PUNK - GM role help...

[Daniel Solis]

For the past year or so, I've been working on a genre-universal game system. By that I mean, how Hong Kong Action Theatre is a genre-universal game system for Hong Kong-style action and All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a genre-universal system for zombie survival horror.

PUNK is a genre-universal system for "-punk" settings. Cyberpunk, steampunk, biopunk have all been done. (Theopunk, superpunk, fupunk, are among the -punk settings I'm developing. When published, PUNK would present a basic system in the first chapter including task resolution, combat and other things. The following chapters would each detail a specific earth-like setting built around replacing the prefix in their respective genres. The final chapter would help the reader develop their own -punk settings or to make new settings for -punk genres introduced in the book. The basic concept, with suitable variations for each setting, is:

"Everyone has ____________, but it hasn't made anything better. In fact, it's probably made things worse."

System Summary: Skip it if you want.

Five stats: Beef, brains, grease, skillz, face, juice. Abilities are do-it-yourself but many examples will be given in the document as a guideline. Task resolution is xd10 where x = the number of any traits relevant to the task. If the highest result is equal to or greater than a difficulty number, it's a success. Highest Result - Target number = Degree of Success. A roll of 10 explodes. Drama Points can be spent to buy new traits, increase existing traits, or to increase degree of success.

End System Summary

The mood of this game generally focuses on little fish in a big pond getting in a variety of gritty-to-darkly humorous misadventures. Think Pulp Fiction, Snatch, or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I would also like to keep some early 80's punk subculture attitude in the system as well.

In that last matter, the role of the GM becomes kind of a snag. I can keep the GM and make things a lot easier one me while designing the system. The GM would effectively be taking the role of the Man trying to keep the group 'down.'

Then again, I was flirting with the idea of taking the GM out of the picture. Making the system somehow entirely democratic. A "Power to the People" sort of system. I've heard of other games that have removed the concept of a GM from the rules and I was wondering how well that worked out.

Specific Questions: Would having a GM or not having a GM better reflect s gritty "us-against-the-Man" and dark humor "trying-to-get-the-one-big-score" style game? If it would be better without a GM, how should I go about doing that?

[Mike Holmes]

What do you envision the characters doing in the course of a session? GM applicability will have a lot to do with what you want to produce.

Mike

[Daniel Solis]

I imagine the characters getting into gritty and/or darkly humorous misadventures. Um... consider a Guy Ritchie movie. A bunch of odd characters, most working in small groups, each after their respective Big Score and getting sidetracked into everyone else's schemes. I imagine a lot of deal-making, some suitably lethal combat, and people unaccustomed to such mayhem losing their composure under stress. The players could be in any strata of society, but they'll all be very driven by some sort of goals, ambitions or obsessions.

[Tony Irwin]

A bunch of odd characters, most working in small groups, each after their respective Big Score and getting sidetracked into everyone else's schemes. I imagine a lot of deal-making, some suitably lethal combat, and people unaccustomed to such mayhem losing their composure under stress. The players could be in any strata of society, but they'll all be very driven by some sort of goals, ambitions or obsessions.

Hey Gobi, one step towards GMless play (but which might suit your game regardless of whether you go that route) would be to have mechanics in your system that encourage players to do all the kewl deal making and breaking you talk about here.

A simple add on to your dice mechanic along the lines of "once the dice are rolled any player can activate a trait to increase or decrease the diffculty level by 1." might do the trick.

Tony: Ok its midnight. Slim is planning to get in the bank and try that safe. 3 dice for "safe-cracking", "cosh" and "Tricky fingers" {rolls} Rats, just missed.

Gobi: Alfie is at home fretting, if Slim doesn't get that money then he can't pay off Alfie what he owes him and Alfie can't pay off his parole-officer. I'll phone the police and tell them about the poker game on the other side of town. There, they'll be busting the game instead of watching the bank tonight, your difficulty is down by one.

That's just a dumb example I've made up on the spot, there's all kinds of different ways you could affect the dice rolls, and justify what it represents in the game, but the point is that every player will have the ability to screw or aid another player at the last minute. This might encourage the kind of play that you're after. Also it could increase player-player interaction if you're looking for a GMless game.

Specific Questions: Would having a GM or not having a GM better reflect s gritty "us-against-the-Man" and dark humor "trying-to-get-the-one-big-score" style game? If it would be better without a GM, how should I go about doing that?

Eeps I've no idea. My only suggestion is that Universalis is a GMless game but its system is very tight in terms of who can say and do things at any particular time. In that case game balance might not be about making sure that everyone has the same amount of traits, but instead about making sure that everyone has the same right to speak and influence where the game is going (part of a gms job is just getting some people to shut up).

Oh one last thought, you could get that "us-against-the-Man" feel simply by blaming every failed dice roll on something he does to screw you. Alternatively if other players are able to create complications and such for your character they narrate it in terms of Mr Big out to get you rather than something their own character is doing.

Anyway its looks really interesting Gobi, I'll be keen to see where you take it from here.

[Daniel Solis]

A simple add on to your dice mechanic along the lines of "once the dice are rolled any player can activate a trait to increase or decrease the diffculty level by 1." might do the trick.

I like this idea. I already have Drama Points that can raise the die result of an individual's action at the last minute. I could just work it so players can spend DP on other PC's actions. But instead of just raising results, players can spend DP to also lower results, thus making someone else's success suddenly a failure.

For example: Slim cracks the safe successfully. The glitter of the ancient, priceless gemstones light up his eyes.

{The player of the museum owner spends some drama points to lower his success and requests to hold his description of the failure until a little later. The GM allows it.}

Treasures in hand, Slim makes his getaway through the back door of the museum. Unfortunately, he unknowingly set off a silent alarm and the whole building is surrounded by police.

I think I need some sort of reward mechanic to encourage that kind of meta-interaction.

[Emmett]

My take on the GM vs GMless idea is, if you are prepared for everybody to play in an more or less orderly manner (ie less stalling and bickering) and your rules are tight (and I mean tight with a captal T) GMless is the newer of the RPG models and appeals to real story core players. But, if your players are more hack and slash, then they might not function as well in that environment. It depends on what type of group you cadre to.

In my opinion if you don't have an air tight system, a GM will be key in smoothing out the bumps. That means less time actually nailing down the system and more time playing. But if you are doing this for your own system creating pleasure then a good GMless is (to me) a triuph of skill.

P.S. Those of you that disagree, I'm just saying what I think. If you see it another way, direct your opinion to gobi. If I've anoyed you PM me instead of turning this into a flame at gobi's expense.

[Daniel Solis]

So basically, don't take out the GM unless I'm absolutely confident that the system is air tight? Hmm...

Like I said in the first post, keeping the GM would certainly be easier on me since it's a well-established framework for an RPG system. Still, I'm curious about the GMless route. Hmm...

[lumpley]

Whether you have a GM or not, you need to cover the GM's duties.  You need scene framing, you need someplace for the buck to stop for narration, you need someone to orchestrate conflict for the characters. This last will be the trickiest, but your game will depend on it.  If it were me, I'd approach conflict very consciously, very literally; I'd figure out what the conflicts will be, what arena they'll play out in, and precisely how decisions about the conflicts get made by the players.  Then I'd build mechanics to meet those requirements, to make sure that the called-for players have impetus and power to make the called-for decisions.

There's not much beaten track.  Whatever you do will be new.

-Vincent