre ScarletHigh Concept: Vampiric Magical Girl
Trouble: Sanity Has Advantages
Childhood: Eternal Child
Coming Into Power: Laevatein
Baby's Day Out: Prison of 495 Years
Teammates: Play With Me, Sister Of The Scarlet Devil
Vampiric Magical Girl is a straight quote from Flan's EoSD profile. Seriously. Play With Me refers, naturally, to Marisa breaking into the SDM. Flan's "first adventure" was decided to be her breaking out from her basement.
CirnoHigh Concept: Strongest Ice Fairy
Trouble: (9) - Idiot
Childhood: Strange And Bright Nature Deity
Coming Into Power: Perfect Freeze
Baby's Day Out: Great Fairy War
Teammates: Icicle Fail, Frozen Dawn
An alternate Childhood aspect would be "Child Of Nature (Literally)". Basically, since fairies are more or less eternally children, we decided to just use that for her childhood. Icicle Fail here refers to her iconic first meeting with Marisa and Reimu, and probably those two's perception of her, while Frozen Dawn is supposed to describe how she was actually pretty badass in Hisoutensoku and, to a lesser extent, GFW (as Marisa was explicitly going easy on her).
Kogasa TataraHigh Concept: Surprising Karakasa
Trouble: You Suck At Scaring People
Childhood: Pitiable Illegally Dumped Object
Coming Into Power: Surprise!
Baby's Day Out: Not So Harmless
Teammates: Sisters In Crime, Taken Home
Not So Harmless refers to Kogasa's, yes, surprising appearance as EX midboss. Both her Teammates aspects are squarely fanon - Sisters In Crime refers to Nue, who has similar interests but apparently no connection to Kogasa despite the latter being her midboss, and Taken Home refers to the popular and hilarious fanon of Sanae taking the poor girl home and mistreating her.
Shikieiki YamaxanaduHigh Concept: Judge Of Hell
Trouble: Black And White Mentality
Childhood: Sympathy For The Living And Dead
Coming Into Power: Guilty Or Not Guilty
Baby's Day Out: Final Judgement
Teammates: Lazy Subordinate,
Nagging Helpful Lecture
Straightforward enough, though there may be some redundancy here (which just means that she gets to stack her aspects a lot!). The Lazy Subordinate is naturally Komachi, while
Nagging Helpful Lecture applies to all the other girls. Sympathy For The Living And Dead denotes her canonical motivation behind said lectures - she goes around lecturing people to encourage them to change so she won't have to convict them, not simply because she's a grumpy spoilsport. Whether that's appreciated is another question.
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I'd get so much stuff done if I didn't waste my time on frivolities like this.
So, Boz, how did that radio show go, and is there a record of it?