Help for a novice in a game idea

[Lxstanto]

Hello all, I am a n00b to this whole pen and paper Rog thing, and thought I could get some good help here.

I was reading 24 hours rps at a site and came across one about road trips. Before reading, I had the expectation of the Rog might be some sort of Lapping while on a road trip. So, basically playing an Rog while interacting with the rest of the world.
The Rog wasn't about that, but I still like this idea.

So, is there any kind of ROG out their were you are essentially interacting with the outside world, but they don't know it?
Sort of a game aiming towards humor, and if not not so, how would you even start to create it?

Thanks

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I guess the only thing I have heard of that falls into that category, is Killer! But it's super old and I don;t know if it is still in print.
  Of course, I don;t have much XP regarding LARPs or anything like that.
  Sounds like you want more of a Flash Mob than a RPG though.

[Callan S.]

'Night time animals save the world' used that sort of idea (google should help you find a link). You took a real life stroll (with your child - this game was aimed at parent and kid play ) and started adding imaginary elements to the real world "There's an squirrel in that tree that wants to egg that house over there". It had some mechanics so you'd wrestle a bit over who gets to narrate (the wrestling inspires you to narrate your best, because you don't want to waste the opportunity - you can't be sure when you'll get to narrate again)

I'd tossed up some ideas on some sort of gamist combat game that revolved around the technique, but never solidified anything.

And just off the cuff, some sort of game based that involves visiting pubs, would be an interesting one!

[Lxstanto]

Ha ha, I think I am still to young for the pub idea. Thanking you for replying, so quickly.
I saw a Killer! online somewhere, and I could implement that some how. But, I am thinking for more for a group of players
and a game master. Flash mob would be fun, but I am also creating this to do during school maybe.

Night time animals save the world is very helpful, and more along the ideas of what I am thinking.
But, I am curious to how the combat one would work?

[Adam Dray]

You're not too young to publish! Banish that thought.

By "publish," we only mean, "write in a coherent form and distribute it so other people can read it." That might be a finished PDF or web page on GeoCities. Anyone can do that, for free. We'll even help.

And once you have a PDF, it ain't that hard to sell it via one of the PDF game sites or go to print-on-demand. Really, save your allowance for a few weeks or take a paper route and you can set up PDF or POD. ;)

[Josh Roby]

...what's a Rog?

[dindenver]

Hi!
  rog=rpg with a typo. I had to read it three times to figure out what they were talking about...

[Josh Roby]

So, Lxstanto (do you have a real and easier-to-spell name?), are you asking for a RPG that has the players interact with the real world, but do so in character, reinterpretting their physical environment as their fictional environment?

Have you ever heard of LARPing?

[joepub]

You're not too young to publish! Banish that thought.

um.... Adam, what he meant by

Ha ha, I think I am still to young for the pub idea.

is that he is too young to write a game that revolves around pubs (bars) as a setting place.

But very positive advice, nonetheless. ha ha ha.


Lxstanto, I just want to know:
Have you played any RPGs yet?
If so, what have you played and did you like it?

And, do I have your vision correct?:
You want to have a game where players get to experience a world which they are still a small part of...
Like road tripping in a foreign land, or a new city, etc?

Is that correct?

[Lxstanto]

Whoops, the spell check accidentally changed rpg to rog and larping to lapping. So, that might help with some of the confusion.

Yes, I have heard of LARPing, and I am not a big rpg player just have experimented with some people who were also experimenting. I've played
D and D and Vampire: the Masquerade. And, I did like both.

Oh, my name is Alex, and I am to young for both pubs (ha ha) and probably publishing at the moment, because I have to have something created before I could publish it. Thanks for the optimism, though.

The idea is having a gm create situations for the players to ...play and overcome. But, I would want a system were you can plug in or improvise items and ideas from the surrounding environment into the game. I don't know how to make a system from scratch because I really don't know what goes into making an rpg. So, a game were you can use your surroundings to play with minimal tools to play, and you interact with the environment(people, places, etc.)

Oh, and I would also like it to be humorous as well.

I hope that clears somethings up, and thanks for all the help so far.

[Callan S.]

Hi again,

Does the GM decide what the solution is to the situation? Or can players figure out their own solution?

Here's a tricky question or two: If they can figure out their own solution, how do you determine if the solution works or not? Does the GM just decide if he likes it or not (and if the GM already has a solution in mind, he's probably going to say no to any solution but his own).

Something that might be useful is if the GM assigns certain values to real life objects, within a certain range, and writes them down. So he could rate a real life tree from 1 to 10 in climbing difficulty, then writes it down. Then say if the player is deciding which tree his imagined character should swing from to power up his flying kick attack, he can try and guess which tree would have the easiest rating by actually looking at the tree.

And if the GM gives hard ratings to all the trees that are clearly easy to climb, you punch him really hard in the shoulder. The forge community calls this 'social contract'. :)

You could do ratings like this for all sorts of things. If it's close to what your thinking of, I'll write up a few more ideas based on this.

[knicknevin]

If you are looking for something to play at school (and I assume you don't mean actually during your lessons) I can think of some mechanics that you could apply so that the success of failure of a player's action is determined randomly, rather than beieng judged by the other players or the GM...

Have you ever played Car Bingo? It's where you just watch the cars going by and try to get a set of colours (or numbers/letters from their license plate) The same idea could be applied to passers-by, e.g. if the next person to walk past is male, then the task fails, but if they are female, it succeeds.

Have you any idea what sort of setting or style you would like your game to have? Do you want it to be completely grounded in reality, or do you want to use the real world as a launch pad for your fantastic ideas? (I'm starting to think Rugrats here now...)

You also want to watch out for other people very carefully when doing any kind of LARPing: if you are going to mix with the general public, try not to involve them in your game... think how you'd feel if someone was playing a game where they were pretending you were an armed guard or a monster...

[Adam Dray]

You're not too young to publish! Banish that thought.

um.... Adam, what he meant by

Ha ha, I think I am still to young for the pub idea.

is that he is too young to write a game that revolves around pubs (bars) as a setting place.

But very positive advice, nonetheless. ha ha ha.

Oh, wow. Sorry about that. I need to read more closely next time.

[Lxstanto]

Both are good ideas, but I think Callan's idea would fit more with what I am trying to accomplish. I think there needs to be some sort of gm, because he could determine the goal to which the players would try to accomplish. In terms of the environment, I think it would decided what a player can do, and what the goal to accomplish would be. So, you would be more like roleplaying to the other players, rather than everyone surrounding you. Am I making any sense?

So, I guess what I am wanting is more of an improve game, but with more elaborate mechanics or rules to make it more complex then simple imagination?

What would you want in a game that would be a spontaneous rpg?

[Callan S.]

So, I guess what I am wanting is more of an improve game, but with more elaborate mechanics or rules to make it more complex then simple imagination?

How do you mean, more complex? Do you mean it could cook up certain results to help keep the creative juices going, like "Well, this result says not only does the PC get's thrown over there, through an apple cart and the juice splashes over the principles head. Hmmm, that adds an interesting twist to the situation"

So it'd add on ideas for you to bring into the improvisation. Is that the sort of thing your looking for?