PUNKS:RPG

[Eldrad]

Sorry I am slightly dyslexic please ignore the previous post.


Back in the 90s I wrote with some help of some friends a game called PUNKS. It was a game about PUNKS life the street. We took real life experiences and stories and wrote them down. We then took punk and heavy metal music and took from that. I talked to guys from the hood and got their stories. The result was a fucked up game that always ended in a bunch of punks, skaters, and metalheads dying in a drugged out orgy of death in gunfights. Yes once guns got in the picture everything died. I have since rewrote half of it in 2003 and recently found the file. The problem is the material seems a bit dated as I am 38 and am having trouble thinking like a 20 year old PUNK.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Are you certain that a 20 year old PUNK is the person who should write the game about being one? It seems to me that you might get a better game about the topic by taking a 40-something ex-PUNK who's also a game designer, and letting him write it. You'd get a more penetrating insight on the topic, perhaps, if somebody who doesn't believe in the simple answers and the PUNK party line (whatever that is) wrote the game.

[Callan S.]

Hi Eldrad, welcome to the forge!

Never mind the age thing. Now, you say everything ended dead? How did you want a play session to end? Did you have one specific ending mind? Multiple endings? A spectrum ending (kind of 'anything in between A and D is a cool ending')

Or did you just dislike that it ended?

[Ken]

The problem is the material seems a bit dated as I am 38 and am having trouble thinking like a 20 year old PUNK.

I don't think dated is a problem. Most RPGs are an immersion in a fantasy or historical setting; I don't think this would be any different. You could set the game in the 70s or 80s to regain some its social relevance. I'm about your age, and I have less trouble remembering my punk stories than trying to figure out 20 year old punks today.

How do you see your game stories going? Like your previous run, I'm guessing that there will be a lot cussing, social apathy and violence. Do you see things getting done or accomplished, or just being crushed under the weight of discord?

As a side suggestion, it might be fun to run more dramatic/action packed stories using the classic punk scene as a filter for the world and characters. I've aways enjoyed this comic called Baker Street, an alternate Britain with a powerful punk scene. There is a Sherlock Holmes-type chick, that is always getting involved in crimes and stuff; its pretty cool.

An additional shot of surrealism: Maybe you could take Shakespeare  (or whatever) and tell it in a punk setting with punks as characters. This may not be the exact thing you're shooting for, but may add some focus to a session.

Good Luck,

Ken

[Eldrad]

There also is going to be a deeper political message in the game itself. I don't have (and never will) an exact date other than a few years from now. The PUNKS setting is from me and my friends a best guess of a worse case scenario of the near future using the current underground news/conspiracy theories. Like the current devaluing of the dollar may lead to an eventual economic collapse. This would lead to shortages and then to riots. Just a cool ultra violent PUNK setting. But as the game progressed the world would get worse.

Farther into the time line there would be different neighborhoods that would be complete lawless zones ran by gangs. A well funded South American/Mexican enclaves of gangs well funded and armed by the Chinese. Some cities with little or no budget would have very little police to keep the law. With our military across the world doing unspecified police actions and wars the UN would send in foreign peace keepers. With their blue hats (the punks called em "blueberries") would tell people in their own country when they could come and go. The powers that be want total control. A fascist state.  In other words the whole US as we know it going to shit and getting worse as time goes by.

Even farther into the time line. Some of the climate change fears turn out to be true. Natural disasters abound. Gas and food shortages. Rolling blackouts. The net is dismantled or controlled.

[earwig]

I have to agree with the others in that I wouldn't worry about the age.  The 20 year old punks of today are probably a whole lot different than the punks when you were 20, who were probably different from the original punks of mid 70s.  Originally I was going to suggest that you set it in the 70s, during the Golden Age of Punk, using the Pistols, Clash, Ramones as a backdrop.  But reading the thread here, I see you have quite a dystopia you're working on, and it looks like you've got something to say with your setting, so I say just go with it.  The punks of the near future probably wont be like the punks of today anyway.

You went down a timeline of your setting.  Is the game set to work in a metaplot, starting a few years from now and moving through your timeline, or are the timelines each individual settings to play in?  There was an RPG called 7th Seal about the coming of the Biblical Apocolypse, and it handled its setting like the latter.  They gave info on the present, through the rise of the anti-Christ, to the final battle of Armageddon.  Each time period was a different setting, with the characters having slightly different concepts. So you coud pick a period and them and roll with it. But if you were ambitious, you could begin with the present (much more clandestine cloak and dagger stuff) and work your way through the final battle (all out war against the Anti-Christ).  I was thinking perhaps the time line that you laid out might work well in that fashion.  So if I wanted to play a punk when everything starts to go down and fight the Blueberrie "invasion", I can.  But if I want to play in the post-invasion, fighting again the fascist state I can as well.  Or, you could even do something like play in the furthest era of your time line, but the GM would have the option of running a couple one-shot flashback episodes, showing how it all came to this.


Just a few thoughts.

[Eldrad]

Yes exactly that is what I was thinking of doing a toolbox.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Eldrad,

I think you'll enjoy reading this older thread: Beef injection: Tim Denee's Punk. My comments in it weren't well-suited to that particular author, but it's possible that they'll mean more for you.

Best, Ron