Welcome, one and all, to Project Sound Souls - a fan-source PbP game based on the legendary manga and anime Soul Eater and many other anime classics old and new. If you aren’t familiar with Soul Eater, that’s alright - We have a lore page detailing the story so far at the ready. If you are, you should read it anyway - Project Sound Souls is built on its own unique blend of the anime and manga continuity with a few original ideas sprinkled in, and the lore page explains it all in detail.
Fair Warning
Project Sound Souls contains mature subject material including heavy violence, mental illness, and potentially sexual themes as well. For that reason, participation requires both physical and mental maturity, which first and foremost means you must be legally an adult according to the laws in your country of residence, and discretion is advised before attempting to join even if you are.
How to Join
If you want to become a player in Project Sound Souls, your first step is to create a character page and send it to me directly - You won’t be accepted into the group until it’s approved! If you need some help designing the character, we have a resource for that as well.
Once your character is approved, you will be accepted or invited into the Project Sound Souls group and your profile will be made available within it. You may submit additional characters after a reasonable amount of in-game time you used your existing character/s (Meister-Weapon pairs are the exception, though having only one of those is fine). Your character page should be made with the following formula:
Character Page Template
On top of your character page, you should add a quote (optional, but recommended). The quote should be your character summed up in their own words - the kind of quote you’d find in a FANDOM Wikia article. Other than this guiding principle, there is no criteria for what this quote should be.
Name: Your character’s full name, as well as any aliases, nicknames and alternate identities they have. Make it clear to me if you want to keep the character’s name secret from other player characters.
Species: Your character’s species; Any species listed in the lore page is allowed (and if you came late, you may also use a race that was discovered within the story). Write your character’s gender in parenthesis - It doesn’t have to be your real-life gender! If your character would masquerade as a different species, this should also be noted.
Age: How old your character is. If they appear significantly younger or older than they actually are, both their true age and their apparent age should be listed.
Appearance: What your character looks like, clothing and accessories included. If your character’s soul has a unique appearance, that should be included as well. Use at least one whole paragraph. If your character hides some aspects of their appearance such as scars, you should clarify that.
Personality: Your character’s personality, ideals, likes and dislikes. Due to Project Sound Souls having major elements of mental and psychological manipulation, it is important to list the character’s mental weaknesses such as their ambitions and dreams, things they are afraid of, and physical traits they find attractive. As with the appearance section, at least one whole paragraph is required, and you should make it clear if there are any aspects of your character’s personality that you want to hide from other characters and players.
Bio: The backstory of your character within the world described in our lore page. You should mention any parts of the character’s backstory that they want to hide from other characters. Having a shared backstory with another player’s character is allowed and recommended, but needs to be coordinated with both that player and the Dungeon Master.
Deathblow: Use a bullet list to detail each individual ability, technique, equipment and skill your character has, with more than one sentence for each listed ability. You should note the Dungeon Master about any ability of your character that you’d like to remain hidden.
Gameplay
In order to reach a target audience as wide as possible, Project Sound Souls will use a freeform RPG system. Both the Dungeon Master and your own responses should be phrased as though you were speaking face-to-face in a live tabletop game, so avoid using specialized punctuations like asterisks for action or parentheses for OOC discussion. As a freeform game, it will not make use of things like stats or even the turn order - The only rigid "mechanic" will be dice rolls, and even those would not be needed if the in-story difference between two characters' power and speed is too great.
To prevent issues resulting from things like one player being busy or asleep while other players are active, each player will be given their own thread within the group’s forums, which they can respond to whenever they’re available. The actions of other player characters, if present, will be described by me alongside non-player characters and the environment from your character’s perspective. There might also be an additional chat for OOC discussion between players for things such as strategizing in the midst of battle.
Your character can be part of any faction or independent at the start of the story, and you may do anything your character is able to do, including attacking or fighting other player characters - The only limitation is doing something your character cannot reasonably do (Which also includes actions based on knowledge you have and your character doesn’t, AKA metagaming).
Project Sound Souls has no rigid “Classes”. While there’s nothing stopping you from specializing in a particular set of skills, individual characters in the setting have individual power sets that aren’t restricted to specific molds. Similar to a video game upgrade tree, your character will need to learn and master individual abilities over the course of the story, and which fields you invest more effort into - If any - Will be a continuous process.
Take note that your characters are just as susceptible to dying as any major non-player character - But are eligible to being resurrected at a later point in the story as well. If your last or only character is killed, you may submit a new character immediately; If your deceased character is resurrected, you’ll be given the choice to keep both characters, return to using your previous character, or stick with the new one, at which case the character you choose to discard will become a non-player character.
Lastly, Project Sound Souls will heavily feature elements of mind control and brainwashing, including the possibility of your characters being permanently brainwashed and/or physically transformed. If any actions you take would lead to risking this, you will be notified about it privately, and while mind controlled you will still play the character, with the Dungeon Master (me) deciding what is and isn’t reasonable for your character’s altered personality or state of mind. If your character is permanently brainwashed, you will have the choice to either continue to play their brainwashed self, or turn them into a non-player character and (If they are your last or only character) create a new character as though the previous one had died.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:56, Sat 23 Mar.