Panels, again

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Clinton,

A couple private messages with some people later ... I came up with this.

See, if (say) Spider-Man gets all his relationship-ducks in a row, there should be no chance for failure against the Big Threat, narratively speaking. Oh, there may be a price to pay or something, but the conflict with Galactus is a wrap, once those relationships have been invoked. Inserting a Fortune mechanic to see "whether" that occurs is plain nonsense (and it's why superhero role-playing ends up being so heavily railroaded and fudged, in practice).

So I was thinking more along the lines that Panels would be about which relationships got involved, how they got involved, and consequences of their involvement, rather than whether "it works" once they are involved. Seems to me that Fortune should most, well, Fortune-like, i.e. chancy, regarding the which and how and consequences - but not so much in terms of the big showdown.

Best,
Ron

[Steve Dustin]

Panels are a great idea. It would make the game very visual, and give a great feel.  Panel Points seem really promising.

A couple thoughts/questions:

What kinds of (and how many) actions are encompassed by a Panel? If you are thinking of panels as I'm thinking of them, really you'd get one main action and maybe a couple of quips to jab back and forth with villan. If you were figuring out how many panel points you have for the panel each time, it could bog the whole thing down way too much. Maybe you'd have X amount of panel points for the number of triggers invoked for a scene. The GM sets up the situation but the players then spends those points on each panel until the scene plays out. For example:

GM: You're confronted by three thugs. You know your girlfriend is in the back, cuffed to a chair.

Player: ok, I get 12 points for my girlfriend trigger. I spend four points on this panel to do a triple head kick. Next panel I spend 4 more, sending those goons into a pile of crates, knocking them over. My next panel I spend 1 point on a crazy quip, "Take that, Blockheads," (ok, I couldn't think of anything better). The next panel has me untieing my girlfriend.

[ok, it's not a very ingenous example, and I imagine you would have to do more then that to make it cool, but ... that's the basic gist]

The game play itself is in the process of creating its own comic book.

This kind of leads to my next point: maybe you should drop dice resolution all together and make the game a bidding Karma game. The player will want to invoke as many triggers as possible, so to gain as many Panel Points to be able to create panels in his favor.

Anyway, just thoughts,

Steve Dustin

[Jared A. Sorensen]

You say that you rip a flagpole out of the ground and beat him in the head with it. If you have enough Power (probably 4 for this), you'd add a Power die to the scene for beating him down.

It goes without saying that this is the way I'd do it. But there, said it anyway.

I really dislike superhero games that give a "Power level X can lift this much/run this fast/eat this many hot peppers."

I think that it's perfectly reasonable to let any player have his character attempt any action that he thinks his character could perform.

Por ejemplo, my gravity-defying dilletante The Suit isn't strong enough to rip a flagpole out of the ground. I just know this. Why? 'Cause he's my character (of course, he could lift a flagpole that was uprooted using his powers of density-manipulation).

However, in the comics, the abilities of superheroes are rarely consistent from issue to issue (ahem, Superman, anyone?). So it's okay if all of a sudden you whip out the heat vision if it's not part of your character. To say this is "cheating" is to miss the point entirely.

Also...and this is kinda silly but bear with me.

The art of comics uses a pencil/ink process where the scene is drawn in pencil, then "traced" (hahaha! your mother's a tracer!) and defined by ink. What if Panels used a similar process. One where the scene is setup and resolved in a bare bones, mechanical way. Then the scene is replayed (traced) with added details, modifications, etc.?

Wacky, I know. I can see Clinton grimacing even as I type this... ;)

[Steve Dustin]

And wait, I'm ripping (RIP!) apart with ideas all the sudden.

You should get bonus points for putting sound effects into a panel. ("I whip my razor-blade frisbee across the dock, knocking Dr. Retardo freeze raygun from his hand! ZING!")

Ditch the GM. Instead, have 1 (or more!) player(s) playing the villan, everyone else is a hero. Everyone at the table is constrained by the same rules to develop and create panels. You pay panel points to be in a panel and pay to get certain things done. Everyone is effectively the GM (and you can run villan-only panels), because everyone is setting up whatever panel they want to be in. Like I said, the object of the game is to re-create a comic book, with everyone involved.

Ok, its really half-baked. And I have no idea if you are even interested, but I'll bounce my ideas off you anyway.

Steve Dustin

[Buddha Nature]

So all of this talk of superhero games, comic books, and the combination thereof reminded me of two games I played way back in the day:  Good Guys Finish Last and Villains Finish First.  They were printed in Space/Fantasy Gamer magazine and created by Better Games.  They have been compiled into a package called Avengers of Justice.  There is an RPG.net review here.

To be honest I didn't care for them that much - they were more about roleplaying the comic book creators than the heroes themselves.  Go ahead and take a look, maybe it will help, maybe it won't.

Rememberances of things past...

-Shane

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Ron,

It sounds like you're advocating a Karma-based system (with a heavy dollop of Drama), which is a complete revision of my ideas so far.

(I still wonder, as I have in several private messages with you, where your idea of Panels came from. It's not the original game I had written, certainly.)

Two ideas:

a) If I don't require that triggers be matched (that is, have a positive and negative side), I could have a mechanic that allows you gain successes for taking negative triggers or losing positive ones. Example:

The Dark Avenger is fighting the NKVDemon, and it's the final scene. The Dark Avenger's girlfriend (who doesn't know his secret identity) is being held by the NKVDemon, and the Dark Avenger's got to stop him from setting off a bomb that'll blow up New Jack City. The Avenger's player rolls and gets 4 successes, compared to the NKVDemon's 7.

The Dark Avenger has the trigger "Loves girlfriend: +4" as a trigger. He burns all four of these points, kicking him up to 8 successes, and stopping the Demon from setting off the bomb. Of course, burning all four of these has an effect in the story. Perhaps the Demon managed to rip his mask off during the scene, exposing his face to his girlfriend - who hates him for lying to her and putting her in this amount of danger.

Option b) Move to an entirely Karma and Drama based (diceless) system. I, well, am not going to do this. I had a whole idea, but scrapped it somewhere above when I realized it kind of sucked. Honestly, I have one diceless system in me, and it's already taken for something else.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Everyone else,

Not ignoring your posts. I started that last one right after Ron posted.

That said, it again seems like most of you are advocating a completely different game, which, to be honest, if you want - write it. The ideas aren't bad, but some of them (no GM, all Karma, "tracing") are a different game entirely.

If I did a Karma based system, though, I think Steve's first post has it down pat.

[Kenway]

This rpg looks to be really gaining steam.
 Just some more random considerations you may want to discuss:
 -Should pc heroes be allowed to "die?"
 Maybe there can be rules where you have to revamp your triggers/powers before you make your big comeback.
 -Since Blake mentioned Risus, maybe there should be some simple team-up rules like that game.  ("Colossus!  Fastball special!")

 -Temporary triggers?  These might work where a pc or pc team gains a temporary trigger for the duration of the adventure, to underline the dedication to their exceptionally difficult mission.  I'm thinking of DC's Crisis from the 80s where the Universes were at stake.  I might be misinterpreting the meaning of the "triggers" though, here.
 -Shared team triggers?  These might emphasis the direction of a team, and discourage characters like Wolverine from going out on his own to kill a bunch of people.  (ie. the x-men are supposed to help mutantkind and therefore gain a trigger to do so, but if wolverine "leaves" the team he loses the bonuses... and penalties)

[Jared A. Sorensen]

-Since Blake mentioned Risus, maybe there should be some simple team-up rules like that game.  ("Colossus!  Fastball special!")

The "Fastball Special" (Colossus throwing Wolverine at some unlucky mook) would just be an example of two characters using their Spheres together. In this case, Adamantium-clawed Feral Mutant and Armored Giant (or whatever).

I think.

[Andrew Martin]

Jared, but what about the inevitable PC hero vs PC hero fights that occasionally break out?

In player character vs. player character situations...does it matter who wins? I mean, sure it matters to the characters -- but does it matter to the players?

I've implemented this kind of system in my Swift RPG rules and have been play testing it with a fellow GM and players. It works well for the most part, except that detailed combat isn't yet implemented. When PC fights PC, the Swift system handles it as well. Both players simply roll. It does mean that fights can go on for a long time, or until players choose not to succeed.