[Junk Dreams] split II

[M Jason Parent]

The following is mostly stream of consciousness as I've been mulling over systems and mechanics for the past two days. This is mostly archival.

I've stalled temporarily in the development of the background material for Junk Dreams as I start working on the system for the game. Any further development beyond this point will rely on having a system that I can tie the development to. Although Gareth has started musing about dropping the d20 system for some of his upcoming releases, I had already decided that something other than the d20 system would be the basis of Junk Dreams. That said, I'm also considering 'dual-statting' the game - that is, releasing a short product that converts it over to the d20 system (albeit not a d20 product, since a game about using heroin to save the world is definitely beyond the limits of the decency portions of the license).

I've been musing over how detailed to go with the system in question - particularly the conflict resolution system. Physical combat per se will not be a huge element in the game because of how quickly cold hard violence kills a trip and sends people back to 'normal' and out of the junk dreams... but will still be needed (and deadly) for the normal world. I've been wondering if I should use a death spiral system for this, or if it would really be wasted here and I should hang on to my death spiral ideas for a game more suited to them. More importantly the game mechanic is going to have to focus on the extended conflict resolution system for other forms of personal conflict. And before we go there, the million-dollar question - what style of base system to use?

(musings on dice systems follows)

Dice Pools are awesome, and I enjoy using them, but having only run multiple games using two non-additive dice pool systems over the years (Storyteller and Shadowrun), I'm somewhat uncomfortable writing a dice-pool system because I'm afraid I'll end up producing a system that is an obvious rip-off of an existing system, or that I will waste my time and efforts trying to be innovative instead of utilitarian.

Additive Dice Pools I'm pretty sure I'll just avoid - my primary experiences with them have been negative (WEG Star Wars, On the Edge), and the game already has elements reminiscent of On the Edge, being a psycho-surreal RPG.

Skill + Stat + Die vs DC is an old fave, but emphasizes stats often over skills, unless stats use a small range and skills use a large range.

Skill + Stat Mod + Die vs DC seems to be my perenial fave when working on games. One the one hand, this is where my comfort is strong, but on the other hand, that could work against me because the system will feel extremely derivative in my own eyes.

Currently, I'm waffling between Die Pool and Die + Mod vs DC... Die pools have the problem that I don't like d6 die pools (even in my new fave RPG, Burning Wheel, d6 pools seem to rub me the wrong way), and d10 die pools seem over used. d8 and d12 pools are a pain in the ass because the average player doesn't have a large collection of these dice...

Meh.

Brain hurts.

(end of those boring musings)

In the end, what HAS been determined about the system is that we need a scale for special abilities that we can interrupt into two sub-scales - one of moderately super-abilities, and then a higher scale of abilities that are much more potent. The point is that someone who is not deeply immersed in the drug trip won't be able to access the upper scale of powers, and developing a character to the point where he CAN have powers in this scale requiires in turn taking more and more potent and dangerous drugs to use the powers, which in turn makes him more defenseless against the Control Machines if they decide to eliminate him. Effectively, this feels a lot like a variation on the Storyteller system to me, with powers up to level 5 being fairly good, yet mundane, and powers above level 5 being insanely good.

I also want to dwell on a few transhumanist elements in this game - partially because I've been reading transhuman stuff the past few weeks, and partially because so much of the material rings true for me from my user days. Memetic warfare is a great theme to be used throughout the game, with various views colouring people's opinions of what is going on in the Junk Dreams at all, as well as being actively fought over by the Control Machines who try to influence each other, themselves and the rest of the world through memetics. Memetic warfare is also the basic theme of VideoDrome, which is a primary influencer. I also love the Artificial Human Evolution meme - that we can change ourselves and the whole race consciously "now" using our new-found abilities, technologies, and understanding of the world and ourselves. This seems especially apropos for hard-core drug users who end up thinking that they are the cutting edge in new human evolution. In the long term, this could lead to one drug user finally actually winning against the control machines and then trying to guide human evolution through this troubling time... thus becoming the new Control Machine himself, much like the Emperor in Warhammer 40k... except that it is all based on drug-induced delusions and not an actual next evolutionary step. Finally we have the tribal structure of post-humanity as a central theme in transhumanist works, which I want to use here to deal with the different groupsof junkies and what they are trying to do, and how they are changing themselves in the junk dreams to do it. Denise has a fabulous obsession with tribal human behaviour that I've been learning from for years, and which is a central element in our CyberPunk setting, and that will go a long way as a sub-theme in this game.