[Boulevard] Define, Refine, Destroy

[joepub]

the basics (skip this if you know it):
The game is called Boulevard.
The basis is: You are a presuming, pretentious punk. You are an aggressive, militant kid who has all these edgy, oh-so-important issues you cling to. You are living on your own, in the shitty part of town, and you hate everybody.

The game is about fighting for Causes you don't really understand, in a world you are afraid to believe in. It's also about being a fucking hellraiser and damning the world. It's about being punk, in the most tragic and naive sense of the word.

So, I came up with these two basic design goals, in this order:

1.) Have "ranting" about your Causes coded into the game - in order to gain game resources, you need to really get passionate about what you stand for, who you hate, and what's holding you down. You need to be expressive about this - through spoken word, ranting, poetry and announcements. Discussed here.

1b.) As a note to that goal... have action very focused on the construction and deconstruction of these Causes.

2.) Have the story told out of chronological order, as a way of dissembling this person's life.
Link scenes based on thematic content, striking imagery, and irony.
After the scene where you crash a car, you jump to a scene where your father gave you the car as a coming-of-age present.Discussed here.

2b.) As a note to that goal... have sequencing very focused on the construction and deconstruction of these characters' lives.


And for a while I was thinking... "Wait, don't these conflict? What's the point of hammering out a "rant" about a Cause that will only see 2 minutes of gameplay? fragmented gameplay at that!"

And... I had this really cool idea, pertaining to part 1: You spend a resource to point a cap gun at someone and pull the trigger. (cap gun has a single cap in it, loaded for Russian Roulette.) If the cap goes off, you kill their Ideal/Cause.
But... that really doesn't matter so much when you're all temporally jumpy-jumpy.

And I was thinking... goal (1) is totally about punk: the movement. goal (2) is totally about punks: adolescants. (sp?)
And I was thinking... am I designing two completely different games here?

Then I had this really cool idea punch me in the side of the face today. And it totally firms up what Boulevard will be, in my mind.
*drumroll here*...
Have gameplay told in some kind of Chapters. Each Chapter highlights a Cause.

But each Chapter includes a few set phases. Define, Refine, Destroy.
Define - Define a Cause. Make it your own. Be all hardcore activist about it.
Refine - Show the character's opinion about the Cause become jaded. chipped away. weak.
Destroy - The character, for one reason or another, loses faith. Gives up. Changes heart. Gets bored. Moves on.

How I Define the Cause - what I tie it to, and what I seperate it from... is crucial.
How you Define something fuels how you Destroy it.
Kinda like... how you define grace determines what a fall from grace looks like. Same sorta concept, but:
How you define your battles determines how you lose them.

How you Refine your viewpoint, and Refine your Cause is something that affects your entire life though. It's the life lessons bit. The ways in which you become jaded, hurt, scarred... those things are with you for LIFE, man!

Define and Destroy are dealt with inside a Chapter. They are built and collapsed internally.
Refine, however, affects the entire story.
And... the resources/boosts that come OUT OF a scene stem from Refine scenes.
And... with those resources, I can do two things:
a.) In future Refine scenes, I invest those resources to get MORE resources. That's how resources work - you pay X in a gamble at getting more than X.
b.) In scenes which aren't really Define, Refine OR Destroy... I can spend those resources to kinda... Raise the stakes for everyone. Step things up a notch. Kick it into a higher gear.

So, in (a), having lots of resources will earn me more resources.
And, in (b), having more resources than others lets me raise the bar to a playing field only I can really compete on.

Now, enter this other Resource called Anger.
You can spend anger to pull the trigger on The Gun.
If the cap goes off, you've just pushed me right into Destroy phase.
If I put X amount of [the Refine resource] on the table, and your gun goes off... That X is lost to me. I don't get it back, and I certainly don't get to finish my test to see if it yields MORE resources for me.

So, if you suddenly have a lot of [the resources], and I don't... I generate some Anger and I shoot you in the face.
Then suddenly... you lost whatever [resource] you had on the table, you move on to a Destroy scene, and your next scene is a new Define scene after that.
I've just:
a.) Made your next two scenes ones which have no long term effect (Destroy and Define)
b.) washed away whatever resources you had ante'd up.

Basically, it encourages me to hurt you in an effort to make sure you don't get ahead of me.
You don't have to be the fastest runner, you just have to make sure everyone else trips up a lot.

Neato?

Now, the crunchy questions:
a.) Does this re-enforce what the game is about?
b.) Is it awesome?
c.) Can this work with the non-sequential timeline idea?
d.) Are there other ways to combine my Original Goal 1 with Original Goal 2?

If people have no meaningful criticisms, but are excited about where I'm going, a simple "This is hot stuff, Joe" post is totally cool.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

A few scattered thoughts/reactions:

1) I don't like the idea of scenes that have no long-term impact. I'm a punk -- everything I do is practically on fire with meaning. I brush my teeth like some people start revolutions!

2) I think firing the cap gun should mostly backfire. Anger is self-destructive, not other-people-destructive. When I focus my anger on you, in this game, it better bite me in the ass at least half the time. When my fist clenches around that trigger, as a player, I should be sweating just as much as the guy I'm pointing it at. My hand should be shaking, I should be reconsidering my choice -- but I should also feel pushed to do it. Put a gun on the table and somebody just has to pick it up.

And when I hear that empty *click*, it's my little world that should collapse, not the other guy's -- maybe not as much as his would if the gun went off, but something. I burned down the wrong house, I picked the wrong fight, and now it's my shit that's going to be fucked up, because I couldn't keep my anger in check.

Note that 2) seems to imply a very different role for the gun than in the thread you linked -- there, my impression is that the gun serves as a limitation on the leader's resources -- as someone gets more powerful, he pisses more people off, and more people are willing to pony up to take a pot shot at them.

But, honestly, I don't like that as much as I like the idea of the gun as it would be to the kind of semi-suburbanite, naive punk you're talking about. Think about somebody who every day is saying "revolution, revolution, fight the man!" and then one day somebody hands him a gun and points at the guy on stage and says "there's The Man, right there... now can you really walk the walk?" The idea of picking up a gun, even a cap gun, and pointing it at another person, and pulling the trigger? That's scary. Scary to me, the player, just like whatever my character is doing when he gets Angry is probably scary to him, even while he's doing it. It's not just a (slim) chance to take somebody else down a notch -- it's going to change things, no matter if the cap goes off or not. I think that if you're going to put a goddamn cap gun in your game and rules that say 'point this at another player and pull the trigger', you should take advantage of everything that makes it different than just rolling 1d6.

I like the idea of players/characters feeling driven to take these extreme actions, as all they care about gets stomped on -- but I think there should be a little less safety involved, and maybe a little less control over when the player has an opportunity to pick up the gun. Maybe as your Anger level rises, you have to start taking shots -- or you have to sacrifice that Anger, which is otherwise a very useful resource. Who knows. The key thing for me is that the gun should backfire, more often than not, in the same way the in-character acts of violence the characters take are liable to screw things up far more often than fix them.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Whoops, I forgot to elaborate on 1) at least a bit:

I don't want to give the impression that I don't like the Define/Destroy concept for scenes -- I do, it sounds awesome. But I think that when you talk about the second scene -- the Refinement -- you are actually describing a process that could happen as part of the other two scenes. I feel like even if you keep the three scenes, the first and third should have a heavy influence on what the second can accomplish, or how it accomplishes whatever resource-gathering is going on.

[David Artman]

All I got at the moment is regarding the gun (and, frankly, isn't that one of the Big Hooks?).

Suppose, rather than some kind of mechanical "backfire" like ICE wants, it instead had these elements:
1) Some in-game event or mechanic will allow someone to add caps to the gun. It starts with one in the cylinder (out of six, say) and something allows a player to add a cap to the cylinder, in any chamber. (Or, maybe, one mechanic lets you add it to a chamber adjacent to one already loaded, another mechanic allows you to add it to any chamber, and a third allows you to add it to any chamber in secret--which could be no addition at all!)
2) After someone spends Anger to pull the trigger, he or she must pull it on themselves. Say I spend 3 Anger to get three pulls: after the first spin-&-pull targetting the person I am attacking, I have to immediately point it at myself and pull (no spin). Then, I can point it at the target and pull the remaining two (no spin). Or, maybe it's alternating each time, with the target shot at first, so that spending a lot of Anger is taking a BIG chance on shooting oneself.

I also like the idea of it sitting on the table, in plain view, waiting for anyone to snatch it up, spin, and pull. Hmmm... what could you do with a "spin the bottle" type of element, where the cylinder is spun, then the gun is put onto the table and spun, and whomever it points at must pull it on themselves? What situations would thematically lead to a "random" target like that?

Mad idea, Joe....
David

[joepub]

1) I don't like the idea of scenes that have no long-term impact. I'm a punk -- everything I do is practically on fire with meaning. I brush my teeth like some people start revolutions!

Oh, true.
*thinks*

The basic idea was that you have this self-imploding structure.
And... within it, you try and cram as much resource-affecting scenes as possible.
You know you will eventually burn up, but in the meantime it's all about generating heat.

But, honestly, I don't like that as much as I like the idea of the gun as it would be to the kind of semi-suburbanite, naive punk you're talking about. Think about somebody who every day is saying "revolution, revolution, fight the man!" and then one day somebody hands him a gun and points at the guy on stage and says "there's The Man, right there... now can you really walk the walk?" The idea of picking up a gun, even a cap gun, and pointing it at another person, and pulling the trigger? That's scary. Scary to me, the player, just like whatever my character is doing when he gets Angry is probably scary to him, even while he's doing it. It's not just a (slim) chance to take somebody else down a notch -- it's going to change things, no matter if the cap goes off or not. I think that if you're going to put a goddamn cap gun in your game and rules that say 'point this at another player and pull the trigger', you should take advantage of everything that makes it different than just rolling 1d6.

I like the idea of players/characters feeling driven to take these extreme actions, as all they care about gets stomped on -- but I think there should be a little less safety involved, and maybe a little less control over when the player has an opportunity to pick up the gun. Maybe as your Anger level rises, you have to start taking shots -- or you have to sacrifice that Anger, which is otherwise a very useful resource. Who knows. The key thing for me is that the gun should backfire, more often than not, in the same way the in-character acts of violence the characters take are liable to screw things up far more often than fix them.

Thanks, Daniel, for flagging this.
You're right - the gun should be INTENSE. I, as a player, should be using this when I hit a breaking point.
Pointing a gun at someone is big stuff.

I also like "and then one day somebody hands him a gun and points at the guy on stage and says "there's The Man, right there... now can you really walk the walk?""

hmmm....
Okay. I am starting to think to myself, "Although sweet, I think that the non-linear timeline MIGHT actually totally get in the way of passionate attachment to Causes".
I'm still going to try and figure out how to incorporate the idea... but maybe it just doesn't fit?
Maybe flashbacks work better?
A set timeline, pierced periodically by flashbacks?

I also like the idea of it sitting on the table, in plain view, waiting for anyone to snatch it up, spin, and pull. Hmmm... what could you do with a "spin the bottle" type of element, where the cylinder is spun, then the gun is put onto the table and spun, and whomever it points at must pull it on themselves? What situations would thematically lead to a "random" target like that?

Hm.... Awesome idea, David. I really like the idea that a single gun sits in the centre of the table. I had originally thought each person has their own... but that's (a) costly, and (b) not as cool.
So, the Gun is a COMMUNITY thing. Cool!

Keep throwing the comments out, people. They really really help.