@trashHeap is gonna play this. I recall it being a D&D + Pokemon (which is… Final Fantasy?!). Anyhow, I’d like to know more about it. 
It really kinda is.
Im getting pretty familiar with the ruleset, feel free to ask questions about it.
Which editions of D&D is it like? Are there:
- classes
- races/species
- skills
- attributes
- items
Hey, look everyone, the D&D subsystems!
In terms of D&D I’d say Humans behave like streamlined combat-defocused 3e/pathfinder characters and are mostly skill oriented. MajiMonsters themselves are like lightweight 4e characters and are combat focused with some utility powers. Trading out powers on your monster as it levels really reminds me of 4e and is totally a thing.
Four or five broad classes, each with two possible archtypes. For example knights are a class, but players must pick one of two archtypes which boils down to buffing your monster’s combat skills or being able to do coordinate and strategize and buff multiple player’s majimonsters on the field. A couple variants of caster. A scribe class which splits into two archtypes, one for breeding monsters one for constructing magic crystals. A rogue-ish class which specializes in creating status conditions and another which specializes in avoiding them. A ranger class which splits into specialties of catching/hunting or wilderness survival.
As of the core rulebook only humans. Wouldn’t be hard to homebrew some though.
Yep. Much like world of darkness actually humans have three or four broad categories of skills. MajiMonsters have no skills but get a flat mechanically average roll to attempt skills apropriate for them if it comes up. Humans are meant to be the skillfull ones.
Humans: One broad attribute per clump of skills. Attributes define the “floor” for your skills and after character creation don’t advance much. MajiMonsters have more attributes than PCs and no skills.
Yep, not only do you have your usual weapons, laterns, rope and armor but magic relics are a big thing.
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Huh, it sounds like they looked at the editions and thought, “I really love the power combat in 4e, but we still need a skill system for non-combat play, so we’ll streamline 3e.” Which sounds like a solid plan, and if they did not do that, then maybe we ought to as well.
You want to run a game here? I’ll give you your own category!1! 
I feel like I detect notes of WoD in the skill system too.
After this weekend when I put it in front of live players and have a better sense of it, I might be up for that.
…part of me wants to turn it into a roguelike.
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That works, too! I want to do that, too!
That is the pip skill system, which builds dice pools? Or the way they break them down into balanced skill sets? I only played the tabletop a few times; I know a lot about the lore, because I LARPed. 
In all seriousness I probably need to do one for Hulks & Horror first. Ive been meaning to for a bit actually. Especially as it contains all the rules for procedurally starsector generation / deckplans / starbase floorplans with dice. AND is allready mostly OGL.
Kinda both? But not quite either.
Skills have three tiers. Tier one, Tier two, Tier 3.
Their ranked 1-8 and on the default character sheet by bubble.
A value <=4 means your tier 1
A value of > 4 but < 8 means your tier 2
A value of 8 means your tier 3.
It’s not a dice pool mechanic. Its roll two dice, add together. Meet or exceed the target number.
Advancing your skill to new tiers increases the size of your dice. Tier 1 getting 2d4, Tier 2 getting 2d6, Tier 3 getting 2d8.
Difficulty of target numbers tops out around 9 for humans. Meaning it’s impossible for someone with a Tier 1 to do a level 9 task, and someone with a Tier 3 skill could do it more than half the time. (%58 of the time according to anydice.com).
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Wow, it sounds interesting! I’ve always liked increasing dice changes as progression. Especially if is uses 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20! Because that last leap is epic!
Does it use a d20 for anything? The reason I like the idea of a roguelike is because I’ve been looking at different d20 games for mechanic abstractions, to see how any given system balances it’s math, and to which extremes it takes numbers that players have to manage. If something is really, really complex, but still fun, maybe we can just make a video game do that, instead. Though I’m always planning a mud.
No it stops the dice progression before it gets that high. It stops around d8. Though if you like that style of dice progression you might want to check out “Myriad Song” for a SciFi game which does that progression with a dice pool mechanic. AND I think goes up to d20. Can’t recall for sure atleast D12.
Looking back at this old thread now that I have a couple of sessions under my belt.
It DOES in fact use a D20 for one and only one kind of roll. Capturing your magical creatures. Basically adding mechanical specialness to that rare and high drama act.
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We wrapped up our campaign arc September 5th. We had migrated from face to face meetings to Zoom, after an unsuccessful bout of trying to get people going on Jitsi Meet. (Atleast Zoom has a linux client.)
Players stopped the big bad shadow guild organization from freeing an ancient sealed Maji Monster named Telos. Which actually was the personification of the greek concept of Telos.
The Shadoq Guild themselves were a bit missguided, they were kind of maji-monster loving terrorists who had believed humans had outlived their usefullness. In the implied setting of the game, mankind invented Maji Monsters to wage war, and then there was kind of a Maji Monster near apocalypse which devastated most of the planet.
The Shadow Guild believed Maji Monsters were the rightful inheritors of the earth as the next step in evolution and Telos was just going to accelerate things to their logical conclusion. Ultimately they wanted to see all Maji Monsters free from human oppression.
It was a fun campaign. A little sweet and sour that it’s over. I did find GMing online a bit more constrained than I like. Will have to revisit the game another time.
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Really dig Telos showing up; the mere existence of such an entity should really throw a world for a loop.