We Wake Up As Magical Girls is a Role Playing campaign being played on the TV Tropes forum
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It is based on the Maid RPG system, where the characters have woken up in the bodies of magical girls.
The back story is that Aerth (mistakenly called 'Earth' by the occupants) is one world of many, all of which are capable of being reached through magical travel. An evil empire (Aterian) is attacking Aerth to steal resources from this world. Princess Star White from the good empire of Atlantis decided to stop them, taking her valet Felix and some companions to Aerth. There she also recruited several local girls to form a squad of magical girls to stop the evil Princess Adrestia.
Star White led an attack against Adrestia that turned out to be a trap; Star White was trapped in a 'mind maze' and the other magical girls had their souls stolen from their bodies. Felix was able to recover the bodies of the other magical girls and performed a complex magical ritual to return their souls to the bodies. The ritual may not have worked exactly as intended. Instead, he ended up summoning...
- Ian, a 17-year-old boy and the assistant to a mad scientist, who was placed in the body of Daisy Hoshina, a.k.a. Dreamblader.
- Lloyd, a British quantum physicist with a love of isekai stories who turns into the Elegant Gothic Lolita Blue Amber.
- Alex, a man leading an ordinary life before ending up in the body of Amethyst Crusher.
- "Houston", a 21-year-old genderfluid individual with an undisclosed past who winds up in the body of Yuki, who is also the runaway ninja hero Unseen Shade.
- Maria, who isn't quite sure exactly who she was before she woke up, but nonetheless takes the mantle of Pink Cat Maid.
- Ryo Aihara, a 28-year-old man who worked at a Host Club in Shinjuku's red light district. He winds up replacing Rosa Thorne, the civilian identity of the succubus heroine El Cuarzo Rosa.
- Shizuka, a 25-year-old chef from Japan who wakes up as the sickly elvish magical girl Gracieuse.
- Savarian Lawmin, a retired 28-year-old half-elf heroine from another world who is thrust into another adventure in the body of the Silver Defender.
In addition to each Magical Girl having special abilities and/or weapons, each girl has access to a magical Augmented Reality system called the M.A.R.I-S.U.E. Codex, which can provide them information and allow them to communicate (in a limited sense) with Star White.
Currently the players need to find a way to rescue Princess Star White and to stop the resident Alpha Bitch Angel N. D'Centrefold (who is most likely Adrestia in disguise) from achieving her current goal of becoming class president at the school where she, Star White note , and the other characters are already enrolled.
The game is mainly meant as a light hearted romp with some side characters obviously ripped off lovingly inspired from various TV Series, but more serious moments do occur.
We Wake Up As Magical Girls includes examples of...
- Aerith and Bob: The real names of the souls controlling the magical girls are mostly standard fare (Ian, Alex, Ryo, etc.), but then you have the obviously fantastical name Savarian.
- Brain/Computer Interface: The MARI-SUE codex is a fancy mentally-accessed computer that allows them to see names and Stress levels of those around them, keep up-to-date information on their foes, and schedule reminders for meetings later.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Maria goes to the nurse's office after getting her heart broken from learning the teacher she had a crush on was married. Later, when said teacher's husband is bleeding out from a monster attack, Rosa remembers Maria's visit to the nurse and has Daisy teleport them all to her office. She ends up stabilizing him long enough until the ambulance could get him, saving his life.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: DreamBlader is the wielder of an eldritch weapon known as the Nightmare Scythe, which 'drinks' human blood. A note supposedly left by the original DreamBlader in the Codex mentions that 'Scythee also likes ketchup and marinara sauce'.
- Fantastic Racism: Angel doesn't like any of the girls, but she seems to hold particular malice for Maria because she's a catgirl, readily stooping to species-based insults like calling her "moggy" or suggesting she needs a flea collar.
- How Do I Shot Web?: It takes some time for the summoned souls to acquaint themselves with the abilities of the magical girls they're standing in for, resulting in some distinctly non-magical-girly combat early on."Unseen Shade can magically manipulate her own shadow" seems like a straightforward phrase on its face, but the codex might as well have said "flex your spinnerets" for all the person currently piloting Yuki's body had any idea how to do that.
- Identity Amnesia: Maria doesn't remember anything prior to the soul ritual. This is particularly concerning to her because it means she can't even confirm whether she really is Maria or (like the others) someone else mistakenly summoned in her place.
- Imperfect Ritual: It's not clear exactly what Felix did wrong, but the ritual he used was supposed to retrieve the stolen souls of the original magical girls. Instead, he somehow managed to pluck random unconnected souls from elsewhere in the multiverse.
- Literal Genie: Houston asks MARI-SUE for a chat protocol to make a group conversation with the other magical girls, and asks it to exclude Felix. It creates a Magic Relay Chat room, which turns out to work in such a way that completely meets the criteria Houston actually asked for, but Angel can immediately join the chat. Houston realizes they are going to have to be very careful with requests to MARI-SUE.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Downplayed and zigzagged. Even though the original souls of the magical girls are missing, the new souls occupying their bodies seem to have picked up a few of their skills and instincts, such as their transformation phrases. However, it's something of a case-by-case basis, as while Ryo can understand Infernal while in Rosa's body despite not knowing the language existed before, Houston cannot understand Japanese while in Yuki's body.
- Our Elves Are Different: Elves (or Faerans, as they're called in this setting), such as Savarian and Gracieuse('s body), have a natural aptitude for spellcasting.
- Punny Name: The third candidate for class president is named Ima Hooker.Ima Hooker's mother, Ezma A. Hooker is a direct descendant of the Civil War General Joseph Hooker. Her father, Ben A. Hooker, chose to adopt his wife's family name rather then pass on his family name of Gigilo.
- Readings Are Off the Scale:
- MARI-SUE reports Angel as "Level ?". Since she's the Big Bad in disguise, the implication is that she's too powerful to scan.
- Jack Harkness's maximum Stress level is apparently "-STACK OVERFLOW ERROR-".
- Serious Business: The election for Student Council President. For some reason, winning the election would give Star White enough power to save the world from the Aterian Empire.
- Shadow Pin: Unseen Shade's "Shadow Tag" technique traps an opponent by pinning their shadow with a thrown kunai or other projectile.
- Shout-Out: As one might expect from a roleplay run by tropers, there are quite a lot of them.
- Soapbox Sadie: Houston seems to have a social-justice streak, as they pointedly avoid assuming Yuki's gender, and are willing to call out Angel's clique for use of the ableist slur "tard" despite the fact that this constitutes picking a fight with the Big Bad.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: After Houston introduces themself, they immediately reiterate that Houston is their real name and it isn't something else. Nobody calls them on it, but the implication (later confirmed in a private conversation with MARI-SUE) is that they're using an alias for some reason.
- They Just Dont Get It: No matter how directly it's spelled out to him, Felix seems constitutionally incapable of recognizing that his soul-retrieval ritual has grabbed the wrong souls.
- Toast of Tardiness: Invoked by Rosa with a bagel sandwich, earning her a point of Favor from the GM for being Genre Savvy.
- Webcomic Time: The story takes place over the course of a week, yet only one day's worth of story took three and a half months to roleplay.
