have-a-go heroes

[Simon W]

The 24 hour role-playing game of Marvel City's not so super superheroes.

You may spot the resemblence to a certain 'Mystery Men' movie, but that is pure intention.

Anyhow, I didn't get a chance to playtest within the time period, but intend to next week. If any of you give it a go, let me know how you get on.

If anyone reads it, tell me if you understand how scenes and stuff works. I think it's clear, but you never know until someone else reads it through.

Don't worry if you get to a page called Dreamscape, its just somewhere to put this game till I find somewhere else.

It is now up at the 24-hour indie rpg group too.

http://www.geocities.com/dreamscape2020/

Simon W

[Simon W]

The game now has a new home here

http://www.geocities.com/have_a_go_heroes2004/

In designing 'have-a-go heroes' I was attempting to write a humorous game, with more than a touch of The Mystery Men about it. Have i succeeeded in this respect? What more does it need to give it more humour?

I didn't want a complicated system decided to do away with stats & skills. Do characters work? Isd there enough for players to give their characters individuality?

I also wanted each scene to have a set goal. I wanted succes or failure of a scene to have an affect on the climactic scene. Is this apparent from the way I have designed the game?

I also wanted the characters to have a home life, but wanted their to be a distinction between the characters and their home--life problems and the nhave-a-go heroes and their 'heroic' problems. Does this work.

I appreciate that it cannot be the polished article yet, but is it some way to looking playable?

Simon W
http://www.geocities.com/have_a_go_heroes2004/

[Simon W]

Ok, so there is a general apathy towards my game have-a-go-heroes.

Alternatively, nobody understood it (quite possible, it was rather hurried!).

Some people (elsewhere) have commented they don't like the pdf layout/style. Maybe this has something to do with the lack of feedback so far?

Personally, I think the game is pretty cool, but it needs something more that I am not finding at the moment. I also haven't had the chance to playtest it yet either, which doesn't help.

Anyway, I have revised it a bit and now have a html version here

http://www.geocities.com/have_a_go_heroes2004/h_a_g_h.html

Please take a gander at either version and let me know, at the very least, whether it makes sense to you - i.e. could you play it as it stands with the info and examples provided?

I know it is a bit rough around the edges, but I am trying to smooth that out with each revision.

Simon W
http://www.geocities.com/have_a_go_heroes2004/

[TonyLB]

It seems to me that you're strenously courting Whiff Factor.  The heroes are supposed to screw up, so horribly that they can't even attempt to be successful in future.  It's not a surprise, for instance, that your example of play ends with them fleeing a lost battle.

Given this, you need more rules about the ways that they lose, and how to make that fun and entertaining for the players.  You have light rules for how to attempt success, which is right and proper (as success is clearly not the focus of the game).  Now you need to give the Boss and players a structure that helps them explore the many subtle distinctions of failure.

[Simon W]

It seems to me that you're strenously courting Whiff Factor.  The heroes are supposed to screw up, so horribly that they can't even attempt to be successful in future.  It's not a surprise, for instance, that your example of play ends with them fleeing a lost battle.

Given this, you need more rules about the ways that they lose, and how to make that fun and entertaining for the players.  You have light rules for how to attempt success, which is right and proper (as success is clearly not the focus of the game).  Now you need to give the Boss and players a structure that helps them explore the many subtle distinctions of failure.

Ahh, you got it. At least partially. Perhaps I need to explain it better in the text.

Yes, the "heroes" are supposed to screw up in the early scenes. As in the Mystery Men.

Until the final scene, that is.

Then hopefully, as they have resolved all or some of their real life issues, they get to use extra dice to succeed in the fanal scene, and thereby "come good in the end.

I don't know what you mean by "Whiff Factor", but whatever it is, the game is intended to be fun, not a long chore of failure, because the have-a-go-heroes never give up (as it says in the text) and will come good in the end (hopefully, through extra dice in their dice pool and higher PR's).

Simon W

[TonyLB]

Whiff Factor is a general term used to describe game systems that have a very, very high degree of failure, particularly for people who are supposed to be skilled.  Like a professional, specialized sniper who has only a 25% chance of hitting a stationary target at fifty feet.

It's really not the right term to use for Have a Go Heroes, because of course these guys aren't meant to be skilled or capable.  That's the whole point.

The thing is... you don't have any rules for the outcome of failure.  And if you don't have rules for something, people tend to avoid it.

The argument can be made that folks went on dungeon-crawls when they played D&D not because they didn't want to unravel high society murder mysteries, but because the rules totally lacked any support for resolving those kind of stories.

Similarly, I think that if you want to tell the stories of how the Have A Go Heroes screw up, time and again, you need some rules specifically made for screwing up.

For instance, you could make individual Self-Image scores that get damaged by being beaten down.  Then you can have fun with "Does the team hang together", based not on how low any individual's Self Image is, but by how large the gap is within the team...

Under such a system, in the example of play, the trouble is not that Billy Bones, Rage and Foghorn got beaten senseless... it's that Lady Luck didn't!  That's got to sting some sensitive male egos!


Anyway, that's just a possibility off the top of my head.  The main point isn't to advocate for any particular system for reflecting the outcome of failures, it's to recommend that you need to have something.