[ABSOLUTE] Over the top of over the top

[whiteknife]

So last week I tested the RPG I've been working on, called ABSOLUTE. It's a power crazy game that fully embraces everything "Awesome" "Xtreme" "1337" "wicked" "cool" "metal" and "excessive" (among other adjectives).  If you take something over the top, go over the top of that, then go over the top of the thing that went over the top of the first thing, that would be this.

Setting wise it's a chaotic grab bag of pretty much everything. There're robot dinosaurs, anime fighters, and all manner of other things and the rest of the world is sort of a strange mix of disparate elements and powerful enemies. There're a bunch of different dimensions and they all sort of leak into each other creating a single mega-world that has a bit of everything (as long as it's awesome). Pretty much everywhere you go is a lawless, monster infested shithole-the title is a play on "absolute power corrupts absolutely": this is the world you get when min-maxed RPG characters are allowed to run things, and it's not pretty.

Rules wise, I'd describe it as rules-medium traditional. There're thirty races, there're thirty classes, there're over 200 powers, 100's of items, and all those other things they put on the back covers of D&D clone games that have been in the works for eight or ten years. This game has those elements as pretty much a parody of the genre- its excess for the sake of excess, awesome stuff because it's awesome. It also has a smattering of more free-form mechanics (like slightly altered keys from TSoY, semi-aspect like elements, and a few other things)

OK, so here's how things went. I had five play-testers, consisting of most of my regular group plus one new recruit. Things started off with character creation, since this was the first game. Now, ABSOLUTE uses random character generation, and this is because 1) It's fast 2) It creates humorous mixes which is something I totally want and 3) because many of the games I'm paying homage to do it, but mostly for the first two reasons.

Character generator took about 45 minutes for four people (one showed up late). During it, everyone seemed amused by their roll results, as well as what their character was shaping up to be, so I consider that a success, more or less. The characters that came out the other end were:

Black Mamba: A dinosaur, which was intended to be a velociraptor, but a spelling error ended up having this character be a "Velicorapeter" which is like a regular velociraptor, but better and also 97% cyborg. His powers amount to running up to someone and ripping them apart, but really, do you NEED anything else? Oh, and he had a sports car he controlled via USB plug in, so....yeah.

Project X:  A dragon-blooded secret agent super sayan (well, the in setting serial numbers filed off equivalent anyways). He was insanely tough (which in this game is an actual skill level), and mostly spent his time shooting energy balls at people and smashing walls with his bare hands.

IOERH: This guy couldn't think of a name so he generated each letter randomly, getting this largely unpronounceable name. He was an exalted (again, in setting clone) beast-man, who are half man half animal. He chose his animal as "human" making him half-man, half-man, which we all found rather funny.

X-KCM: Another unpronounceable name, this one a tribute to the venerable webcomic XKCD. This guy was a fallen (read: demon) super hero. This character is funny because he looks like a horrible demon, black scales, eyes like pits of the deepest abyss, and wicked claws, except he's wearing brightly colored spandex and smiles a lot. He could light things on fire with his mind, something he did quite often by accident, and more often on purpose.

Osric von Duran: The latecomer was a Canadian Rockstar (with umlauts on every vowel in his name, and eventually every vowel on his entire character sheet). He was addicted to cocaine and going adventuring to gain acceptance by his motherland of Canada.

Once characters were rolled up, the characters were contracted out by the golden king (a king made of gold, who lived in a golden castle atop a mountain of gold) to take down his enemy, the silver king, with a similar set-up, except his castle flew. Normally, I'd have a bit (just a bit) more to the plot than that but it's not a plot heavy game, in case you couldn't already tell, and I was mostly interested in testing the combat system, not dazzling the players with a masterfully woven narrative (because honestly, any narrative involved these characters is going to be an endless series of fights no matter how you spin it).

They approached the flying castle with natural flight powers and a flying sports car, fought off some hover bike pirates and a jetpack narwhal (don't ask), and got inside. Once inside- more fighting! This time against fifty odd knight lackeys, two commanders who were total douche-bags, and eventually some WARBEARS! (bears with twin machine guns on their backs). They fought through those guys with relative ease and made their way to the throne room to fight the silver king and his ninja minions, massacre and devastation. This fight involved a bit more tactics (specifically, revealing in banter a weakness to fire, lighting a ring of fire, then tossing the silver king back and forth through it), and almost got Osric von Duran killed, but he got better.

Finally, the castle nearly crashed into the water and the players had to team up to fight a massive 500 ft. long leviathan, which involved many, many, many dice (I think 74 were rolled for the ultimate team attack as I recall). Then, we discussed the game and everyone left reportedly having enjoyed themselves.

OK, so. I realize that was essentially a rules-free post, and that's because I'm already overhauling combat and a lot of the other rules for my next playtest this upcoming week.

What I would like to know is- how did that sound? Like fun? Ridiculous? I mean, if it didn't sound like that there might well be something wrong with you but I mean more "so ridiculous you would never consider playing it". The zaniness factor is dependent on who's playing, but it does veer towards the "tons of crazy shit" side of things.

Another thing is, what sort of vibe did that playtest report give you? I'm trying to go for a mix between crazy humorous stuff and high end kill em' all hack and slash roleplaying.

Well, thanks for reading anyways.  I appreciate comments, questions, or general one sentence reactions!

[Filip Luszczyk]

What I would like to know is- how did that sound? Like fun? Ridiculous? I mean, if it didn’t sound like that there might well be something wrong with you but I mean more “so ridiculous you would never consider playing it”. The zaniness factor is dependent on who’s playing, but it does veer towards the “tons of crazy shit” side of things.

Frankly, it sounds normal. Something might be wrong with me. Or I read too much rpg.net. Either way, it sounds like a typical stuff to be found in an rpg.net thread. I think I've reached a pretty close level of "tons of crazy stuff" myself in some past games of Exalted, Wushu, Capes, The Pool, Illumination! and even that one PTA show that included nuke surfing.

The thing is, games like Exalted, Rifts, World of Synnibar or octaNe set the zany bar so damn high already. Once you reach the over nine thousands zone, there is nothing over the top, things just get blurry. Furthermore, I'd say the existing games of this type do a great job at desensitivizing gamers to "tons of crazy shit". There were games like that back in the 70s already (starting from Gygaxian D&D, arguably) and plenty of people play them for their regular gaming fix, with no particular parodic intentions. Play a few, with the specific intent of playing a game as it is rather than engaging in a parodic performance, and it just starts feeling normal. Once a game like Exalted mind rapes you and teaches you to accept the zany as regular and approach it seriously, you just go with the "tons of crazy shit" appreciating its referential aspects.

So, games like that generally achieve the "tons of crazy shit" thing through their heavy intertextual aspects. You take whatever nerd culture references feel fresh and hot at the moment of the game's production and put them all into the same kitchen sink. I currently feel that Exalted is losing its punch, for example, as after a few years it plain fails to keep speed with 4chan. Whatever the next Exalted is going to look like, it's pretty much bound to include the entire 4chan's worth of "tons of crazy shit" in its kitchen sink. Still, even with the entire 4chan in the sink, it's still going to be a regular desensitivizing kitchen sink game for its times. You won't go over the top of over the top of over the top without surpassing the current nerd culture's memetic pool, and as long as the game relies on the referential powers of the existing source material, I don't think that's really possible. You just keep getting the regular kitchen sink experience, only updated.

In short: once one accepts dragon-blooded, dinosaurs and cyborgs as regular and expected, a dragon-blooded cybernetic dinosaur is no longer much more over the top, intrinsically. It has all the familiar parts that tend to occur close to each other on a regular basis nowadays. The awesome overload is only amusing for a short while, then things blur and it no longer short circuits one's brain.

I'd say actually producing a genuine over the top experience reliably, the game would actually have to spark creative, rather than just referential processes. In the end, I think, it boils down to producing certain unexpected combinations of familiar memes that resonate as innovative. I have no idea how to achieve that with game design, though, or if that's possible at all. It's something that occurs naturally all the time, but it's essentially a random process. Sometimes two things just suddenly click together and w00t, a new meme is born. A random process is not a reliable process, though, and my guess is a reliable game like that would have to be some sort of a frickin' zen mind memetic mutation engine. Good luck with that?

Consider this strip. I think there's something very significant in the author's comment below.

Another thing is, what sort of vibe did that playtest report give you? I’m trying to go for a mix between crazy humorous stuff and high end kill em’ all hack and slash roleplaying.

Well, my suggestion is to ditch the explicitly humorous approach. All being said, games of this type are already silly enough on their own, once one looks from the right angle. I think games like Exalted, Rifts or The World of Synnibar would be much less zany if they didn't attempt to treat subject matter seriously. Trying to force the humor won't help - it's like trying to explain a joke that doesn't even need the explanation in the first place, or trying to make a parody out of parody. Like, does the dragon-blooded secret agent really needs the super sayan bit? He's traveling with a cyber dinosaur and a Canadian rockstar, shooting hadoukens out of his ass, so yes, it's already obvious it was meant as excessive. Show, don't tell etc.

(It reminds me of the sort of humor I sometimes see in internet communities of the overly "friendlish" sort, where an user says something funny only to immediately and explicitly point out it was meant as a joke, and then adds a disclaimer on top of a disclaimer just in case some idiots still misread and get needlessly offended or something. Lame, and largely ruining the initial humor.)

[whiteknife]

Hmm.... very interesting.

I do see your point about this sort of thing not necessarily needing anything special to come about. I've played those other games, and this stuff can and often does pop up naturally. I also get your point about not pointing out jokes and not being explicitly humorous and all, I just wanted to make sure I got my point across for the thread, although I realize I maaaay have overdone the whole "hey look, this is a joke!" "You see it's funny because..." thing.

Man, I don't know. Everything you said sounds pretty damn solid. It is rather a challenge to do the sort of thing I'm going for and not have it just be completely stupid and/or pointlessly done far better by every other game. I would like to address a few of your specific points though.

Frankly, it sounds normal. Something might be wrong with me. Or I read too much rpg.net. Either way, it sounds like a typical stuff to be found in an rpg.net thread.

I also read too much RPG.net, although I wonder how much of that kind of thing makes it off the internet and into games. (Possibly a lot? I don't know.)

It is a pretty damn high bar, but I intend to try and jump it. One big thing I see is that if you do this sort of thing in another game it's often in a broken system like rifts or synnibarr, and while that isn't too big an issue (those systems are actually rather fun) I do like to have systems that work. Alternatively, it's a side thing in a larger issue- a game might feature a nuke ride but it's unlikely to be the focus of the session (or maybe it is, if so that sounds like a good time). So, assuming this is the kind of thing you were looking for, then a game where it's the point would be ideal, no?

The awesome overload is only amusing for a short while, then things blur and it no longer short circuits one's brain.

I'd say actually producing a genuine over the top experience reliably, the game would actually have to spark creative, rather than just referential processes.

I suspect (more like hope I guess) that part of this stems from the "reading about a game vs. playing it" difference. Because pretty much THE biggest thing that the rules of the game try to do is to spark creative- the entirety of character creation to the in game experience is all a bunch of creative sparks. I mean, yeah there are lists of shit and they're stuff you've seen before (especially if you hang around the internet a lot), but a big part of the game is combining that stuff into something- I mean it isn't impressive to read about a cybernetic whatever here, but if it was your idea, perhaps you'd find it more interesting (or perhaps not, I really wouldn't know), as well as adding your own stuff to it. I mean, yeah a game like this is going to suck if it's just a traditional system slapped on to all the random stuff I found on the internet, but I'm hoping that the game part of the game will help make it a bit funner than that. (Note to self: next time include some rules)

The awesome overload only registering for a while is a thing, but it's not exactly meant to be an extremely long form game anyways, to be honest- I'd rather produce a really awesome one or two sessions then have the game shelved for a while only to be pulled out again after the next long campaign of a more serious game than produce a less intense experience over a longer period of time, if it comes to a choice like that.

Well anyways thanks for the well thought out comment. It really does bring up a lot of the issues with the game, which I sort of realized from the get-go. Still, I'm planning on pressing ahead. I'll find ways to mitigate the issues (or ignore them if it comes to it). After all, this was just the first playtest. Perhaps what come sout the other end of the process will be a far different animal.

[Catelf]

I want to describe another viewpoint: My own.

If i had gotten this kind of impression from the Exalted, i might've bought it.
I Have Rifts, and has possibly never thought of it this way.

But Your Game, on your description, seemes hilarious, and i went LoL several times over, due to it's extensive Sillyness.
I would have some problem playing it, though, since i prefer to choose my characters, rather than roll them up(but i could make a wierd enough character anyway....).

Also, I would play your game, for the very same reason as i would play Macho Women with Guns, wich i Have bought, by the way, partially because it's own description of it was ..... silly ! I also has "More excuses to kill things", and that, i dare say, was ONLY (more or less) for its expected LoL-potential!

So, to me:
If you do it for over-the-tup-fun-types, describe it as such, as you did!

Catelf

[whiteknife]

I want to describe another viewpoint: My own.

So, to me:
If you do it for over-the-tup-fun-types, describe it as such, as you did!

Thanks! I'm glad for the feedback.

[MacLeod]

I'm always interested in any game that emphasizes the over-the-top approach. I gather that many others would be, too. =)
The real barrier is going the way of Rifts and Synnibar... systems that many consider to be junk. Also, Exalted makes that list for me... I've never had the joy of experiencing an over the top (retail) game because of these issues... and I would guess that I'm not alone in that either.

So just how heavy are the rules? You describe it as medium... but what would you compare it to? The idea that you might have to throw 74 dice isn't exactly intriguing to me regardless of the rules' weight.