MythDeck: supershort 1pg storygame for newbies

[DevP]

MythDeck

Purposes:
(1) A game really, honestly designed for absolute newbies who know zero roleplayers and know a few jokes about RPGs, but will pick this up and play it, and get drawn to this hobby.
(2) This will fit on one side of one page and look awesome, and it will be postered up at random locations.
(2a) Such a brief game will have flaws necessarily; this is okay.
(2b) Any space spent addressing said flaws will not be available for the Awesome Layout. (see #4) Consider this and act accordingly.
(3) Take the core system and specifically spin it (and the setting) for specific subcultures that could accept roleplaying.
(3a) In this case, make this fit for putting up and punk shows and getting played by indie kids at diners, just maybe. (So we can move towards getting our games at Hot Topic or such. Read Ron's old editorial on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4223">Mainstream, y'know?)
(3b) That community already has niche markets, a crossover with the "geek" population, propensity towards alternative/"bizzare" activites, etc.
(4) Eye-catching layout, as possible. (With my current skills, this just means "White text on black", but I'm working on it.)

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PLAYSTYLE: Make a world, make characters, play until you finish. Have a deck of cards and radio (background music) ready.

WORLD-CREATION: You've Heard This Before.

"These stories takes place in worlds like ours, but little twisted." Gothic horror, political violence, conspiracy theories, etc. - basically all the urban legends exist to some extent.

Every person draws one or two cards, and gives the world a twist for each card, depending on the suit. Diamonds change the laws of reality, adding something magical or surreal about how things work. Hearts change how people relate to each other, or how your group is related to each other. Black cards mean you take some fact from your reality and shift it or stretch it a bit. Keep drawing cards in a circle until everyone is satisfied.

"Spades. The Corporations already have private armies controlling the state and doing their dirty work. It's getting desperate."
"Diamonds. Vampires are very real and very deadly, but they're not evil."
"Clubs and Hearts. In fact, they're persecuted by the normal people and by fundamentalists. One of our close friends was a vampire, and was brutally killed by their Hunters."
"Hearts. Ever since, we've been working together to help vampire refugees escape those who hunt them."

CHARACTER CREATION

"Likewise, the heroes are like you - they even share your name - but they've been a little twisted by life. So begin with your own name." ("Jayne." "Steve." "Aara." "Ian.")

Every person draws one or two cards, and throws a twist into their own life, depending on the suit. Diamonds add some luck, chance encounter, magic or destiny into your life. Hearts change something about your heart, soull, or how you relationships with people. Black cards alter a single fact or a single choice from your past.

"Clubs. My parents enrolled me in boxing instead of ballet. I started beating up boys since grade school, instead of just in high school."
"Spades. I actually got caught shoplifting when I was 14, but that only made me more determined to do it right. I haven't been caught since."
"Diamonds. Since I was 15, bad luck ended up coming to people I was pissed off. A dead computer, an ex-girlfriend, or maybe a car accident - you never know. Luck, I guess."
"Hearts. I never met Toby, and I'm still bitter about love; I haven't been in love for 5 years."

Now take your name, and add a title to it. This is your Legend, and this is your new identity.

"Unbreakable Jayne"
"Quick Steve the Robber Queen."
"Aara the Grinning Trickster."
"Deadeye Ian, Master Marksman."

CONTINUE

And with your new Name, the story starts. Begin with the oldest person present, and go around the circle clockwise; each person takes turns as Speaker. As Speaker, you describe the upcoming scene and frame the players right into the middle of the action. You also help descibe what they find and act out the roles of people they talk to.

"The van pulls up to a rusted down factory near outside of town. It was abandoned for years, but this is where Jimmy said to meet the refugee leader."

A Speaker keeps talking until she wants to pass, until the song in the background changes, or until a Conflict comes up.

"But the factory door was locked. The Hunters had them pinned down. They draw their own weapons - sword, axe, shotgun - and you realize that they will not let you get out alive."

Each player decides how they're going to react, and draws one card - or three cards if their action relates to their Legend! The Speaker meanwhile draws up to three cards, depending on how dangerous the conflict is. Each player wins or loses by comparing their highest card with the Speaker's highest card (Aces low, King high). Once you figure out who wins and who loses out, it's the next Speaker's turn, who begins by describing the outcome of Conflict and continuing the story.

And you keep going, until the story ends. Each story must end with every character dead, missing, or driving into the sunset. Once a player's character has been removed from the story, she can help whomever is the current Speaker by filling some roles of the other people in the world.

ALTERNATE PLAYSTYLE

Another way to play these out is wandering from place to place, not describing things abstractly but instead going out to where the myths "take place", and figure out "what really happened". So go to the diner, and recall that "This is where Ian was talking to the Biker Gang, at that table ont he right"; or go by the Church, and recall "Right there, by the arches, this is where Unbreakable Jayne fought for the last time!"
---

Questions:

* What flaws do we come up with here? I'm okay with some flaws - I will add a line near the very end basically saying "want more of a game or world? try this URL." But are there things here which threaten to break the playability? (One possible hitch is the whole people dying bit; I could mandate Everyone Lives, or alternately make it a egalitarian Dial: Everyone Lives or Everyone Dies, decided before hand.

* What Social Contract issues should I try to formally recommend in the beginning (other than, say, that dial above) that won't take too long to get into?

* If anyone's interested in branching a thread into Theory/Connections, what do you think of the term storygaming? (vs. role-playing, which has Connotations but is also potentially vague)

* By the way, any suggestions as to the URL I should put on this one-page, aside from my own, if I want them to start looking at other RPGs to play pust that one? (Do I have to make a special intro page now?)

[DevP]

Issues I just thought of:

* Speakership: I should add more details (and thicker examples) if possible to explain what it means, and give more of a firm definition of how to frame into what you're doing.

* Situation: it was pointed out on an RPG.net thread that D&D was good (ostensibly) in that newbies new "what to do" in that universe. Fighters fight, archers arch, etc. Similarly, I think that this right now suffers a lack of specific Situation set-up and direction; I'll formalize that, perhaps having another round of collective Situation creation (like the World-Building).

* The magical/wierd effects from Diamonds: right now it's used in the example to add something of a kewl power ("bad luck"), but that could be a bit overpowered; and yet, I *want* people to explore using strange abilities. I should probably redefine Diamonds in char-creation to reflect an *interaction* with the supernatural; and meanwhile suggest adding elements of the Supernatural to the character's legendary Titles (so their power is implemented that way).

[Mark Johnson]

I like it.  I don't know how well this will go over with a newbie since experience has robbed me of my innocence.  If you only it on one page, my fear is that without play examples that a non-RPGer will just simply be lost as to what you do.  I am not sure that even experienced RPGers without experience or knowledge of storytelling games such as Universalis will be particularly comfortable with this style of game play.

The sort of game text you are proposing will be a real test of your writing skills.  I am sure it is doable though.

The real test is simply give the rules to non-RPGers and see what they do with it.  That could be the real test of this.  It may work as you envision or not or you may roll 00 on the postion miscibility table and discover some radically new form of gaming.

Things I like:

1) The new song forcing a change in speaker.  You may end up dropping it out of this game at some point, but I like the mechanic a lot.  You could give some kind of bonus if the player's action relates to the song playing.  
2) The fact that it is an "I" game, using yourself as a basis for the action.
3) The card mechanics are beautifully simple and effective.
4) The legendary trait descriptor as character sheet.

Things I would clarify or change:

1) Have Clubs and Diamonds perform different world creation functions.
2) I am not sure that the alternate playstyle really works for this game, do you mean actually go to those locations?  
3) You might have a character who is invoking his legendary trait only draw two vs the speaker's three giving a variety to the number of cards drawn and give the speaker a bit of an advantage.
4) Rather than everybody live or everybody die, give each player that power over his character.  
5) Add some kind of gamist element to play( a score, points, token, etc.)  The person with the highest number at the end of play "wins".  Maybe give the winner of every contested action a point.  This would motivate the speaker to initiate conflict (especially if they get a card advantage over the defending player).
6) I am not sure that you can really deal with any social contract issues of note in one page.

Storygaming is an interesting term.  I have seen the term storytelling game thrown around a lot.  Unfortunately, Vampire tried to ursurp that term.  I think it is still valid and the Vampire connection may not be bad because it might link it back to RPGs.  Also you might consider the term Storyteller over the term speaker for that reason as well.  It is one of the few alternate terms for the person with that power that has any presence in the RPG/LARP community.

Talk Soon,
Mark

[DevP]

The sort of game text you are proposing will be a real test of your writing skills.  I am sure it is doable though. The real test is simply give the rules to non-RPGers and see what they do with it.

I can see that getting in written in a truely newbie-friendly AND experience-friendly manner is a trick. When I write up a full version I'll post up thusly.

1) Have Clubs and Diamonds perform different world creation functions.
2) I am not sure that the alternate playstyle really works for this game, do you mean actually go to those locations?
3) You might have a character who is invoking his legendary trait only draw two vs the speaker's three giving a variety to the number of cards drawn and give the speaker a bit of an advantage.
4) Rather than everybody live or everybody die, give each player that power over his character.  
5) Add some kind of gamist element to play( a score, points, token, etc.)  The person with the highest number at the end of play "wins".  Maybe give the winner of every contested action a point.  This would motivate the speaker to initiate conflict (especially if they get a card advantage over the defending player).

To sum up, I'm taking all of this advice into account. <g> (2): I did intend for them to go to the actual locations (I'm remembering hanging out at the Diner/parking lots/graveyard as a kid) but I think it's a bit out of scope and possibly wierding, so I'll nix it. (3): I'd originally meant it to be 2 cards, and now I remember why, so I'll stick with that.

(1): If I differentiate the black cards, then here's an alternate scheme:
World-Twist: Occult fact / Conspiracy fact / Political fact / Alternate History fact
Character-Twist: Relationships / Success / Failure / Chance Encounter

The thing is, Hearts/Diamonds have very clear meanings; ideally we can have the mnemonically easy red cards and the default Black cards. In contrast, the scheme above definitely needs looking up. Am I overstating this difficulty?

Also you might consider the term Storyteller over the term speaker for that reason as well.  It is one of the few alternate terms for the person with that power that has any presence in the RPG/LARP community.

I should mention "storytelling" as a temporary role for the Speaker, but certainly given the rotating nature of the game, Speaker feels like a more temporary (and apropos?) name.[/list]

[Mark Johnson]

I realize that "Storyteller" is probably too loaded a term, "speaker" just sounded a bit too vanilla.  It is perfectly acceptable though and does descbribe the function pretty well.  You might hit a thesaurus and see if anything fits your intentions better though.

Dividing the black into twisting character facts vs world facts sounds intriguing.  Have you developed this any further?

Punk has me interested in short games at the moment, so this definitely looks like a good candidate for a similar treatment.  Have you had any playtest experience with this?

[DevP]

Dividing the black into twisting character facts vs world facts sounds intriguing. Have you developed this any further?

Ah, that's actually not quite what I meant to say. The character-twisting and world-twisting steps are separate; all I considered doing was using all 4 suits to represent 4 different choices for the kind of "twist". I'm not sure going for a rigourous mnemonic device is necessary, or even helpful.

Have you had any playtest experience with this?

Not yet, as rpg-gaming time is (for me, right now) hard to come by locally, but then again, I could people to give this a quick jaunt once I get this written out in plain human-readable text.