world of nixon - surrealistic postindustrial roleplaying

[splattergnome]

bailywolf,

your concept is very cool... but i wasn't sure if it would fit my game, since it reminds me a little too much of "superpowers". however, i have put some thought into it, and i have found a comprimise to put it into play without changing the mood too much... using "supercharged" versions of your skills come at a great cost to you... in many ways, and are not possible if you are grounded in reality... but reality is not also "straight", but sometimes "liquid" in the world of nixon... so i would see such abilities as a bonus which you can sometimes use... but not always.


and now for something completely differant
or: my innovative bombing rules

the one single idea for this game i am most proud of are the rules for the bombs.

the -city- is continously being bombed by the those from beyond the veil (ie those who live beyond the eternal atomic explosion of rome). these bombs have a wide variety of effects:

[*]"normal" explosions
[*]doxrine-analph contamination
[*]radiation
[*]"lsd"-bombs... (reality becomes liquid, everyone begins to talk as if they were high)
[*]time-shifts (time moves ahead a few hours... and it is as you had actually lived this time and done everything you would have, but you have no memory of it. note that people at work love this bomb, since then they blink their eyes afterwards, their paperwork or whatnot is completed and if they are lucky they are already on the way home)
[*]cause visions and hallucinations
[*]transfer victims to the land beyond the veil
[*]among other effects...
[/list:u]


i don't want this to be GM fiat. that is one of the main themes of the game - characters have relatively free will and succeed in what they do according to their abilities with little random influence... however, the world is random, and things happen which are even beyond the GM's control and make his job more... interesting. the GM is responsible for NPCs and similar events, the reality (level) itself acts by itself, and the GM has to adapt, making himself a player in a way.

the question is, how do you simulate this? how do you simulate these random bombings which happen every once in a while? then i had the solution:

all clocks, watches and other timepieces have to be removed from sight during play. the GM has a timer-enabled clock. depending on the actual length of the game-session, he sets the timer to regularly ring (or sets it manually each time) a certain amount of minutes, for example 45 minutes or an hour and a half. he then hides the clock.

now the thing is, noone knows how long it will take until it rings (unless the PLAYERS have absolute timesense.) but when it does, a bombing run occurs. maybe several game-days have passed in the meantime, maybe the players have spent the time making plans, maybe they are in the middle of combat... BUT WHEN THE TIMER RINGS, THE BOMBS FALL. the GM rolls on a table of effects... WHICH ARE IN EFFECT INSTANTLY. this simulates the randomness. of course, to us, it isn't random... it'll ring every 45 minutes. but time is relative in a game session, and the players (and the GM) will never know when it will ring.

i happen to love this idea, but i would like to know what you think of it, using an OOC object (timer) to simulate random IC events. i think it is rather original, but then again, i am rather biased ;-)

[Christoffer Lernö]

It's extremely bizarre, but it seems to fit with the setting. I would have to try it in actual play to say totally for sure. It seems like it could work very well though.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

I love your idea for handling the bombs. Mechanics which play with the fourth wall like that are ideal for a surrealist game.

[Laurel]

As a GM, I would probably drift this a little so that I had my bombs pre-rolled and written in order on a 3x5 card so that the second the timer went off, *wham*  I could launch immediately into the bomb effect.  It would still have been randomized, It would still hit the game at whatever period of time the play had moved to, but the game wouldn't have that minute freeze it would take to role the die and look up the chart.   The flow itself would be less likely to be broken and therefore, the dramatic effect improved.

[rafael]

this sounds badass.  like a david lynch adaptation of gravity's rainbow or catch-22 or something.  but darker.

so this is funny -- i was working on a game with tangential references to dresden.  mostly, it's the firestorm, those great winds, the walls of flame, sucking people out of windows into the street -- i can hardly imagine what it was like.

anyhow, the allusion to dresden was surprising, in that regard.  but i love the idea for the game.

question: what, specifically, would characters do in a game?  what would it sound like?  any antagonists?  threats, risks?

sounds cool, i must say.

[splattergnome]

thanks for your kind comments, guys. :)

As a GM, I would probably drift this a little so that I had my bombs pre-rolled and written in order on a 3x5 card so that the second the timer went off, *wham* I could launch immediately into the bomb effect.

i tend to disagree. while i understand your arguments about loss of game time (and dramatic tension), this solution brings another problem: you as the GM will know what will happen next. maybe not conciously, but i can imagine a GM going something like this:

oh, i have such a beautiful scene coming up now... but oh! the next bomb effect was going to be a time switch into the future, and i can't let that happen right when things are going good! so i am going to try to fill up the remaining time with some meaningless drivel to get the bomb thingy over with so that i can continue.

you are probably a capable GM who can overcome the tempation of pacing your gaming session based on what effect is coming, but many others probably wouldn't (i admit that i would probably be tempted, too.)

another solution would be to use index cards... one bomb effect for each card, shuffled randomly. the clock rings, you pick up the first card, turn it over... and *bang*. there's your effect. it is not quite as fast, but definately faster than rolling dice. i might even implement this as the "default" mode for the game, along with dice tables for those too lazy to make some index cards ;-)

You know, I associated it with Brazil right off as well.

well, i know i am going to enrage people with this, but i have never actually seen the movie, despite my constant raiding through all of the video stores over here (in germany). but it is on my list of must-see movies, so... if world of nixon reminds you of it, it must be a good movie *grin*

like a david lynch adaptation of gravity's rainbow or catch-22 or something. but darker.

david lynch was one of my first inspirations to start studying film and write scripts in the first place, and this influence can be seen in the world of nixon. catch-22 is a perfect fit, and although i haven't read it, what i have heard of gravity's rainbow would probably fit as well, in style and atmosphere. but darker, of course. ;-)

question: what, specifically, would characters do in a game? what would it sound like? any antagonists? threats, risks?

answer: anything the characters want ;-) there is no standard answer to what the characters will do, but i want to offer several possibilities in form of sample campaign frameworks along with the game. it is my hope that the detailed locations and npcs have enough adventure potential in them to provide "jumpstart" ideas for a game.

the perhaps most basic campaigns will focus about the secrets of the setting and trying to stop the disintregration of the world started by the eternal (nuclear) explosion of rome. stopping nixon is also a major goal, but it is very unlikely that he can be stopped directly... but his servants can. and in a surrealistic world even "small" things can affect the balance of the world.

and there are enough other possibilities... i am interested in detailing (probably in a small supplement instead of with the actual game) the smuggling organisation named BLACK STAR who are a postmodern-day robin hood, kidnapping rich industrial magnats and selling them into slavery... in the same factories they originally owned, among other tasty illegal business and other interesting guerilla tactics. okay, they have major ulterior motives of their own, but they are the next thing to "heros" that the world of nixon has... and provide the blaxplotion element *evilgrin* don't ask... the answer is very strange ;-)


plans for world of nixon

just to update things, i am planning to post some new stuff on the world of nixon homepage over the weekend and work on the first playtesting draft of the actual game, since it seems that there is some interest in it. ;-)

i would love to thank you all for your support and suggestions.

[splattergnome]

instead of opening a new thread (and taking valuable forum place from other good games ;-), i am added an appendum to what i wrote above. i have updated the //www.worldofnixon.com website and added a rpg section with some short texts. it isn't finished, but i would like to here what you think about it. i am currently working on a new main menu, so in other words: its an "under construction" site. ;-)

oh, and there's still a little bug, BTW... if you click on a link back to indie-rpgs, the title bar still says "world of nixon". i'll try to correct that, but its nice to think that my homepage is aggressively trying to conquer other sites... ;-)

[splattergnome]

although it is quite far from ready, i have written up the first part of the character generation and task resolution rules, for those interested on how the project is coming along. note that these are only the basic rules, and prone to change a lot while i tinker with the dice rules ;-) i am currently rethinking the mundane stat... perhaps i won't need it, since it wasn't actually part of my original game idea, but i'll first have to check how this works. more problematic is probably the skill choice section, i'll have to fill in more detail there.

(note: file is a microsoft .doc file)

http://www.worldofnixon.com/rpg.doc

so, if you have any criticisms or comments, on with them! ;-)


EDIT: the first "official" version of the world of nixon homepage has finally been uploaded last night. you can find further information about the world setting here. note that the ruleset draft can only be downloaded with the link above. thank you all for your support!