[Imp Game] Traps & Mishaps! - Brain Dump & feedback

[daMoose_Neo]

For those following the development of what was once "Dungeons for Dummies", The Imp Game, we're finally getting down to the meat of the original concept: maintaining a dungeon!

In writing the game, I've come to the conclusion I'm going to have what appears to be three seperate games that actually form one whole:
- Mischief & Mayhem, more or less a Nar RP book?
- Traps & Mishaps, what could possibly be a Sim collection (building the perfect dungeon, exploring it), I dunno
- "Arena", a minis component, pure combat, Gameist?

All of which comprise "The Imp Game". Quite the interesting setup now that I look at it...

"Traps & Mishaps" will introduce three new Imp Types, possibly a new list of possible Traits and Abilities, but most importantly rules for developing a Dungeon, different ways to play the dungeon, monsters, traps, and expanded information on Adventurers, so as to abuse and kill them in a creative fashion.
At the basic level, this will play as more or less a board game. Players will construct a dunegon out of a point pool, buying rooms, gold (lure), traps, monsters etc. Running the dunegon, players will have to lure Adventurers along, guideing them to traps or monsters by using gold or treasures as lures.
Other options might include competative dungeon building for praise, running random dungeons as Adventurers and being the first to off your Adventurer.

Imps introduced follow the same formula as the others and are based on the 3 remaining stereotypical stats: Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom.
The Tinkering Imp is our dexterous imp, able to build and set traps with less risk of getting caught up in them!
My personal fave of the lot are the Generic Imps: one Player, 3 imps. Each has a single trait, but everything else about these three imps is nearly identical- they're the generic fodder for running tests, or doing other nasty things where disposing of an imp is called for. There will always be 3, however, so its not like the player really misses out on anything, but it is possible to kill these three - another Generic Imp simply takes its place later. This is based along the idea that Constitution is a measure of how much you can take in terms of damage, weather conditions or other assaults on your person.
The Wise Imp is the one being fleshed out at the moment, but we're really looking for some way to effectively tie it in to the whole Dungeon concept the book and other two imps have. Wisdom would be its "stat".

Adventurer's will likely have a couple stats to help determine things. I'm thinking a "Greed" or "Lure" stat, that is a descriptor & number, always starting at 0, like Gold(0). Something simple, like Gold, can quickly rise as each time they obtain that descriptor, the more they want and the more it affects their actions in the dunegon. What I'm going to have to do, though, is some kind of Satisfaction roll to see if the Adventurer is satisfied with their haul or not. Given the 2d6 system the Imp Game runs on (2d6 less than a Target Number), this could be simple: 2d6 less than Greed. At 0, the Adventurer will plow right in, heedless of danger. Raise it a few points, though, and you run the risk of the Adventurer bugging out with your hard earned gold! At about 6 or 7, its downright certain the Adventurer will attempt to flee.
A few Adventurer types would be the generics: Fighter, Thief/Rouge, Wizard/Mage.
Also thinking Adventurers will be built similar to Imps: 3 traits, 2 fears (or just replace these with the Greed/Lure) and an Ability. These, however, will come off a table, allowing players to take a couple six siders and roll up a random "party" to wander through.

Traps will be a little more complex. Current thought: Each trap will have an initial TN of 2, which the Imps can stack their GP on at the start of the crawl, as well as carefully position some items or treasures or whatever as lure. Traps will also recieve a bonus based on the Greed/Lure of the Adventurer, as they may be more occupied with the idea of their loot as opposed to their own safety.

Monsters may end up statted similar to Adventurers, off a random table or based on the "species". Simply point them at the nearest hero and let them loose! Combat amongst Monster and Adventurer will likely boil down to a single success netting a kill, possibly Monster TN vs. Adventurer Greed/Lure. Monsters would also get bonuses to mobbing moves (like Dire Rabbits overwhelming a single warrior).

Finally, a good chunk will concern using the dungeon as a setting for Mischief & Mayhem stuff as opposed to running it as a seperate game. Cross-over points would be possible: play a few rounds of Traps, earn some praise, stat up the imps, run a Mischief game.
NOW
- Does the proposed capture the ideas of running the dungeons? I'd like to think so, but this was the sticking point when I first started development on it.
- Given the cross-over concept, does the idea of two seperate games that interact and support each other have appeal?
- Point based, little unsure here. Mischief flows pretty fast and loose, while a point based means much more math and time taken to construct the duneon. Does it mesh? Is "meshing" not important given the seperation of the two?
- General feedback appreciated: what works, what doesn't, what looks cool?
- This is the basic structure, but might it need more to help make it work, or could this puppy fly once there's some flesh on this skeleton?

[Jasper]

Answering your questions...

"Given the cross-over concept, does the idea of two seperate games that interact and support each other have appeal?"

Yeah, that's cool. I like the idea of choosing right up front what kind of play you want to have for the next couple of hours, and switching around as need be. Are they separate and related, or does one flow into the next? I think continuity would be good, both to connect the experience under the "Imp Game" umbrella, and to enable a group to play each sub-game in a single session more easily.

"Point based, little unsure here. Mischief flows pretty fast and loose, while a point based means much more math and time taken to construct the duneon. Does it mesh? Is "meshing" not important given the seperation of the two?"

I think it's totally fine. You're not going to have to construct a dungeon very often, right? And I don't think "meshing" is really that critical: in fact, a strong argument could be made for purposefully differentiating the games. In M&M, you're a simple Imp following orders; in T&M, you're suddenly seeing all this behind-the-scenes stuff. And you can think, "Oh, that's why Imps needs Masters -- that's what they do all day."

"General feedback appreciated: what works, what doesn't, what looks cool?"

I like where you're going with adventurers, but true parity with Imps doesn't seems necessary, really. They're humans (or whatever). They're big. They're good. Etc. They can work in a totally different way, and that will just reinforce the weird nature of Imps themselves. Since Imps has pretty simple rules, if you have too much paralellism, things may seem overly uniform.

I also don't know about the CA tags you've assigned the games. Seems like T&M and Arena may both support gamist goals more than anything.


This puppy could fly...but it does definitely need more meat. How about an imagined sessions (or snippet) of what would be happening in a T&M game?

[daMoose_Neo]

Still pulling it all together.
I'd say the games can easily flow one into the next. Your M&M mission becomes the centerpiece of the T&M dungeon, which is now under assault from the bevy of Adventurers who want that treasure. Also, the dungeon can easily go from a seperate "game" to a setting for M&M.
I'm pulling together a document right now on it, the first post helped me get some of the initial ideas down, and few that had just cropped up really seemed to work.
An Adventurer right now looks as such:

- Class (Fighter, Caster, Rouge or Elfish Archer), which acts as an Imp's class does as well as set a base HP and Movement.
- Lures, looking like 2 Lures per Adventurer (Gold & Experiance, Knowledge & Jewels, The Sceptre of Power & Gold, whatever)
- Traits/Special abilities - Agreed a little on too many parrallels, but not for the same reasons. Mostly, I realized statting out disposable characters like this (And Adventurers are HIGHLY disposable). I figured roll the Traits & Special Abilities into a descriptor type, grant some bonuses to the likes of combat or trap disarmment for them.
Break them down into the three levels instead of imp's 4, probably use 2 Traits/Descriptors.
For M&M terms, the Adventurers will ALWAYS be better than an imp, but I do need to set up a system whereby the vast majority die.

T&M is really the oddball of the three, as there are about a half dozen ways you could play with it. You could use it as an extension of M&M, you could build the dungeons and just go exploring as an imp or adventurer, you could use it ala a board game and play it straight up like that.
In terms of playing:

Vision of play: I imagine you could go one complete "session" just building and tweaking the dungeon, kind of like meeting with everyone for a group D&D character generation. This would involve a good amount of grid paper, tables, and die rolling for some randomized attributes for monsters or adventurers.

Assuming thats all done, the elected GM for the game (as M&M has the rotating GM concept) would set up the scenario, either through first discussing it or by pulling it out of no where, and prep the dungeon for any such neccesities. One sample scenario, included in the back ala M&M, concerns the imps being trapped in the dungeon after just resetting it, with a team of adventurers just freshly entered. Play would concern getting through the traps without setting them off. A session like that would probably run like M&M.
Another, two parties of adventurers are in the dungeon and you need to distract the second one while the first one is being finished off and the traps they spung reset, could easily play like a board game. Each player taking turns, seeing if they can get the second party to chase after them and into a trap, trying to reset one of the other traps, or wax the first party somehow.
Pure T&M will have an outlined turn order, as we have to take into account the actions of the adventurers, which are likely to be controlled by a GM/Adventurer player in normal T&M play.
So, here's a rough outline:

GM/Adventurer Player: Ahkay, the heroes have entered the dungeon and are at the Entry Room! Small party this one, a Caster, a Fighter and a Rouge. *rolls against a Behavior table* Party agrees to split up, the Caster backing up the Fighter, the Rouge going off on his own. Fighter & Caster go through the left door, the Rouge sneaks through the right.

Player A: In that left room, we've got a pile of about 700 GP, but its also the Trigger to Sealed Door trap.
GM: Neither of them have Gold as a Lure, so they wouldn't trip that trap.
Player A: But, the Fighter has a Vengence lure? Orcs attacked his village, so...I've got Shapeshift as a power, I'll Shapeshift to an orc! *spends 2 GP, chucks dice, fails* Crap. Okay, I transform into...a villager, thats right! "Help me, master, help me!" I call through the corridor south of that room. "There are Orcs down here! Help me!"

Player B: Okay, I know we'll catch that Rouge with the Gold/Door trap in the other room!
GM: Yup, the Rouge has a Gold lure, he scoops up as much gold as he can and springs the door trap! He's got about 150 GP on him now, and a Gold(1) Lure.

GM: The Caster heard that, but the Fighter is too busy attending to the "villager" rambling on about the Orcs further ahead. The Caster doubles back because he's got "Suspicious" as a trait, so because he wouldn't overlook anything he goes back to see what that was.
Meanwhile, the Rouge is poking and proding around the stone door that just fell behind him.
Player A: "They're down there, Master!" I point down the corridor, which turns off to the left. "The evil, wicked monsters are down there!" "Don't worry!" The Fighter sounds all cheesy and "noble". "*I* will save you and avenge my beloved puppy Cuddles!" And he goes charging down the hall.

Player B: I'm in the corridor just south of that Rouge's room, and see him poking around. "Hey you! Stupid! Down here!" I shout. Lemme see if that got his attention *tosses another 2 GP into the pool, rolls a 5, succeeds* All right it did, he comes charging down the hall! Wait a second, there aren't any traps down this hall...crap!

GM: The Caster is reading the inscriptions on the door, and finds out its a Sealed Door trap. He doesn't have any kind of skill or trait to pick locks, however, so he goes back through the room to see his comrade charge blindly down the hall.

From there, we'd have some combat, probably Orcs given the setup. Not quite as free-form as M&M, but still pretty loose on the "What happens next" piece.

[daMoose_Neo]

http://www.neoproductions.net/imp/files/Traps.pdf

First taste! Since I'm doing a fair bit of discussing Adventurers and Monsters here, I figured I'd toss up the in-progress sections on Adventurers and Monsters.
I've listed about seven would-be, basic Monsters, kind of taking a page out of Diablo's book: Skeletons, Zombies, little anklebiter Goblins, and some slime, a well rounded lot if I do say so myself. Yes, they are fairly easy to slay, and by all rights should be. Level 1 Dungeons will oft attract Adventuers of the level of "Peon", "Wannabe" or "Apprentice", meaning the simple critters will do more than enough damage. Also showcases some of the creatures that can be generated by a dungeon, including another personal fave the Dire Rabbit ("E's got these sharp, pointy fangs!")