Trollbabe makes good Streetfighter

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

A few weeks ago, I picked up Big Eyes, Small Mouth D20, and have been watching tons of Japanese and Korean movies lately.  So, my roommate and I decided to play a game based on Streetfighter, Rival Schools, Volcano High, etc.  After trying to make 2 NPCs, I decided BESM D20 was not for me.

So I grabbed Trollbabe.

Drifted the setting, magic is now Chi Powers, and off we went.  The new setting was Ascenscion Isle, a manmade island jointly held by Brazil and Japan, filled with martial artists for no real reason.  The focus was on high school, following the inspiration material.

From the player's perspective:

He played a one shot of Trollbabe before, and this time found it a lot more fun.  Getting used to narrating failure was the big leap for him, but this time he loved it.  It'll probably be awhile before he gets more into conflict initiation through scene request and declaring conflicts, but I'm always asking questions to keep it open.

From the GM's perspective:

I am always amazed at how fast conflicts get resolved in Trollbabe.  I really had to adjust my pacing to the game, since conflicts no longer ate up time like I expected, and when they're done, they're DONE.  I found myself having to add in Bangs and Bobs real fast to keep the pace right.  I suspect with 3 or 4 players it's probably easier to deal with.

System in play:

The player chose his number at 6.  He only really scored failures when it came to Social rolls(of all things!).  He was also very judicious in his use of relationships, so he ended up taking an injury spiral once, ending in incapacitation when his mom caught him drinking bubble tea with a girl instead of being home studying...oops!

The Stakes were, "Who will Yukiko take to the dance?", which was easy to spark conflict, as I simply pulled up every bully, asinine preppy, or petty gossip drama I could recall from high school and applied it liberally.

Future thoughts:

I want to get more players in on this, and also see what happens over the long term play.  I'm especially interested in watching how the Social score works, and whether I want to implement Ron's "lower of the two" rule.

Chris

[Rich Forest]

Chris,

Alright, this one got away from me over the weekend, but I can't let anything in any way related to a certain video game get away from me for long. So I've got some questions for ya.

First question: Did you do anything somehow analogous to the "You're a trollbabe, caught between two worlds, which makes it impossible for you to avoid conflict because everyone will drag you into it" thing? I'm asking partly because I've considered doing a (yeah, another one of these) D&D fantasy game with Trollbabe. In my case, I was considering replacing "Trollbabe" with adventurer, based on just little quotes from Perdido Street Station that emphasize the general awfulness of adventureres. But I was ultimately unsatisfied that it was a good enough analogy, and I was loathe to lose the Trollbabe effect.

So thinking about Street Fighter, Rival Schools, etc., the first thing I can think of would be something along the lines of "You're a student of great master so and so, and his evil ass brother/fellow student killed him dead, and you're torn between evil and good like, um, a certain melodramatic main character." But I dunno if that quite does it. There has got to be something better. Would it be enough to say, "You're a Street Fighter (martial artist, etc.), someone who's got the fighting and chi abilities that very few on the planet have. And yup, people are going to expect you to do something about it when stuff goes wrong." Again, this is kind of brainstorming. So I dunno if it works.

So what did you guys go with, if anything? And if you did, what kind of effect did that have? And if you didn't, how did that affect play?

Alright, another question: You mention that your friend was careful-like with the relationships. Were a lot of them established but not often called on? Or were not a lot of them established? I'm curious because it's something I see being a particularly interesting angle for fighting game style play. All those characters in those games know each other, hate each other, love each other, are brothers-in-law, and... and... and... So were there a lot of those kinds of things? Or did the high school angle get played up more than the fighter angle, more in the Rival Schools kind of vibe, so more of the relationships were riffing on the whole high school thing as much or more than the fighting game thing?

Question the next: What about the Rerolls--how did those get used? I can totally see cool potential for "a remembered spell" (read "a remembered hisatsuwaza!") and for "a sudden ally" in particular. Any uses of them that were pretty cool?

Right, I think I thought I had more questions. But I guess I can't remember 'em at the moment. Oh, was there a tournament? And if so, how'd that work out?

That oughta do for one post.

Oh, and by the way, shoryuken,

Rich

[contracycle]

But I dunno if that quite does it. There has got to be something better. Would it be enough to say, "You're a Street Fighter (martial artist, etc.), someone who's got the fighting and chi abilities that very few on the planet have. And yup, people are going to expect you to do something about it when stuff goes wrong." Again, this is kind of brainstorming. So I dunno if it works.

I picked up Fates Worse Than Death a little while ago, an interesting self-described 'post-cyberpunk' game.  One of the explicit differences given between Fates and classic CP is that the characters are assumed to be part of a gang making its own way in the world; part of a community with relationships with others at a [personal rather than instiutional level.

While difficult for me to comment on whether this makes a significant difference in actual play, I am struck and impressed by the conscious attention paid to this aspect.  Characters are not nihilistic loners but part of an extended family and therein lies some of the fates that can be worse than death.

I'd like to see more systematic attention to this sort of structure but I do think its worth commenting on as is.  Ma y games almost set out to alienate the player character from broader society; a bteer approach is to engage and include them.

[Bankuei]

Hi Rich,

We went mostly with the high school thing as the basis of conflict.  Whereas the Trollbabe is caught into conflict by genetics, high school forces you to be around people you don't like, without authority or power, with parents to answer to, romantic interests, and bullies.  It's a perfect nasty situation to start conflict.

For your D&D game, you need to have some angle that ties the characters into the conflict whether they want to be or not.  Wayyyy back, the game Draconic had it set up to where each PC was personally being hunted by a dragon, because they happened to know its true name.  Don't leave it at being "fantasy adventurer", set it up like a solid situation that they can't just escape, and let it roll.

The way I set up our conflicts, was I started with a simple trigger:  "The Dance".  Immediately this set up for the player the issues of impressing his romantic interest, getting her to go to the Dance with him, plus dealing with Romantic Rivals and Parents.  Quickly tied into this was the Mid-Term, which also added drama to the mix.  

As far as relationships went, a lot were formed, but they weren't used a lot.  Oftentimes it was easier for the player to take a loss than to risk a relationship.  The relationships were stuff like, Girlfriend, Best Friend, etc.

Rerolls were mostly bland, I think we can expect more interesting stuff as play continues.  There was a mini-tournament in gym class, which allowed for some justified rival beating.  It was really a sub-scene to the whole "fixing up the mess of romantic misunderstandings" that we carved up.

Chris