An idea for a game

[stefoid]

This idea has been kicking around for a while, and partly recently inspired by IaWA.    It is supposed to facilitate the following type of play, which I associate with gamist play:

The fun in playing this game is two-fold:  it comes from designing a character - choosing between a multitude of valid design trade-offs - and then successfully executing a strategy

based on that design to overcome the various challenges that are put in front of the players.   

The second fun part is player input into the process which presents the challenges to the characters -- the game is setting-agnostic, but depends on a random 'challenge generator'.

The short summary is that the GM pulls a card from a Challenge deck that presents a potentially challenging situation that must be addressed by the player characters.   I am

imagining something like the Oracle cards from In A Wicked Age, but different in nature -- more narrow in terms of what the situation is, but not specific at all in terms of who is

involved in the situation.   examples might be:

A direct confrontation
An attempted burglary
A hurtful betrayal
Sweet revenge
Rebellion!
Make a friend
etc...

Somehow, by way of player and GM collaboration, the playing group narrate the series of events that leads from the current situation directly to incorporating the new challenge, up

to the point in which the exact nature of the challenging situation is determined and it is about to occur.
Once the new challenging situation is established in this way, it is played out to its resolution in a more 'traditional' roleplaying fashion, with the players saying what their

characetrs are going to do to resolve the challenge and the GM taking on an opposing/adverserial role.

The GM's job is not to come up with some plot that the players have to guess at, or be overerly-zealous in policing 'realism'.  The GM does have final say in whether or not the

players strategy in overcoming the challenge lies within the realms of plausibility, and to provide reasonable opposition to the players plans such that their strategy has a

fighting chance of succeeding or failing.

The 'fighting chance(s)' is resolved via the mechaincs of the game in a task-res and/or conflcit-res system.

Character creation.  This is an important fun part of the game.  Players should have many valid design decisions to choose from.  The player is basically deciding in what areas the

character is effective and to what degree. 

The characters capabilities are defined soley in terms of 'backgrounds' and 'techniques'. 


Backgrounds:  these are broad descriptions of experience that the character has had in the past, that define how good the character is at doing anything remotely related to that

experience.

examples might be : Pirate, Nobleman, Prostitute, Street Urchin, Hunter, Thief, Policeman, Nurse, etc...


Players have 8 dice which they allocate between 2 and 4 backgrounds as they wish.  They must allocate at least two dice to any background they select.

i.e.  Pirate 5, Nobleman 3

Any time the character wishes to do something that the GM feels should be opposed, they roll a number of dice for the background that bests suits that undertaking.  i.e.  Could use

Pirate or Nobleman to fight (in different ways), but probably only Pirate could be used for nautical flavoured challenges, whilst only Nobleman could be used for courtly discourse.
In the event that the character has no applicable background experience to draw on, a default of 1 dice is used.

Once an appropriate background (or not) has been selected, the player chooses an appropriate technique to apply:


Techniques:
These are a bit like skills, but instead of defining how good at a certain task a character is, they define how good the character is at generating some specific outcome.

examples of techniques are:
sweep an opponent off his feet
provide covering fire
hammer an opponent into a purely defensive posture.
make an inspiring speech
move undetected
get someone to consider you favourably
etc...

The thing about techniques is that if they are executed successfully, then the outcome definately does occur.  If a character makes his 'sweep his opponent off his feet' roll, then the opponent DOES hit the gorund.  If a character succeeds in their 'provide covering fire' roll, then the enemy IS pinned down.

I imagine hundreds of techniques being listed, divided into categories.  The technique is defined by its name, the exact outcome it generates, and any extra information that might help resolve complications that could occur when it is applied in tricky circumstances.  Thus the rules of the resolution system are dispersed amongst all the possible techniques, available to be read whenever that technique is applied.

The player can assign 10 techniques at +3 dice skill,   10 techniques at +2 dice skill, and 10 techniques at +1 dice skill.

The number of dice of the technique is added to the number of dice of the background.  all are rolled and the highest value dice of all dice rolled is the result.  It is compared to the opposing roll to dertermine success/fail of the endevour.

Thus techniques represent practiced abilities the character has.  If a situation calls for it, the character can improvise any kind of plausible ad-hoc technique with a +0 dice value.  The player just needs to state what the outcome that her character is trying to generate.

[stefoid]

Actually, I will steal from IaWA and ammend these bits allready:

The player can assign 10 techniques at +3 dice skill,   10 techniques at +2 dice skill, and 10 techniques at +1 dice skill.

and

The number of dice of the technique is added to the number of dice of the background.  all are rolled and the highest value dice of all dice rolled is the result

Rather than adding extra dice to the number that are rolled, techniques add their value to the  result.  i.e. If you use a +2 technique in conjunction with a 4 dice background, you roll 4 dice, and add +2 to the highest dice roll to get the final result.   This gives techniques more oomph and reduces the number of dice rolled, which would have been getting out of hand.

Also, I think the "10 of each technique system" does not give enough tradeoffs during the design process.

Instead I propose a points based system , where the player gets to allocate 50 points to techniques, with individual techniques costing that many points, plus 1, with a maximum technique bonus of +5.    (i.e. +1 technique costs 2 pts, whereas a +5 techniques costs 6 pts)

It might be cool to throw in some other design tradeoffs - something like, if you take at least two closely related techniques, you get an extra point to spend on a third related technique.  this bonus applies once per category.

Or something like that

Note that techniques can also be stuff like a specific magic spell or a particular psi-ability or a certain super-power - anything that has a specific outcome that is plausible for the setting.

[stefoid]

So as to the application of techniques to challenge situations...  how do you hurt someone?  How do you overcome their resistance and win?  Sweeping them off their feet is one thing, but whats to stop them regaining their feet and trying again?

Each characters has two stats - BODY and SOUL.  Again, divide 8 dice between them with neither stat being less than 2.

Whenever a technique is aimed at overcoming an opponent, it could target their Body or Soul, if you are successful, it will reduce the targeted stat by a prescribed amount which is included in the description of the technique.  Once either of an opponents stats reaches zero, that opponent is out of the challenge, having been physically, or mentally/spiritually overcome.

Reaching zero in a stat does not usually mean death, although it could for NPCs.  But  most of the time, and particularly for PCs, the stat loss is temporary.  There is no hard rule when the stat loss is regained -- it could be short or long term, as required by the nature of the technique (it will be listed with the technique description).

Techniques that do not target Body or Soul.. what is the use?  These could provide an advantage.  If successful, they provide a bonus to the  next technique applied to that same challenge situation...  The bonus is like the technique bonus - it adds to a dice result.  An example is the Sweep technique.  If successful, your opponent goes down which grants you a +3 bonus against that target (until they regain their feet).  Again, any ifs, ands or buts that apply to the technique are listed in its description.

Obviously executing some techniques are their own reward - moving unnoticed or picking a pocket.

One last tactical choice is how much to commit to a particular technique.  Normally, failing a technique does not cost Body or Soul for the attempt.  However, the character has the option of risking Body or Soul!     The character may choose to risk or sacrifice 1pt of body or soul in an attempt to execute a technique.  Risk means the point is not lost unless the character fails.  In narrative terms the character is over commiting to improve  his chances - the sweeper may be overreaching or letting down his guard for instance.  This gives a +2 bonus.

On the other hand, a more severe form of commitment is to sacrifice a point of body or soul.  It is lost whatever the result.  narratively this might mean throwing yourself onto an opponent who has a drawn weapon, or straining so hard you hurt yourself, or exposing yourself to ridicule in order to get your point across, etc...  this gives a +4 bonus.

[stefoid]

The short summary is that the GM pulls a card from a Challenge deck that presents a potentially challenging situation that must be addressed by the player characters.   I am
imagining something like the Oracle cards from In A Wicked Age, but different in nature -- more narrow in terms of what the situation is, but not specific at all in terms of who is
involved in the situation.   examples might be:

A direct confrontation
An attempted burglary
A hurtful betrayal
Sweet revenge
Rebellion!
Make a friend
etc...

Somehow, by way of player and GM collaboration, the playing group narrate the series of events that leads from the current situation directly to incorporating the new challenge, up to the point in which the exact nature of the challenging situation is determined and it is about to occur.
Once the new challenging situation is established in this way, it is played out to its resolution in a more 'traditional' roleplaying fashion, with the players saying what their characetrs are going to do to resolve the challenge and the GM taking on an opposing/adverserial role.

So yeah, obviously generating a great deal of interest   

Any ideas for doing the 'and magic happens' part I have bolded?

[stefoid]

So the general idea is that you only have randomly decided contests (as described in previous posts) during official Challenges.   Everything that occurs between official challenges 'just happens'.  The question is who has authority over what exactly 'just happens', which is something I havent worked out, except to say that I really like the idea that the players have a lot of input into that process, and that they obviously have authority over decisions that their character makes during that period.

I think a lot of authority can reside with the GM, but that players should be able to in some way buy/negotiate narrative authority in some way, even if it only applies to their particular character.

This sort of implies that characters can get up to mischief which involves conflict, but that the conflict is just narrative.  Anything can happen that is plausible, with the aim that everything flows to the next official challenge in a satisfying fashion.  It may even be from a dramatic/narrative point of view that the simply narrated conflict is more important than the actually played-out Challenge that the players have to overcome.   I dont see that as a problem, however.