[M&M + Noir] The Aeon Detective Agency

[Bailywolf]

I'm running a M&M game set in the mean streets of Freedom City in 1929, and trying out some homebrew rules inspired by several of my favorite indie games.

I detail the first session in the following RPG.net thread (long, so I hesitate to repost it here and waste resources double-hosting the same text), and this thread contains linke to the setting info and the special rules I'm using.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=169861

Basically, when making certain skill rolls, players can say what they expect to find before making the roll, and the result determines how close to this they get:

10 or more greater than DC = "YES, AND"
5 or more greater than DC = "YES"
less than 5 more than DC = "YES, BUT"
less than 5 below DC = "NO, BUT"
less than 10 below DC = "NO"
More than 10 below DC = "NO, AND"

The player describes the things in Red, while I get the things in black.  

I ran into some rough spots- I need to formalize how things are declared, how often someone can declare this way, and whatnot.

There is a Mystery Level (wink wink Donjon) against which 'expectations' are rolled, which goes up by 1 when a "NO, AND" is rolled, and drops by 1 when a "YES, AND" is rolled- as the mystery progresses, it gets easier to "figure things out"  When the Mystery Level drops to zero, it can then be resolved with rolls to 'put it all together' as the players desire (against the full ML).

I'm not really happy with this, but it was all I could come up with at the last minute when I realized I needed a way to regulate how the mystery progressed.

So- anyone help me out with my game?

-Ben

[Joe J Prince]

Hey Ben

I love the idea - film noir Mutants & Masterminds with investigation mechanics! Cool!

I would suggest the expenditure of a hero point to allow a suggestion at any point - simple but effective.

I would also suggest contracting the ANDs or BUTS out to other players or the GM - so if a player gets one of these results anyone else gets the opportunity to add to it.
I would also say that each AND or BUT should only involve one potential conflict tops and they should be conflicts that can be resolved within one dice roll (skill check, charisma, reflexes whatever...)
- unless the AND or BUT furthers the plot (GM calls it).

The mechanics for this could perhaps revolve around will saves or straight D20 rolls.

I feel the GM still needs a veto or 'producer role' to be used if he feels the game may be derailed by inappropriate narration or suggestions.
I can't begin to go into this. Mainly 'cos I have no clue ;-)

Cheers
JJ

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Ben,

This interests me a lot, because it looks like a fantastic idea.

10 or more greater than DC = "YES, AND"
5 or more greater than DC = "YES"
less than 5 more than DC = "YES, BUT"
less than 5 below DC = "NO, BUT"
less than 10 below DC = "NO"
More than 10 below DC = "NO, AND"

Am I correct in assuming that the whole "YES, AND" --> "NO, AND" is something you've come up with, and not a feature of M&M (a game I don't own)? Do you have any inspirations, game-wise, for this specific mechanic? If you do I'd love to hear about it so I can go out and buy the games in question asap.

Thank you for taking your time answering my questions,

[Eero Tuovinen]

Heh, that progression was first formulated in full form in Jared Sorensen's Isystem, I think. You can find it in octaNe and InSpectres both. The theoretical idea is widely known, and many games make use of contracted or subsumed forms of it. My own D&D variant has exactly identical progressions, which should show how universally it's floating around...

Jared's version of the system uses a d6 pool to find a result, in case you're interested.

[James_Nostack]

Am I correct in assuming that the whole "YES, AND" --> "NO, AND" is something you've come up with, and not a feature of M&M (a game I don't own)? Do you have any inspirations, game-wise, for this specific mechanic? If you do I'd love to hear about it so I can go out and buy the games in question asap.

That narration thing is not part of Mutants & Masterminds, which is a nice enough game in its own right but never addresses the topic of narration.  Robin D. Laws wrote a column about "Yes... but" narration which got some circulation on RPG.Net and may have inspired Bailywolf, but I wouldn't know.  It looks like he took M&M's damage save mechanics and combined it with this narration thing, which is pretty clever.

Ben, when you say "help you out with your game," what specifically did you have in mind?  Were there any particular problems you encountered?

[Bailywolf]

I can't honestly say I took the "yes/but/and/no" thing from any one specific source... it was just something that had been cooking in the back of my head, made from ingredients I had absorbed via osmisis...  Lots of different sources, but none I can name as the primary.

I worked out the basic scheme for a D&D 'magic cops' game I run sometimes in which the PC's are members of a special night watch group that deals with magic and the supernatural in a chaotic fantastic city (low level, high grit).

Adopting it to M&M and Noir actually worked better than the D&D mod...

Seeing it in play, I needed to formalize the declaration scheme somewhat.

Here is the structure I'm working on right now (as suggested by my playes and other posters here and there):

1) One "expectation" per player per scene.

2) One expectation per skill per player per session.

3) "And" and "But" details are used to tie a new addition back into previous facts.

For example, if a player uses Search and says "When I search this guy, I expect to find Mr. Bathroy's busines card in his wallet, and five grand in cash in his pocket."  He rolls it, and gets a "NO, BUT".  The GM says, "Actually, you can't find any direct connection to Sturgis, and all he has on him is fifteen bucks in mixed bills."  The player could then say, "But he does have a phone number written on a scrap of paper- a number I recognize as belonging to Mr. Bathroy's social club."


I'm going to run this on Sunday, and I'll post how well this streamlined system works.

-B