My Love For You Is Way Out Of Line

[damion]

Various thoughts:
1)An obvious idea is random duration. Give BoB D20 rolls, even better, gorm, or better yet, nancy could be the keeper of this number. (A Nancy player is pretty useless, but anyway...), so Bob doesn't know how many moves he gets.

2)Art for art's sake is ok, I mean, it's a free game. What do you expect? I figure the only purpose it may have in this case is that you enjoyed making it.

3)You could have a humor varient. I would allow Gorm to mock Bob.("Yoo, squeeze me out, you ninny.") Also Gorm could have minor directorial power by being able to add irelevent details to Bob's justifications of his movements.  

Bob: "I think I'll go over to look out the window"

Gorm: "You see a UFO, but it's gone now, you just KNOW she won't believe you if you say something."

Bob:"Hey Imelda, want a Coke."

Gorm:"To bad for you it doesn't have REAL cocaine, then you MIGHT get somewhere."

Admittably, this would probably ruin the point of the game, which is to be dark, but hey, it's a though. YMMV. It is more playable however.

[Rallan]

Maybe if it was implied that Imelda and Grom have an objective other than staying in-character, and there was some arcane point-scoring mechanism with a few charts, their uselessness could be disguised without changing the fundamental nature of their roles.

 Then again, considering how totally useless and futile Bob's role is, any scoring system for the other characters would take the limelight away from him.

[deidzoeb]

Then again, considering how totally useless and futile Bob's role is...

I disagree that Bob's role is useless.  The player knows Bob is going to die, but his goal is to try to get Imelda to say something positive to him at the end.  That's still worth something.  Sort of like Call of Cthulhu, where players are told that unstoppable monsters will one day eradicate mankind, that most pc's will be killed or gradually lose their minds after a few adventures.  I just got the d20 version a month or two ago, and this accounts for a lot of the discussion on the CoC message boards -- D&D players asking why they should bother playing Call of Cthulhu, what their motivation is supposed to be if players know they're fighting a losing war.

It's also similar to the endings of Thelma & Louise or Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid.  Sad endings, but not necessarily useless deaths, or useless movies.  Butch & Sundance would rather continue fighting against unbeatable odds than give up.  They lose their lives, but they win honor by never giving up.

Dying doesn't necessarily confirm that your actions have been futile.

[deidzoeb]

3)You could have a humor varient...
...It is more playable however.

Yikes!  A humor "VARIANT?"  The original idea is too serious so it needs a humor variant?  I'll definitely add this one.  Gorm as unsympathetic tormentor of Bob would be funny, for people who want to play it that way.  But it only makes it "more playable" to people who would enjoy doing that.  That's like saying vampires are "more playable" than werewolves because I wouldn't want to be a werewolf.

I realize that most people would not enjoy playing Gorm, and that it's just asking people to improvise, play freeform around the rest of the rules.  But I don't think the idea is "unplayable" any more than the thousands of freeform play-by-email or freeform IRC games are "unplayable."  I think it might be an interesting way to get two radically different types of players to enjoy one game: that talkative theater major in your D&D group who loves to play out long scenes of bargaining with weaponsmiths or flirting with barmaids (make this dude play Gorm), and the Gamist who would rather "win" a game than worry about how realistic or literary the game turns out (make him play Bob).

I'd rather drop Imelda or make her an NPC than get rid of Gorm.

For all it's worth, I'm going to extend the "Variations" section to include some things that have been suggested here, and I'm definitely going to write a longer "What's Wrong With This Game Design" page to attach after the end.

[damion]

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the game was unplayable, nor to serious.  This kinda reminds me of the plot of many television shows, so I was trying to draw on the fact that it may be humerous to an external veiwer, but excrutiatinly depressing/embarassing for the people in the situation(more accuracly, the people playing the people, as they know the ending). Thus you could look at it another way and find the hurmor, but like I said, that probably ruins the point.

[Rallan]

I disagree that Bob's role is useless.  The player knows Bob is going to die, but his goal is to try to get Imelda to say something positive to him at the end.  That's still worth something.  

 Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Bob all the way regardless of his inevitable fate. What I meant was that since Bob's goal is such a small and simple thing (get Imelda to feel good about him by the end of the day), expanding the role of Imelda or the sponge to give them their own goals would kind of overshadow what little point there is to the game.



Rallan
- that's always been the big problem with minimalism. Try and fit too much of a message and suddenly it ain't minimal no more

[jrients]

1. Gorm has no apparent goals and can't influence anything in the game, can't be influenced by anything in the game.  Very few people would enjoy watching a game played by others and calling the color commentary.

I think Gorm rules.  I'd love to try playing Gorm.  But I've always wanted to be the Chorus in something Shakespearean or Greek.