Hardboiled - RPG Proposal

[Alan]

A short rules summary can be found at

http://www.seanet.com/~alanb/Hardboiledv01.html" >http://www.seanet.com/~alanb/Hardboiledv01.html

I'm hoping to create a detective RPG with a narrative Premise like "What is justice?"  Every PC would have a secret crime.  

I have developed quite a bit of a system and have gotten stuck on hooking the characters into the N Premise.

My question is twofold:

1) Do you think my mechanics will encourage play into the narrative premise?

2) Or do the Motive rules take things in too many directions?

Suggestoin on more focused or elegant mechanics would be very welcome.

[iago]

I love the motive rules.  Don't change them.  They're a good, driving engine for, well, motivating the characters, and I personally feel they do the job pretty well (in absence of a playtest).

I'm not sure the "what is justice?" thing expresses itself clearly in the rules.  I think a second pass through that included some examples from hypothetical play may help clear that up and guide use of the game in that direction, though.

As far as the 'secret crime' thing is concerned, I personally think that the GM should be on some level required to work the crime in and make it relevant to the storyline.  Maybe that's where your mechanics can come from, where the GM announces to the player that he's "laying the crime on the line" when a scene is specifically relevant to that ... but I'm not sure where I'm going with that thought yet.  If your theme is "what is justice?", however, that might guide the circumstances where a crime can go on the line (i.e., when the character is specifically pursuing a matter of justice, etc).

Edit: I also think that when the player redefines his secret crime, it should relate to the prior one (and the prior one should be archived) in some fashion.  Thus, as the game progresses, the "backstory of the character" would get filled in as a weaving together of past crimes, which could be viewed almost linearly.  Gives us a lot of that novelesque feeling of the character being a cipher at the beginning, and gradually sinking into a full understanding of him as we move through the "chapters".

[Alan]

Thanks Iago -

Premise

The narrative premise is something I'm not sure of, so maybe that's part of the problem.  I'm aiming for something like the film noir detective movies for the 30s to 50s - questions like: how far will you go to find the truth?  Who decides what truth is?  How will you make justice in a world where everyone is flawed?

It just occured to me that that last is what the Secret Crime supports:

How will you make justice in a world where everyone is flawed?


Secret Crime Mechanic

Having the GM tie it in is an interesting idea.  That would require the GM to provide situations that either use elements from the character's crime, or that reflect them.  I think I'd leave this open to player interpretation to, so they can find or project such links into play.  What would be the benefit of having the SC show up in play, "laying the crime on the line"?  Not sure.

I have a feeling I'm too attached to the Motive and Insight mechanics.  They don't seem to hook players into the narrative premise.  Or do they?  Motives are modified Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel.  In TROS, I think it's the deadly combat system that presents the narrative premise and the SAs are player's response to that premise.

Do I need a written mechanic to tie Motive and Insight to Secret Crime?  Or does that come out of setting and situation assumptionis?

I'd appreciate any more comments on this and the game summary I posted above!

[iago]

The narrative premise is something I'm not sure of, so maybe that's part of the problem.  I'm aiming for something like the film noir detective movies for the 30s to 50s - questions like: how far will you go to find the truth?  Who decides what truth is?  How will you make justice in a world where everyone is flawed?

It just occured to me that that last is what the Secret Crime supports:

How will you make justice in a world where everyone is flawed?

That's enlightening.  One thing you might want to consider, is having each player have their own Personal Question that must tie into their Secret Crime in such fashion.  Maybe the question you're putting forward isn't the only thing that ties into the Secret Crime... why not let the players get involved in that?

Secret Crime Mechanic

Having the GM tie it in is an interesting idea.  That would require the GM to provide situations that either use elements from the character's crime, or that reflect them.  I think I'd leave this open to player interpretation to, so they can find or project such links into play.  What would be the benefit of having the SC show up in play, "laying the crime on the line"?  Not sure.

Well, clearly for the PCs, as protagonists and nominal "good guys", the secret crime of the past is something about which they have guilt.  Maybe you could track guilt as a stat or something, and make it an overarching goal for a PC to overcome that guilt.  (It's been a few days since I read your rules, so I may be riffing in a way that collides with them.  If so, apologies.)  Might be worth taking a look at http://www.halfmeme.com/">My Life with Master if only to digest some of the ideas about what that game tracks (weariness and self-loathing) and how a Guilt based mechanic could be worked into yours.

I have a feeling I'm too attached to the Motive and Insight mechanics.  They don't seem to hook players into the narrative premise.  Or do they?  Motives are modified Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel.  In TROS, I think it's the deadly combat system that presents the narrative premise and the SAs are player's response to that premise.

Do I need a written mechanic to tie Motive and Insight to Secret Crime?  Or does that come out of setting and situation assumptions?

I don't think there's anything wrong with "forging" a more explicit tie between those two things.  You're looking to have your game reflect, in essence, a film noir story.  In a very general sense, you already know what the plot of any game adventure should be, then.  Making sure that your mechanics all line up in a neat little row along that plotline is really the way to get things refined, here.

As I see it, your "storyline", per character, runs something like this:

- In the pre-story, the character has committed a crime.

- As the story opens, the character is called on to investigate another crime, find a missing person, what have you.

- As the story progresses, layers of the investigation are peeled back to reveal a story that hits closer and closer to the character's own past, whether in a "resonance" sense (this is like that) or in a "personal" sense (this _is_ that).

- These revelations, over time, allow the character to explore his own guilt over the crime from his pre-story.

- As the character reaches some kind of personal, final conclusion on his inner contemplations of his past,  the investigation he is on comes to some kind of climactic head.

At least, that's how I see it.  If I had that plot outline on hand, I'd have:

- A secret crime, and a level of guilt associated with that crime (bigger guilt, longer game)

- A method whereby investigation yields confrontations.   Confrontations yield insight; insight buys down guilt (and may be used for other effects as well).

- As guilt gets lower, the character comes closer to the object of the investigation.  If the original object has been revealed by the confrontation and that character's guilt has not reached zero, then a new layer is uncovered and the investigation continues along that new vector.

- Once guilt is at zero (the character has come to a final conclusion and made a certain sort of peace with his past -- just in time to load up with guns and go for the showdown and shootout at the end, or whatever), a final insight will trigger "endgame" (at least for the current plotline) for that character, yielding a solution to the investigation and an inevitable Final Confrontation that either follows or precedes that solution.

So, you'd have a little bit of a gamist competitive angle there (in that the guy who gets rid of his guilt fastest is the one who "wins" by solving the case), but a strong focus on narrativist exploration of personal guilt and so forth against a backdrop populated by flawed souls (I may have my terms wrong here).

[iago]

The more I think about the 'guilt' mechanic I suggested above, the more I think that it should start at something more like 0, and increase over the course of the game until it hits some GM-defined Breaking Point numeric threshold, and that's when it all comes to a head.  It makes more sense to me for guilt over a past crime to grow and grow as the characters move deeper into the investigation and thus hit things which are closer and closer to their own crimes, rather than reduce.  A character's current level of guilt could also indicate how hard the world is on them as well, as it's usually in the later parts of the story that the protagonist gets beaten up worse and worse...

[Paul Czege]

Hey Alan,

I've read it over, and I like it a lot. The implementation of Motives is fantastic. Thoughts/observations:[list=1][*]Your premise is not: How will you make justice in a world where everyone is flawed?

It's: How will you make justice in a world where you're flawed?

[*]What you have is a basically a linear currency exchange:

demonstrate character by activating motive -->
motive is increased -->
use motive points to comment on secret crime (explore backstory) -->
gain insight -->
use insight to establish relationship[/list:u]
And it's great! But that's where it stops. Relationships don't do anything. It's like a freight train slamming into a brick wall. Character significance will boil off this "event market" almost as a by-product...but only if relationships deliver. You also have this desire for characters to "solve" their secret crimes. Dude, the solution is to tie your loose ends in a knot! My suggestion is that relationships play a factor in a character's resolution of his/her secret crime...but not a success/failure factor. If it were my design (and I wish it were), I'd have solving the secret crime be an inevitability. The details of the crime will come to light. What's up in the air is whether the character's viability as an agent of justice is preserved, whether the character is ahead of the game when he cashes out of the "market." I'd have some sort of roll, with relationships as a factor. Success means that somehow the character's relationships preserve him from the consequences he deserves...and maybe the number of successes rolled is plowed back into his/her stats somehow, as new descriptors perhaps. Failure means an orange jumpsuit or a shallow grave, or something along those lines.[/list:o]Paul

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Alan:

Your game sounds like pure Chandler, and that's enough to get me to play it. Marlowe's the least corrupt in a corrupt world, and he deals with your premise in every novel.

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."

[Paul Czege]

Hey Alan,

Two questions:

1. How wedded are you to the name? I actually think it's too generic, and that you could do better.

2. When you think of game events, what look do they have? Stark, like Frank Miller's Sin City? Or something noir-ish and deco, with greys as well as blacks and whites?

Paul

[Alan]

Matt, Paul, Fred:

Thanks for responses so far.  Much to think about.  Keep it coming.

1. How wedded are you to the name? I actually think it's too generic, and that you could do better.

2. When you think of game events, what look do they have? Stark, like Frank Miller's Sin City? Or something noir-ish and deco, with greys as well as blacks and whites?

1.  Hmph.  I thought Hardboiled was a pretty good name.  But it's only a working title and I'm open to changing it.

2.  I haven't read Sin City.  I think I'm going for Spade, Marlow and Hammer - the corruption is internalized, rather than externalized and explicit.

Thanks again!

[Alan]

Fred's comments clicked with something I read about detective fiction and I had an idea.  I'm not wedded to it either, but I throw it out for comments.

What if the players have a role in defining the situation, just as in Alyria?  We might start by collectively inventing the events of a crime - like the opening of a Columbo episode.

Then during play, players would develop the connections between NPCs and the crime sequence.  

The second major change would be this: only the villain has a Secret Crime - actually the corruption or guilt that drives him.  Through game mechanics, the players get to create and develop this story of corruption.

These two ideas might create more of a Columbo episode, where the focus isn't on who dunnit, but on moves and countermoves, and PC relationships to the villain's corruption.

Hm.  I think the best thing for me to do may be to script a couple  imaginary session using my different ideas and see which I like better.

[lumpley]

I don't think I'd want to be a PC without a secret crime.

I'm taken with the idea of the players describing the situation - including who dunnit! - at the start of play.  Isn't there a name for that sort of mystery story, where the audience knows who's guilty from the start?

That's what I'd go with.  Make the mystery easy enough to "solve," but morally challenging because of the detectives' own pasts.

-Vincent

[Paul Czege]

Hey Alan,

1. Hmph. I thought Hardboiled was a pretty good name. But it's only a working title and I'm open to changing it.

Sorry...too brutal? I was actually thinking of something along the lines of:

A Cold Heart, and Other Stories

Other possibilities:

1515 Brutal St.
Sodium Light Goodbye
Never To Have

etc...

Paul

[iago]

Actually, what I had had in mind with some of my suggestions w/r/t players taking a hand, was that not even the GM necessarily knows who committed the crime.  The players (and GM) would introduce circumstances, characters, and other plot elements, and the GM would help to drive the NPCs -- but the actual who of the whodunit wouldn't be revealed until a "final confrontation" scenario (where, perhaps, the player of the PC who's accumulated sufficient guilt or whatever makes an accusation, a case, what-have-you, for who the who is).

Personally, as a player, I'd probably be less interested in a Columbo style "mystery", but that may be an issue with my play goals in this set-up being different from what you're intending for the game...

[Valamir]

If this were a vote, I'd cast my ballot for Hardboiled honestly.

[Ron Edwards]

I hate game title debates. "Touch of Grey."

Alan, I really like the storymapping approach for this sort of game. It neatly solves the necessary step in detective fiction in which the detective gets personally involved with the situation, and which is so painful in most role-playing that tries to incorporate mysteries and crimes.

Best,
Ron