The Cardboard People

[Kirk Mitchell]

Hey everybody. Been a while since I started my own thread, but now I've got my web site up and running I'll get right to work:

The topic at hand is a game that I made up during a particularly long car ride and my younger brother was getting anxious. On a scrap of cardboard I scrawled something like this

Split 5 points between two attributes: Mind and Body. When you get into a conflict, put something at stake to win/lose. Roll a d6. Odds lose the stake. Evens win the stake. You may roll again for as many times as you have points in the relevant attribute, and each time you must put something new at stake. The last roll you make determines whether you win or lose all of the stakes. You win the last one, you win all of the stakes. You lose the last one, you lose all of the stakes.

That was the beginning of the game that I now call The Cardboard People. It is about bums living on the streets who get mixed up in stuff they shouldn't, from witnessing a gangland shooting or some Lovecraftian horror stalking suburbia. Please have a look at it on my website (it will be in the games section, under "The Cardboard People") and get back to me with any comments you happen to have.

Luck,
Kirk.

[John Kirk]

Ummm.  What is your website's URL? It would really help if you posted a link.

Thanks

[Kirk Mitchell]

Sorry, I was in a rush and sorta assumed that the website link below my signature would be used. The pics on the site don't seem to be working anyways (don't know why though) so I'll direct you straight to it.

http://prison-man.datamachine.net/Cardboard.htm

Thanks,
Kirk

[groundhog]

I like it. I have a few comments and a question or two.

The rule that the character sheet be on cardboard will, of course, be considered optional by many groups. It's a nice suggestion, but binder filler paper is so much cheaper than cardboard.

The presence score is very similar to the presence stat I'm including in a couple of games on which I'm working. I actually call it the same thing in one of them, and I call it "aura" in another, in which that stat also deals with psi and magic. However, unless you give some tradeoff for having higher or lower presence, then people will choose a high or low presence based simply on convenience vs. extra adventure. No one wants extra attention when they are trying to sneak around. People who want more conflicts will start with a higher presence, so that they get noticed more and thus get into more conflicts. This may be exactly what you want, and why you've elected to have people choose their own score. However, some tempation towards higher presence is easy to work into the game. Someone with a higher presence might seem more confident when they speak, might be better able to intimidate people physically than normal for someone of their size, or be able to use their higher noticeability in social situations like panhandling, distracting people away from buddies, or protecting others by pulling their attention away from the horrible things the cardboard people see.

You mention a game master a few times. From what I've seen, it seems that this game may work without one if that was a group's goal. Yet you didn't mention that as a possibility. Why not?

Is it your intention that every Ripple become the effected character's next Conflict? That makes the game very tightly bound, and would allow the players to play without a GM even more easily. If you have a larger group, say eight to twelve people, it could really slow things down to have every conflict in the game lead to another action for, on average, two out of three other players. It would allow off-the-cuff play a little easier, though, as the story is built piecemeal by the players.

Ripples also change mechanics from Conflicts. You're now requiring a d6, where you weren't interested in the number of sides before. If I were to add the Ripples concept to a game which had the Conflicts set up the way you have them, I would try to keep the even/odd idea going.

I worked out a way to keep effect/no effect, good/bad, and major/minor effect intact with even/odd rolls on one die, but it took up to three rolls per person. I'm thinking of some other even/odd mechanics for this as I write.

Perhaps using two dice, you could make it work really well. Two evens is something major good, two odds is something major bad, and an even/odd split is something minor. You could have a second roll on a split to see if it's good, bad, or indifferent if you like, or just let the player decide. Here you're up to half the players, on average, being effected by something major though.

Another two-dice, two-roll method is that if there's a matched even or odd set on the first roll, something happens. If it's a split, nothing does.  I would use the first roll as the determination of good/bad, since you've already determined something is happening. So, two evens means soemthing good, two odds means something bad, and a split means nothing. Only half of all rolls cause something to happen. Then, a second roll determines major / minor. A matched set would mean major, and a split would mean minor. Since the first roll already determined something good or bad was going to happen, whether this matched set is even or odd doesn't need to have anything to do with good or bad, just major or minor. This gives an effect 50% percent of the time and no effect 50% of the time. It would allow for 1/2 no effect, 1/8 minor good, 1/8 minor bad, 1/16 major good, and 1/16 major bad.

Using three dice in one roll makes it really easy, but ruins the math. Three evens is something really good. Three odds is something really bad. Two evens and one odd mean something minor good. Two odds and one even mean something minor bad.

Four dice in one roll seems to work well. If all four match, it's something major. If there's three of one type, then there's something minor in the good or bad direction. If there's an even split, there's no effect or an indifferent/negligible one. Only 1/8 of the time is a major effect happening (1/16 of the time major good, 1/16 of the time major bad). 1/4 of the time a minor good thing happens, and 1/4 of the time a minor bad thing happens. 3/8 of the time, it's negligible. This means that 5/8 of the time something happens.

It seems awkward that a player gets to set up situations for another player that can't be resolved as a Conflict. On the other hand, like I said before, every Ripple becoming a Conflict, which in turn becomes more Ripples will really bog things down. Maybe you should think about what causes a Ripple. Obviously, the resolution of the Conflict from the initial Sighting would cause Ripples. I'm thinking that maybe after that, major Ripple effects could cause more Ripples but that minor Ripple effects could be resolved as Conflicts but with no Ripple rolls. I think this idea combined with my second two-dice idea or the four-dice idea would really make for an interesting use of Ripples while letting the game continue at a more reasonable pace.