An action movie RPG

[Davicimo]

This is a little something I just threw together yesterday, that's been evlving rather quickly in my mind. This so far nameless game is meant to emulate the style of the action movie genre, without simply focusing on combat like most similar games do. I've tried to make the interaction systems have low search/handling times, and while not being necessarily realistic, match with genre expectations. The system isn't really meant for more than one-shot adventures, but I'm sure with a little tweaking I could devise some sort of experience system. I'm looking for criticism, and advice on how to pull the game more together. Well, here we go.

Characters (and in some cases, objects) have 4 attributes:
Wits - The character's alertness and charisma.
Will - The character's self-control, willpower, and reasoning ability.
Prowess - The character's coordination and agility.
Body - The character's strength and resilience.

Essentially, Wits is mental speed, Will is mental strength, Prowess is physical speed, and Body is physical strength. The attributes are rated from 1 to 5, with 2 being "average".

Furthermore, characters/objects have various skills/abilities/descriptors that fall under specific attributes, chosen freeform, which also fall under a 1 to 5 rating. Untrained skills generally default at a rating of 2, but the GM generally won't let players make certain skill checks untrained, like brain surgery and such. Skills/abilities/descriptors can be anything from "Taking a hit" for Body or "Mad firearm Skillz" for Prowess to "Charming the ladies" for Wits or "Cutting the right wire" for Will.

Skill/ability checks work like this:
1) The player rolls a number of d6 equal to the relevant attribute.
2) Count up the number of dice that are less than or equal to the relevant skill/ability's rating. These are successes.
3a) Tasks generally have a difficulty number, generally from 1 to 3. If the number of successes are equal to or greater than the difficulty number, you succeed.
3b) If the check opposes someone/something else's check, whoever has the most successes wins. If it's a tie, neither comes out on top.

ex. Mikey Burton, NYPD detective and general loose cannon cop who doesn't play by the rules, is sweating in front of an open suitcase bomb rigged to blow any second. Luckily, Mikey has a Will of 3 and the skill "Cutting the right wire" at 4. Unluckily, the bomb has been set to blow if tampered with, and has a Will of 2 and the descriptor "Don't fuck with me" at 5, which means that Mikey is going to have to make every die count. Mikey rolls 3d6 (for his Will of 3), and comes up with a 2, a 4, and a 6, two successes (the 2 and the 4 are both equal to or under Mikey's skill rating). The GM rolls for the suitcase bomb, rolling 2d6 (for the bomb's Will) and gets a 2 and a 5, also 2 successes. Mikey cuts the wrong wire, and after a pulse-pounding second of anticipation, sighs. Mikey has made no progress, but at least he didn't screw up and detonate the bomb.

Characters will also have "hooks", which can be the character's drives/motivations, or certain dramatic traits. The character can add dice equal to the hook when in a situation relevant to his hook. Charaters generally only start out with one or two points of hooks, but I'm planning on making them something that can somehow be bought in play. Hooks can be anything from "Wife murdered by drug dealers" to "War flashbacks". Generally, if the character roleplays the hook, he gets the bonus.

ex. Golden Charlie Kou, an ex-Triad hitman, is tailing two Triad goons through the dark backstreets of Chinatown. Charlie has a Wits of 3 and no relevant abilities, and is thus starting to lag behind a bit, but has so far rolled at least 1 success on each check, and is thus still on their trail. Charlie stops at the street corner as he notices the two thugs approaching a black luxury car parked on the side of the street. The mirrored window rolls down and Charlie catches a glimpse of Lam Jaw-long, the man who killed Charlie's brother, in the passenger seat. Charlie's hook, "Avenge my brother's death - 2", kicks in, as Charlie Kou remembers the look on his brother's face as he was brutally cut down in a hail of gunfire by Lam's hired lackeys, while Lam simply grinned and watched. Lam emerges from the car and leads his lackeys further into the dark alleys of Chinatown, but Golden Charlie Kou has no problem following anymore (he now has a pool of 5d6, 3 from Wits and 2 from activating his hook). It's payback time.

An idea I'm toying with is "danger dice", which are penalty dice added to a pool to represent abstract/eviromental dangers, targetless attacks, or generally bad working conditions that could be dangerous to the characters if they screw up. Got the idea from watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Jones is fist fighting the german by the spinning propeller blades. Danger dice, which would probably be a different color than your normal dice (I'd recommend red) just to make it easier, are rolled with the normal dice pool, but successes on them don't count, and failures cancel out your regular successes. Having more failures than successes is a "bad thing", but just how bad depends on your GM.

ex. Professor Alfonzo Palatti is deep in the catacombs of Paris trying to decipher the archaic scripture in the ancient tome A Treatise on the Invocations of Dark Wisdom. Unfortunately for Alfonzo, the Shattenkorps also wants the book. While Alfonzo's companions hold the Nazis off with sporadic gunfire, there's still the danger of a random bullet flying overhead. Alfonzo has a Will of 4 and the skill "Academics" at 4, and thus rolls 4d6, plus the two danger dice the GM gives him. Alfonzo rolls a 2, a 5, and two 6s with his normal pool, and two 5s on his danger dice, for a net result of -1 success. Not good.

Drama dice are the one-shot adventure's version of experience points. Drama dice are given to a player as he performs an act that significantly develops his character, attempts a difficult or creative action that advances the plot, or just plain does something cool, depending on the flavor of the game you're running. The player can choose to add the drama die to any die pool before rolling. Drama dice don't have to be spent when recieved, but are generally given when they would be beneficial. Drama dice can be spent to buy new hooks, or raise the rank of old hooks, at a cost of three dice per level raised, plus some relevant role-playing.

ex. Aimee Yun is picking the lock of a heavy door in the back alley of a Hong Kong shipping company's dockside warehouse. She has a Prowess of 2 and "Picking locks" at 5, but the door has a Body of 4 and "Unopenable" at 4, which means that Aimee is unlikely to open it up easily. Luckily for Aimee, she has a couple Drama dice tucked away, which were being saved for a new hook. Aimee decides that the door is more important in the short term, and spends the two drama dice, bringing her dice pool from 2d6 to 4d6 for a check. Aimee had better open the lock this time, or start looking for another way in.

ex. Danny Strack, amateur carjacker, is being chased down the interstate by heavily armed corrupt DEA agents. Both Danny and his pursuers are travelling at alarming speeds, and just when Danny thinks he just might be pulling away from the agents, he sees ahead of him a police barricade stretched across the raised section of highway he travels on. Danny decides he's going to take a big risk and take his car off the side of the overpass. He then procedes to describe the action in painstaking detail, describing every slowmotion second of the jump from various camera angles. The GM is impressed, and rewards Danny with three Drama dice, which he's going to need, considering he has only a Prowess of 2 and "Drive like a maniac" at 3. Danny briefly considers saving the Drama dice for a Body check, to survive the flaming wreckage that his car will most likely explode into if he botches this, but decides against it.

Now, the combat system. There is no initiative system, and each action happens at aproximately the same time. If you want to have a quickdraw contest or something, just have opposing Prowess checks. So far, combat is broken down into (generally 3 second, but should be whatever's most dramatic) rounds, and goes a little something like this:

1) Characters declare actions.
2) Characters roll action pool, defense pool, and tenacity pool.
3) Action successes buy actions, defense successes cancel attacks, and tenacity successes cancel damage.
4) Resolve all attacks/defenses/soaks/etc.
5) Repeat.

The action pool is a check for whatever action you want to perform during that turn, be it hacking a computer, performing HK style gunplay acrobatics, planting your foot in some guys mouth, or breaking down a door that bars your escape. Extra successes can be used to buy extra actions, like a punching one guy in the face then grabbing another guy's gun, or to strengthen or modify your first action, like making a punch stronger or making it stun someone.

The defense pool is a generally a check for Prowess + whatever relevant skill you have, be it "Flows like blood" or "Parry, parry, parry!", but can be any check as long as you can justify it, such as Wits + "I knew you would do that". Successes are used to cancel out attacks against you, or can be used for movement purposes.

The tenacity pool is used to soak damage, to reduce previously recieved damage, or to recover from certain conditions, such as being stunned. The tenacity pool is generally a check for Body + whatever relevant skill you have, like "Take it like a man" or "Bulletproof skin", but in the rare occasion that someone could justify it, something else could be used, like Will and "There is no pain".

Also, unnamed characters, or "mooks" if you prefer, are quite dumbed down. Each unnamed character has a 1 die pool at a skill of 4 that acts as either action or defense pool, and no tenacity pool. If you want tougher baddies, bring their action/defense pool up to 2 or 3 dice, but with one dice per generi-guy it's a simple fistfull of dice instead of a character by character check.

The whole combat system is meant to recreate the typical action movie fights, with the characters plowing through nameless goons but having long fights with the meaner baddies.

I'm still working out exactly how damage will work, and if the tenacity pool is even necessary. I like the concept, though, because it lets players recover from a bout of bad luck, and adds to the whole action movie feel by letting characters get hit, but recover from "superficial" wounds.

I'll try to illustrate how a typical fight could go with an example:

ex. Jen Shih Sheng, sword scholar of the Order of the Burning Lotus, draws his sword, the eightfold feared Immortal Dust Leopard, and assumes a Sun Rises over Still Waters stance. Wan Nan Hsieh, the demon trickster of ten thousand faces, merely stands in a loose defensive posture, his face an ever shifting display of Sheng's deceased friends and loved ones. Shen has a Prowess of 4 and "Flickering steel" at 5, a veritable master of the killing arts, and thus rolls 4d6 for his action pool. He rolls a 1, a 2, and two 4s, four successes. He then rolls his defense pool, Prowess and "Like the wind" both at 4, and recieves two 3s, a 5, and a6, two successes. Finally, Sheng rols his tenacity pool, a Body of 3 and "Body hardening exercises" at 4, and gets a 1, a 5, and a 6, for one success. Meanwhile, the demon Wan Nan Hsieh has rolled his pool and obtained two actions, three defenses, and three tenacities. Jen Shih Sheng flies into battle, bringing his blade down sharply at Wan Nan Hsieh's head, intent on splitting it in half like a melon (1 action). Wan Nan Hsieh grins as he flows aroud the blade (1 defense) and strikes back with a newly formed set of talons (1 action). Sheng knocks the lethal attack away with the flat edge of Dust Leopard (1 action) and takes advantage of the opening by quickly bringing the tip of his blade in at the smiling demon's ribs (1 action). The sword slides in to the hilt, through what should be the demon's heart, and Hsieh hisses and spits the vulgarest of curses. Sheng withdraws the blade and swings again, expecting a finishing blow (1 action), but the demon flows back like mist (1 defense) and Dust Leopard rakes nothing but air. Wan Nan Hsieh laughs mockingly as Jen Shih Sheng watches his lethal blow seal without even a scar (3 tenacities). "You'll have to do better than that, monk. Your Burning Lotus style is no match for the likes of me. Your brother's style was much stronger, yet I still devoured his soul with ease..." As Jen Shih Sheng's player cashes in three Drama dice to buy a new hook, Sheng's eyes burn with rage. "Tonight, demon, you die."

[Mike Holmes]

Which of the following have you read/played? Adventure!, Hong Kong Action Theatre, Feng Shui, Two Page Action Movie, and Extreme Vengeance? Just curious as to what your influences are, system-wise.

For instance, your Hook idea sounds like an improvement on the "Melodramatic Hook" idea from Feng Shui. Intended, or accidental?

What do you intend to do with the system? Is this for personal play, or something larger?

Mike

[Davicimo]

The only one of the books listed that I've read/played is Feng Shui. Mainly, the inspiration for this game is, of all things, Dead to Rights (a HK action style video game I've played only a couple times, over at a friend's house), as well as and various action flicks I was watching Sunday night (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Replacement Killers, and Drunken Master). Also, some more "rules-lite" systems I've been looking at recently (didn't used to really like them, but now I dig), like Sorcerer and Donjon, as well as Tim Denee's Final Stand (which I love).  The system's meant for personal play, mainly for quasi-improvised one-shots in the style of Hollywood action blockbusters or HK gun-fu flicks.

The hooks were actually accidentally similar to Feng Shui's. I was originally going to have "hooks" the generic name for advantages and disadvantages, but they evolved into what they are now.

As for damage, I'm considering having attacks have four different strength levels, trivial/minor/major/incapacitating.  Tenacity successes could be used to drop an attack/wound down a damage level. For now, I'd say that an attack can be reduced to trivial, but a wound can only be dropped to minor. If you take an incapacitating wound, you're out of the conflict (killed/knocked out/brainwashed/whatever). If you take x major wounds, same thing, and again with y minor wounds. x will probably be equal to Body, and y equal to twice your body.

Now, looking at unnamed characters, I think that they should be fixed up a bit, because they just don't seem right to me as they are. Too weak in small numbers. I'll keep it in mind.

I'm actually considering how this would work in longer running games or short campaigns, particularly fantasy. The system has been designed so far with short adventures in mind, but I think that its Drama dice system is better than the typical experience and level system in most fantasy games. Drama dice would be rewarded when the characters perform heroic feats, simulating in a way the normal experience system, and would be spent not on making the character stronger or more skilled, but simply used to allow him to be more heroic, as well as giving him a healthy and ever-changing number of dramatic hooks, to round the character out more as the game went along. Huh, just a thought.

[Valamir]

Not that I don't like what you've come up with (I do).

But you might want to take a look as some of the games on that list.

Particularly Extreme Vengence and Two Page Action Movie which have the exact same goals for promoting action movie style play as you as well as about the same level of rules.  Hong Kong Action Theatre is a little more meaty in the rules department.

Extreme Vengence is out of print, but can usually be picked up on Ebay after a minimal wait.

TPAM is from Sean Wipfli, who has a discussion forum down at Destroy all Games.  There should be a link to his website there.

There was also a game by Tim Denee I believe called Final Stand which IIRC was a pure hong kong fight mechanic.  I'm not sure of his web page but if you do a search in the Indie Design Forum on Final Stand, I'm sure you'll find it.

All great sources of inspiration for you...and you may decide after reading them, that one of them fulfills your goals and you can save yourself some trouble.  Or you may find that you can go them one better which would be cool to see.

[Davicimo]

Hmm... I just read TPAM, and I've already read Final Stand, and both are great games, but not exactly what I'm going for. Instead of focusing on cinematic combat, I'm trying to make a system for cinematic conflict. I think that my "combat" system can be abstracted a little bit and used as a system for general conflicts that you want to be more detailed, such as psychic struggles or games of chess or high stakes gambling matches or cooking competitions. Hell, "damage" can be to any attribute, not just Body. A nerve-killing poison could damage Prowess, or a nasty insult could damage Wits.

Here's an example of a psychic using his Will to "attack" and "damage" another man's Will.

Michael Fencer, a ESPer for DNAtion Technologies Inc., is in the process of giving the physically restrained industrial saboteur Dean Karn's long-term memory a nice scrub.

Mike Fencer

Wits 3
Jedi mind trick 3 (mental misdirection)
Saw that one coming from a mile away 4 (minor precognition, also used for combat defense pool)
Will 3
Braino Drano 4 (a rather nasty psionic mind wipe)
Prowess 2
Good game of darts 3 (I don't think I need to explain this one)
Body 2

Dean Karn

Wits 2
Monkeywrenching 4 (the simple skill of making technology screw up)
Will 3
Brick wall 4 (keeping what's in your head yours)
Demolitions 3 (making things go BOOM)
Prowess 3
Punch things until they stop moving 3 (a.k.a venting steam through the knuckles)
Body 2

Mike rolls his action pool (Will and "Braino drano", using sheer mental strength to attack the mind), and Dean rolls his defense pool (Wits and "Brick wall", trying to outwit the psychic by keeping his thoughts roving) and his tenacity pool (Will and "Brick wall", trying to hold his mind together by sheer force of will). Mike gets 3 action successes, and Dean gets 2 defense and 2 tenacity successes. Dean manages to shut out Mike's mental probing for the most part (2 actions/2 defenses), but doesn't seem to be able to remember his first kiss, or what kind of car he drives. (1 action/2 tenacities to bring incapacitating damage to Will down to minor damage to Will). Five more hits like that and Mike's mind will be wiped squeaky clean (or two more hits like that and a major hit, or two more major hits, or one incapacitating hit).

[Davicimo]

Ugh. I just realised that the skill/ability rating really works better as the number of dice rolled, and the attribute rating as the target number to roll at/under. For example, a man has Wits 4 and "Charming mofo" at 3, so now he rolls 3 dice and hopes to roll under 4 on each, not the other way around. Makes more sense, really. Nothing else has to be changed, as far as I know.

[Mike Holmes]

Ugh. I just realised that the skill/ability rating really works better as the number of dice rolled, and the attribute rating as the target number to roll at/under. For example, a man has Wits 4 and "Charming mofo" at 3, so now he rolls 3 dice and hopes to roll under 4 on each, not the other way around. Makes more sense, really. Nothing else has to be changed, as far as I know.

You know, I've seen a couple other systems like this. In fact, Ralph had proposed that we use something like this early in the development of Universalis. What we noticed statistically, and I thought that you might find interesting, is that the best combinations of stat and skill in such systems are where they are both equal. That is, if I have a 3 skill, 3 stat, that produces better results on average than say 2 skill, 4 stat, or 4 skill, 2 stat. The one that covers the dice is the one that extends the range of possible results, and the other extends the likliness that successes will occur in that range (its interesting that we, too could not decide which would be responsible for which; in the end we just went with one tier).

This mechanic produces neat effects. It has one potential problem, however. Players who note the above facts will tend to take middle of the road stats and skills. Especially if chargen allows these both to be taken from the same pool of points.

OTOH, there's the classic default problem.

How do you envision your chargen?

Mike

[Davicimo]

I've been thinking about chargen a bit, and I'm planning on using seperate attribute and skill points. Something like,

Mundane - 4 attribute points, 3 ability points
Skilled - 6 attribute points, 6 ability points, 1 hook point
Heroic - 8 attribute points, 6 ability points, 2 hook points

All attributes start at a base of 1, with 2 being the human average, and all the abilities start at a base of two. I'm thinking that "weird power" abilities (psychic powers, super powers, cybernetics, etc.) may be considered to start out a 0, but I'm not really sure yet.

I assume I'll have to monkey around with these a bit, because this is all off the top of my head, and pretty well untested.