Slacker: The Roleplaying Game of Avoiding Work

[Rich Stokes]

OK, first thoughts.

This is a game that's fermenting right now.  It'll never be very complex, so here we go.

The title of the game is Slacker.

The players are characters trying to avoid doing any work.  That is, they are all employed to do a job, but are trying to avoid doing the work they're supposed to do.

Aims:
Not doing something you're supposed to do.
Achieving the same goal (or the illusion of that goal)
Amount of effort going into avoidance is often greater than that involved in just doing the job properly in the first place: This is fine.
Everything usually turns out OK in the end.

Examples of characters (from TV):
Bender and Fry from Futurama (Esp Fry)
Randal from Clerks (Esp The Animated Series)

System notes:
Designed for GM + 2 or 3 players
Scene resolution rather than task resolution.
Track level of success and also Effort taken.
Rarely a case of success or failure, usually whether they put in enough effort to complete the task to a satisfactory quality.

Defining character attributes:
Selfish
Lazy
Greedy

They like:
Food
Booze
Porno
Videogames
TV
Free Stuff

Task resolution:

Roll 6 6 sided dice
Each 1 rolled is an ammount of effort you have to put in for your scheme to work.
Each 6 rolled is a degree of sucess.  Only one 6 is needed, but more is better.

Note: I've been using custom dice.  They have a green sticker (success) in one face and a red sticker (effort) on the opposite face.  The other faces are blank.

"Skills"

Characters have a bunch of skills.  Say 2 or 3.

Describe how that skill helps.  For each skill you describe that the GM agrees helps, you get one "bump".  A bump physically rotates a die by one side.  So a 1 could become a 2, 3, 4 or 5, meaning that one unit of effort would be removed.  A 2, 3, 4 or 5 could become a 6, meaning one extra level of success.

The "bump" mechanic represents characters lying, cheating and stealing their way out of having to do any real work.  It seems about right.

The main problem is this: How do you make doing nothing into an activity?  The characters in these stories and TV shows often go to extreme lengths to avoid doing the work they are supposed to.  Often, they will expend far more energy avoiding doing their jobs than they ever would just doing the damn jobn in the first place.  Theses guy work really hard at doing nothing.  Or they're trying crazy "get Rich Quick" schemes.

On TV, the boss ususally shows up and they have to hustle in order to look busy.  It might be interesting to have one of the players play the "straight man" who's trying to get the characters to just get on with it, but I can't currently see a mechanical way of acheiving this.

[Bryan Hansel]

How do you make doing nothing into an activity?

I do this all the time.  Like today, I needed to mount up a bunch of prints for a local store, and instead, I built part of a boat.  Which was harder?  The boat building.  Which makes me money? The prints.  Which is more fun? The boat building.  Which should I have done? The prints.  And then, of course, I've been asked to find some stock images for a magazine and get those to them. I haven't done that either, because the boat building was much more fun.

Seems to me, that the GM states what they have to do, and the players then come up with creative ways to avoid it.... until the bills catch up.  I suggest that the bills in your game should be debt collectors, bankers, public utility works who chase the characters.  And I suggest throw in a nice healthy dose of Austin, TX as in the movie Slackers.

[Plotin]

The main problem is this: How do you make doing nothing into an activity?  The characters in these stories and TV shows often go to extreme lengths to avoid doing the work they are supposed to.  Often, they will expend far more energy avoiding doing their jobs than they ever would just doing the damn jobn in the first place.  Theses guy work really hard at doing nothing.  Or they're trying crazy "get Rich Quick" schemes.

What you describe here is the very essence of the "Dying Earth" RPG: a bunch of amoral, lazy ne'er-do-wells (the PCs, but also about half the NPCs) trying to swindle their way through life without ever having to do any honest work – which regularly brings them the greatest of jeopardy. Or in conflict with each other, when something (really anything) absolutely has to be done and every character is trying to get the others to do it while he watches on idly or pretends to be busy. Dialogue (rather arguments) among the PCs thus make up quite a lot of the activity, the rest being taken up by implementig said hare-brained "Get rich quick"-schemes.

Dying Earth goes about this by emphasizing that the characters are out for instant gratification; having to work today to reap their labour's fruits is something that for them takes a lot of willpower and effort. To simulate this, characters have six traits like "Resist Pettifoggery", "Resist Slothfulness", "Resist Avarice", "Resist Gourmandism", and so on. Whenever any opportunity at all arises where one of these vices is tempted, the character will give in automatically, unless the player wants to chance a roll to resist. The result is that the characters' crazy schemes regularly fail because of them shirking to contribute anything substantial to their progress and succumbing to their own vices, which in turn of course leads to more arguments among the characters. Hilariously funny.

On the company's homepage used to be a download of the quickstart rules, but I just saw that it is temporarily down. Anyway, here is the link to the download page, for referral at some later date:

http://www.dyingearth.com/downloads.htm