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[BrunoDeLaBomba]

hello everybody.

i have some ideas that i could need some objective criticism on.

1st idea that i got a while ago was to make a game about people that's forced to act realy inhuman to satisfy a deep rooted need.
this could be a new vampire that have to kill pople and drink there blood to satisfy there hunger or a guy whos lust for power constantly pushes him to make some f****d up s**t that realy is as monstrues as killing someone and eating there brain.


my original thought was to have a realy simple mechanik..one stat and a d% too se how you did. and that stat would be like "humanity" or something.
streangths and weaknesses can modify how many times you roll the dice. and how well (bad) you did could increase or decrease your humanity.
also you could have like "contacts" or "stuff that remainds you of why you should'nt kill people" that you could use a numbre of times in the game.

my other idea was to have a number of stats. one that everybody gets (humanity) and 2-3 that you can choose for you self and these stats get plussed to you humanity if they are in a scene.

does anybody have a better idea for dice mechaniks?
anyone spots a hole in my original idea? would more stats be better than just defining words for weknesses and stuff.?

this is my first entry to this site, hope to hear from you all.

/Bruno

[Callan S.]

Hi Bruno,

Toward what purpose? What's your overall goal for the game? Do you just feel something about someone having to drink blood to maintain themselves, or someones lust for power driving them to canabalism?

Why do you want to evoke that feeling? Just because it feels compelling and thus it seems cool?

I'm probably a little negative, but it's too easy to be attracted to look at the horrific (like gawking at a car accident) for no real reason except it's horrific. Which makes the horrific a source of titilation and not much else (and I'm sure it looses it's lustre after awhile, anyway. Meaning you either have to find something even more horrific, or actually look at why you wanted to examine it).

If I'm too negative, feel no pressure to regard the post.

[BrunoDeLaBomba]

hello again. first of all i would like to thank Callan for your input, that's propably what i needed, i'll try to answer your questions as best as i can.

no wait first i'll tell you how the idea got to me first.
i was watching "moonbase alpha" on the swedish sci-fi channel, it's a realy good show. and in this episode i watched there was this guy who became infested by some wierd alien energy that made him crave for heat, his greatest motivations seemed to be to suck the heat from every source posible,  but while doing so killing his friends, and the other motivation was to fight this alien thing so that he could be with his girlfriend again. that's the easyiest way to put it i guess, but it works.

so the game would be more about the different choises that a man in his situation would be forced to make.sort of like gollum, his good side telling him to act loyal and help the man who saved his life, the other side's telling him to get the ring at all cost.

the game could be about a vampire, or a power hungry guy killing of people to get more power (the cannibal example i did in my last entry was intended to be about a mobbster or somthing rather than a cannibal.) and the mechanics job was suposed to guide the player thrue all of the diffrent choises that he would be forced to make.

so the purpose of the game would be to act out this unfortunate guys story as he have to fight this monstrues urge so that he would'nt be all jaded and stuff. no angst or darkness inteedened (but it could be, i mean gollum man..that guy is DARK)

so the system would only help you to tell the story of, for example, a vampire, who's not all that happy about letting go of his human side.

i dont know if what i just wrote makes any sense, but i hope i answeard your questions. and by the way, i think that this game could be very cool, just beacuse you could play as golllum or the wolfman or whatever. all i need is a good mechanik to suport the game, and perhaps a litle work on the "motivation" part.

hope to hear from more people on what you all think.

/bruno

[Vulpinoid]

First idea that comes to mind is an escalating mechanic.

Characters would have their regular skills and abilities, but within them would be a drive mechanism; the dark urge you describe.

I'd see two sides to this, a conscious urge to pursue the darkness, and an unconscious urge that could get the character into trouble.

Roll a die to determine a starting addiction level.

If the character doesn't indulge in their urge, the unconscious urge grows stronger. Roll a die when the urge hits, if the die result is higher than the current addiction level, the character is fine, but the addiction level increases by 1. If the die result is equal or lower, then they have to indulge in the addiction. The character can choose not to indulge their addiction, but they become weaker. Depending on what you want to say in your game, this weakness could be temporary or permanent. On the positive side, if a player doesn't indulge their addiction when the urge hits, the urge gets weaker too (it drops by 1), it's like going cold-turkey from a drug. If the addiction drops to zero, the character has kicked the habit.

When it comes to consciously indulging in an addiction, the character would get some kind of bonus. A vampire might get a chance to use on of their supernatural powers after they've drunk blood, a zombie might get some boost after eating flesh or brains, a pyromaniac might get a psychological bonus when they set fire to something. The character always gets this bonus, but when the character consciously performs their dark deed, roll a die. Rolling above the urge level has no effect, rolling under the die roll has a two-fold effect. Firstly it reduces the urge by a degree, the character has indulged the darkness and has kept it at bay for a bit, but at a cost. Secondly, write down what the character had to do in order to keep their urge at bay, the next time they choose to indulge their addiction voluntarily, they'll have to do something even more severe to get the benefit. The vampire who has just drained a dog dry may have to escalate to humans next...and once they've killed a human, they may have to kill a virgin, or maybe engage in mass slaughter to get the bonus. From now on. the character has to indulge their addiction at the level they last wrote down if they want to avoid weakness.

A system like this has a few interesting things about it.

The vampire player who escalates from puppies to mass murder in a single step has really raised the ante. This player must engage in mass murder every time their addiction kicks in, otherwise they suffer a major penalty. But if they do manage to kick the habit, they go back to a much lower step once they start the curing process.On the down side, if they want to escalate their powers again they can't take half measures, they have to go straight back up to mass murder, and then to dark urges even worse (...genocide???). 

A pyromaniac starts by burning a sheet of paper for kicks, then gets thrills from burning peoples garbage bins on rubbish night, then escalates to bonfires in public parks, then burning peoples houses, then ensuring people are burnt in the fires. It's a slowly building addiction, but it becomes more ingrained in their psyche. If this character attempts to kick their habit, they'll have to go backward through all of these steps, suffering a weakness for each step as they attempt to kick their addiction. If this character starts succumbing to their addiction again, they can follow the steps they took the first time.

In this way players are encouraged to develop symptoms that get gradually worse as they succumb to their addictions. But if they take too many steps on their path to the dark side it will just mean that the habit is even harder to kick when things do go badly for them.

Just an idea...

V

[Callan S.]

Hi again, Bruno,

so the purpose of the game would be to act out this unfortunate guys story as he have to fight this monstrues urge so that he would'nt be all jaded and stuff.

What if the player doesn't want the character to fight the urge any more. Or more specifically at a certain point in play the character stops fighting the urge (maybe he'll start fighting again latter, maybe he'll never fight it again - you can only find out by playing!)

Is that something that's part of your game, as your deciding it?

Just in case it is, how would you handle the uncontested decent into monsterous urges. If it's uncontested there is no conflict - what other conflict could be brought in?

[BrunoDeLaBomba]

hello again

What if the player doesn't want the character to fight the urge any more.

well...my ideas was that all the important decisions would be made by the dice, if you don't want to kill people but the dice tells you that there is no way your not..to bad for you, and vice versa...so what im trying to say is that the only conflict is the "inner" one....every other conflict is  told from the characters perspective by the player, the gm can interupt whenever he wants. the goal in every scene is to reach a critical point where choises haveto be made..

i'm thinking about spiderman when greengoblin throws mary-jane and a buss load of people on eatch side of a bridge..he have to save one of them.
if he saves mary-jane he is maintaning his conection to "the real world", without masks and all..
but if the "masked hero" calling is to great he saves the buss, and to embrace a masked alter-ego who fights crime over a loved one could be interpret as an inhumane act. although he saved a lot of people..

so what im trying to say is that the big decissions are made by chans.


that thing about an esculating mechanic was interesting as hell. i don't know if it fits the consept..or if it outshines the consept and deserves a better rpg, but im thinking about it...
the main problem i think is that it would mean that players would have more power over his character, and it just don't fit this kind of game i think..

but wow did it get my creative Juices flowing.

[Callan S.]

So the dice would decide if spiderman saves MJ or the bus load of kids? Or whether the vampire kills for blood or not (at a particular point)

What does the player tell from his perspective?

I'm not sure what he'd tell in terms of character perspective? The dice made a certain roll and is he supposed to make up an in character reason why his character did as the dice determined?

[BrunoDeLaBomba]

yes exactly, spidys big desissions is made with a roll, all the webb shoting and wall climbing is'nt as important to the story as the death of his girlfriend or that bus full of kids.... like in "my life with master" were there's only one roll in every scene, and that roll determents the consequence of what the player did. standard scene resolution i guess. and everything up to that point is just diceless.

and yeah if the dice tells you to eat a guys brain (cause thats your "motivation" or "hunger or whatever) you tell the story how it happend, what your general thoughts were and stuff... im thinking if maybe that monologe could be used to set the next scene or something, like the last sentences is all about what happend right after or a week later. like a cliffhanger for the next episode of a tv show or something.


and btw, i could still need some help with my original questions. and a new question: would someone want to play this game?