[Dungeons for Dummies] Notes: Character Creation & Scene

[daMoose_Neo]

Dungeons for Dummies

Imp Character Creation
Scenerio Ideas

Premise: Instead of playing a stalwart band of intrepid heroes, players take on the role of a Horde of Imps- mildly evil though fairly inept stooges of a wannabe dark over lord. Instead of traveling the country side, hunting monsters and treasure for glory, players construct and maintain a dungeon, populating it with Monsters, Treasures and Traps, all to lure adventurers to their doom, all for approval and praise from their Master!

What I have here are some notes on character (Imp) creation and scenerio ideas. I've tried my hand before with a "comedy" rp, but found the mechanics a little too stiff, forcing "comedy", and the subject matters a little too limited. With DfD though, the idea just hit me and I started right in! Mostly the work of this past weekend, I'm also working up other notes and ideas for the Master, the Villagers (who may or may not figure into a 'campaign', depends on the Narrator), the Adventurers, Dungeon Design, and the Monsters, Traps and Treasures.

Notes on the character creation: I like simplicity. In fact, the last attempt (Backstage RPG) I wanted a statless, diceless system. Doesn't quite work.
What I did for the Imps is I took the basic stats common to d20 and several other systems, put an imp-ish spin on them, and parceled them out: Each Imp gets 1 stat only, an Impish version of the "real thing". What I want this to do is encourage players to work together during the execution phase of a scenerio: it will take all of the Imps together to act as a "Complete" character. After the fact however, the part where rewards are dealt out, the Imps also need to be able to fight credit for success or pawn off the blame of failure.
What I'm looking for with this: die mechanics, or suggestions there of. I'd like a d6 system, possibly a d10. I'm playing with some ideas now, using a Difficulty/Challenge rating vs. d6(10) + Prime Stat, as well as some variations for group efforts.
Also need to work on pricing archetypes, quirks and traits, and talents, but thats more a playtest issue for the moment.
Also general comments on the idea or what not are welcome as well. Looking mostly for mechanical insight at the moment:

1) I like simple, would like diceless (already have a rough, point based Character creation I'm building off of)
2) I'm not looking for complex realism and the players partaking in actual combat would be almost nill. If they did (and I did use dice), I am looking more toward a "conflict resolution"  than a sequence of combat.

Thoughts, suggestions, commentary, or other works I can look at, let me know! Thankee~

[Keith Senkowski]

Hey,

Have you considered using Elfs for this?  This sounds like a combination of the 2nd Edition AD&D Reverse Dungeon and Elfs.  I can attest from playing Elfs that it would be ideal for a humorous game like this.

Keith

[Tobias]

This is cool! The imps as dummies that need to work together to become the 'complete' character (or collective) is great, and working together to divvy up loot and pass blame is also cool, AFAIK.

I've been thinking on 'group' play myself for a while (where players play a closely intwined group, so one thing I am looking at is a shared pool of collective hitpoints, which might be useful to you as well), and I think the 'real thing' stat idea is cool.

I'm not familiar with the 'Reverse Dungeon'  (and would appreciate a link), but something else you might want to look at is Great Ork Gods, for its treatment of expendable Orks (and goblins, even).

edit: read those two links as well - and I love them. If you ever need a playtest of this puppy - I'm your guy. On the 'smart imp' thing, though. While it would be fine and super if the smart imps were the natural leaders, because things fall all to hell slightly slower with someone who can think at the helm, you might have a thought about the devious imp always being in the way of the smart imp for the leadership position. Not because the devious imp is brainy about it, but because he just attracts attention, social creature that he is. You could also have an 'alpha' kinda thing, where the most appropriate imp is the leader, at different times (and types) of need. That last bit certainly isn't neccesary, but some might like it.

[Inner Circle Inc]

Facinating concept you have here, I'm currious though how players would react to the idea of not having accual imp on adventurer combat, and how character development and roleplaying would be carried out, if at all.  Do you have a more complete rulebook laying around somewhere that gives the basic rules, or better yet, a sample game woudl be great.  The senarios you offer promice to be ammusing, but I would like to see, from a player's perspective, how the game would pan out, and most importantly, would people have fun playing it.  I look foward to seeing what comes of this, like I said, you've got an interesting concept here.

As for mechanics, diceless would likely be the best for this kind of a game, though some degree of random chance would likely become inevitable, perhaps if you ran off of a karma system, with each point over the minimum being an additional success against the task, if you are a master at rigging a trap, then while you could set an extremely complex trap  to work normaly, you could set a simple trap to work abnormaly well.  Since you don't have "combat" per say, you might want to include "cheerleading" or some form of support so that they could buff the monsters they've hired, or something similar.  In Strife, we've assigned a set HP and AP for each character and a set ammount of damage for each weapon, if you did that, then combat would be a known factor of getting the right monsters in the right room to combat the character group. . . sort of micromanagment.  But that's looking at it from a serous perspective, feel free to take or leave any of these ideas and run with them.

Paul of Inner Circle

[Tobias]

Inner Circle's post made me think of those old pinball-like marble boards. I don't know if you have them, in that case, just think of a pinpall or pachinko machine. In other words, marbles go in at the top, bounce around over a number of obstacles, and wind up in one of several end containers.

You could have the adventurers be the marbles, and the board/machine the dungeon. The Imps set up the monsters, barriers, etc. to guard their evil overlord (who the adventurers want to slay and get his treasure - an outcome which would be the most favorable result for a marble to end up in).

'Play' is in the Imps setting up the board, trapping or persuading or training monsters (heck, or cleaning up their do-do after them), making the corridors, traps, trap doors, etc.

Then just have some rules for the marbles/adventurers falling down through the dungeon.

[Keith Senkowski]

I'm not familiar with the 'Reverse Dungeon'  (and would appreciate a link), but something else you might want to look at is Great Ork Gods, for its treatment of expendable Orks (and goblins, even).

Hey,

Sorry, should have added the links in my first post.

The Reverse Dungeon was a TSR product/adventure where you play the goblins/monsters fighting off the invaders (adventurers).

Elfs really is an ideal game for running goofy crap.  It adds lots of new life to old DnD mods...

Keith

[daMoose_Neo]

re:Elfs - And I'm kicking myself for not doing more than thumbing through it at GenCon!!

As to actual play notes or more complete rules: notta. As I said, those documents posted represent the work of this last weekend alone. The game itself was a wacky concept that struck me before GenCon and this has been the first chance since that I've had to re-examine it. Working up notes on the specifics of Dungeon Design and the Master right now, some friends are cooking up ideas for the "beastiery" (including "Socks" The Demon among others).

Personally, I think 'role playing' is a must. The Imp Archetypes tell you what *kind* of Imp you are, how you act I want to determine the gameplay, hence the leaning toward a diceless or really limited die involvement. Plus, for myself and the guys I usually game with, given such a character to start with almost instantly leads to some level of roleplaying - hell, you should see them when we're brainstorming at work, its a regular circus!
Plus, for the Imps I'm not seeing a real internal reward system (They're Imps- they live in squalor- the best they can hope for, and will be shown, is a wee little bit of praise in the form of a backhanded compliment ("good work for a pint-sized pea brain!") and the classification of Imp "levels" (slime, worm, peon...up to "minion", the 'highest')). Thus, killing everything won't do anything for you- you'll at least have to think a little if not play the part of your Imp really, really well.

When it comes to the Dungeons I'm really into the "day to day maintance" concept- not a predominant part of the gameplay, but certainly a must on one level or another.
As for Imp vs. Adventurer, I don't want actual combat (My Imp swings for a punch!) but rather allow the players to use their Imps unique stat some way or another (ie A Devious Imp w/ a high Morph convincing one Adventurer his partner is really an Imp in disguise or a Tinkering Imp laying a well hidden trap and (somehow) luring the adventurers into it. OR, a Tinkering Imp lays the trap and the Devious Imp tricks the adventurers into it). The BDI could get away with a physical altercation as could a Crazy Imp suitably played, but that would all use the same "resolution" mechanics as opposed to a dedicated combat system.
Cheerleading, now thats an interesting situation worth looking into (Can see it now - "Dungeons for Dummies - The Imps Guide to Cheerleading"!) heh-

btw, reminds me, and I had pondered this. Nod to Tobias on this - the "for Dummies" titles are supposed to be heavily trademarked and defended, thus calls for a new name. Considering:
1) Dungeons and Dummies
2) Dungeons for Imps
3) Imps! (and to steal, I think Keith's idea, have in really really really small type "Based in no way on the game" followed by "Elfs! by Ron Edwards" in larger type to take up the rest of the page ^_^ j/k)
4) Dunegon Master 101
5) Dungeons and Imps

or something else~
Anywho, working up more notes, going to try to hit my guys up for a rough game one night here. I have in my head the ideas, I just need to do a lot of costing and finalizing on the vauger points. And some filling out of Imp Archetypes is definetly needed.
Also welcome to the ideas of additional archetypes if anything crops up for anyone~

[Tobias]

Plus, for the Imps I'm not seeing a real internal reward system (They're Imps- they live in squalor- the best they can hope for, and will be shown, is a wee little bit of praise in the form of a backhanded compliment ("good work for a pint-sized pea brain!") and the classification of Imp "levels" (slime, worm, peon...up to "minion", the 'highest')). Thus, killing everything won't do anything for you- you'll at least have to think a little if not play the part of your Imp really, really well.

I liked the 'try to get praise and shift the blame' bit, and I like what you wrote above as well. Of course, Imps are probably not allowed to keep more than trinkets - but they might have hidden stashes when Nobody Is Looking (which would be an interesting explanation for why monsters and other assorted nooks and crannies are abound with treasure in classical dungeons - it's been put there by the none-too bright imp. "Nobody would think a beholder had a sword in his pocketsessss!").

btw, reminds me, and I had pondered this. Nod to Tobias on this - the "for Dummies" titles are supposed to be heavily trademarked and defended, thus calls for a new name. Considering:
1) Dungeons and Dummies
2) Dungeons for Imps
3) Imps! (and to steal, I think Keith's idea, have in really really really small type "Based in no way on the game" followed by "Elfs! by Ron Edwards" in larger type to take up the rest of the page ^_^ j/k)
4) Dunegon Master 101
5) Dungeons and Imps

1) is a cool title for the same reason 'for Dummies' would've been - the reference to something everyone's seen before.

3) Laugh. You could mention "Orkz" (the boardgame) as well, then.

4) Also a laugh - did you mean to misspell that?

[daMoose_Neo]

re 4): Nope, that I did not, but fits! Have the logo or something be all scrawled out in Impish writing, heh ^_^
Could work as a title ^_^

Hmm, that also works, might allow small hordes for Imps ("Hmm, Master won't miss this gold piece or two..." as the Crazy Imp walks off with arm fulls of gold).