Soul Bound(RP idea)

[that man]

Yeah, this is an idea I had for an RP(might not follow through with it, but might if there's enough support). I also have no real idea of how I would roleplay something like this, if I did do it. Anyway here's what I've thought of so far:
The story

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Is the same as ours, just one most people never thought possible. True, they had heard of great ancient deities, powerful gods who could shape the Earth, and many knew that people often "prayed" to them, but those who thought more of it were called crazy. Why would a god form a contract with special humans who were capable of sustaining them through sacrifice and "devotion"? What sort of madman would claim that they would gain magical powers from such things? This is a modern day and age, above the superstitions of the past, beyond the existence of daemons and witches, and always pointing out the flaws in those ancient stories.

If only they knew yours.

The characters

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You can make either a human or a bound soul, then team up with another character who is the opposite of you (human contractor with bound soul and bound soul with human contractor). Unless a bound soul and its contractor are in the same general area, neither can use magic.

Human contractors

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Humans go and live double lives, often right under the noses of their spouse. Generally, they will have another job (even if it's just a student) and life completely removed from this. However, no matter how much power a human may gather, they are still mortal and can die or be driven "insane".
Witch/Warlock
- Treats their bound spirit as equals, and come across as a jack of all trades. They are capable of preforming spells, but can have a hard time defending themselves. Witches/warlocks really don't have any set agenda, and individual members are free to do as they please.
70 stat points, up to 2 spells, and 1 ability
Inquisitor/Exorcist
-These are the people who have become contractors, just so they can force other contractors to renounce theirs. While not very talented magic wise, they are very skilled at normal combat and countering spells.
85 stat points, up to 1 spell, and up to 2 abilities
Cultists/Acolytes
-A bit on the crazed side of things, cultists have incredibly powerful/unstable magic, and worship their bound souls as gods. Their goal is to convince all other contractors that the only thing they can do is submit to their bound soul's and serve them forever.
60 stat points, up to 3 spells, and 1 ability

Bound Souls

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These have to be based off of a real life god/goddess/mythical creature, and their stats and abilities have to reflect this. However, unlike humans, a bound soul can't die or go "insane". If the human they are bound to at the time does do any of these things, then they are free to leave and bind with someone else.
Gods/Goddess
-As should be expected, these are the strongest of the Bound Souls, and are reflected in the major/minor gods/goddess of mythology. While they do offer great magical assistance, they often see themselves as above such petty disputes as the mortals engage in, and will sometimes refuse to engage.
300 stat points, up to 10 spells/abilities
Mythical creatures
-The succubis, dryads, elves, and magical animals of mythology. While not entirely skilled magically, they are able to help in much more "practical" ways.
200 stat point, up to 6 spells/abilities
Cryptids
-those creatures arising from urban legends and campfire tales. Focused more on physical combat, but still able to aid in lower spells.
100 stat points, up to 4 spells, and up to 2 abilities

The players

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Urhr93(Sae Yoake-Contractor) spriter1(Ciara Rose-Bound Soul)
MiscChaos(Cameron Stevens-Contractor) TCELESBHSUP(Delphine-Bound Soul)

Human

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Name:
Age:
Gender:
Sexuality:
Job: (What do you do to make a living)
Class: (Witch/Warlock, Inquisitor/Exorcist, Cultists/Acolyte)
Bounded Soul: (include link to their character sheet)
Appearance:
-Image
-description (for if the image doesn't do you justice)
Sexual preferences (limits, what you're into, etc.):
Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Bounded Soul came together)
Game things
-Stats
Strength-How powerful you character is (used for hitting, holding down, etc.)
resilience-How good you character is at taking hits (Used for resisting pleasure, wounds, etc.)
Agility(or flexibility)-How fast your character is (Used for dodging, Sneaking, running, etc)
Willpower(or libido)-How well your character is able to resist "temptations" (used for ignoring someone's advances, ignoring "that feeling", and the like)
intelligence-How smart your character is (Used for charming people, setting up traps/ambushes, using certain items (like horseless carriages), and other inteligent sounding things)
health-how alive you character is (made from combining strength and resilience)
Sanity-how rational your character is (made from combining willpower and intelligence)
-Equipment
-Abilities
--Spells

Bound Soul

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Name:
Gender:
Sexuality:
Mythos: (which mythology/urban legend are you from)
Type: (God/Goddess, Mythical Creature, or Cryptid)
Contractor: (include link to their character sheet)
Appearance:
-Image
-description (for if the image doesn't do you justice)
Sexual preferences (limits, what you're into, etc.):
Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Human Contractor came together)
Game things
-Stats
Strength-How powerful you character is (used for hitting, holding down, etc.)
resilience-How good you character is at taking hits (Used for resisting pleasure, wounds, etc.)
Agility(or flexibility)-How fast your character is (Used for dodging, Sneaking, running, etc)
Willpower(or libido)-How well your character is able to resist "temptations" (used for ignoring someone's advances, ignoring "that feeling", and the like)
intelligence-How smart your character is (Used for charming people, setting up traps/ambushes, using certain items (like horseless carriages), and other inteligent sounding things)
health-how alive you character is (made from combining strength and resilience)
Sanity-how rational your character is (made from combining willpower and intelligence)
-Equipment
-Abilities
--Spells

Spell template

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Spell Name:
Roll required (d100, can add one stat, depending on type): (TBD)

Hit detection (choose one):
-Aura
-Cone Aura
-Touch
-Missile
-Lightning(max Chain)
-summon
-enchantment

Effects (prinary):
-Damage (+2 for every point)
-Heal (+2 for every point)
-Other (TBD)

Elemental base [ Water > Fire > Earth > Wind >]

[MiscChaos]

I support the shit out of this idea. The shit! It could be fun, though I do worry about what happens if the Human to a Bound Soul goes inactive.

[that man]

Not entirely sure. I suppose they could always temporarily rebind themselves (gods do seem a bit fickle that way). The same goes for humans, though, the results would be more catastrophic when the bound soul returned.

[BlueLight]

I call the goddess ookamisama sun/wolf goddess. So who wants to be the emotional wreck that i brighten the day of?

[that man]

...ok, this was apparently a good idea. I'll have to make two different character sheets (and we'll still have to come up with/decide if we want stats), but I guess I'll try this. Still not 100% sure how it will work yet though.

[BlueLight]

I had a idea like this once.... didn't follow through with it.... Now quick, i need someone who's either emotionalless or sexually inactive and shy

[napsii]

I definitely like the idea. Three concept characters come to mind, and the last of them has me wondering what the material/metaphysical source of these "Bound Souls" are. Modern and historical religion and mythology do not nearly share the same canon and hence could be thought of as competing fiction if you wanted to be cynical (which I do; what I mean to ask is something like: how could every creation myth be true simultaneously?) and we only understand mythological and religious concepts and figures insofar as we, humans, have read what other humans have written about them.

Very basically, I'm just asking if there's any reasoning for how and why these Bound Souls appear to universally share the same rules and dimensions despite them apparently contradicting each other's existence. There are deities of death in countless religions, for example, but the origin stories which validate their existence would necessarily disprove one another if one of them was true. But if they were all true, what determines their authorities over death? Not every deity of death is ascribed equal or the same portfolio of powers as those in another religion.

But that's a lofty challenge, I guess. I just thought it'd worth be examining since it strikes me as being the substrate of your entire lore. Personally, I had the idea that they (Bound Souls) were all mirrors of collective human thought, constructed and empowered over hundreds or thousands of years of history -- figments of human imagination and faith, basically, but capable of acting on the world. That could circumvent our inability to validate or falsify any claims made about them by making them all "true" , and additionally explain why they are approximately what humans describe and interpret to be without dictating which of them are true or false. I mean, heck, in that case I imagine many Bound Souls would compete for relevance and human faith. Others might passively change with the times.

Anyway: concerning stats, I would be wary of using them since the character of the roleplay would likely be determined by what borders you set for Bound Souls of any class. A lot of objects in mythology and religion are often described as necessarily unquantifiable, and deconstructing them into statistics greatly alters the scope and feel of the setting. It doesn't make it worse, I mean, but it makes it different, so naturally it's up to you to decide what you want as the GM.

[that man]

@napsii
I am actually a firm believer of the Jungian idea of archetypes bringing a subconscious template for the gods, that at some point, become something more then mere stories. Most of the gods are given human characteristics, and are able to interact in the mortal realm, so it is safe to assume that they could actually meet one another. Essentially, I apply "I think, therefore, I am" to the idea of gods, monsters, and daemons, as some cultures have gods who fill similar roles oddly close to each other (see Chaac and Thor as a good example). Also, I'm a big fan of Shin Megami Tensi.

Another thing, I made a WIP character sheet for those interested:
Human

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Name:
Age:
Gender:
Sexuality:
Job: (What do you do to make a living)
Class: (Witch/Warlock, Inquisitor/Exorcist, Cultists/Acolyte)
Bounded Soul: (include link to their character sheet)
Appearance:
-Image
-description (for if the image doesn't do you justice)
Sexual preferences (limits, what you're into, etc.):
Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Bounded Soul came together)
Game things(don't put anything here yet)
-Stats
-Equipment
-Abilities
--Spells

Bound Soul

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Name:
Gender:
Sexuality:
Mythos: (which mythology/urban legend are you from)
Type: (God/Goddess, Mythical Creature, or Cryptid)
Contractor: (include link to their character sheet)
Appearance:
-Image
-description (for if the image doesn't do you justice)
Sexual preferences (limits, what you're into, etc.):
Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Human Contractor came together)
Game things(don't put anything here yet)
-Stats
-Equipment
-Abilities
--Spells

[BlueLight]

I definitely like the idea. Three concept characters come to mind, and the last of them has me wondering what the material/metaphysical source of these "Bound Souls" are. Modern and historical religion and mythology do not nearly share the same canon and hence could be thought of as competing fiction if you wanted to be cynical (which I do; what I mean to ask is something like: how could every creation myth be true simultaneously?) and we only understand mythological and religious concepts and figures insofar as we, humans, have read what other humans have written about them.

Well strange thing about myth of gods is that they keep changing. For instances the Egyption god of war and hunting, became a god of weaving fate because of two things, 1 a symbol above her head which contained 2 arrows crossing over a shield looked like a weave, and 2 a character in her name also looked like a weave. So just to say the lores don't match is a moot point, since the lores of a god literally change because future generation can't read the gods name. So just have gods making bull shit up and we're all good.

Basing on Dungeon and Dragon lore; gods can literally change jobs. So just have the gods taking up their prospective roles at different time periods and just have them lying all the time based on human lore. Be quite funny to have Hades god of the under world getting annoyed because thor keeps calling him Plato.


SIDE NOTE
Also the difition of gods help with magic while others types help with other things is just silly. Their are tons of gods that would not mind getting their hands dirty while other creature would make more sense to help with magic. For Medusa the creature cursed with her sisters to go from extremely beautiful to so ugly that looking directly at her would turn you to stone. Now if she helps you in a physical battle i'd be shocked; but magical is another story.

[napsii]

That's more or less similar to what I was thinking. Incidentally, I'm also a fan of SMT and Persona in particular. >.>

--

It's not a moot point, Bluelight, because you essentially just agreed with me. My concept involved mythological objects (e.g. deities, etc.) being reflections of what humans have ascribed to them who then develop their own will, so I don't find it at all contradictory that a god of war becomes a god of weaving or what-have-you. Thematically speaking, that would just be a convenient example of deities adapting new forms since they are, after all, self-determining entities.

I should also clarify that I explicitly intended for no past myth to cancel one another out since they would be, in essence, only as true as humans and the respective Bound Souls wanted them to be -- but not necessarily what humans think they are.

--

Anyway, is it really necessary to have such a bloated character sheet? "Likes" and "Dislikes" are things that can be compacted into backstory, which is the section almost exclusively best suited for explaining the character in a non-technical fashion. Not every detail needs to be made explicit from the onset, anyway -- that's how character development works.

More cynically speaking, I think that if a character can be accurately broken down into "Likes" and "Dislikes", it's probably not a very good character.

That said, I'm waiting for clearer answers on just how magic, etc. works before I really know what to think of the rest.

[that man]

@BlueLight & @napsii
I said that everything was a work in progress, since I really am not sure what I'm doing yet, and that that was a rough template. I'll take out the likes/dislikes section, and try to figure out what exactly a god does do (they honestly seem the least likely to help people, since some gods, like Odin, went out of their way to kill people they were supposed to be helping).
As for the magic...
I'm open to anything right now. It could be a completely free-form, but still requires a template to make spells, or they can only choose spells from a select list. Heck, maybe something in between would work.

[napsii]

Of course. I wouldn't want to be impatient; it's basically my modus operandi that as much time as needed is taken to develop a thread. Concepts always become more sophisticated the more thought is invested into them, which is why I find it to almost universally be a bad (or suboptimal) idea to go with the first or second draft of something.

I'm not a huge fan of predefined lists for most anything these days, and in this context, I think it'd be a particular disservice. It's difficult to create a spell list that sufficiently covers every avenue your roleplayers could conceive of, and similarly, I think it's better for roleplay when people are afforded as much sovereignty over their characters as possible. If I had concerns over how to make things functional and congruous when magic would be so diverse because of this, I'd focus on defining the ups and downs of magic in general -- parameters that all magic actions and objects abide by.

So far, I can only suggest that either a) all Bound Souls draw magic power from a universal source, or; b) every Bound Soul has its own unique or shared source of magic power.

Or c) Something else entirely. Silly me, thinking the creative process is at all binary. Those are just the two suggestions that immediately jerked to mind.

[daxtinator396]

YES :3 If you want abit of inspiration try reading princess of wands. Its similar :3 but I really REALLY love this :3 can't wait for those sheets ^^

[daxtinator396]

Hmm... would a Valkyrie qualify as a mythical creature?

[eaenidu]

I'm just gonna post this now and reserve my right to be this spirit for when this gets ready



Name: Lady Loki

Gender: Female/Futa/Male when she wants(Loki is known to change gender)

Sexuality: Everything (Loki has had sex with a lot of things)

Mythos: Norse
Type: God/Goddess

Contractor: (include link to their character sheet){Work when get partner}

Appearance:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

[link=]http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/294/1/0/10f92c23997674241cbbcd5e3b9bb0b4-d5ihxby.jpg
[/link]

Sexual preferences (limits, what you're into, etc.):NO scat, Vore/Gore)(YES Public anything, cum play,Being Sub, everything else

Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Human Contractor came together){work when get partner}

Game things(don't put anything here yet)
-Stats
-Equipment
-Abilities
--Spells

[BlueLight]

Why not allow us to create spells for our selves? Make it stat base so we're give so many points, and based on that we decide if it's ranged, touch element based, buff debuff.
Just a idea.

[BlueLight]

Name:Amaterasu Ōmikami 天照大神, the Sun Goddess (A-ma-te-ra-su Oo-mi-ka-mi) / The white wolf
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bi sexual... i think.... what?
Mythos: Shintou
Type: Goddess
Contractor: She's a jobless bum right now.
Appearance:
-Image

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[indent=][/indent]-description
Sexual preferences:
Back-story: (At least 5 sentences. Must also explain how you and the Human Contractor came together)
Game things(don't put anything here yet)
-Stats
-Equipment
Kusanagi (Her brother's sword)
-Abilities
--Spells

[that man]

@daxinator396
Yes it would. Now it seems that we need some human contractors.
@BlueLight
We could do something like that for the spells. Here's a WIP template:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Spell Name:
Cost: (not sure about this)
Effects:
Side effects: (What does it do beyond the main effects (splash damage, local climate change, turns target on, etc.)

[BlueLight]

@daxinator396
Yes it would. Now it seems that we need some human contractors.
@BlueLight
We could do something like that for the spells. Here's a WIP template:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Spell Name:
Cost: (not sure about this)
Effects:
Side effects: (What does it do beyond the main effects (splash damage, local climate change, turns target on, etc.)

Spell Name:
Cost: (not sure about this)
Mana cost: base 10

Hit detection
Aura

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Cone Aura

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Touch

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Missile

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Lightning(max Chain)

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summon

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enchantment

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Effects:
Damage
Heal
Flight

Secondaries
Elemental based [ Water > Fire > Earth > Wind >]

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[that man]

If that's an improved version of the spell template, I'm all for that.
Even if it's not, we should probably discuss the maximum number of spells available to each class.