[Super Action Now!] A nuclear winter with NO CHIRSTMAS. How sad.

[whiteknife]

So I was planning on running a game of 3:16 with my group, but then two of them bailed and me and the other two players decided to play some super action now! (http://www.angelfire.com/indie/btw/SUPER_ACTION_NOW_3.htm
I had a great time with it last time and I wanted to see how it would work when I added in the "twists from a hat" rule.
The answer?
Excellently! More than that in fact. It made the game so much more fast flowing that I definitely thought it was an amazing addition. My favorite rule, pretty much in any game ever actually. Instant funny, mad libs style.

So, this time the players were:
Me, running Mark, a 'remote control operator' with a drive to stop illegal unicorn poaching
Daniel (a player from my last game) running Joe, a burrito taster with mad D&D skills
and Bishop, playing Jameson, a blogger who could turn invisible (Why? Who knows!)
For assigning traits, my players (used to D&D) decided we should give one of each number 1-5 to each of the basic traits. This worked well, and I found it to be a satisfactory way of doing it. Simple, some choice, and makes sense.

For other traits, we basically just wrote them down until one of us ran out of ideas. I had 10, one person had 8, and the other had 6. It worked out fine though in the end I think. (Some of the greater traits: jumping slightly higher than everyone else, breaking expensive things, throwing pet rocks) When I looked back on how these turned out, they reminded me of the "focused specialties from paranoia, which were some of the coolest things in that game. Maybe you could allows some traits to be added midgame (actually, I think you actually could do this by the rules, but it never really occurred to us to do it). Me and Daniel also picked drives that were hard to work into play and ended up running low on drive points. Again, you can change your drive midgame I think, but amidst all the craziness it never really occurred to us. (Didn't help that I was the only one who had read the rules and only remembered that rule now. Oh well, it wasn't that bad. Although, maybe some loose guidelines could be put in about how much a power should cost. I mean, guidelines aren't funny per se, but neither is running out of drive points early on or having to lose all your points to get a new one).

So, as the game began we decided to use another of the hooks in the end of the document, and we chose "CEO dies, players fight over inheritance." That lasted all of 0 seconds. First line of the game: TWIST! The corporation explodes. Two twists later, still no corporation. Cue tons of crazy PvP as we get into pie eating contests, channel changing fights, and inter-dimensional worm holes (Full of giant worms, of course.) Eventually the blogger used "nuclear engineering" to create a nuke. A twist from a hat made the statement "Christmas tree fire" so we decided the nuke strayed off course and destroyed all the Christmas trees in the world (which were all in one place apparently). That's right- it was a nuclear winter with NO CHRISTMAS. That one got a big laugh. Proceed us going to the Grinch's fortress at the south pole. Apparently, he rode a dragon and had heat vision, although after one player pulled out a dragon slaying sword, it was revealed he rode a drake rather than a dragon. Oh yeah, there's a difference. Anyways, after that the twists from a hat (all 30 or so) had been used up to great comedic effect and everyone's creative juices were as dry as the Sahara in summer, so two quick super double evil erasers of doom later and everything turned out to have been a drug induced hallucination. Go figure.

Overall, I'd say that a re-write of the rules needs to totally stress the twist from a hat thing, since it made things much, much better. That should be maybe the first thing in the rules, right after what the game's about. I'm thinking that next time I play, I'll come with a bunch of pregenerated random stuff to throw in if things run dry, probably from this great site: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

Anyways, great game! Good luck if you decide to pursue it further. Even if you don't you have one fan!
(Everyone besides author reading this: RUN THIS GAME. Go to the link at the top of the post and play it. Seriously. You'll have fun. How can you pass up free fun? )

[Marshall Burns]

Haha!  Fantastic.  It's a good thing that I'm not drinking coffee, otherwise I might have shot it out my nose by now.

And, yes, I'm gonna be pushing the From the Hat rules hardcore in the next version, whenever I get around to doing it.  One thing I'm planning on doing is taking all of the stuff my group has used (we saved nearly all of those little scraps of paper), picking my favorites out of it (such as "A is for Amazing Alligator Attack!" "Gravity will be temporarily suspended; we apologize for the inconvenience" "A busload of violent anti-nature activists") and putting them in the book, with dotted lines so that you can cut them out and use 'em to get you started.

Oh, hey, while I'm thinking about that, why not email me the ones that you've got (marksman45 [at] gmail)?  A large idea pool can't hurt.  And I would of course give credit for any of them that I used.

Maybe you could allows some traits to be added midgame (actually, I think you actually could do this by the rules, but it never really occurred to us to do it).

Yep, it's allowed.  It ended up being kinda hidden, though.  It would benefit from more attention pointed at it.

The Powers & Drive mechanics are something I've been thinking about lately.  I like Drive because it requires you to think about your character's wants, and it encourages you to shape things towards that, and it gives the other players a flag for how to screw with your character.  I also like how it factors into the Inconvenience issue.  It is definitely possible to come up with Drives that are real stinkers, but I figure that's partially A) a skill you have to develop to get the game to deliver in full force, and partially B) something that could be helped through better writing. 

But, as far as Powers, I can't really remember what exactly the purpose of them costing Drive points is, other than "You spend points to use kewl powers in RPGs" -- and, really, that is to say, what is the purpose of distinguishing Powers from Traits?  I remember having a reason, but I don't remember what it was.  Powers aren't more effective than Traits; they're equally effective (potentially, at least).  And I can't think of any Power that couldn't be represented by one or more Traits applied to action.

-Marshall

[JoyWriter]

That game is wonderful! I just read it, although of course only took in about half. I love the way stupidness and clever role-play encouragements go so smoothly together!

Maybe you should keep powers in as a more obvious joke, along the lines you said? So as a gift power-gamers get to make up any power they want, without realising that the people adding traits and descriptions to their characters are actually just doing better. Powers don't fatigue, but they only work once per scene! I reckon you should add some kind of sparkle effect to the powers, so whenever anyone uses one everyone has to say ooooh, like it's a firework. Is that worth the self hosing? For the ardent show off it's worth a lot more!

[Marshall Burns]

JoyWriter,
Thanks!  I'm really proud of it.  I mean, any idiot could have thought it up -- but which idiot did?  Tha's right:  me.

I reckon you should add some kind of sparkle effect to the powers, so whenever anyone uses one everyone has to say ooooh, like it's a firework.

Oh shit, that's hilarious.  It's like the GOTCHA! rule, where you have to say "GOTCHA!" for it to count.

I did come up with another idea for powers, though.  What if, instead of granting dice, powers let you exchange Drive for successes?


Hey, whiteknife,
I got a question for you.  How did you guys go about applying traits?  I mean, what was actually said by the people at the table, and how was that connected with deciding which traits were used?

When I play, we do it one of two ways:
1)  Describe an action, then figure out which traits are involved.  "I flip over the table, grab the skillet, and flick the pancake into his face!  So, that's, what, Gymnastics 4d12, Short-order cook 2d20, 'I like breakfast' 4d8, and, I guess I'll throw in my 5d6 Finesse too."

2)  Pick a bunch of traits and shape it into an action.  Basically, the reverse of the previous.  "I'm going to use my 4d12 Gymnastics, 2d20 Short-order cook, 4d8 'I like breakfast', and, ah, my 5d6 Finesse, to flip over the table, grab the skillet, and flick the pancake into his face!"

They're both great.  The first one is good because you don't limit yourself to mechanical thinking, which frees you to think up something really crazy-ass without fear.  The second one is good because finding a way to link up a series of traits into an actual action requires creative thinking that leads to something really crazy-ass.

[whiteknife]

Sorry I took so long to reply, finals and holidays and all that. But here I am addressing your questions anyways, so here I go:

We applied traits in a way similar to number 1, but I don't think we ever applied more than one at a time. It was something like, "OK, there's a paper falling off a skyscraper, who grabs it first?" and then everyone would go: "umm.... my unicorn friend 4d10 grabs it for me" or "So do I use finesse then?" or  "Twist! It spontaneously combusted!"  (Which isn't an application of a trait but whatever).

As for powers, i think we sort of gave them that "ooh! sparkly thing without being told. Probably do to conditioning by other RPGs but we stuck (for the most part) to traits being something you could do that, while not necessarily constrained by physics, would only allow you to roll to put inconvenience on something or accomplish a task or whatnot, while powers were sort of given the distinction of being able to pull stuff off that otherwise wouldn't be possible. What I mean is that lets take for example the "unicorn friend 4d10" trait and the "flying around on a rainbow 5d12" power. Even though unicorns can fly around on rainbows (yes, they can. Of course.) We sort of played it that you could use the unicorn to fly on a rainbow to accomplish a task, while with the flying on rainbows power you could go off and start another whole thing based on flying on rainbows, like deciding to stop fighting over the remote and going to look for a pot of gold or something. Not that that's the best way to handle things, or indeed even something we intended, but that's how it just fell into place. Although I do like the idea of spending drive for successes, as it seems to justify higher costs, because right now the only metric is "whatever you feel like it should cost" which, while funny and free-form, can cause un-fun when someone chooses their power to cost 9 and runs out of drive.

As for putting the "from a hat" ideas in the book I think that's an astounding idea! I can only remember a few from the last game, but all that means is that I'll have to play again and send you the ones from another session... I think this might end up very fun...

[Marshall Burns]

Man.  That is seriously interesting about the Powers.  I am extremely interested in the ways that things are said, named, and expressed (especially without numbers) influences the fiction and the flow of play.  It's just really hard to talk about because it's sorta ephemeral.  I don't suppose there's any more about the usage of Powers hidden away in a corner of your brain somewhere we can prise it out, is there?

[whiteknife]

Back from a trip, and I've looked at your comment. Hmm... I'll see what I can think of...

OK, here's what I've got. First, the background. Both times I've played so far, the players I've played with have been very heavily traditional. It was solid D&D and final fantasy until I very recently introduced them to 3:16 and FATE, but even then we've only played a few sessions and out of all the story games those are some of the lighter ones. On the other hand, I've read into a lot of theory and tried some of the more "freeform" games, but still I've played much more D&D and pals than story games over time.

Anyways, I think the way we handled things had to do with the fact that "trait" and "power" can be loaded terms, especially when it comes to RPGs. When it comes to a "trait" (which is almost synonymous with skill or attribute as far as the semi interchangeable lingo of RPGs is concerned) I tend to think of it as something you roll to accomplish something. There's really no rules  separating a trait from a power (in fact, some of the traits I chose were "better" at least in the "would like to have more in real life" sense than some of my powers", and actually seeing as they're both limited and costly, they actually are worse than a trait of the same name).

However, powers get the sort of preferential treatment that a skill just isn't given. I found that during play (your results may vary) that the use of a power was less likely to be interrupted and given more weight in the fiction than a mere skill. There's no rule difference besides cost between the crazy kung-fu trait and the crazy kung-fu power (this chosen because something very similar to this came up in the games I ran), but I didn't see anyone even attempt to do anything too off the wall with the trait version. Sure, they'd knock some guy out of bash through a wall, but that's just action movie stuff. On the other hand, when one of my players picked the power version of crazy kung-fu? He was smashing buildings down, making fissures in the earth with one punch, etc. Chalk it up to pre-conditioning or just the fact that having to pay for something makes it more valuable in people's minds (although I don't know about this since he actually forgot to pay for it until I prompted him) but the powers and trait version of something that was otherwise very similar was noticeable.

Anyways, I'm not sure if that would happen with everybody, or even if it would keep happening in later games I would run (I'd guess probably but you can never be sure). If you do want to make there be some kind of mechanical impact though, the amount of drive adding bonus dice or something sounds good. People do like to roll lots of dice.

Hope that helped. I'll be sure to post more next time I can rope together some players. Good luck with the game.