Arise and Throw Off Your Chains

[clehrich]

Okay, this will soon actually be played, but hasn't been yet.  If this is the wrong forum, Ron, could you please shift it?  It's not game design, and it sure as hell isn't theory or GNS, so....

So I'm going to be running a one (or maybe two) shot game, and I want a bit of advice beforehand; when it runs, I'll give you all the gory details.

First of all, I cribbed the idea from http://netrover.com/~nkhsin/sifan.html" target="blank">this website.  But I don't love his version, frankly.

Here's the idea.  If you remember the Fu Manchu books and movies, you probably recall the Si Fan, the murderous secret organization of evil people working for the brilliant mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu, against which Sir Denis Nayland Smith and a few other Brits and Americans were arrayed in a desperate attempt to foil the Yellow Peril.

Okay, in this game, the PC's are Special Agents of the Si Fan, working for the brilliant Doctor Fu Manchu, trying desperately to save the world from White Imperialism.  You could be The Shadow (trained in Tibet), or Mr. Moto (Japanese), or somebody like that, as you like.  Get it?

So it's high pulp, with lots of heroic-pulp sorts of powers and extreme weirdness, fast and furious action, desperate chases, beautiful exotic English girls, you name it.  And yes, it will be entitled "Arise and Throw Off Your Chains: The Si Fan Save the World."

Now the players for this are not big Narrativist types, nor are they all that familiar with Author Stance stuff.  But because I want to play Shadows in the Fog with them, which leans heavily on that stuff, and I think they'd love this sort of thing once they get the hang of it, I want to ease them into it with this.  So I was thinking about the Pool as a system.

Here's my question:

Given that I want
1. A Narrativist-promoting system,
2. An Author-Stance-promoting system,
3. A lot of pulp action and craziness,
4. Very shallow basic learning curve,

Is the Pool a good choice?  I'm a bit worried about #3 here, but I haven't tried it for that purpose.  Most of the other things I can think of would require really weird twisting and rewriting: Sorcerer would require, um, throwing away sorcery, which seems stupid; InSpectres would pretty much require throwing away the franchise, ditto; and so on.

Suggestions?

[deadpanbob]

Off the wall suggestion, how about OcTaNe?

You might also take a look at Risus - which can be a little silly, but has quite a low learning curve and could be fairly easily drifted toward Narrativisim.

Just my .02$ worth.

Cheers.

[Brian Leybourne]

The Spin System, which is a derivative of The Pool, would suit your purposes nicely, IMO.

You can find it in the Game Design Forum (although I'm still waiting for Jeff to post the updated version).

Brian.

(Edit: Added a link to the right forum).

[clehrich]

Hmm.  The Spin System seems plausible, but in some of the discussions it got a tad crunchy for my blood.  But I guess it'd be useful to drift people away from really serious crunchiness, rather than dropping them in the middle of a totally open system.

Can I ask, did you find that there were enough points for seriously "kewl powers" as the kids say?  I mean, could you design The Shadow on these points, or would you need more?  I know there was discussion of ranging things up to a max of, say, 20 points starting; how powerful do they get on 10?

Basically the story I'm setting up here has them stealing something, and there will 100% guaranteed be mooks getting in the way --- but they're really not supposed to kill them, because that's tacky and besides gets Scotland Yard all pissy.  What they're supposed to do is be sneaky-heist about it, but of course things go horribly wrong and they have to cool their way out.  Hijinks ensue.

And no, I haven't really thought out a lot more than that -- the idea is to make them do the work.

Speaking of making them do the work, what I really liked about the Pool was the MoV, i.e. the fact that you had a mechanic that forced players to choose between having a whole lot of control, or just taking a mechanical bonus and handing over control to the GM.  I don't see the MoV in the Spin System -- is it hidden there in some other form I'm not seeing?

See, I've got a specfic objective in mind here, involving:

1. No formal designation of abilities, traits, etc.
2. Players being encouraged to construct the world around them creatively.
3. Players being rewarded for their characters talking cool.

I could go with Theatrix, but that's really not Narrativist at all unless you make it so.  Besides, without the heavy-handed GM, it's pretty much freeforming, and I think that's a bit radical for the purpose.

I guess I'm currently leaning toward a slightly crunch-ified Pool.

[Ian Charvill]

I'm not sure to what extent it fulfills your criterion about a shallow learning curve, but Adventure! hits your points 2 & 3 pretty hard.  Inspiration, especially, promotes Author stance, and it's an overtly pulpy game.

Because it's a fairly traditional system, it might make it more suitable for drifting your players towards narrativism - by starting them with a lot of familiar landmarks.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Off the wall suggestion, how about OcTaNe?

I don't see it as too off-the-wall...I mean, get Paul Elliot's supplement for it (Against the Reich!) and you're all set.

- J

[Paul Czege]

Hey Chris,

3. Players being rewarded for their characters talking cool.

One game you might consider is EPICS, by J. Scott Pittman. Players create sketchy characters and define them further through the assertions they make about them in play. The assertions earn Survival Point awards, which are a metagame resource used for favorably influencing die rolls and avoiding wounds.

The downside of EPICS as an option for you is that it's a significantly pervier Narrativist system than The Pool. Our fairly experienced group of Narrativists struggled in our two sessions of play to completely apprehend and utilize all of its nuances; I'd be hesitant about using it as an entirely raw introduction to Narrativism.

The advantage of The Pool is that people tend to grasp the concept easily. But you should keep in mind that The Pool works best when the play group has a real shared vision for what the game is about, and a commitment to that vision. If you're doubtful about the possibility of real shared interest among the players in your Si Fan concept, you might want to reconsider using The Pool. There is nothing in it that enforces or rewards player commitment to genre during play.

Paul

[Dotan Dimet]

Try Wushu, which I just posted about.

[Cassidy]

The advantage of The Pool is that people tend to grasp the concept easily. But you should keep in mind that The Pool works best when the play group has a real shared vision for what the game is about, and a commitment to that vision. If you're doubtful about the possibility of real shared interest among the players in your Si Fan concept, you might want to reconsider using The Pool. There is nothing in it that enforces or rewards player commitment to genre during play.

What Paul said.

The shared vision thing is key to the Pool. Without it there is no direction to play. If one players vision of pulp action craziness is different to anothers then at some point they are going to butt heads probably to the detriment of the game.

Highlighting to the players the characters and themes from relavent books/films/etc that you see as being analogous to the main protagonists in the game would be where I would start.

Question for you about "Goodies" and "Baddies" in pulp action.

"The Baddies" in a typical pulp action setting often get the upper hand over "The Goodies" but never quite end up killing them. In the end good prevails and the evil henchmen (i.e. players) are vanquished, their evil schemes thwarted.

Is that the type of pulp action story that you would be looking to create?

If it is, and assuming every player understands that this is the type of story you want to tell through play then the Pool could indeed work.

If it isn't then you may be hard pressed to run a Pool game with the players playing the "Baddies". First chance they get there is nothing to stop them taking out the "Goodies". It would be a very short game :)

[clehrich]

Good questions.  My concept of the "goodies and baddies" issue is that most of the normal pulp conventions apply -- the PCs are the goodies.  It just happens that the goodies are trying to save the world from evil white racist imperialism, rather than trying to save the world from the Yellow Peril.  So there are rules.  The most important is:

Don't kill anybody unless you really, really have to.

So it's all pretty much pulp as usual.  You might get captured by Scotland Yard, that nest of imperialists, but you're not going to die that way unless it's very very dramatic.  Chances are, you'll have to use that special electromagnetic device Fu Manchu gave you, or get saved by your friends (with help from some rare narcotic orchids), or the like.

Sounds like the Pool may be the way to go, so long as I explain clearly enough what sort of pulp I have in mind, and people get enthusiastic (which thus far seems probable).  I may add a few tinkerings here and there to smooth the flow into freeform combat, but thus far the players I have seem sufficiently caught up in the idea that the shared vision thing should carry the day (for a one-shot, anyway).

I'll post the game setup stuff shortly.  Thanks for your suggestions!