The Iron City

[W. Don]

Hello all. I'm neck deep in the game design trenches, being my first time designing an entire game from scratch. Writing my initial ideas here to structure them and maybe ask for some help.

As brief as I can:
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THE IRON CITY
(c) 2003 WDF

Setting/Color: Sprawling multi-level, urban landscape, driven by clockwork and powered by steam. A totalitarian regime in the guise of a capatalist state.

Characters: Players take on the roles of secret anarchists, out to outwit the ubiquitous secret police and turn society on its head.

Situation: Each character is a member of a cell of underground radicals, all recruited by a shadowy Sunday figure (reference to The Man Who Was Thursday, by GK Chesterton). In their struggle to strike a blow against the ruling order, each character weaves a web of secrets and intrigue, and may often be caught in it.

System: Includes an "emotional" component, where additional dice are given to a character whenever focused emotion kicks in. Emotional content in any given scene can only be tapped for added dice by positing person-to-person relationships in-game. That is, you are considered emotionally charged (and thus gain dice) whenever you aid or confront someone with whom you have a relationship (eg: the other person can be a nemesis, a lover, a loyal friend, etc.). Other emotions such as anxiety, unfocused rage, or a simple mean streak are essentially worthless in terms of added dice.

Secrets: The players possess a number of "secrets" to spin out just after the GM describes a scene, prior to any interaction within that scene. A secret must be: something not apparent to most, include or imply a more-than-passing relationship between one person and another. The player may be one of those persons involved in the secret. If he is, there's opportunity for emotional content (and additional dice).

Advancement: As the cell of anarchists advances, they widen their network of contacts and gain more secrets to spin out. Or maybe their ability to ferret out accurate secrets increases. I'm still not sure about this. Suffice it to say that the characters themselve do not advance. Their training is over, as it were. The cell, however, does increase in it's effectiveness to weave intrigue.

The Cell: The cell itself is structured using trust and secrets. The Sunday (the shadowy figure who originally recruits the players), has gained the trust of each recruited anarchist, and he knows one sure-fire secret of each person he's recuited. The players may define this "Sunday secret" in-game at any point in the campaign they see fit (no need to pre-approve it with the GM or pre-define it). In turn each player may recruit two people under him, each one with a sure-fire secret that the player may define whenever it may suit the campaign. The agents recruited by each player need not be defined ahead of time but may be designated in the same manner as secrets, just after the GM opens a scene.

Quick Example: The GM sets up the scene for a masked ball, there are several personalities taking part in it. One player declares that the lady wearing the toucan mask over there is his secret agent, who is secretly in love with him. (This means that the player has defined one agent, and that agent's secret as well). A gunshot explodes. The girl with the toucan mask lies dead. The player now proceeds to track down the culprit with additional "emotion" dice.

Another Example: The cell is fleeing from the secret police. They are vastly outnumbered, there's no emotional content (ie: person-to-person relationship) involved, so the group is flailing about with no extra dice. Suddenly, Player A defines his "Sunday secret" thus: that he's a member of the secret police! The group is suddenly aghast from the betrayal within their own ranks (additional dice). They utilise the added emotional content to successfully flee, bearing their treacherous comrade with them (so they can interrogate him, and turn him into a double-agent).
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That's the game in a nutshell. A very green nutshell. There is, of course, still a whole lot for me to do working out the crunchy dice details of the whole affair. But I was hoping for some feedback regarding these questions:

1. Are there any other game that utilise the elements above? I haven't really seen or played that many games, and I'd like to know if there are others out there with the same elements as the one I'm working on.

2. Does the "directorial power" given to players in the form of "secrets" above seem overly much? I realise they could well run the whole show if they chose their secrets well -- but then, that seems like a good thing for me. How do I go about refining the way secrets work? Or is the above a good start?

3. Alright. I have to ask this one. I apologize ahead of time if this seems like too general a question. But does it strike you as exciting?

4. I know the write up above seems very initial. But does anyone see any flaws or difficulties in the design?

5. Finally, does it work well as a narrativist-oriented game? (I found out recently that while we don't have much experience with narrativist games, everyone in my playing group is a either a closet narrativist just waiting for the right game to play, or someone who's quite willing to try it out.)

I'm rather new at this whole thing and don't really get the chance to look at other games out there. (The RPG scene in my country is stuck in the dark ages; it's really just d20 and White Wolf here, and sometimes not even those). So I don't really feel experienced enough to step back and take a good look at my own on-going work. Thanks to anyone who can help. And thanks too the whole crowd here at The Forge. Reading all your articles and discussions has cranked up my RPG awareness in a big way, and -uhm- tripled my vocabulary :-)

[ADGBoss]

I think thats a pretty good start.  I will let others judge the narrative content as far as it goes but I do think your headed in the correct direction for that.

One thing with Secrets:

1) When I use a Secret in game, does it refresh at the end the session or does a Character have a finite number of Secrets?

Sean

[Mike Holmes]

1. Are there any other game that utilise the elements above? I haven't really seen or played that many games, and I'd like to know if there are others out there with the same elements as the one I'm working on.

The conspiracy thing has been covered from a lot of angles. Underground has some overlaps in terms of that, and there's always Consiracy X, GURPS Illuminati, and other games that might be useful. As far as the setting/color, I'm thinking that the Urban Anthill Clockpunk thing is a new particular synthesis, but one that's been done in parts elsewhere. I'm getting a Judge Dredd vibe, along with a little Castle Falkenstein. Also, was it a Mike Gentry game that was posted a while back (might be a GO thing) where everyone lived in a very tight envirinment that was all clockwork, and souls drained into the basement when people died...I'm remembering that here for some reason.

2. Does the "directorial power" given to players in the form of "secrets" above seem overly much? I realise they could well run the whole show if they chose their secrets well -- but then, that seems like a good thing for me. How do I go about refining the way secrets work? Or is the above a good start?

Probably a good start. I think that having the power usable only once is pretty cool. You might also want to have some sort of vote or GM veto or something, not to be used so much as to require players to consider the others playing when whipping their secret out. There may be other, more positive ways to do this with more mechanics.  

That all said, such a limited power argues, to me, for a game with a limited duration, and some sort of goal to determine endgame. Otherwise players who can't see the light at the end of the tunnel might be reticent to spend their one time get out of jail free card.

3. Alright. I have to ask this one. I apologize ahead of time if this seems like too general a question. But does it strike you as exciting?

Way too early to say. Could be. Certainly isn't dead boring or anything.

4. I know the write up above seems very initial. But does anyone see any flaws or difficulties in the design?

Nope. Again, still too preliminary. All that you have can be made to work well.

5. Finally, does it work well as a narrativist-oriented game? (I found out recently that while we don't have much experience with narrativist games, everyone in my playing group is a either a closet narrativist just waiting for the right game to play, or someone who's quite willing to try it out.)

This is problematic. Again it's too early to say, though, the idea of emotions as effectiveness certainly seems to lead there. The question will be about fluidity of emotion. If they're locked in place, and the player has to play the character as written, then probably not. If the player can change them somehow, then probably.


Mike

[W. Don]

Hello Mike, Sean. Thanks for your thoughts. Some return fire below:

1) When I use a Secret in game, does it refresh at the end the session or does a Character have a finite number of Secrets?

The way I've initially drafted it is: each player character's secret, the one that his Sunday knows, may be defined only once in a campaign. Further he can define only two agents under him (each with one secret) in the course of that campaign. However, it's entirely possible to set this limit on a per mission basis, refreshed at the beginning of every mission the Sunday sends the cell into. The original option sounds a bit limiting, the second is starting to sound better by the minute.

I'm thinking that the Urban Anthill Clockpunk thing is a new particular synthesis, but one that's been done in parts elsewhere. I'm getting a Judge Dredd vibe, along with a little Castle Falkenstein.

Something like that, yes. I'm picturing a slightly surreal world -- with The City as almost literally all the landscape there ever is, a steampunk-ish Fritz Lang Metropolis. Obscure forgotten levels, mind-control cults, airships, tramways, secret police everywhere. All of which is really just fuel for the players to work into the whole intrigues and secrets angle -- meaning a similar setting can be substituted. Whatever form The City takes, I'm assuming one constant: for someone, somewhere, the "system" has failed -- ergo the anarchist.

That all said, such a limited power argues, to me, for a game with a limited duration, and some sort of goal to determine endgame. Otherwise players who can't see the light at the end of the tunnel might be reticent to spend their one time get out of jail free card.

Great point. I actually saw this happen playtesting a light version of Secrets with my group. Only two of their Secrets were played, out of a possible ten (two each from each of the five characters). A good play structure or some mission completion meter would help with this, I think. I'm going to sit down later to try to work it out.

...the idea of emotions as effectiveness certainly seems to lead there. The question will be about fluidity of emotion. If they're locked in place, and the player has to play the character as written, then probably not. If the player can change them somehow, then probably.

Another good one. I was aiming for the relationships angle to be something that the players can explore with some element of dramatic tension at key points in the game. It's possible for me to lock the emotion-relationship item down (eg: once a nemesis, always a nemesis) and simply rely on the player's sense of timing to call it in whenever appropriate via Secrets. However, that alone wouldn't suffice for my purposes. I'll have to think up on the possibilities that open up during an encounter/confrontation. (eg: do we try to turn him to the cause, or do we kill him now? -- a person's emotional link should shift because of what they choose to do), and work it into the system.

Off to the lab to tinker. Thanks again all.