[MADCorp] buddy mechanics?

[Marshall Burns]

MADCorp is the game of corporate dungeoncrawling horror. (You heard me). You work for MADCorp, the Mercenary/Adventurer/Dungeoneer Corporation. You do the dirty work of going into the dungeons, and MADCorp owns your balls because you're an undesirable and this is the only job you can get.

Gameplay-wise, it's mostly a traditional dungeoncrawl for Gamism, but a really really cool and colorful one. I mean, in how many other games can you perform feats like touching a 9-volt battery to your tonge in order to throw chain lightning, or spiking your hair with the blood of the innocent for a bonus to your necromancy?

A thing that I want, more for Color purposes than anything else, is plenty of characterization and banter on the part of the players as they play their PCs. I want them to have conversations and personalities. I want them to crack macabre jokes with each other like paramedics. I want them to have reactions when their buddies get blown up.

What I mean is, along with the tactical and strategic fun, I want to make sure that the players have some degree of emotional attachment to their characters, and each other's characters.

An idea that I hit on, but have no idea how to implement, is some sort of buddy mechanic. With each person in your crew, you have a "Buddy Score" of some sort; it starts out low when you don't really know each other, but goes up through interactions, conversation, saving each other's life, that sort of thing.

Conceivably you'd be able to call upon this for some sort of Budy Roll to get some sort of bonus when acting with or onbehalf of your buddy.

That's an idea, at any rate. It's very nebulous at the moment. So I thought I'd start a thread, which tends to really help with nebulosity.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to implement this sort of thing? Anyone know of anything similar that I can steal from? I hear that the Hx mechanics in Apocalypse World are sorta like this, but I don't know anything about them.

Also, any other ideas to encourage the buddy/comrade Color, and attendant banter, would be appreciated.

-Marshall

[M. Burrell]

The first thing I'm reminded of is Paranoia - the game, for those of you who don't know, in which a mad, omniscient super-computer sends you, the Troubleshooters, to shoot trouble in the bowels of Alpha Complex. A little slapstick, a little 1984, a lot of summery-execution, frantic betrayal and party self-wipes.

So the question arises, in a world of corporate power and subterranean murder, is it always more fun to keep the party working together as buddies? Well, it's your game and I'm sure you have a certain feel you want to put across, but it's a thought.

Perhaps 'Buddy Points' could be added. Given out for being awesome, interacting and developing character they allow the re-roll of a dice (or somesuch) when used for yourself but have double the advantage if given to another in the scene.

Not without problems, but it immediately promotes team play.

[Marshall Burns]

I'm only vaguely familiar with Paranoia, unfortunately. But I think I get the thrust of what you're saying.

I'm really not in the mood for abstract, player-modulated point systems, for this game. The whole thing is very in-game cause and effect, and although it's often weird and abstracted, it's all derived from concrete details of what's going on in the situation.

And, you're right, I don't want to force the formation of buddy relationships, but I want to encourage it. Mainly because there's going to be a lot less PC/NPC interaction in this game than in many, so more PC/PC needs to happen. (Some guy at theRPGSite actually went as far to say that the game might be better as a boardgame, due to the relative lack of PC/NPC interaction. I don't believe him, though.)

I should note that this game has no PC advancement. The company levels up (and down) based on your profits, which changes your team's budget and the quality of employees and gear you're able to get, but the stats of the existing PCs don't change. There's also a pretty high risk of character death; anything you get hit with, there's at least a 1 in 20 chance of it being fatal.

Given that many of the moves in the game incentivize putting yourself (and sometimes others) at risk, they are tools for winning in the long term (maintaining a profit) but not in the short term (staying alive). Which is intentional as part of my goal to poke fun at shit jobs and the insane demands that corporate work environments place on people.

But my point is, it's really easy to get yourself killed. You're allowed to play multiple characters, and new ones are created by a few dice rolls and a few choices, so being shunted from further play is hardly a concern. But what happens when you've become attached to a character that's just been killed? You can't do anything about it, and there isn't (at present) really a way to prevent it reliably without sinking the company in the long term.

The Buddy thing could present an out for this. Something you can pursue if you become attached to a character (or characters), but you don't have to worry about if you don't want to.

Perhaps everyone has a Buddy Sheet. It has a list of everyone in the team, with numbers beside them representing their relationship to your guy. Suppose they all start at -1 (after all, all of these PCs are rather antisocial types). These go up over time through interaction, and when acting with or on behalf of your buddy, you can call on the relationship for a bonus to a roll (bonuses are granted in dice; it's a "Roll X dice and keep the best" sort of thing, unless your roll suffers a negative modifier, then it's "Roll X dice and keep the worst"). Given that important details often rest on a single roll, and that the most effective moves in the game are made by combining the talents of two or more PCs (I won't tell you how, 'cause that'd be a spoiler; the game won't spell them out, and it'll be the players' job to spot them), the Buddy Bonus is actually quite attractive.

(This would also give me an excuse to use corporate buzzwords like "synergy")

But, problem: what is the system for incrementing the buddy score?

I'm comfortable with "GM says so" in this project. He gets a lot of say-so in this game, but has a clear and firm set of directives to follow when exercising it. But if the GM says so, what are his criteria for this?

[David C]

on a purely mechanical note, you could...

have each player have a buddy score with each other player.  Each session, this goes up by one.  They can also get buddy kudos from their GM for acting particularly friendly. (Maybe have a mandatory Kudos the GM must give each session.)  If a character dies, your buddy scores with that character die as well, and you start at 0 with their new character. Once each session, per buddy, you can perform a stunt with a bonus equal to your buddy score.