Sasuke/Ninja Warrior simulation - a design attempt

[Imizaru]

I live in Japan and happened to catch this show last Fall, and again on New Year's day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IW0rb3cl18

I was fascinated and I wanted to try to make a game to simulate that kind of experience. In the game PCs take on a multi-stage obstacle course in front of an audience and experience wild challenges and crushing defeats. I hope to capture some of the adrenalin rush, the thrill and despair that the show can provide.

After a few months of thinking about it on and off, I wrote up a draft and I would like some feedback on if it looks playable, if the numbers seem reasonable, if it sounds like fun. I want to make a complete ruleset, so I'm wondering what seems to be lacking. It's a pretty simple game, I think, but what does everyone think?

I put my write-up on my blog, here: http://imizaru.blogspot.com/2010/01/some-thoughts-on-sasuke-based-rpg.html

Thanks for looking!

[Callan S.]

Hi,

Is this game about whether the player (not the character, the player) wins or loses the game?

If it's about the psychology of the characters involved, I think it's missplaced to make play centered around a bunch of physical abilities, since that'll focus play on the physical and not the psychological.

[Imizaru]

Is this game about whether the player (not the character, the player) wins or loses the game?

Yes, I think it definitely could be, although that's not what I was really thinking about as I designed it. From a design perspective, I wanted the game to describe the actions of the show. Character psychology is an incidental factor, dealt with in the Balance resource. But as people might play it, it is definitely about player competition. One might think of it as a board game, or as a dungeon crawl, in terms of the level of the action.

[Callan S.]

Hmmm, if you haven't decided yourself its a game about player competition, I'm not sure it is a game about that. People might use it that way, but it wouldn't be what it's about. Which still leaves me not knowing what your game is about?

[Imizaru]

I think I see where the confusion may be. It is a game about competition, but the players are not really in direct competition with each other. Rather they are going against the challenge of the course itself. In the show the game is referencing, the entrants all cheer for each other. And more than one person could theoretically win, although winners are extremely rare (only 3 in 12 years). The game is about winning and losing, but it's not zero-sum.

And from this, I can see I need to revise the Support mechanics and lay out how the players can interact with each other in some more detail.

[Callan S.]

Okay. So as I know it if your up against the game, it needs to be up against some real life difficulty the game poses. Not just the imagined idea of of a challenge, because when it's just an idea it doesn't really exist.

If I'm looking for that real life challenge in the text, where's the best example of it in the text? Or an easy to see example? Even if it's just a flat out roll dice and hope for the best gamble, what's the real life challenge the game grants if you play it? That way I can help out with the text more.

Currently in alot of traditional RPG designs that are supposedly gamist/about challenge, at default the texts provide no real life challenge, they just provide bits and bobs which could be put together into a challenge (and most people who are skilled enough to do that don't need to buy a game like that to do that).

[Imizaru]

Please elucidate. I do not understand. How do you define a real-life challenge?

[Callan S.]

Hit a dart board with a dart, get a ball through a hoop, roll dice and hope for a number/gamble (not really involving skill, but hey), solving resource puzzles, etc. The last two, if there are any, are the most commonly found challenges in traditional RPG's.

This is working from my hypothesis that just the idea of challenge, by itself, provides no challenge at all. Rather than just the idea of challenge the game has to actually have a RL challenge built into it.

Now it's possible to have some numbers in the games RL challenge left to the GM to choose, and he can take the idea of challenge that's in his head and literally render that idea onto the games RL challenge. That's the imagination being rendered onto something that exists in real life.

However, most traditional RPG's, the ones we all learnt design from, present no RL challenge themselves. They always have the idea of challenge in them, but in terms of real life goods, there's nothing there. The traditional market has thrived off thinking that selling the ideaof a challenge is the same as selling an actually challenge. That's kind of like me talking about the idea of challenge in chess, in a book, and selling that book as if that is chess.

Anyway, that's my hypothesis. Some other people might want to swing in and present their own help too.

[Kanosint]

Hit a dart board with a dart, get a ball through a hoop, roll dice and hope for a number/gamble (not really involving skill, but hey), solving resource puzzles, etc. The last two, if there are any, are the most commonly found challenges in traditional RPG's.

I was always interested in presenting real-life challenges as resolution. Though I never manged to cross the boundary of accessability. It's easy to make a player throw a die, and player ability and character ability stay theoretically seperate this way. With Darts, however, if you make it represent, say, something logical like how accurate you are (in this game it could be the accuracy of your jumps, how well you land...) even if your character is the best at such tasks, if (and that is a rather big if... Dart boards are relatively common, but not everyone will just have one) you suck at darts, your character will still fail at accurate leaps.

Now, the player-character skill may not be relevant in some games, but how easily one can get access to the required items and a room where such things are workable is ALWAYS relevant with this, and sadly a big problem...

I'd find it very interesting though, if the OP or anyone else could find a clever method around this.

[Imizaru]

Hit a dart board with a dart, get a ball through a hoop, roll dice and hope for a number/gamble (not really involving skill, but hey), solving resource puzzles, etc. The last two, if there are any, are the most commonly found challenges in traditional RPG's.

I see what you seem to be saying, and I admit it is an intriguing idea. However, how would you say that rolling dice and hoping for a number is any different from any roll in any dice-using RPG? Am I to assume you mean a specific gambling mechanic? Well, the closest the game I've written comes is in the Support mechanic, wherein PCs try to win support from the audience - players choose the size of the Support die they want to win, choose a number within that die range and roll for it - if successful, they get a die they can use later; if they fail, they don't really lose anything, but I could change that. For each subsequent attempt to win the die, they can choose an additional number, making the odds of getting a die go up the more they try, but it costs Time to do so, so repeated attempts reduce their chances of completing the course.

There are some other mini-game type activities I could put in, using the dice like marbles or quarters or tiddlywinks, and that might be fun, but it kind of distracts from what I was trying to do with the dice system (which may or may not be worth distracting from).

Here's another idea that might be something more like what you meant. When the PC tackles an obstacle, the player has to pay some real money into a pot, a quarter, or something; if the PC fails and tries again, the player has to pay in again. All this money from all the players gets saved throughout the session, until in the end someone's character completes the full course. Because the course is supposed to be very difficult, this could conceivably take a long time. The winning player receives the accumulated pot and treats everyone to dinner or drinks, or something.

This is kind of interesting, and I appreciate the comments, but I was kind of hoping for more feedback on the dice and resource economy, because it's really my first time to try and make such a system.

[Callan S.]

Hmmm, well there's two ways of looking at it - did you somehow echo or capture some of of the RL challenge of the obstacle course in the RL challenge of your game? Did you capture it as much as you intended? Well then you did what you intended! After that there's handling time, layout, how easy it is to learn, etc, but this is kind of small fry stuff.

The other way to look at it - well, I could judge it by what challenges I expect from a game. But that's not really feedback - that's just my or someone elses personal opinion.

The only genuine feedback I could give is asking if the game does present some RL challenge to players (not just the idea of challenge, which alot of traditional RPG's do through setting). If it's got some, then your fine! After that the only issues are stuff like handling time (like if it takes ages to calculate the result of your challenge, that's a spoiler - but that doesn't mean there isn't challenge). I think once you have some RL challenge in it at all(preferably one most people, especially non gamers, would recognise), in terms of all the particular parts and details of the challenge is, it's beyond critique - it's entirely up to your creative muse.

Or is this responce too nurturing and supportive, hehe?