Catastrophe Academy

Episodes

The campaign will be divided into 13 Episodes, each lasting approximately six weeks and having a common structure:

The first week is a break week in which GMs will not be hosting any expeditions, plot-significant group scenes, or accepting private scene requests with plot-central NPCs.
The next four-to-five weeks will be open-ended, with plot events occuring that will eventually lead up to the Episode Boss. Players are free during this time to RP between eachother or with NPCs, pursue plot threads, do combat missions, or work on side-plots.
On the weekend of the final week, the Episode Boss fight will occur. This is the climactic fight with a plot-significant foe that each episode leads up to!

Note that the first and final episodes may have unusual structures.

Scenes

Scenes are the lifeblood of Catastrophe Academy. A "scene" is any isolated instance of characters interacting with the world or eachother in written prose within one of the RP channels. All storytelling is done through scenes, with there being two primary types of scenes:

Public group scenes, where anyone may join. These tend to be where major plot events occur, or where the team as a whole decide on their next moves.
Private scenes, where only specific players are involved. These are generally one-on-one scenes between players, or between a small group of players. But they can also be plot-relevent scenes that a specific group of characters arranged, or which impacts a specific group of characters.

As a general rule of thumb, anyone can request a scene with anyone as long as the characters involved could feasibly meet and interact at that point in the story. This includes both requesting interactions with other players, and also requesting scenes to advance the story by talking to an NPC or going out into the world to do something. Of course, neither players nor GMs are obligated to accept those requests at any time.

Players may also open group scenes as well, so long as the appropriate channel isn't already in use.

Private scenes should be opened as a Discord thread in the most appropriate location channel corresponding to where in-universe the scene is taking place. The thread's name should include the current Episode number in brackets, for organization's sake.

Public scenes should be opened directly in the most appropriate location channel, and not in a thread.

Your characters should not be in more than one private scene at a time. Due to the nature of this campaign, sometimes scenes can take unexpected turns and if your character is in two simultaneously it can create chronology issues.

Some players also choose to "draft" scenes with another. This refers to writing the scene in DMs to post all-at-once when their character is available. While this is permitted, be cautious in doing so. One of your live scenes or the ongoing plot could still disrupt the plans you drafted in public.

Offscreen

We understand that not every action you might wish to take to further the story, or your character arcs, or for any other reason necessarily merits writing out a full prosaic scene. Players are also permitted to intermittently "offsceen" actions by posting in the appropriate channel. This allows them to state things their character does in downtime without needing to convey it in a scene.

That said, not everything can be offscreened. At times a GM may request that an offscreen be expanded into a scene on account of it being more involved or interesting than it might have initially appeared.

We also ask that offscreen actions not be flooded. It is not intended to be a substitute for RP. Please do not regularly post offscreens that do not meaningfully alter anything.

Comms

After a certain point characters will also be able to communicate directly with one another using their communication systems. This is a more laid-back, dialogue-based form of RP that amounts to essentially "sending texts" in character.

Combat Basics

The full combat mechanics of Catastrophe Academy aren't detailed here, on account of their evolving nature. Full combat rules including numbers, interactions, and other nuances can be found here. This should be your primary source in understanding the detailed mechanics.

What this section instead aspires to do is explain the fundamentals, to give players a baseline on how combat will work before diving into the nitty-gritty.

Player Characters in Catastrophe Academy have 7 primary stats:

HP, which determines how much damage they can take before going down.
Defense / Resistance (Special Defense), which determines how much damage Physical and Magical attacks respectively deal to them.
Attack / Magic (Special Attack), which determines how much damage their Physical and Magical attacks respectively deal to enemies.
Stamina, which determines how many Moves they can use before getting tired out.
FP, which determines how many Perks they can equip to gain special bonuses.

These are based loosely on Pokémon's canon stats, which Stamina taking the place of Speed and FP being entirely novel.

Early in the game you'll be able to allocate a small handful of stat points to determine your character's archetype. Then throughout the game your character will achieve certain breakpoints known as "Ascents", at which they'll gain many more to spend on diversifying their stats. Your character's species will lightly affect their baseline stats, but don't worry- canon stats largely wash out as the game goes on and any species can serve any role.

Your character will be able to pull Moves and Abilities from a combination of their species' canon Move pool and a few additional sources that allow them to gain 'illegal' Moves and Abilities which might let them better fill a specific role.

As your character grows, they'll also be able to start equipping Perks. Perks are special passive abilities that characters can equip up to their FP stat. These effects might unlock new abilities, raise ceilings, protect them against negative effects, or provide a wide variety of other boons.

Player Actions

Combat is run on a 2D grid via Roll20 and divided into two primary phases, the Player Phase and the Enemy Phase. During the Player Phase all players may take their turns in any order they wish. When every player has taken their turn, they can end the Phase to transition to the Enemy Phase.

Player Characters will typically have three full Actions and two tiles of Movement available to them on a turn. Players can spend their Actions on things such as:

Using a Move.
Dashing to gain additional Movement.
Using an Item.
Resting to restore their Stamina.
An "odd" Action that uses RP-flavor to try and achieve a non-standard effect in the battle.

Players will need to balance their available Actions, as well as their available Stamina which is spent when using Moves and restores gradually between turns.

Players can also gain or sacrifice some Actions on one turn to bolster another with the Brace and Surge system. When players spend actions Bracing, they can gain Surge points that can be turned into an extra Action on a later turn. Managing these resources is the key to combat!

Whenever a player targets an enemy, they'll provide an Offense number based primarily on their stats and the Move they used, and a Modifier value based on various boons that may buff their attack. The GM running the combat will calculate the damage against the targetted enemy and respond with it. If needed, players are allowed to submit a partial turn and "pause" to wait and see these damage numbers before continuing.

Enemy Turns

When the players have all used up their actions and declare the end of their Phase, the battle transitions to the Enemy Phase.

Enemies use similar, albeit slightly adjusted mechanics to players. They will take actions, spend stamina, and try to defeat the players. Because player information is known to the GMs, the GMs will handle all damage calculations and report back to players the outcomes of the enemy phase all at once.

If any Player Characters are reduced to zero hit points, their body is destroyed! But don't worry- they'll get better. And in the meanwhile, their spirit will be able to continue supporting their allies with limited Support Actions from beyond the grave.

Once all Enemies have exhausted their actions, it rolls right back to the next Player Phase.

Expedition Rules

This is similarly not a full-details explanation of Expedition mechanics. Those can also be found on the regularly-updated spreadsheet.

Expeditions are an intermediary between mechanics and pure RP. Sometimes, GMs will host a mission known as an "Expedition." Unlike combat, an Expedition usually takes place over a longer period of time and has a series of challenges rather than a single combat mission.

Expeditions draw partly from the stats and abilities of characters, but with more emphasis on how they flavorfully implement and utilize their abilities in RP. The GM determines how successful their plan is, based on a mix of numbers related to the characters' skills and judgement of their applications.

Expedition Skills

What a character is capable of in an Expedition is generally split into three categories:

General Skills are Resilience and Prowess. They are the only skills that are directly tied to your stats. As you level up, these skills will similarly increase. If you're a more defensive unit, your Resilience will be higher than your Prowess, while being more offense-oriented will feed into your Prowess over Resilience.
Specialty Skills are things that your character is good at which do not necessarily fit into a stat. Mentors will have higher skill points to spend on these starting off, but mentees gain more of these points as the campaign progresses. These skills come from a set list that can be found on the sheet.
Niche Skills do not have points assigned to them, and are instead a limited player-provided list of very specific things the character is good at. For example, one Niche Skill could be "tying knots." Another could be "distinguishing bakery smells."

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Introduction