Someone Had to Have Had This Idea

[CommonDialog]

I had an idea for a game, but I am like 90% sure that it's already been done and I wanted to know if anyone has seen the game discussed here on the Forge.

What I was thinking about was a game that takes place in an alternate dimension/shadow/realm/etc. where anything is possible.  Basically as far as the rules go, anything that someone can think of they can use.  For instance, a character is setup by a swordsman and thinks that a lightsaber would be a good tool right then, reaches down into her pocket and draws one out.  Later on, in the midst of a space battle, the character thinks "What I really need is the SDF-1" and boom! it appears.  Later, the character is trying to take over the world and thinks that a few axlotl tanks and a Tleiaxu Master or three might help.  And there it is.

I was wondering if anyone had heard of a game and if not, if I can come up with a decent set of rules, does it sound like fun.

[nystul]

Sounds like Toon.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Sounds like Mage.

And sounds like Cthulhu Dreamlands.

And there's probably a lot of games of this kind that don't come to my mind at the moment.

Which doesn't mean there's no point in developing the idea further. E.g. there's a lot of fantasy games out there, but people still come out with new - and if done right these new games are still worth attention.

[Filip Luszczyk]

And sounds like Amber, of course! :)

(See? Although Toon, Mage, Dreamlands and Amber have the "do whatever you can imagine", they are still different enough - different approaches, different context, different tone etc.)

[Graham W]

I can't think of a game that quite does this. What it does remind me of is Universalis: where you pay coins to add things to the world.

Of course, Universalis is a very different game from the one you're describing (the coins are generally used to add things to the narration, not to specifically create objects to help your character). But there's something similar going on there.

Oh, and it's a cool idea.

Graham

[CommonDialog]

And sounds like Amber, of course! :)

(See? Although Toon, Mage, Dreamlands and Amber have the "do whatever you can imagine", they are still different enough - different approaches, different context, different tone etc.)

Darnit you guys, you're going to make me take a shot at this.  Like I need less free time!!!!

Actually, I appreciate the help.  I had thought of Amber (big Zelazny fan and am one of two people who actually enjoyed the RPG) and am trying as hard as I can to keep things away from Shadows, though really any alternate dimension could be considered Shadow.

Thanks for the other ideas.  I've read Mage, but I am going to go back and read it and see if I can't find a copy of Dreamlands, Toon, and Universalis.

[David Artman]

My 2¢...

I think you can save time by skipping Toon--it's got the whole Acme thing, where you can "send away" for something you might want, but it is ultimately rather static in actual play.

Similarly, the Dreamlands setting of Lovecraft--while strange and fey--is still just a fixed world setting, swirled in odd time dislocation and funky mists and peopled by all manner of beast and men.

Amber is closer to what you want (as you know) but the whole crux of Shadow Walking is just that: the Amberite changes worlds to suit his or her needs; he or she doesn't bring that other thing into their current world. (I always felt this made any changes wrought by shadow walking sort of moot: so what if you walk to a world where cancer doesn't kill: you were trying to cure cancer HERE....)

But Mage... ah, Mage. If you just declared that every player has, say, 40 dots to put into spheres, you'd be playing the very game you describe, because those Mages would have SO much power that it would make trivial the concerns of paradox or paradigm. In fact (not to derail your own creativity) you might just be able to tweak the Mage rules a hair and have the system you want to play the type of game you describe.

But ultimately, you describe a game in which players are granted a significant level of credibility. This leads me to ask why you don't just use a freeform system, with a highly abstracted, simple, low granularity conflict resolution system? After all, when your example guy whips out his lightsaber, the enemy will just whip out his pistol and *tips hat to Indiana Jones* blow you away while you are activating the blade. TO which you will CLEARLY counter by Jedi Deflection, sending the shot back at him... but he's already got his laser-proof suit on, so....

There's an old comic this REALLY reminds me of... someone help me out, here: two brothers who could do what we're talking about, and their escapades were just long series of trump and counter-trump uses of this "create anything" power...?

Anyway, the point is that, when gods contend, who needs stats and skills and handfuls of dice and other granular resolution techniques? The game might well be played with TWERPS or TriStat (i.e. System won't matter; and might as well be hyper-simple). Because the real play will be in creativity and humor and stunning your adversaries into silence at how cool or effective your most recent trump was.

HTH;
David

[Paul T]

If it's about using invented tools to struggle against or fight other characters, Wushu might do the trick...


Paul

[daMoose_Neo]

And not to shill, but my Imp Game is a lot of that, provided you succeed (or fail, depending on the idea) a roll. At least one person in every group grabs "Pull Stuff From Thin Air", though even with the setting players can take it any direction at all. That's how we end up with Sean Connery and The Tick wandering around some of these worlds...for Imp, this comes mostly from it being freeform and GM less play, so anyone can toss anything in provided the table agrees to it~

[Filip Luszczyk]

Similarly, the Dreamlands setting of Lovecraft--while strange and fey--is still just a fixed world setting, swirled in odd time dislocation and funky mists and peopled by all manner of beast and men.

David, Dreamlands expansion for CoC had rules for Dreaming that basically allowed to change the environment however you liked. I think the implications of those rules was that the expansion actually didn't emulate the actual stories and setting well - with high enough dreaming skill players could have do whatever they wanted with their surroundings (and most native Dreamlands inhabitants weren't able to dream, heh).

But Mage... ah, Mage. If you just declared that every player has, say, 40 dots to put into spheres, you'd be playing the very game you describe, because those Mages would have SO much power that it would make trivial the concerns of paradox or paradigm. In fact (not to derail your own creativity) you might just be able to tweak the Mage rules a hair and have the system you want to play the type of game you describe.

Heh, how not to love Mage? Actually, I've been working on a little Mage heartbreaker lately, that will be focused mainly on shaping the reality according to ones whim, without the whole "you have the power to do anything, but you ought not use it" issue.

But ultimately, you describe a game in which players are granted a significant level of credibility. This leads me to ask why you don't just use a freeform system, with a highly abstracted, simple, low granularity conflict resolution system? After all, when your example guy whips out his lightsaber, the enemy will just whip out his pistol and *tips hat to Indiana Jones* blow you away while you are activating the blade. TO which you will CLEARLY counter by Jedi Deflection, sending the shot back at him... but he's already got his laser-proof suit on, so....

Actually, I think the idea is worth well developed system, as far from freeform as possible. This definitely wouldn't work well with a granularity of GURPS or HERO, I'm rather talking about something abstract but defined enough to deal with potential credibility issues.

But then, there is a significant question - is the power supposed to be only color, or should the quality and/or cleverness of player's ideas matter? If it's the latter oversimplified conflict resolution might not be enough (I tried Mage with something like that once, and it felt completely bland, there was no place for "oh, smart idea", cause it all boiled down to "cool description, but whatever, roll them dice"). Unless it's all about color, I think it would be better if the system produced the "ideas matter" feel and promoted looking for interesting solutions (even if it was illusory in fact).

[De Reel]

Hello,
sorry I am late.

source : Champions 3-D "the Dreamzone"
tool : dream pool (active pts = ego x 5)

Thanks for the memories.

[David Artman]

David, Dreamlands expansion for CoC had rules for Dreaming that basically allowed to change the environment however you liked.

Ah, fair enough. I never read that expansion.

But then, there is a significant question - is the power supposed to be only color, or should the quality and/or cleverness of player's ideas matter? If it's the latter oversimplified conflict resolution might not be enough (I tried Mage with something like that once, and it felt completely bland, there was no place for "oh, smart idea", cause it all boiled down to "cool description, but whatever, roll them dice"). Unless it's all about color, I think it would be better if the system produced the "ideas matter" feel and promoted looking for interesting solutions (even if it was illusory in fact).

And that's the tricky part, yes?

Short of player voting, I don't know how you could put a mechanic behind "cool" or "smart idea." Probably be sufficient to do a Dogs-like traits system, where a player must narrate to gain the right to employ an arbitrary trait, then let the dice decide success from that. I can recall a Dogs game where I did a soliloquy that pinged something like five of my traits, and I picked up a fistful of dice and laid down the holy hammer, so to speak. Had I not "cleverly" pinged each element--i.e. if the other players had called BS on a particular ping--I wouldn't have had all those dice.

And as you probably know, Dogs's mechanic is, essentially, compare sums of dice values to equal or exceed the other guy's values. Basically a "one stat" mechanic (if I may set aside escalations and such for the sake of argument).

But maybe there's a way to encode "coolness" into a traditional mechanic. At least some kind of mechanic will keep it from being a game of "Nu-Uh" (as in "I do Blah!" "Nu-uh, because my Yadda stops your Blah!" "Nu-uh, because Yaddas can't live in Such-and-such an atmosphere!" "Nu-uh...").

Any ideas?
David

[JustinB]

Why not just give bonus dice or a bonus to the roll if someone's description is particularly good. That's how they handle it for Exalted. You get 1 bonus die for a basic description, 2 if the GM thinks the description is awesome, and 3 if the table votes that it was an awesome description.

[CommonDialog]

Short of player voting, I don't know how you could put a mechanic behind "cool" or "smart idea." Probably be sufficient to do a Dogs-like traits system, where a player must narrate to gain the right to employ an arbitrary trait, then let the dice decide success from that. I can recall a Dogs game where I did a soliloquy that pinged something like five of my traits, and I picked up a fistful of dice and laid down the holy hammer, so to speak. Had I not "cleverly" pinged each element--i.e. if the other players had called BS on a particular ping--I wouldn't have had all those dice.

Sorry if I'm still a n00b, but by Dogs I assume you mean Dogs in the Vineyard?  I really should buy that game, I've been meaning to.

My original idea, which I think I put into my first post, was more of an auction system (see, another Amber tie-in :)) where basically a lightsaber is perhaps 1 point.  The Executor (the Super Star Destroyer that was blown up in Return of the Jedi) is worth maybe 100 points.  The Executor piloted by force sensitive clones of Darth Vader is worth around 1,000,000 points and of course, the Executor piloted by millions of force sensitive Jar Jar Binks clones results in sudden player death.  (Sorry...)

Howver, it's the way the point costs are set that makes my original idea interesting.  For instance, in a PC vs. NPC contest, the PC says "I want a lightsaber, I think it's 1 point."  Basically the GM servers as the arbiter.  The other players or GM can retort "This area is very low tech, no one can reasonably beat a lightsaber, it's at least 5 points."  The PC can then argue "A lightsaber is not that useful without the Force since I can't deflect or do lightsaber tosses, make it 3 points."  The GM is there to ensure the point cost goes smoothly and fairly and decides when the cost is settled on.  The arbiter is basically there to tell the story, be impartial, and reduce munckinism and cronyism.  Basically, the GM is the one to say "No, you cannot argue that a shot from the Death Star's main cannon is 1 point" and to make sure that the game doesn't result in one group of players trying to screw over the others.

In PC vs. PC battles, that's where you get into the "I draw the lightsaber for 1 point", "I draw a blaster for 2 points", "I Force Deflect for 3 points", "I summon a team of biker scouts on speeder bikes to attack you for 5 points.", "I summon a Klingon bird of prey to fire at you while cloaked for 200 points", "I install a planetary shield that prevents orbital bombardment for 250."  This causes each player to not only spend more points than the other, but to spend a reasonable amount for the effect.

I really saw character creation to be very simple.  My idea for the purpose of this game beyond killing everything was that the general idea is that the PCs have been forcefully torn from their world and placed into a "pocket" near the Nexus, the home of the All-Thing (those are working names, I really don't want to get sued by the folks from Star Trek and Dan Simmons at the same time.)  One is torn from their reality because of a latent ability they have to control the Nexus energy (again, I am going to come up with a better name) and ascend (diito) to commune with the All-Thing.  The problem is that one cannot be told about the All-Thing, they have to experience it.  So for beginning characters, the number of points is pretty minimal because their mask (their attribute measuring how tied they are to their former reality) is so high.  However, there are benefits to having a high mask (as of yet to be determined) and players can choose whether they their characters to try to lose their mask or try to hold on to it.  In All-Thing terms, those who refuse to remove their mask are evil, at least that's my idea.

So beyond the mask attribute and points to spend, I'm trying to figure out what else is needed.  I really see this game as potentially being diceless, but I do want something else besides mask maybe spirit and willpower, I don't know yet.  I agree that when you play a person capable of bending the fabric of the pocket their trapped in, strength, dex, and constitution become irrelevant.

As far as conflict resolution, I am strongly considering it be whoever spends the most points wins.  That would mean that each scenario in the campaign or each session would grant the GM a certain number of points or each NPC gets a number of points and I don't know how I feel about that.

In general, I tend to favor GURPS and tighter systems, but I can see why some would argue for a very limited system.  It's hard to model a system which allows anything, but again I look at it as it doesn't matter than the the autocannon of a VF-1 does 1D6 MDC damage per round (why I remember that, I don't know.  If anyone has the Robotech source book, you can double check that.)  It more matters that I spent 25 points on a VF-1 squadron and spent 6 more points for Max and Myra against a 20 point no-ship piloted by a 10 point Bashar Miles Teg.

I've got a lot of ideas so I'm sorry if that came out disjointed.

[CommonDialog]

One thing I forgot to mention, if I go with the pocket idea, eventually the pocket collapses.  Those who can escape their mask get to be with the All-Thing.  Those that don't get some other end.  I can't figure out what yet.