RPG Musical: Inspiration Points

[garapata]

Okay, I have decided to try and give a more concrete set of area where Inspiration Points are guaged.

As mentioned in my other thread, Inspiration Points are gained when a player successfully integrates songs into his roleplaying session.  Inspiration points can be spent to gain bonuses to future rolls that are thematically related to the original song they were earned from.

This thread seeks to concretize the areas or fields of emotion that fall under an Inspiration Point's resonance  (did that make sense?).  At first, I was considering keeping everything freeform.  A player simply designates a field of influence a particular Inspiration Point was gained under (example: By singing "I love you for sentimental reasons" to court an npc, a player gains an Inspiration point to spend in future rolls relating to "love","sentimental", "emotions" and possibly "admissions of feelings". ) but I then realised such an approach would be clunky once the number of Inspiration Points increase.

Maybe a more clear chart or grid system would be appropriate?
Something like:

Inspiration point Resonance
Courage - tally goes here
Love - tally goes here
Anger - tally goes here
Sadness - tally goes here
Fear - tally goes here
Happiness - tally goes here
Secrecy - tally goes here
Pain - tally goes here
Deception - tally goes here

So when a song is sung, the player merely has to choose the appropriate area of resonance it applies to the most, and dot a check there.

Or does that seem to limiting?

[garapata]

Great.
THanks for the help.
Or the lack of it.

Sigh.

[JimmyB]

Patience is a virtue.

You could have a large space on the sheet, or a seperate GM's sheet, to record song titles perhaps. It avoids the limitations of a specific set of topics, and means that you can record the relevant areas quite easily. Then simply allow each appropriate song title to give an inspiration point when needed.

After all, in your average four hour session you're not going to get more songs than you can write down on a single sheet anyway.

At least I hope not.

[taalyn]

One thing I'm confused on... do you simply note lyrics/songs, or do you have to sing them, or what? How does the song mechanic work?

As for IPs, I think something combining freeform with tallies. Maybe a grid. Right half is internal emotion, left is external. Top half is improving, lower is degenerating. So, fearful IPs would go in lower right quadrant, and love into the upper left. Then define what any given half/quadrant can be used for. I do think the list for tallies is too clunky.

And sorry for the delay - I've been cogitating on the idea (in addition to other stuff! ;)

Aidan

[garapata]

Pardon my lack of patience.
I guess considering the traffic in this site I was expecting more.
My apologies.

As to the questions:

1) Well, really good players might sneak in a song per dialogue scene.  So four might not be an accurate number.  Unless I opt to limit the maximum number of Inspiration points gained in a game session?  It brings a second thought to mind: can one bank the points for future sessions?

2) The player ACTUALLY sings the song to represent the character also signing the song in the scene.  Look at movies like Moulin Rouge and Chicago as examples.

[garapata]

One thing I'm confused on... do you simply note lyrics/songs, or do you have to sing them, or what? How does the song mechanic work?

As for IPs, I think something combining freeform with tallies. Maybe a grid. Right half is internal emotion, left is external. Top half is improving, lower is degenerating. So, fearful IPs would go in lower right quadrant, and love into the upper left. Then define what any given half/quadrant can be used for. I do think the list for tallies is too clunky.

And sorry for the delay - I've been cogitating on the idea (in addition to other stuff! ;)

Aidan

On second glance, yes, perhaps a [Positive] and [Negative] area is a better way to keep track of points.  Although that might add the strange results of a character's player singing a love song [Positive] in order to drive in a scene better.  When appropriately, the bonus should apply only to love scenes.

[Tomas HVM]

Inspiration Points are gained when a player successfully integrates songs into his roleplaying session

A games designer I know have worked on roleplaying musicals for two years now, and his premiss is to make the players sing the whole game. It's fascinating, and it functions.

The sheer fact that this functions (with normal people/players) may give you some ideas too.

[garapata]

Okay, been thinking.
Here's what I got in mind:

A small grid shows [Positive] and [Negative] on the top area:
As a listing below it are:
Passion
Determination
Logic
Luck

When a player sings a song to enhance a scene, he jots down a dot in the appropriate area based on which seems most likely to be most associated with the reason he sang the song.

So if a player sang "Just got lucky" to try and boost his character's gunslinging skills, the dot goes down [Positive] - Determination.

Where as a player who sings "You are everything to me" to try and court a lady selling flowers jots down [Positive] - Passion.

A player who sings "Goodbye, Goodbye" as he tries to kill a coming monster would gain [Negative] - Determination or [Negative] - Luck since his bonus would be to something that takes away rather than creates.  

The guide isn't meant to absolutely categorize, rather to encourage players to use many songs to gain various bonuses in different areas.
A player who sings "Don't let me get me" and segues it to "These boots are made for walking" might gain [Positive] - Determination and [Negative] - Determination at the same time, thus getting dots he can spend to get a bonus to hit his opponent, as well as a bonus to do more damage to him as well.

What do you think?

[taalyn]

The only issue I have with this new development is that it's often difficult to tell the positive from the negative. If I sing "ray of light" to light up a room AND simultaneously burn some vampire, is it positive or negative? Now, I think you're saying that it's both - in which case, why can't I pick a song and sing it for 47 different purposes at the same time, and instantly fill all my pools?

The pos/neg distinction seems to involve a lot of internal intention that are exceedingly hard to characterize/know. If I sang the song above just for the light, do I still get the points since it burned the vampire too? And if not, how do you know whether i intended it or not?

I like the grid idea (I did suggest it, after all! ;), but I wonder if you can remove subjective judgements from it? If not, make sure that you account for the repercussions, and be aware what effects it will have on the game...

Aidan

[garapata]

Because the song is enough to generate Inspiration for ONE bonus result only?

Or maybe, I should set degrees for the song to give more benefits?
Like, if the song was a medley, you can allocate more than 1 Inspiration Point (1 per song?) or something.

And keep in mind, the player HAS to sing it.
If he says the song inspires him to do more damage and hit the vampire, he better perform it in a way that does "inspire' you to let it happen in the game.

:-)