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Old 10-12-2014, 09:08 AM   #1
Disliker of the mary sue
 
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Default How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

A few ideas I had rolling around in my head involved school in someway, one of them being a sort of power ranger thing where a team of people try to balance school life and super hero life and an outright school for super heros. Of course my thoughts then come to how exactly am I going to involve the school part into the roleplay to begin with. My thought process being we're just going to skim over the school part unless plot things are happening so really it probably is going to be forgotten most of the time unless it directly brought up (Hell that seems to be how a lot of power ranger series handles school if they don't just deal with young adults who already passed high school)

So anyone ever dealt with a roleplay where a school was either the main or at least a major part of the setting? How exactly do you pull off school not just being a minor thing in the grand scheme of things? Honestly my only thought really is just have it be college where they usually don't give a **** if you attend as long as your passing test.
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Old 10-12-2014, 11:40 AM   #2
Xenarthral
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

Never had the opportunity/reason to actually play a game where it had to be
dealt with, but it's not as if there's no games* where school is the main or a
major part of the setting.

Off the top of my head:
Teenagers From Outer Space
Tokyo Brain Pop/Panty Explosion
Monsters And Other Childish Things
Monsterhearts
(Not counting the ones where a school setting is officially recognised/supported or even highly probable but not officially The Setting.)

Some, most or all plot things happen at school, other than that it is pretty much the same as if the characters were adults with a non-adventurous day job. Treat it the same way.

*or books, comics, movies, tv shows and so on.
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Old 10-12-2014, 12:38 PM   #3
johndallman
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenarthral View Post
Teenagers From Outer Space
That can also work very well as Undergraduates from Outer Space, which also has a better acronym.
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Old 10-12-2014, 02:34 PM   #4
robkelk
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
That can also work very well as Undergraduates from Outer Space, which also has a better acronym.
But then you're getting into GURPS IOU territory.

As for the original question: is it really that interesting to roleplay the attendance of classes? If it is, then just go with the flow. If it isn't, then follow the lead set by so many anime, gloss over the actual classes, and cut to the school's after-school supers club...
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Old 10-12-2014, 03:05 PM   #5
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

Whilst Joss Whedon may have many points against him, he did manage to produce a series which ran for three seasons (IIRC) in an American high school without too much dissonance ... mostly, as previous posters have noted, with the school as a backdrop and classes being what happened when nothing else was going on...
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Old 10-12-2014, 07:35 PM   #6
whswhs
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

Why, yes, I did that in my Worminghall campaign, just lately concluded, and based on the supplement of that title that came out a couple of years ago. It seemed to work pretty well. The students were "at the university" but in age they were early teens, about right for ninth grade.

It worked quite well, once we got past some initial interpersonal stress—between the players, not the characters; fortunately they went on to play well with others.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 10-13-2014, 07:47 AM   #7
quarkstomper
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

When I first showed TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE to my gaming group, the couple who ran the group were not terribly impressed. They were both high school teachers, and didn't think that high school would make an interesting setting for a game.

A couple months later they discovered the comic book NINJA HIGH SCHOOL. One of them, Bryon, casually asked if they could borrow that TFOS book of mine...

By the next week, Bryon had make up TFOS character sheets for every person to appear in NHS, and the campaign I started with them ran for several years.
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Old 03-17-2019, 04:57 PM   #8
Mr Pengum
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

I was wanting to do a campaign in the the same manner and was wondering what you ended up doing for your campaign

Last edited by Mr Pengum; 03-17-2019 at 05:12 PM.
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Old 03-18-2019, 04:52 AM   #9
L.J.Steele
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

_Bubblegumshoe_ if you want a focus on the teen interrelationships and on mystery/problem solving. It's deliberately combat lite, but you could bolt on parts of other Gumeshoe settings like Mutant City Blues to handle powers and combat.

Both _Buffy_ and _Smallville_ had tie-in games which have advice on high school adventures and balancing monster-of-the-week with teen drama.
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Old 03-18-2019, 07:04 AM   #10
WaterAndWindSpirit
 
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Default Re: How to Roleplay HighSchool in a tabletop rpg

I would recommend checking some Persona 3/4/5 Let's Play. Persona is great about mixing normal high schooler life with supernatural adventures.
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