New to Roll20, any Bleach fans here?

Hi, I'm new to this site, but it seem like an awesome way to provide more of a visual aspect to tabletop rp-ing. I've been playing rpgs for years, everything from Star Wars and D&D to the Hero System and Fate. I mostly GM, but I love to play as well.  Anyway, the reason for this topic is because I've been wanting to do an rpg based on the Bleach anime series for a long time, but none of my rpg partners are interested. I was wondering if there are any fans on this site who would be interested in a Bleach rpg, or especially anyone who's actually played one. I was leaning towards the Hero System, because of the extensive customization options in that system, but if someone's found a better way to do it I'd love to hear it!

Its an interesting idea. Usually when i've played RPGs based on a show they end up short lived. Bleach was a pretty cool show though.

I used to be a Bleach Fan... and then Rukia was kidnapped, no so much after that.

@ John T: If you're talking about Rukia being taken back to the Soul Society for her "crimes," you're really missing out on the rest of the story :) @ William P: I've done many long-term rpgs, but none based on a tv show (unless Star Wars counts). Why do you think (in your experience) they don't last very long? Also, which ones did you do? I have to admit, I'm a big fan of the series. I really like the characters,  of most of whom are made of equal parts silliness and awesomeness. The main reason I like RPing is for the storylines and character development, so a character-centric series like Bleach seems like a good fit. If anyone has any advice or would seriously like to play a Bleach game, feel free to chime in! PS: I just played my first d&d session on this site, and it was awesome :D

This is not meant to be a bump, so no anger please :)  I'm just trying to gauge the player pool on this site before I actually put up a LFG description for the Bleach campaign I'm hoping to run someday soon. I've been crusing the LFG forums, and haven't been able to find a single hero system player, let alone a Bleach rpg fan, so I'm just curious to see if anyone even uses hero system on roll20 and whether anyone would be interested in a bleach RPG, hero system or not.  Any advice would be welcomed!

No, bro-- there are only Dragonball and One Piece fans. (polite bump)

Lol, guess I'm outta luck then :P Does anyone even use the hero system here?

A month ago, someone was recruiting people for a Hero System demo game before amping up to a campaign ( here's the link ).  I also recall questions about Body damage...so there are people here who are familiar with it.

Interesting. Thanks for the link, I read through the thread and it looks like I'll be sticking to d&d for now. But thanks for the help :)

If you're going Anime, Big Eyes Small Mouth or Anime d20 actually are pretty decent, I've never played Hero System, but BESM is designed for the craziness that is anime and gives you a lot of food for thought on running character centric stories. I'm actually re-reading into BESM right now as my main RP group has broached the idea for me to run an Anime School campaign, trying to get me to do something to make me less bitter about GMing after my attempt to run a Pathfinder Adventure Path with them died. I did like Bleach up until Hueco Mundo where I fell away when things just went to over the top and hard to follow for me. I like One Piece better, but I stopped watching it when Funimation decided to block episodes from being able to be viewed in Canada. The bastards.

Interesting, I've never actually seen BESM before, so now I'm going to have to check it out. I know what you mean about the Hueco Mundo arc, they just started adding too many filler seasons and it didn't make much sense. The fillers weren't bad, just badly placed. That sucks that they blocked One Piece in Canada, though :( I don't think there's going to be enough interest on this site for me to do a Bleach rpg, so I'm going to stick with d&d unless & until my current group shows some interest in Bleach, like you I hate when campaigns die. 

Bleach sounds like an interesting setting; my old DnD group played a one-off Naruto campaign using old DnD 3.0 psionic characters (PP being chakra, psionic feats requiring PP = require chakra, etc.).  Probably not as good a fit as a more specialized game system but was fun coming up with unique ninjas using the restiction of the Psionic Handbook. My first thought when you said Bleach would be a specialized Mutants and Masterminds setting; it's easy to design custom ability sets.  I messed around with Hero a bit but felt its combat system was a bit too slow for my tastes.  M&M has very "loose" combat and is very friendly to exaggerated, extreme combat using single die rolls and huge movement speeds...great for that "action hero" feel I think would compliment Anime-styles of play, but maybe I'm biased towards the system I'm more familiar with.  I've run a few M&M campaigns and they've always been a blast but YMMV. That being said, I feel like Bleach is potentially a better setting than, for example, Dragonball.  You've got a defined enemy with different power levels (Hollows, Arrancar, etc.) and a lot of "empowered" people to choose from without being overly powerful (Shinigami, Quincy, Ability Users).  Dragonball has waaay to much power creep...what happens when your PC gains the "destroy planet with his pinky" ability and is still only like level 10?  One Piece wouldn't be bad as the group dynamic is already built-in with your crew. The biggest issue I had with Bleach (the manga arcs; I would just skip the filler arcs) was the Substitute Shinigami arc.  It felt too much like a manga version of filler and didn't really fit with the overall story. Good luck!

Naw, most of my t-shirts are dark so I use Woolite. :D

Chad: So do I :) Jacquense: Sounds like you really know your stuff :) I've never played M&M before, but after looking it over I can see that it follows the basic d20 rules, so I don't think I'd have a hard time getting used to it. I'd prefer to play a little before I started GMing, though. You wouldn't be interested in trying to help me put together a Bleach group by any chance, would you? ;) I agree that it would be a good setting, because there are a lot of interesting characters and awesome action scenes, but also lots of opportunity for character interaction and development, which is what I like best. I agree with you on the whole filler arc point, most of them simply cut right into the main story without even attempting to explain what was going on. The exception for me was the Bount arc, which I found very interesting. They also did their best to fit it into the main story rather than just cutting right from a main story scene into a filler. And yeah, the Substitute Shinigami arc just didn't quite fit in well, I guess the author was just wanting to try something new...

I'd love to try a Bleach setting, the biggest challenge being my location; I live in Hawaii (military) so my time zone is 3-6 hours earlier than most of the U.S. and Canada.  This pretty much restricts me to playing Saturday/Sunday nights (my afternoons) for most gaming groups.  Not impossible to work out but it means I couldn't play on weekdays or Friday nights (I'd still be at work) unless the group didn't start until about midnight on the east coast. The more I think about it the more I like M&M for Bleach.  The rules easily allow for every ability and setting used in the show and have some pretty neat (imo) mechanics for dealing with classic Bleach situations.  For example, my basic Shinigami template has the following abilities: -Shunpo: Teleport with a flaw and drawback (no extended teleportation, no passing through objects). -Reiatsu Sense: Super-senses with detect Reiatsu as a ranged mental sense, drawback being overwhelming (reiatsu over 5 PL above individual requires a save DC 10+PL difference, fail by 5 for shaken condition, fail by 10 for paralyzed condition, fail by 15 for unconscious condition).  Buyable bonus could include combat sense with limited to reiatsu sources. -Reiatsu "Ground": Super-movement, walk on air. There's plenty more, for instance adding "turnabout" stunt to shunpo for Shinigami that can attack during a shunpo.  Zanpakuto would be sword weapons with other powers tied to them in an array.  Bankai could be powers that temporarily up the character's PL, require a minimum PL to learn, and have a limited time flaw. The system also works great for two things you see a lot in Bleach/anime... destructible environments and tired characters.  One of my favorite optional rules involves causing characters to go flying when hit.  A typical attack involves a hit roll and then a damage resistance roll; the attacking character rolls to hit and the defending player rolls to save against the damage DC of the attack.  So if one character hits with an attack that is rank 5, the DC would be 20 (15+rank), the character being hit rolls 1d20 plus their toughness save (or in the case of attacks that target other saves, such as a mental attack that targets Will, the relevant defensive save).  If they roll over the DC of the attack take no damage even on a hit, if they fail by less or equal to 5 they take a hit (-1 to future saves), if they fail by less than or equal to 10 they become stunned for 1 round in addition to taking the hit, and if they fail by over 10 they get knocked unconscious or disabled. A great optional rule is that if you fail the damage save you get knocked back 10 feet for every point you failed the DC.  So if you failed the DC by 10 you'd get knocked back 100 feet through the air (and stunned).  If you hit an object and the remaining DC is greater than the hardness of the object you knock through  the object and keep going for the rest of the remaining distance.  That may sound complicated, but in practice you end up knocking enemies through walls when you hit them hard enough.  Not enough game systems allow for this in my opinion! =) Powers would need to compared to Bleach "lore" in that certain abilities wouldn't make a whole lot of sense; for instance, Cosmic Power.  Most abilities are fair game, however, considering some of the stranger zanpakuto and ability user powers. It'd probably take me a week or two to set up a decent system and beginning campaign for Bleach but I think it's pretty doable.  I enjoy DMing so if you and a couple other people were interested in trying it out that wouldn't be a problem.  I'm still getting used to using Roll20 in actual games so it would probably be a bit slow paced at first. Let me know what you think =)

That sounds awesome, I'd love to try it out! The time difference wouldn't be a problem for me on Friday or Saturday nights, since I usually don't have to work weekends and I stay up pretty late. I don't know anyone personally that would join right now, so if you don't know anyone either we might have to put a group together on the site. But I can definitely promise to be a committed player!  I'd like to learn the M&M system, since it looks adaptable and d20 rules are usually less complicated than d6 rules (in general). The group I RP with in real life likes to try different settings that aren't in a published system a much of the time (Mass Effect, for example), so learning a d20 system that's not in a specific setting would be really cool. Let me know when you want to get started!

once you get ready, look me up. I'm interested and have too much free time.  

Sounds great! I'm really looking forward to this, if we can get it off the ground. What group size are we talking about? I think a smaller one (2-3) would be just fine, but any size would work.

I got a question about the show itself.  I have watched the anime up until the part after Hueco Mundo, but what I am asking about came way before that, I think shortly before Hueco Mundo or just at the beginning when the arrancar number 10 and 4 show up on earth.  Anyhow, at some point it just seems like everyone up and learns how to stand and dash in mid-air.  I dont remember anyone doing this before except for ice dragon guy, but he had wings in his bankai, so that made sense.  But it just seemed rather suddenly that everyone was able to do it, even chad i think does it.  I was wondering if it was ever explained why everyone was able to do this, or if everyone just kinda started doing it cause one guys started doing it and everyone else had to match him in mid air.

Reb, they don't really ever show them learning the skill, but it's used way before that, just with more subtlety.  They are basically "compressing" reiatsu at their feet and standing on it.  It appears to take a bit of concentration and preparation to use (which is why characters can still fall if the ground is destroyed).  It does seem like something that is utilized much more extensively in the Heuco Mundo arc and makes Ichigo's use of the flying artifact a bit unclear (why would you need it if you could just run on air?) Ichigo uses it extensively during his bankai vs Byakuya when he uses shunpo (the dash) in mid air to avoid Byakuya's bankai.  Pretty much any time someone changes direction or shunpos while in mid-air they have to use this technique.  I do agree it could have been better explained and implemented. Reiatsu has a lot of impact on how things work in Bleach and it's not always intuitive...for example, a Zanpakuto is basically compressed reiatsu.  When Ichigo first fights Kenpachi, the passive reiatsu possessed by Kenpachi was greater than the compressed reiatsu of Ichigo's sword...and so Ichigo got hurt when he hit Kenpachi.  Ichigo's bankai works on a similar idea by highly compressing his reiatsu to make a much sharper "blade" than it would be otherwise.  Even his clothing is changed and related to his reiatsu, which is why Inoue can't repair it after Ichigo's fight in Heuco Mundo (she can heal damage, not restore reiatsu).  Quincy in particular are experts at manipulating reiatsu, going so far as to literally convert the environment of Heuco Mundo and Soul Society into raw energy since it's made of reiatsu. I hope that makes a little bit more sense.  I may be applying more logic to it than the author, though, so this is just a theory.  They may be able to do it because it looks cool =). *Break* On an unrelated note I've started working on the Bleach campaign, got some pretty good ideas for it.  By tomorrow or the next day I'll open a campaign thread for it.  We'll see how much detail I can go into as I work about 10 hours a day on weekdays, not a whole lot of time after work =).

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried making an anime-style campaign yet?  I'd kind of like to have environments that fit the anime rather than generic "realistic" tiles but it's not exactly easy to find empty, top down pictures of Bleach (or any anime).  I may have to play around with Campaign Cartographer or GIMP but I'd rather have a faster method than making it from scratch (plus I'm a poor artist and decent perfectionist, which is a terrible combination for quickly coming up with decent backgrounds).  Tokens should be fairly easy (I typically use a picture surrounded by a circle background for tokens). I'm kind of thinking that a plain background and drawing lines may be the way to go since M&M can change scale so quickly and easily.  It figures the background art would be the hardest part =).

Thank you for the explaination jac, that question has always boggled my mind and none of my friends really knew either.  i can sleep peacefully now.

Reb: Everything Jac just said is true. I'm a long time fan of the show, and he definitely knows his stuff :) One thing I'd like to point out is that there's a difference between reiatsu (spiritual pressure) and reishi (spirit particles). Reiatsu is a person's personal spiritual power, but think of reishi as the molecules that make up matter in the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. There is also a difference between shunpo (or flash-step, if you watched the english version of the show like me) and standing or dashing in midair. When the characters move so fast it looks like they're teleporting, that's flash-step. It's basically a super-speed technique. When they just stand in midair, or when it looks like they're flying but not teleporting, that's when they're using their  spiritual pressure to create the solid ground to stand or move on in the air. In the beginning of the series, Ichigo and Co. didn't know either of these techniques. W hen Yoruichi gave Ichigo the flying bat-wing thing, it was because he couldn't yet use flash-step or control his spiritual pressure enough to allow him to fly. By the time he fights Byakuya, he's learned the flash-step and can match speed with the Captain of Squad 6. From there, Ichigo's power level increases much faster then his companions. It never shows him learning it, but by the time Grimmjow arrives in Karakura town, he can stand and fly in midair (not that it does him much good at that part, :P) I think you could say when the whole group learns to stand in midair is when Urahara tells them to use their spiritual pressure to make a path to get through the garganta into Hueco Mundo. Chad learns flash-step (or the equivalent of) during his fight with Gantenbainne (the afro-headed former Espada), and says that in Hueco Mundo it was easier for him to draw out his full powers.  Uryu actuall knew hirenkyaku (the Quincy flash-step) at least from the time they first went to rescue Rukia, as he used it constantly during his fight with Mayuri. Quincies powers revolve around manipulating reishi, which is why they can use the environments in the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo for energy, since everything there is made of reishi. Theyr'e bows, arrows, and ginto weapons are all made of reishi which the Quincy absorbs and shapes into whatever form he needs. Wow... I just realized how long-winded that was, but I hope it makes sense, lol! Jac: I've looked for suitable maps myself for a Bleach setting, and I haven't been able to find any environments with the top-down view. There is one decent looking map of the seireitei, which I believe was made by a fan for his own RP site. I'll try to find a link for you. I'm perfectly fine with line-drawing, I've done it for years with markers on a whiteboard in my RPG group, works fine :) And the circle tokens are easy to find and to make, so that should work good too. I can't wait to see the plot you've come up with!

Jeremiah's explanation is better.  I was trying to keep it to the basic ideas but think I made it more complicated, lol. Yeah, I'm used to GMing with a battle map and dry-erase markers.  We'd use random tokens for our characters (sometimes they even resembled the character!) and colored glass tokens for enemies.  It wasn't pretty but it worked and was fast. For something like Pathfinder or DnD 4e it makes sense to me to spend the time and make detailed maps with dynamic lighting and all kinds of layers.  But for M&M, where I fully expect players to jump hundreds of feet around in combat and knock enemies clear through buildings, I feel a more abstract style is more appropriate.  It also allows the players to have a greater degree of freedom since I don't have to worry about funneling quite as much. For my first M&M campaign (where the PCs were actually villains, not heroes) I didn't even draw most of the map; I described the bank they were robbing and they told me where they were going and who they were fighting.  Rather than spend 20 minutes drawing a bank lobby only to have it literally smashed to pieces by Grog-Smash, the half cloud giant, half dwarf (he had a complicated childhood), I just described the action and it worked great.  Grog-Smash didn't worry about flanking or attacks of opportunity.  He worried about how many guards he could line up in a row when throwing the closest bank teller at them =).  Different style of game, different style of map drawing.  If things got complicated I'd just draw the local area but most of it was fairly abstract. I'm kind of thinking that a Bleach campaign (or most anime style campaigns) would be better served with this style of play.  We'll see if I can resist Roll20s pretty mapmaking capabilities, though!

I would love to try this out but I'm in Guam, +10GMT, and also have never played with Hero system if that matters.

I'm fine with abstract roleplaying, it sounds like you and me have run our campaigns basically in the same fashion. =)  Roll20 does have a great mapmaking system, and I've used it for my D&D campaign since my friends and I started playing on this site, but using your imagination is always a lot of fun. For this type of campaign, it definitely works great, especially for people who've watched or read Bleach and already have a good idea of what things and characters look like. Simon: It looks like we're going to be using Mutants and Masterminds for this campaign. I've not played that system before, but it looks pretty similar to the basic d20 rules so it shouldn't be hard to pick up at all.

Looks like we were both wrong about the air walking ability Jeremiah...check this out from Chapter 5 of the manga: Started watching the anime again with my wife (she's never seen it before) and noticed this right after he gets knocked out of Orihime's bedroom window by her (spoiler alert, sort of!) brother.  I've seen it a couple other places early on in the series as well. In other news I think this will be ready to start playing by next weekend.  I'll be putting out a LFG tag this weekend once I finalize a couple more things.  M&M character creation can be pretty time-consuming so I want to have plenty of time to set up the PCs.  It will also give me time to set up NPCs and maps as well. Simon: I think Guam is doable for the timeline I'm think of.  Since I'm in Hawaii you're only 4 hours ahead of me (ignoring the day change).  If we started the game around noon on Saturday my time (8am Sunday in Guam) we'd be starting at 6pm on the east coast.  I try to keep sessions around 2-4 hours (depending on the group) so that means finishing around lunch for you, around dinner for me, and bedtime (depending on the person!) for the states/Canada.  I don't think there's any realistic way for me to incorporate the UK unfortunately. Based on previous games I've found that we'll pretty much have to use Google Hangouts for video chat.  The TokBox client tends to work horrendously in general but is much worse when you have the players far apart geographically and we can't get a much bigger distance.  I've only tested the WebVTC client on local computers and it worked well but requires everyone to use Google Chrome.  There are other options but I'd like to stick with either the built-in video chat, Hangouts, or text where the other two don't work. Time for bed.  I'll have some more updates tomorrow.

You're right! I totally forgot that he did that so early on!  Time sounds fine for me, I should have no problem getting on regularly. I might end up just using voice chat, though, because I don't actually own a webcam :P  Really looking forward to this!

Turns out Zangetsu explains the air walking thing to Ichigo when he's first undergoing hollowfication: In other news...campaign LFG is open, title is "Bleach - The Hollow War" =)  Campaign details will be added later tonight after work.