Since I've gotten onto a gamist kick lately I'm seriously considering a wargame thing now that I've got the core of Men Of Teak (my Road House game) done and am now in the tweaking for balance and adding features that were found lacking stage.
Right now I'm thinking of making the entire thing Karma based with a focus on small units and maybe motorcycle jousting.
Hmmm, gamist... karma-based... martial arts bar fights (Road House)? Tell me more.
Specifically, I'm most curious as to how you're planning to implement gamist karma-based resolution here, and how you see it supporting your goals/gamist premise.
Rich
Hey,
If Drama-based Gamist design is anything to go by, the big issue in a Karma-based system is going to be resource management.
After all, think about Magic for a moment. When decks were played out of the box, the big issue was rolling with Fortune's punches and thinking one-two moves ahead. When decks were customized into lean & mean two-color killers (with 4 of each card, making a 60-card deck essentially 4 times a 15-card deck), Fortune was diminished sharply and strategy could be handled mainly in terms of resources: mana, card draws, and turns themselves.
One of the reasons I want to play Nobilis is that it's the only Karma-based RPG with resources rated in precisely the same units as the Effectiveness scores. It seems to me that in such a situation, the main issue is tuning the adversity, so that players are often deciding whether or not to "spend," and those decisions matter severely.
Take that management to a more competitive arena, and I think you've got something, as "adversity tuning" is Gamism's very foundation. In those variants in which players compete directly, it's fabulously effective.
I think a careful look at Nobilis and the card game Slasher would pay off very well. The former is all about Karma and resource management, and the latter is all about adversity which includes both cooperation and competition.
Best,
Ron
Sorry Rich, but the wargame thing is just a little side project that I fiddle with while I wait for the playtesters to send me back reports on Men Of Teak, which is fortune based.
The wargame which is yet unnamed is all about resource management. It's got action points that are used for everything. It has no color at all yet. It's just a very crude mock up right now.