Battle High!
In a galaxy far far away, a remote school rises like a spiral towards the heavens. It looms tall and proud on a steep hill above the town around it. Its thick armored walls house the meanest and toughest. Its classes are all about developing students into competent people and powerful warriors. Ruled above all by the Student Council President Zenith, everyone know the school is just a recruiting ground for Zenith's personal army. While everyone has heard rumors about Zenith, nothing is truly known except they command the top of the class at Battle High! for their own secret agenda.
Suddenly transfer students begin to appear at Battle High!. Each more powerful than anyone can easily accept. Each named after a star that burns bright in the night sky.
Why have these heroes appeared? What drives them? How does all this intersect with Zenith's plan?
Welcome to the wild and crazy mysteries of Battle High!
Here are the rules for the game, broken down into small digestible sections.
The game needs two or more players. One player will become The Stray Narrator, and they take on the role of Zenith whenever he or she pops up in the game, as well as control all the details of Battle High! itself. The other players will all create heroes, transfer students named after stars that have suddenly begun to arrive at Battle High! Lets talk about making them!
Hero creation is a set of several small steps that will define your hero in broad terms, the details you will fill in as you play. As you go you will be building an introduction for your hero in a specific format. Expanding it at each step until it gives us a good quick look at them.
A hero is born from the stars in Battle High!, so the initial part is picking a unique star for your hero to be named (no two same named heroes in a game of Battle High!). Stars come from constellations in the sky, each provides a vague, open to interpretation, special power to the heroes named from stars within that constellation:
The rules under each name that mention Trigger can be understood if you jump down to STAR NUMBERS below.
In order to access their star power, the student summons their Facade. This is a uniform that goes over their normal uniform (or replaces, as the player decides) that imparts a form to the power. Designing the appearance of the Facade is part of creating your hero. It can evolve and change during play too, but at the start we need a base form for the Facade.
Every hero born under a star title has a significant presence. You need to decide what makes them stand out from the crowd, what makes them special at first glance to the other students attending Battle High!.
Every hero born under a star title has a reason for attending Battle High! This is something compelling, something interesting, something dramatic!.
Every hero born under a star title has to have numbers too, these tell us a little about the capabilities of the hero themselves. Each of these numbers goes under a name, which we just call a rating. There are three ratings for heroes with star titles:
Under each rating, you can see what the number means in the game. The higher the number you assign to a rating, the more ability your hero has in that area. A hero with seven HUSTLE is faster and stronger than one with two.
In addition you can see something called a Trigger. A Trigger is a situation in which that rating is called into place specifically. The Stray Narrator normally will tell you when which applies, but in Trigger cases it always applies, the rules trigger it. The second line on each has a question mark to show that a second Trigger can be added to your hero, one additional per rating. You hero got one from their star name, and they can develop more during play, but only ever one per rating.
Zeroes (non-heroes) all have one in each rating. Your hero begins the same, but you assign ten more between the three ratings any way you choose. Note though that a two is merely twice as good as a zero, so it might be wise for first time player to assign four more to a base of three (same total amount of 13).
Every hero born under a star title has an orbit, a track of things that matter to them. Adding something here is something very important to hero, and its open to additions and subtractions across the run of any game of Battle High! However, each hero starts with one orbit: Cool.
Each hero begins with three Cool. When we are talking about orbit ratings, we use the exclamation mark to denote that. Three Cool is 3! Cool. If you don't attach any name, we assume you mean Cool since it is the default ! rating.
A hero with ratings less than three gets more Cool: +2! per rating of two, and +3! per rating of one. In this way, a hero with two ratings of one starts with 9!.
The Cool is the innermost orbit of a hero born under a star title. When you add more orbits, they go in the outer ring above Cool. Each ring has a doubling effect, making your hero more and more Cool. Lets explain this with an example.
Each hero gets to know three rumors. One is about Zenith or Battle High!, one is about themselves, and they hold the last one until it is triggered in play. A rumor is just that, something that has been going around about the subject. Something juicy, something that would catch someone's attention and make them tell everyone they know. The Stray Narrator decided ultimately the truth behind the rumor, and what is means (all have meaning).
The rumor you hold for your hero is triggered when they meet another hero with lower PUSH, or when they have a Showdown with another hero. In that case, the player of the hero with the rumor makes one up about the other hero.