Diceless mechanic for space pulp

[MikeF]

I mentioned a while back on this forum a rocketships-and-rayguns RPG I've been toying with. It's essentially space pulp, set in a 1930s solar system, where the lantern-jawed men and women of the Space Cavalry fight against the evil machinations of the Sultan of Mars. There are Giant Venusian Flytraps, Leather Goddesses on Phobos, and - oh be still my beating heart - brains in jars. I'm also taking a lot of the political-social-cultural colour of the different moons and planets from the mid-Victorian colonial period. Think Flashman meets Flash Gordon, only with more braiding and added chrome.

Anyway, I've struggled to find a system to run it with. I very much liked Wushu, but I've started to move away from dice resolution and randomisers and more towards resource allocation systems where GM fiat is strictly limited by the resources available. For a while I thought the Token Effort system of In Spaaace! might be the answer - there's a lot to love about that mechanic,  but there are also a couple of things that I'm not happy with. Firstly conflicts get resolved in one go (secret bid, reveal your hand, voila), whereas I like to have slightly more of an ebb-and-flow feel to certain types of conflict. Secondly I'm not all that happy about the secret bidding creating a game-outside-the-game where the players and the GM are trying to second-guess each other's stakes. I'm no good at poker, and In Spaaace seems to me to encourage players to try to trick each other into making bigger or smaller bids than they intended. I want the focus on the story, not the metagame.

So I've been doodling around, and the mechanic I've come up with is this:
- Characters start with four Aspects. Aspects are rated 1 – 4 and can be skills, props, contacts, motivations. One of the aspects is 'negative' (ie a Flaw). Characters also get a couple of Stunts (special powers, super abilities). Players get 7 Story Tokens. The GM gets a number of tokens equal to all the other players' tokens.
- As long as their actions are plausible, characters will always succeed unless the GM or another player challenges their narration and suggests an alternative outcome.
- When challenged all players can lay tokens on the original or the alternative outcome. Players get 'free' points equal to aspect level if the character is using a relevant aspect.
- Tokens are laid down one at a time, everyone around the table having the chance to lay or to pass. Keep going round the table until noone wants to lay any more.
- Players can get extra tokens by reducing an aspect permanently or taking a flaw.
- Highest total score wins, but the loser takes all the tokens bid by all the players during the challenge. If it's a draw GM decides.

I'm hoping that by allowing the 'losing' player to take all the tokens it will create an interesting economy of tokens, where players will need to lose a few conflicts in order to win the ones that really matter. I'm also hoping that by making the bidding open it will avoid the meta-game of In Spaaace. And the more I think about it the more I like this system as a neat, simple, easily managed engine for all sorts of other RPGs.

So, before I get round to playtesting this, what do people think of the open bidding mechanism? Think I'll still run into meta-gaming? Think it can fit with the not-especially-serious subject matter I'm focusing on? Or is anyone aware of other systems that do pretty much the same thing but have already gone through all the tweaks and tests this one will need?

Michael.

[Ken]

Hi-

I think as long as you have a system where strategic play nets you a benefit from the system, you will run the risk of metagaming. In this case, the trick would be to instigate a bidding war (or get involved in a bidding war) early in the scenerio, and lose so you can stockpile tokens. I think this type of gaming is viral; a group is playing and having fun, until somebody (intentionally or otherwise) catches a windfall of tokens from an aspect of the system, and then the game could degrade into a race to fail as many times as possible for the big payoff.

While I don't think you should necessarily ditch this idea because there is a chance it could get misused, I think being aware of it is prudent. Sacrificing success to ensure victory in the future is a pretty cool idea on the surface and could bring some real value to a game. Playtest it, and see what happens.

Good Luck,

Ken

[tombowings]

I really like this idea. However, like Ken, I can see some player's abusing the system. To solve that issue, I purpose 2 changes: 1) a player must either have another player second his or her alternative outcome or give 2 Story Tokens to the GM when announcing his or her alternative action. 2) More than one alternative outcome may be brought to the table, however, a single player may not suggest more than one alternative outcome.

These would be worded better, of course, but it's later here and I don't want to think.

[LordKiwi]

Reminds me of some of the mechanics in Universalis (which can only be a good thing). The windfall of tokens problem can also happen there too.

If you loose enough so that you can win later it can be very heroic (as has been mentioned), but it would only work if you lost in a big enough way, possably a problem since the importance of conflicts to the story is not represented mechanically.

You could limit the windfall effect by breaking the game into scenes....
1. There is a 'pot' of ownerless tokens.
2. When you loose half the tokens go to the pot.
3. You can only use your 'winnings' on the next scene, not the current one.
4. Every scene the pot is shared equaly amoung players (leave odd tokens in there)
5. Scenes end when the 'in play' tokens run out.

This way you can't rake in too many tokens at once and everything gets leveled out a bit between scenes. If you want to stockpile tokens for later you really have to take a hammering now.

Another thought about the system, if you want a real feeling of ebb-and-flow. Every time a token is placed in support of an objective, have the player describe, in brief, what they are doing to help. This not only describes the outcome but it tells you how you got there.

Hope this helps.

[MikeF]

Thanks everyone. Lots of interesting feedback.

LordKiwi: oh yes, I completely agree about using the token-placing as an opportunity for narrating and roleplay. Funny what you take for granted. That narrative ebb-and-flow as the tokens get placed and one person's version of 'what happens next' edges ahead is the absolute focus of what I want to achieve with this system. But I've just looked back over my various notes and scribbles and realised I never once made that explicit. It's the reason I toyed with Wushu as well, but I'm hoping that this way round takes off some of the pressure that Wushu can create. With this you can narrate events turning your way when you place the tokens, but it's the tokens that count for the game mechanic - if you're having an off day and can't come up with the narration you won't get penalised.

I'm struck by the point that Ken makes about this still opening the door to gaming the system. Now I think about it, there's actually a sort of double-whammy effect, because the winner weaker at the same time as making the loser more powerful. If one side stakes 3 tokens and the other stakes 4 tokens the winner ends up being 7 tokens worse off than the loser, and the loser can pretty much guarantee winning the next round (if they want). Hmm.

Tom, I'm not sure having a price for even suggesting an alternative outcome would fix things. If you pay and then *win* you could be in real trouble. And it makes it difficult for someone with no tokens to engage. At the moment, if you have no tokens you could still win if your aspects are high enough.

But I like very much the solution proposed by LordKiwi, where the winner's tokens go into a pot. The winner suffers a game penalty that limits how often he can win, but the loser doesn't gain mechanical advantages if he keeps pressing other players into beating him - he just ends up worse off in the fiction. If one side stakes 3 tokens and the other stakes 4 tokens the winner ends up being 4 tokens worse off than the loser. I like that better. And if you're low on tokens you can still 'burn' aspects to win in the grand climactic denouement.