Bloodlust : le retour de la vengeance

[boulet]

Hi, new guy here. I'm not fully committed to the idea of designing a game. I'm more like at the "proof of concept" stage.

I lured myself recently into some Bloodlust nostalgia. The short pitch could be : a sword and sorcery inspired game where main characters are variations of elric and Stormbinger. Aside from the question of keeping the rule-system (at least the core of it) or not, which is a heavy can of worms in itself, I've been examining what to do about the game mechanism about the interaction between weapon bearers(WB) and the god-weapons(GW). To me it's one of the weak point of the original game.

A few explanations. Bloodlust offered different game modes:
- players play the role of WBs, GM plays every GWs. Easy on beginner players (except GMs) but quite frustrating too considering how lethal combat is supposed to be. Hence story continuity is related to GWs more than WBs. Hence players aren't very engaged or commited to their PC... Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It doesn't work on the long run.
- players play the role of GWs. Should be quite nice but WBs, as important as they are don't interact that much with the fictional world. I assume it would be boring at some point. And just like previous mode it's a lot f#%&ing work thrown on the GM's shoulders.
- players play both a WB and his/her GW. Good solution for GM workload but it means that nothing is conducive to inter-players interaction. Mental dialogs between WBs and GWs are almost impossible to role play while it's one of the major interests of the game.
- players play the role of one GW and the WB for another GW. Probably a little difficult but could be assisted by players using a hat to make obvious when they play WB or GW. As intensive as it is on the players, I believe this is the way to go. The role of WB should be exciting especially if the player in charge of the divine inner voice is doing his job of promoting his own agenda. As some people mentioned to me already this mode bears similitude with an optional game mode in White Wolf Wraith : the Oblivion where players could play the role of another player's Shadow (Freudian Thanatos type of stuff).

So now back to the premises of the game :
- most humans are looking forward to becoming WBs. It means power, quick social ascension and fulfilling wild fantasies.
- WG are looking for the proper WB and some form of symbiosis. They want to get control of their WBs and the way to achieve that is to stimulate their common pulsions/desires. GWs should be able to force the fulfilment of unshared desires sometimes too.
- Desires are : Prestige (gaining respect, power over people, becoming a legend...), Violence, Sex, Reputation (winning as many duels as possible, defeating WBs, inspiring fear...) and Wealth.
- The game should be geared toward campy jubilation rather than deep introspection. That's how I think it would work best.

The original system used a number between 1 and 10 for each desire of a WB. GW have a modifier which could get between -3 and +3 but the creation rules make this range of values very different for each desire. Once combined the resulting modified desire would be uncontrolable if negative or superior to 10. This is something I'm not really happy with. I'd like WBs to have even a remote chance to resist their strong drives. Also there isn't anything to reward WBs to give in to their desires.

I'd like to figure out some mechanisms that would :
- help materialize the risk of a desire leading to the GW taking control. Something very visual, in the middle of the table.
- involve the GM too. After all he's the one who is going to target players with stuff like "you notice a gorgeous woman at the bar", "the villagers are looking for a hero, someone to help them defeat the monster" etc... He's the one bringing most of the stimuli into the fictional world. He's got to be able to stir shit up.
- become some kind of economy. Probably some sort of circle like : GM declares a stimulus and gives a token to GW A. GW A realizes that he/she's got enough tokens to trigger some frenzy or negotiate with WB B to fulfill the desire. GW A gives tokens to WB B and takes control for the rest of the scene or sth like that. At the end of the session WB B exchange his tokens for some sort of reward, for being pushed around by his divine alter ego. I would like to make Elric type of situations ("you made me kill my wife !") quite frequent.

It's kind of taking shape in my head but I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Any suggestions and references to relevant game systems will be greatly appreciated (especially if it doesn't cost me a penny).

[MacLeod]

I think I'd be able to help you better if I knew the rules you were speaking of... Is his game strictly in French? The wiki seems to suggest as much.

Could you explain a little bit more about the GWs? It seems to me if they are compelling WBs to do stuff through divine will and dialogue... this seems like something the GM should be taking care of, in order to control the flow of the game. I guess it would be a little more annoying if you had more than two players + GM... then again, what is the incentive for two WBs to travel together? Seems like they would end up killing each other.

In any event, it sounds like a cool concept for a game. Have you ever played a FATE 3.0 game? You could probably emulate this game pretty easily while making the WBs a little more resilient. With both the WB and GW having Aspects, they could compel each other with a separate pool of Fate points for a lot of different nifty lil' effects. =)

This here is the SRD if you want to learn more about FATE. If I was you, I'd check out Starblazer Adventures, it is what I like to think of as the natural evolution of the FATE rules (plus, it doesn't use Fudge dice, hurray!).
http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html

[boulet]

The game hasn't been translated in English. Sorry about that If I was to sum up the game system I'd say it's a percentile Chaosium alike type of system, with a dose of combat crunch and other subsystems like mass combat. There's also quite a few random tables for GW powers where a little bit of choice is added by letting players choose if 0 and 5 should read 05 or 50 (a bit like in their other game In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas). Combat is quite lethal and one could expect a bit of turnover on the WB side. There's no trace of politically correct and it's intended for adult players who can enjoy fictional sex, violence and competition in their hobby. Real religion is absolutely not a concern in this game. The tone is quite satirical (as most games where Croc has been involved with).

The GWs indeed push their WB toward fulfilling their urges. They feel and enjoy the world through the bearer senses. they're a bit like a FPS players except the bearer keeps control most of the time. They can communicate mentally with the bearer at a short distance. They are able to communicate with other GWs at a bigger distance (sth like a hundred yard or sth). They can grant their powers or not. They can be quite pickish about the bearer they're looking for and usually don't mind letting a lame bearer die in the hope of finding a better vessel.

My vision of what the game should be (and departs from the original design a bit) :
- God-Weapons are the primary focus of the story. They're quite childish in the way that responsibility isn't their concern. They want to achieve some (player chosen) goals and have been at it for decades. They toy with the human civilization like someone would play Populous or Black and White video games. They form cabals with other GWs.
- Weapon-Bearers have a secondary place in the way that they're fragile and the resulting turnover. But they are the one who do interact with reality directly. GWs are indestructible but could be threatened by just mentioning "I could toss you in a deep lake". It's a kind of unstable balance and I like it that way.

There's no real incentive for WBs to work together but I hope that if the GWs form a cabal then the WBs will tag along more or less.

Fate doesn't excite me. It's a bit too amorphous, too generic. I could change my mind if I get to play it but I believe it's not going to fit my Bloodlust experiment. I quite like the combat/chargen of original design though I'm tempted by ORE as a replacement.

Let me give you an example of scene so the dualism GW/WB makes more sense.

Let's say we have three players and a GM. The players are Arthur with Amanite as a weapon and Amed as a bearer, Bruno with Baal as weapon and Bjorn as bearer and finally Christine playing Crom as a weapon and Chazam as character. We could portray the way the inetractions like this :

It's got a similar pattern as in Vampire : The Eternal Struggle (CCG). I love the concept of Predator/Prey circular flow and know as a fact that it is a source of fun. I want to exploit it in this rpg.

So let's say a scene focuses on Amed (played by Arthur) and Crom (played by Christine). Amed is a warrior who would above all like to be feared (Billy the Kid syndrome). Crom tries to ride this wave because GWs gain experience when their bearer give in to their desire. Plus it's a way for Crom to achieve some secret goal by manipulating Amed. Amed is supposed to infiltrate a bandit camp to steal something. While sneaking in he notices a NPC wielding an impressive WB with a big reputation. Tension : Amed should remain sneaky for the sake of his mission, but his drive for Reputation is exciting a desire to provoke the NPC for a duel.

I'd like the game system to open different tactical options for Arthur and Christine here:
- negociation. The desire is really strong. Christine could take control for the scene. The odds of whatever mechanic for controlling the WB are on her side. Arthur tries to change her mind and say : "let me steal the damn mc guffin and I swear I'll provoke the bad guy just after". Arthur could be lying btw.
- frenzy. Christine decides to take over. If she manages to win control. Whatever visual meter modeling the urge is depleted, making next frenzy less probable in the near future.
- breath in, breath out. Arthur resisted Christine's take over. The meter isn't depleted, maybe just slightly lower because Amed managed to keep the inner voice under control and Crom has to back off a bit.

I hope I make sense. English isn't my native language and some could get lost in translation. I don't mind explaining stuff a different way. Plus it's really blurry in my head too.

[MacLeod]

Don't worry about your English, its great. =D

The game play model is interesting sounding for sure. Seems like you could achieve this pretty easily without many house rules either. Have you actually played the game like this, or is it still just an idea?

[boulet]

Just an idea. I have only played in mode 1 (cf first post) and an hybrid of 1 and 2. I'm trying to find alternatives as you can see.

What I like with the model I'm exploring is that the game is presenting as a manly game about power, violence and Conan on his way to Kingship kind of images. But the interaction I'm trying to portray is more like dysfunctional relationships with manipulation, jealousy and threesomes

[Abkajud]

Nice diagram, boulet!
I have a question for you: what are your design goals? I know you said things are pretty vague at this point, but let me ask: what if each player-character relationship was between the Bearer and some kind of really powerful artifact, but not necessarily a weapon? The One Ring comes to mind - Frodo has to be wary of it slipping away and finding a new Bearer, or at least betraying him. This might also stretch the concept of the game a little, allowing for more flexibility in character concepts.
What do you think?