[Space Rat] Rewards for Femme Babes

[Peril Planet]

Let me start by throwing out a general "thanks" to everyone that has given me feedback on Space Rat so far.  "Thanks".  Now, down to the pointy end of things -  I've run through a number of sessions of Space Rat now, much to the enjoyment of my regular gaming group (an "actual play" is forthcoming).  However, I am still searching for a satisfactory way of rewarding the player/femme babe that "wins" the Space Rat's attention at the end of any given session. 

I have so far come up with three options for rewarding a femme babe for accumulating the most attention stars during an adventure.

(a) During the following adventure they recieve a +1 bonus to any "test of luck" roll.  This will allow them to perform many more daring acts as it is much easier to use luck.  This gives a big advantage, in that they are guaranteed to pass their first two uses of luck.  Maybe that's appropriate, but so far my play testers are least satisfied with this option.

(b) During the following adventure the femme babe is allowed to re-roll a single luck test.  This was suggested by one of my players, and has been the way we have played so far.  I have found, however, that the player with the re-roll tends to just hang on to it, unsure of whether any situation is dire enough to use their bonus.  To me, it smacks of a too little reward for all that effort.

(c) "Upstaging" is a new idea I tried last game, where the winning femme babe recieves +1 to luck tests if they currently have the least attention points - the bonus is negated if their attention stars are equal or greater than any other characters, but returns if they drop back into last place again.  This gave the character/player a chance to stay in the "spotlight" so to speak.  The jury is still out on this one.

All three options are mechanical rewards (providing the femme babe with a bonus to dice rolls/actions in the game).  It would be nice if the player had some chance to influence the story (either their character's role in the story, or the entire groups), but I have yet to come up with an idea that didn't undermine any preparation that a game master does.  In a novel you might imagine the main character (the femme babe that won the previous adventure) have some important role or goal that elevated their importance in the story above that of the supporting cast members.  I am unsure how this might be reflected in the game.  Maybe, the winner of the previous game is given some additional challenge/goal that will earn them (and only them) an extra attention star if completed.  That way they have a unique adventure goal to strive for, and the other player have their own agenda too - screw her over so she doesn't earn that extra star.  I might try that.

Any suggestions or feedback would be much appreciated. 

If you have no idea what Space Rat is, check it out at
http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/Space_Rat.php

[Rob MacDougall]

Rusty: First, let me add to the general chorus of oohs and aahs for Space Rat. It's a great premise and the game looks hella fun.

re: story-based awards
1. What about Ron's initial suggestion, that the winning babe gets to begin the next scenario on Jack's arm, embroiled in the story? It don't think that necessarily undermines any GM prep - I mean, the GM is safe to assume that there will be some babe on Jack's arm at any time.
2. Could the player of the winning babe had some (limited, but more than the other players') power to influence Jack's actions during the next session? "But Jackie-poo, you promised you'd take me on a tour of the Thalusian Sludge Palaces..."  This actually connects to one thing I don't completely understand reading the game: how the GM is supposed to play Jack - is he actively involved in everything or does he just sit back and watch the girls get in and out of trouble? 

Again, my compliments on the game.

[Peril Planet]

This actually connects to one thing I don't completely understand reading the game: how the GM is supposed to play Jack - is he actively involved in everything or does he just sit back and watch the girls get in and out of trouble?

Yeah, that was a drawback to not (yet) getting to to the GM section.  In the playtest games I have run so far, Jack has been on the periphery - either starting the girls off on their mission and watching from afar, or being the goal of their quest (i.e. rescuing him).  With that said, however, I do have a few stories in mind where Jack "leads" the ladies, and gets them into all kinds of trouble.  I guess, because of the format my test games have taken, I have made it hard to provide the story rewards I have been thinking of, as Jack hasn't really played a role.  This is perhaps the problem I need to address, not necessarily the rewards.

Thanks Rob, sometimes it takes some straightforward questions to get the old brain out of its rut and think freshly about problems.

[Graham W]

(b) During the following adventure the femme babe is allowed to re-roll a single luck test.  This was suggested by one of my players, and has been the way we have played so far.  I have found, however, that the player with the re-roll tends to just hang on to it, unsure of whether any situation is dire enough to use their bonus.  To me, it smacks of a too little reward for all that effort.

That's interesting. I had this problem during a LARP: when I gave the players a one-shot power, they never used it, because they were hanging on for the best time to use it.

You could, say, give the winning player three rerolls rather than one. They probably wouldn't use all three, but it would make them more willing to use their rerolls.

Or could you do something more mechanical? Say, let the winning player reroll any 1s rolled in Luck rolls? Or 1s and 2s (I forget how big the dice are in Space Rat)?

Graham

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I strongly advise against any larger-scale reward system that provides bonuses to the Femme Babes. The whole existing resolution system of the game is a brilliantly-constructed set of bonuses over a simple opposition-framework. It's already a traditional-type game's reward system built right into resolution.

By having scenario-based rewards add more bonus-wrangling on top of that is like smearing jelly on top of frosted cake. "Jelly's good" - yes, it is, with butter on toast. Layered thickly over frosting, on the cake, it's nasty.

Most traditional RPG resolution isn't integrated well with either direct Author/Director Stance input or effectiveness-improvement ("advancing" in gamer jargon). Therefore when their reward systems do add those things, they seem like wonderful bolts out of the blue, well worth striving for. All such suggestions you'll receive or hit upon yourself are based on experience with games like I've just described. "Hey, in game X, we got re-rolls for completing missions, and it worked great!"

Of course it did; the game being played didn't otherwise have such things. Space Rat does, already right there in the resolution system. Adding more of the same to Space Rat will suck really hard. The scenario-level reward system shouldn't concern modifying resolution in any way. Nor should it concern improving the characters in any way above and beyond what the Stars already do very well.

Instead, stick with the SIS, and as well with the wonderful overall framework of the game. The best SIS reward I can think of, mentioned above, is for her to start the next adventure with the Femme Babe explicitly attached to Jack. The overall-framework reward concerns all the Femme Babes' roles in whatever novel these scenarios are excerpts from. As I wrote before, the point of play rests on whether any or all of the Femme Babes are heroes, and that is definitely a social, CA-level reward which has no in-game causal component - rather, it's based on the judgment, appreciation, and enjoyment of the real people concerning what they have wrought.

How are you going to achieve that in terms of rules? Well, Nathan, you're the author who wrote up those wonderful existing excerpts in the text from the "novels" - to the point where one player in my group tentatively asked if the novels really exist. You don't need much now! State clearly, once, and encouragingly that the people playing this game are, basically, inventing their own excerpts from a Space Rat "novel," and that they should explicitly refer to it and invent bits of it during play.

That'll do it, I think. Try it out; play a couple-three continuing scenarios with the same Femme Babe characters and bloody well use Jack in play, and let me know how it goes. As it happens, I'm playing Space Rat this very afternoon, and we'll compare notes.

Best,
Ron