[Down Spiral] Fast-paced, aggressive gangster play

[joepub]

Okay, I had an amazing idea the other night, after watching Reservoir Dogs.
And Snatch the night before.

One thing I notice about a lot of gangster movies (not gangsta movies, keep in mind. big difference.), is that the protagonists offer suffer as a Tragic Hero.

Despite how calm, collected and in control they are at the start, they are pulled down by a plethora of fuck-ups, betrayals, disasters, and unexpected twists.

Take for example Layer Cake. The dude knows his place, and he doesn't push his boundaries. And then he becomes forced into a downward spiral towards breakdown.

...

So, anyways, I want to write a game with the following elements:
-Centered around a (or several) protagonist(s) who fall from grace, as tragic heroes.
-The game is centered around the other players at the table trying to destroy everything that the protagonist had going for him.

-Highly cinematic, fast-paced. Like Snatch, or any other good gangster movie, I want it to jump all over the place, move quickly, and have twist upon twist.



Anyways, I came up with some half-formed ideas. They're still a bit jumbled, and that's what I want help with. I'll bold the stuff which I can't properly envision yet, and maybe you guys can help fill in the blanks.

Control Pool
So, beneath the narration and gameplay, there is an underlying need for the protagonist to keep control of himself, his situation, and his story stakes.

What I envision is a pool of dice, 5 to begin with. All start out as 6s.

Basically, through narration, characters will add, remove, shift and re-roll dice from this pool (depending on their in-game actions.) If at any point there are twice as many other dice as 6's, the player reaches break-down. (ie. loses story stakes, etc, etc.)

Yeah, and that's the core mechanic of the game.
There are certain things which give the protagonist, and the antagonists (all other players) modifications to the pool.

Sabotage - Any in-game event which is resolved with a die roll, which the antagonist succeeds on (which brings the protagonist closer to failure).
They get to re-roll any die in the Control Pool. (Ie, pick up a 6 and have a 5/6 chance of changing it to something else.)

Low Blow - If anyone rolls a 1 in the Control Pool, they immediately pick up a die (can be same one if desired) and re-roll it.

Saving Grace - Any in-game event which the protagonist succeeds on, through a dice roll, which helps regain footing. The protagonist re-rolls any die in the Control Pool (ie, picks up a non-6 and aims to roll a 6.)

Twist - A twist in plot that drastically changes things. The player who caused it can choose to remove a die from the pool, or add one facing any face they want. (except a 1, because of Low Blow.)

Flavour - Any time a character does something true to form, adds flavour to their character, pulls off something sweet... they gain a die, for Flavour.




In-game mechanics
So I figure that at the start of the first session, every character gets 5 dice (the protagonist gets these as well as the 5 which start in the "Control Pool")

As they succeed, gain opportunities, add flavour, they get more dice to spend.

Any time that a character goes into action, at first it is considered an action with a resolution: 0.
A player can choose to add a d6 (all dice in this game are d6) from their pool, and must narrate why they are gaining this upper hand.
Or, a player can check a box on one of their Fortes (like aspects in Fate, with the boxes, etc.) to add +1 or re-roll a die.

To succeed at an action, you need a higher total than opposing forces. This means that sometimes you can just check off a Forte and gain +1, and win by default more or less.
Or it means that you might end up throwing in 5 dice and checking off 3 Fortes. It all depends on how contested something is.



Controlling NPCS

I figure that the current story arc is always centered around the Protagonist. this means sometimes other players wouldn't logically be there.
So, if a PC is out of action, that player can take up an NPC. They have less Fortes (like, maybe 4 where PCs start with 8). And flavour, twists, etc all don't effect the dice the PC has when he comes back into the story.

The NPC is an independant character which is controlled until NPCs switch or the PC comes back into play.

[redivider]

Hi,

I like the concept.

I assume that one player controls the protagonist, the rest control antagonists?

If so the antagonists need to win 3-4 sabotage or twist rolls to end the game. If game play proceeds around the table with each player getting a turn, I can see it being over really fast. Maybe give the protagonist player an added advantage considering it's one against the world? Not enough to win, but to draw out the agony. Perhaps play proceeds from Protagonist to Antagonist 1 to Protagonist to Antagonist 2 etc. Or the Antagonist has more fortes.

[joepub]

I actually wasn't thinking turn-based really...
There's probably a term for what I'm thinking, but I don't know it.

For now, let's call it Interception Based.

The protagonist controls the story at the beginning. Because, well, he's in control.
And someone intercepts/interrupts him, and the controls the story until someone reacts to that.

Theoretically, someone could control play for 5 seconds, or 10 minutes. It all depends on how quick people are to intercept play.



And, one other key thing I'm thinking so far... When the "story" is over, players have the option to start a new character (if theirs died or became boring) or to continue a character.

And the dice that character has at the end of a story carries over.


Which means that once you've got people where you want them, you don't want to end the game. You want to milk the limelight in order to get more dice. You want the glory.

Does that make sense? I want some kind of dice-gaining mechanism that makes it so that characters would milk the situation than bring it to an end.
And I want antagonists to try and fuck each other over too. It's protagonist against the world, but at the same time the world is against itself too.

[joepub]

I forgot to address the protagonist needing some sort of advantage.

Hmm... Maybe he starts with an extra 2 dice.

I don't want fortes, because protagonist changes at the end of a story (unless it was a standalone story) and I don't want to dish out a permanent advantage.

And if the protag. starts out with bonus dice, it also creates a good tie in for deciding who becomes protagonist after the story ends, when a new one starts: He with the most dice must be brought down.

Or, maybe each protagonist (because there can be more than one) gets a bonus die for each antagonist.

[redivider]

Interventions sound good & addresses my concern. I look forward to seeing where you take this

[joepub]

Okay, I think I've got a grasp on where I'm going with this...


I've got one other question: does anyone have any ideas on how to handle:
a.) Multiple protagonists (ala Snatch)
b.) A protagonist that doesn't emerge immediately (ala Mr. Orange or Mr. White in Reservoir Dogs)

?



I want rules that allow those, but don't know how to do this.

[mutex]

Wow, that's kinda creepy.  I've been mulling over a similar idea based on Hong Kong bullet ballets and Japanese yakuza films.

[joepub]

Really, mutex?


I'm going for a less outright-violence film.


You know how a lot of Snatch is double-weaving? Unless you count Mickey's boxing as combat (which in this case I'd consider more character development than combat in terms of game mechanics, haha) then there are only a few points where characters actually hurt each other.

Same with reservoir dogs. Violent movie, but when you get down to it the violence points are:
1. escape the bank.
2. Mr. Blonde.
3. Ending Scene

Most of it is double-crossings, betrayals, stakeouts, lies, screw-ups, accidents, etc.

[Danny_K]

Could you rotate the protagonist role around?  So in one scene, Mr. Blonde is the protag and his player is trying like mad to keep from breaking down, and then at some point triggered by game events, the protag hat moves to Mr. White and Mr. Blonde is an NPC antagonist. 

This style of story usually depends heavily on outrageous coincidences and the same small pool of characters popping up again and again, so this is actually in-genre. 

The other possibility is to have separate protagonists whose stories contact each others' (like the Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson characters in Pulp Fiction but who ultimately go their separate ways. 

And yes, in a game like this, combat would be just another form of conflict, or even just flavor, like the boxing matches in Snatch.  This part reminds me a little bit of Wushu, where the players can narrate getting brutally beaten and it still makes their die roll more effective (because every brutal blow is another detail, which earns the player another die). 

One more movie suggestion: Sexy Beast.  You can really see the turning points in the story where the protag tries to finesse the situation and it all goes south. 

[joepub]

Good ideas Danny, you got me thinking.


The idea WAS that the protag switches as soon as he hits Break Down (2/3s not 6s).


But I like the idea of interspersing....


So, propose mechanic: Intersperse.
Certain twists, and I'm not sure how to differentiate these from standard Twists, switch protags even before hte protagonist is Broken Down.

Each protag has a control pool, like normal... but only one is in play at a time.




OH! SNAP!
I just thought up the Reservoir Dogs solution. Everyone has a control pool in those cases, intersperse rules apply... and then if they are Broken Down they are determined not to be the protag and continue Story Arc as a antagonist.
And protags can opt to became antags at a point - ala Mr. Blonde going psycho on the cop's ear.


Last protag standing is the protag, they fall... story ends and new story starts as per regular rules (he with the highest die pool is protag).







Am I still making sense? Anyways, thank you for setting my thought trail off Danny. Sorry if this was a confusing post --- it's a confusing game.

[Danny_K]

At some point you're going to have to put dice on table and see what you've got.  Let me know if you'd be interested in playtesting it on RPG.Net, that's my usual stomping grounds.  I just have a particular interest in gangster RPG's. 

It occurs to me that switching to antagonist might be a more interesting choice for the players if it has in-game usefulness: if my character is getting dangerously close to breaking down, maybe I'll jump out of the spotlight in the hopes of getting more dice as an antagonist.   So the protagonist is a high risk/reward position, while antagonist is low risk/reward. That sound right to you? 

I'm playing Polaris at the moment, and it's really opened my eyes as to how you can have hard-edged competitiveness in the same game as cooperative story-telling.  If you can get the mechanics so that the best way to play the game is to totally screw with the protagonist's head when you're an antagonist, you're halfway there.

[joepub]

I've just put another game, Point of Collapse, up...

So it might be a little while before I get serious about writing/playing this game.

But if you want to be, you're there when I start up.



And yeah, Basically I want players to fucking hate each other after this game. The GM (called the arbitrator) has teh responsibility not of telling a story, but of deciding just how outrageous a backstabbing he'll let through. he he he.

[madelf]

Just some thoughts...

I'm wondering if you're over-thinking the seperation between protagonist and antagonist. In the personal view of any given character they are the protagonist, and everyone else is out to get them, or thwart them (the antagonists). So, really, the only difference is the perspective. The person who is in the spotlight is the protagonist, and everyone else is an antagonist. When the spotlight switches to another character, so does the status of protagonist.

Looking at "Snatch" (one of my favorite movies, by the way), I'd be hard put to say any one person is really the protagonist, except at a particular moment in the movie (based on who's in the spotlight at that moment). Each of them is the protagonist of their own agenda, and they are also an antagonist from the viewpoint of everyone else. They're pretty much all just trying to do their own thing, which ends up complicating everyone else's plans.

Just have a bunch of protagonists with individual agendas, then figure out how to make those various agendas conflict with one another. Throw in a few NPC antagonists to muck up everybody's day, and watch the trainwreck commence.
:)

[joepub]

Very true point Calvin.

But this game is about destroying the protagonist. And thus the distinction must be made.


That's why I'm trying to develop the rules for multiple protagonists, interspersing, etc.


Interspersing (Have several people with Control Pools, but only one or a few are counted as "in play" at any one time, and thus players swap in and out of the Protag position.) was made with Snatch and Pulp Fiction in mind.

Protag Out - Many people start as protag and last one standing must be brought down - was created with Reservoir Dogs in Mind.

Standard Protagonist scenario was created iwth Layer Cake/The Big Lebowski in mind.



Do you think between single protagonist, multiple protagonist, protagonist-out, and interspersing that we can cover the wide spectrum of protagonist situations?

[madelf]

I'm not yet convinced that the distinction must be made, because your inclusion of options for "interspersing" and such leads me to think it's not necessary. You seem to be starting with one basic assumption, and then adding tweaks to alter it to something different (making it be about more than just destroying a single protagonist).

If there is a mechanism for shifting from one protagonist to another within a session, then why differentiate at all? (Or differentiate beyond "gang up on the guy with the ball" at least) Just use what you're calling Interspersing as the default. At that point you don't really need an overarching protagonist and antagonist, as it's every man for himself. If people want to gang up and take someone out, that needn't change the mechanic, just the way the players handle the characters. Sure, someone goes down, maybe everyone goes down - which leads you directly into your last man standing "Protag Out." Not defining the protagonist doesn't mean no-one gets destroyed.

And if the shift only takes place between sessions ("we're playing in Protag Out mode tonight"), then that's just a choice of the type of plot/story chosen for a particular session. Then the difference would be more how the individual session is planned, than how the game is designed.

All protagonist and antagonist terms really do (generally) is highlight who's "the good guy" and who's "the bad guy." In real life (and good fiction), the bad guys think they're the good guys too. So they're the protagonist in their own perspective. Treat the game the same way; when your turn comes around you're the protagonist, and everyone else tries to mess you up. When the next guy's turn comes, you're now his antagonist, and you try to ruin his day like he did for you.

But it's also possible that I'm completely missing what you're trying to do.

Now if you really want a defined protagonist... how about making him the GM? The GM sets up his scenario, his goal, etc, and the players (antagonists) try to thwart him. It would be a turn-around on the GM playing the "bad guys" and the players always playing the "good guys." Of course this would require the system to have enough player power to keep the GM from necessarily having his way, and could even include a mechanism for handing off GM duty as the game goes onward (maybe when the protagonist goes down?). Now in that case I could see it being a meaningful distinction (between protagonist and antagonist), as it involves more than just who's in the spotlight.