Idea for a game (Occupation)

[daemonchild]

Hi,

(Thanks to Mike Holmes for recommending me to post here.)

I have an idea for a game I'd like to write. Here are the specifics:

GAME QUESTION: An alien has landed. What does your government do?

SETTING, LOOSE: Set a few hundred years into the future, some humans have evolved the use of their mental powers. The politics have superceded everything by this point, the United States has expanded into Canada and parts of Mexico into a city-state country called the United Federation of States or the UFS. More info on setting later.

SUPERNATURAL: In this world, the only "supernatural" that exist are ghosts.

CHARACTERS: As a player, you play within a team of loosely banded "agents" that represent different countries. You write your own agenda. At all times, you are playing conflicting sides. You need to remain loyal to your country, loyal to yourself, and loyal to the group. The overall goal for a character is to do the best with what limited resources they have.

GM or THE DIRECTOR: It's your job to give the players as much or as little information as you want. The aliens could be benign, violent, or this could all be a big hoax. The game's first goal is not let the public know. Only, there may be a saboteur in the group. Once the public finds out, the game doesn't end there. Now it's all about damage control.

OPTIONS: Director can give mission briefings to players in emails, politics or negotiations can continue during the week.

MECHANICS: I'm opting for a diceless system that uses money. Either in dollars or (as an option) play money. You pay for information, your mission budget is determined beforehand (roll the die or...). Open to suggestions.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[kenjib]

As it is in the real world, funding seems like a great way for those doing the funding to push a certain agenda.  A political game and money with no strings attached?  I don't think so...  You've got three loyalties:  Yourself, the group, and your country.  It seems like funding is a great source of leverage for a country (or maybe even some subgroup within the country that has yet another agenda of it's own) to enforce it's loyalty.

What each character was funded by their country and their funds from mission to mission depend upon the level of loyalty they have demonstrated?  Furthermore, what if individual players had their own secondary, and secret, objectives during a mission that were somehow beneficial to their country, perhaps even to the detriment of the group or the individual character?

Next you find some other kinds of leverage to enforce the group and self loyalties and you've got a system of conflicting tension in place.

[Andrew Morris]

Okay, the first thing that pops out at me is....why are there ghosts?

[daemonchild]

In this reality, the human spirit has been recognized as something other than the physical body.  Accessing it as part of the evolutionary process of humans (some who recognize it and some who don't) could potentially do some pretty amazing psi things.  However, in this world people with full awareness of the psychic realm of abilities either don't exist or are too freaked out to access their powers.  Most people, on the other hand, have tendencies towards some form of psi powers, even if they are on the weaker end.  A stronger sense of premonition, rattle physical objects when upset, etc.  This is a world on the brink of a mental evolution.  But they are not there yet.

Ghosts are the extension of the spirit.  They don't normally realize they are dead, if and when they do they become more desperate to resolve what is holding them back from moving on.  These beings are not "scary" here, they are strictly "I need to resolve." At this point, a few hundred years into the future, the world population has expanded so much that ghosts are thought of as a consequence to overpopulation. They are conscious, and they primarily act on that consciousness through the evolved form of...

...the internet at this point has evolved to "The Interface." A fully interactive internet that the user controls and surfs through.  A chip is implanted in people's forearms.  This is not the Matrix, or VR, you can not see yourself nor can people see you.  It's still in first person POV.  There have been experiments with VR net usuage, with disastrous results.  The Interface is the sole vehicle for technological communication.  Your cell phone, your TV, your radio.  It's the hub mutually aintained by the Consortium. (Group of allied countries).

I understand that some of this stuff won't work for a potential game.  I have oh 60 (Mike, I lost 20 pages!) of fiction written...available to anyone who wishes to read it...

[daemonchild]

The setting, while it may appear confusing, is not as defined as you may think.  I have a strong writing background, so right now everything is being "given away."  In game, I'd prefer to leave that up to the GMs.  Some things are optional, some are not.

Basically, what I am looking for is feedback on the idea of using money as a mechanic instead of die rolls.  The "budget" would be determined at the beginning of each session.  

This would be my first RPG creation, so go easy on me...

[Emily Care]

Hey Monica,

Welcome to the Forge, by the way. : )

Basically, what I am looking for is feedback on the idea of using money as a mechanic instead of die rolls.  The "budget" would be determined at the beginning of each session.  

Let me start by saying that I love the idea of using play money. Especially for a spy/intrigue game where the characters might have contacts they are bribing for leads.  The color of the mechanism matches the setting, to my mind.  My big question is how you'll resolve outcomes that don't have to do with the over arching plot?    

Say you've got an agent from Nigeria on the tale of a tentacled thug who took a shot at him in a subway station. The thug slips into a car and the agent sprints after him.   Is this the kind of thing that would be decided by money? If not how would it be handled?  

You could use task resolution: so many dollars per a given situation, amount set by difficulty of the task. The interest there would be using resources like psychic powers, contacts etc. to minimize the cost.

Or you could use conflict resolution to handle it, making the question "does the thug get away" rather than "does the agent make it into the car".  Then the player and director could haggle over the amount of money required.  Perhaps, the more money the player spends, the more difficult is the chase, but also the better the secrets revealed.  Or, they player could get a "discount" by taking setbacks.  

In the example, if it was getting close to end game, the player might be saving up her dough for the show down with the big bad on the horizon ('course the plotting and rationing of the money could be way different, I'm just guessing here).  In which case she wouldn't want to toss away lots of dollars just for some petty minion.  She could pay nothing and let it get away, or go for broke & pay a lot to get a substantial amount out of the encounter. Or she could buy a higher level reveal by taking damage to the agent.  Her character could take a slug to the arm, but catch the thug, forcing it to reveal the whereabout of the big bad by twisting it's eyestalks. (Sorry I just saw Sin City...)  

Kinds of things that could be used to "buy" better results could be loss of agent cover, civilian casualty, or look to the three loyalties: if the result helps one of the three, one or both of the other two could be compromised.  The fallout of the exchange could feed upcoming plot twists.  Fallout of failures (ie not spending money) could do the same. That escaping minion could then finger you to the alien mob.

A different approach would be to use the dollars in bidding rounds--the players could even bid against eachother based on their differing agendas.

Just brainstorming!

best,
Emily Care

ps Soap and Universalis are the two games that came to mind that use counters like money extensively in their mechanics.  You're probably familiar with Uni since Mike pointed you this way. Vincent Baker also just came up with this money related set of mechanics. Also see his Nighttime Animals Save the World

[daemonchild]

Emily: Mike had mentioned Universalis to me.  I've paged through it but haven't had the chance to give it the attention it deserves.

And bidding rounds is a great idea!  

I've been going back and forth on whether or not to have money as the straight mechanic or, like in combat situations, have a subset mechanic.  Something simple.

I'm trying to leave the game as wide open as possible in terms of options for play, but the main focus of the game is resource management.  So how players get the money is by assessing a budget.  

I will definitely check out those other mechanics.  Hoping Mike chimes in at some point.  (Where are youuuuuu???).

I'm also torn on layout.  What do you think works well for layout, what doesn't?  The game will be available as a pdf and POD.  Thoughts?

Regards,

Monica

[Emily Care]

Hi Monica,

Soap uses bidding extensively. Definitely worth a read. The players could be trying to bid who the info gets revealed to first, or you could have it that the players bid to establish aspects of the conspiracy itself.  That is, if you want to open it up to collaboration.  

Having a subset of mechanics might be a good idea--don't forget that there are lots of times when outcomes may be in question that aren't combat.  Will they be left to gm fiat? Negotiation? If you haven't already picked up the concept of IIEE (Intent, Initiation, Execution and Effect, it's great to have that clear as you go forward to writing resolution mechanics.

Some of the best advice I've seen for game design is in the sticky on this forum.  Ben made this post fairly recently which is a state of the art list of things to be aware of in design.  I was looking for Clint's essay on self publishing, but the link is dead. Darn.  This thread has tons of good links about design in it. (I'm gonna have to sit down & read all this now!)

Layout is a good question. Mike & Ralph did a great job with Uni. I like how Shadow of Yesterday came out.  It's a big topic. Clarity, simplicty, aesthetics--where to start. I'm just beginning to grapple with those issues myself.  I'm waiting until I have a complete set of text for the games before I start thinking too deeply about the layout.  Here are a couple links on writing, layout and publishing. And Phil Reed's post about his (highly successful) rpg publishing business is an excellent read.

best,
Em

[daemonchild]

Emily: I really appreciate the information.  Thank you for being supportive.  Will definitely take a closer look at what you referred me to.

I guess my word choice wasn't as good as it should have been.  When I was referring to "layout" I was referring to contextual layout.  I.E. Writing an outline for the meat of the game.

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Monica,

I want to look at the Ghosts thing, too. What I'm seeing there is a whole second game. That is, the game seems primarily about "What do you do when you're a government agent who has been given the mission of first contact?"

I don't see how the ghosts relate to this focus.

Which is not to say that they can't. It's just to say that at the moment the ghosts seem "tacked on." The term we use around here is "lasersharking." Basically when you feel sharks aren't good enough so you staple laser's to their heads. With the ghosts tacked on the About statement reads: What do you do when you're a government agent who has been given the mission of first contact, an, oh yeah, there are ghosts?"

What you probably want is something like, "What do you do when you're a government agent in a highly spiritually charged setting when you get a mission of first contact?"

That is, how do the ghosts affect who the agents are? How do they affect what the agents do? If it's just "some missions are about ghosts, and some are about aliens," then you have two games. If it's "the aliens have decided to make contact through operating ghosts for communications," then you may have something.

That's not a suggestion, just an example. So is it all more coherent than your description above?

Mike