Design Session 0

Design Session #0 is the first episode of the Design Sessions, as well as the first episode released for Eidolon Playtest entirely. It covers Luke Varner and Molly Rhinebeck introducing the EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self and the podcast to their new audience.

Summary
Luke Varner and Molly Rhinebeck introduce themselves and discuss the origin story for EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self.

Several years ago, a tabletop roleplaying campaign they were playing had just ended. Luke Varner wanted to start a new one with a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure/Persona vibe to it. He looked around for a viable system, and the closest he could find was Monsters and Other Childish Things.

Monsters and Other Childish Things is a tabletop roleplaying game about children with imaginary friends who are monsters. While it was broadly similar to elements of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, it did not suit their purposes. After some time trying to use it, Luke Varner got the idea to just make his own system. He tried working on it, but quickly lost momentum. A few months of little progress later, he was discussing it with Molly Rhinebeck, shared it with her, and she started contributing.

Since then they've been working on it together inconsistently for around a year. At this point, they've completed the game but have no idea if its any fun. Hence, Eidolon Playtest. Molly Rhinebeck and Luke Varner wanted to provide this episode first as an explainer for their game.

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop roleplaying game is a Powered by the Apocalypse game. It is inspired by JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Persona, both series where protagonists can summon 'cool ghosts' with weird powers. Both franchises have problematic elements, so they wanted to capture the cool aspects of them while leaving other aspects behind.

The system is relatively open-ended in order to facilitate the wide variety of superpowers players may have, which requires an emphasis on 'playing in good faith'. It has Playbooks, each with a mad lib-esque sentence for generating a power. Some, like the Alchemist, could easily be overpowered in an unfun way depending on what the player writes down. While superpowers are more fun when creatively restrictive, ultimately it is up to what the group and the game master wants.

Trivia

 * Currently, this is the only episode of the Design Sessions available for free.