[Tabloid] The Gutter Press Roleplaying Game

[simon_hibbs]

This is just a skeleton outline of a game at the moment. For example I've got some stats, but no numeric scale yet. I've also got the beginnings of an experience or reward system. It doesn't hang together at all yet mechanicaly, I'm just dealing with game concepts at the moment.

I'm realy after ideas that will fit in with the structure I have at the moment.


TABLOID
The Gutter Press Roleplaying Game

Also planned to be the first roleplaying game to feature a nipple count!

In Tabloid you play hacks investigating, researching, sensationalising and just plain inventing stories for their paper. One player takes the role of the Editor, who assigns stories to the hacks and makes sure they submit their copy before the presses roll.

In a typical session the Editor will assign the hacks to work together on a scoop. This may take several sessions to nvestigate, but the publication schedule is relentless and regardless of how far along they are with the scoop, every hack must submit one story by the end of each game sessioin to go into the curent edition of the paper.

The hack that has scored the best when they print the scoop is promoted to Editor and the current Editor is demoted to hack for the next game.

Adventures, sorry Scoops, will revolve around dealings with underworld and/or showbiz figures, invading people's privacy, setting people up, etc.


Each hack has the following abilities : Charm, Lie, Knowledge, Contacts and Snoop.

No other skills or statistics are necessery. Note there is no writing skill. You realy think they'd work for a rag like this if they could actualy write?


In addition to general news pieces there are also some regular columns. From time to time a player hack may be asked to fill in for a columnist, or you can even volunteer. Not sure how to handle this part yet. Perhaps the lowest scoring hack from the last session must fill in for a columnist for a session? Roll 1D6 for which column.

1. Spacie Filler: Lifestyle and gossip columnist.
2. Aunt Aggie: She writes the Ask Aggie column
3. Augustus Spode: Obituaries
4. Frasier Bookbender: Reviews
5. Horrace Fixer: Sports Columnist
6. Mysic Doris: Psychic

A story consists of a headline and a number of grabbers. A grabber is anything that will catch the reader's attention. It can be a revelation, a rant, a quote from someone, whatever. headlines and grabbers are single sentences.

For each grabber in a story the hack scores from 1 to 3 points for each of the following, headlines score double:

Is it True?
Outrageously false = 0 points
Believable but false = 1 point
Partialy true = 2 points
Realy true = 3 points

Is it shocking?
Not at all shocking = 0 points
A bit surprising = 1 point
Quite shocking = 2 points
Totally shocking = 3 points

Sex or Violence?
No sex or violence = 0 points
Naughty or slightly violent = 1 point
Lots of sex or lots of violence= 2 points
Lots of sex and very violent = 3 points

Comments? ideas?

Simon Hibbs

[simon_hibbs]

It's occured to me that this could work as an add-on to other games too. A recent fantasy campaign of mine included a city freesheet that reported on in-game events and contained hints, clues and information relevent to the game. It would be fairly streightforward to adapt this to most modern and SF settings too, especialy those with a humorous or sardonic flavour. How about running a paper in Mega City One, for example?

So is this a game or a supplement, or is it both? How might you consider using this in your own games?


Simon Hibbs

[Matt Snyder]

Damn, damn, damn. There goes another one of my back-burner ideas! Alas.

Keep it up, Simon. You're off to a decent start. In what format will this game be published?

[contracycle]

Also planned to be the first roleplaying game to feature a nipple count!

FATALITY!  Sunday Sport WIN!

[simon_hibbs]

Damn, damn, damn. There goes another one of my back-burner ideas! Alas.

Ha, ha, ha... Eat my dust!

No, actualy you liking the idea is a big indication that it's worth doing something with.

Keep it up, Simon. You're off to a decent start. In what format will this game be published?

I'm thinking tabloid format on recycled bog paper.

Ok, maybe not realistic.

How about Letter format PDF, in a kind of compressed tabloid style, complete with outrageous Weekly World News/Sunday Sport headers. Make it look as much like the subject matter as possible while making it a functional game.

The idea is this isn't just a spoof, it realy should be a playable and fun game. You can just do away with a lot of the baggage that RPGs usualy have.

Damn, I had this idea while halfway through a complete re-organisation of Born of the Blood. I was getting bogged down in it a bit recently, then on the train yesterday I read a headline in a rag someone was reading next to me and the whole idea for the game just popped into my head.

Maybe I need a break from BoB for a while to regenerate those particular creative juices. I'll run with this for a while and see where it goes. I'm not very good at working on a single project continuously anyway. BoB's been on the boil for about 3 years, although it recently passed the 10,000 word barrier, so it is coming along.


Simon Hibbs

[simon_hibbs]

Also planned to be the first roleplaying game to feature a nipple count!

FATALITY!  Sunday Sport WIN!

Do you think I'd get it past the D20 decency clause?

Simon Hibbs

[Phillip]

Man, I really hope you finish this game.  I'm all for it.  I would guess that your British tabloids are fairly equal to our American ones.  Do British tabloids do the two-headed baby/I saw Elvis/Bigfoot fathered my child stories?  In America, if you don't know, they seem to be split among this kind and the 'sordid celebrity' type, although there is some overlap (some do a lot of both types; the National Enquirer used to be like this, though I think nowadays they only really do sordid celeb bits as opposed to UFO type stuff).  Maybe your game could mirror that type split?  Maybe you need a Stalk and Hide in the Bushes skill to get those nude Fergie pix without getting caught?  Or maybe a Brawl skill if you do get caught by her bodyguards.  Or perhaps a Legal Defense rule in case the tabloid is sued?  This idea is a goldmine...

[Gwen]

I had a similar idea a while ago based around this idea- in that these tabloid oddities actually existed.

Bat Boy, Sasquatch, living dinosaurs, cattle mutilating aliens.

The idea was that such ludicris monsters wouldn't be taken seriously by local or government authroities, so the Tabloid writers also took to fighting these paranormal oddities.

In real tabloid, the same creatures keep popping up.  The Bat Boy is the most common.  He usually escapes and steals a car and winds up in the deserts of Las Vegas.

Perhaps writing a "better" article (worth more points) would involve actually fighting/capturing/freeing the monsters.

Plus this might add some suspense to investigating mutilated bodies if you don't know if it's the real bat boy... or a psycho killer making it seem like the bat boy.

Kind of like Men in Black, X-Files and World Weekly News all rolled into one.

Gwen

[RaconteurX]

I take it no one here is familiar with Atlas Games' wonderfully silly Pandemonium? Not quite identical in concept, but it certainly warrants inclusion in the bibliography of any game based on tabloid journalism. :)

[Daniel Solis]

You might want to look up a short-lived series that aired on the scifi channel a year or two ago called, I believe, The Chronicle. The main characters were reporters in New York working for a tabloid, the main source of "real" news for the monsters, zombies, mutants, aliens and assorted unusual characters making their home in the city that never sleeps. Shortly before its cancellation, the series started making very interesting allusions to the Chief's deeper connections to the unseen world and his motivations for running the paper. Anyway, it's some good research material.

[simon_hibbs]

While weird paranormal investigative games are a lot of fun and I'm all for them in principle, this isn't one of them. In fact while I put a scoring system based partly on whether a story is true or not, in fact it might be closer to the source material if the truth of a story was completely irrelevent to how successful it is. This isn't the game of valiant but flawed people uncovering an unpopular truth. It's the game of seedy, manipulative hacks exploiting the gulibility of the unwashed masses for personal gain.

I do imagine the game having a certain cartoonish quality though. It is satire after all, so realism as such isn't realy a goal of the game, but the reality of the subject matter it is satirising must always be visible. For example, some of your fellow hacks might include Lois and her dweeb boyfriend, not to mention that spotty kid Parker, and their obsession with gimmicky vigilantes. You might even include subtle hints that some of this supernatural stuff realy might be true, but that's not what this is about. This is about exploitation journalism at it's worst. It's about catching politicians paying off single mothers with brown envelopes stuffed with money. It's about paying prostitutes to seduce happily married sports stars and then secretly photographing them in a hotel room. It's about
investigating a story and if it turns out not to be true, fixing it so it seems true because you still need to file copy before the presses roll.

That's how I see it anyway. It's  matter of purity of vision. Of course when people take the game and actualy run it, you can do what you like. I'd be perfecly happy to hear of people adapting the game to any of the other approaches mentioned here and it should be designed to that is fairly easy to do. However by focusing on one side-issue like there realy being cattle mutilators or whatnot, it reduces the usefullness of the game for running another alternative, such as a serious political journalism game, or whatever. IMHO better to stick with  the central concept, and let people take it from there.


Simon Hibbs

[simon_hibbs]

I've ben thinking a bit more about format. I think foing the whole game in mock-journo style might be tough and not realy come off cery well. How about an alternative - present parts of the game in newspaper style, so more traditional game rules pages are interspersed with tabloid-style pages.

Another nice resource to give out would be some word processor or DTP templates for people to put together their own mock publications. I've got some stuff already as I've done player handouts in mock tabloid style for games before. I suppose such things would have to be provided as free downloads.

Ok, I suppose this is where the hard work begins actualy writing the thing.


Simon Hibbs

[garapata]

Sounds more like a boardgame/non-board game thing than an RPG.
How does it become an RPG?

[simon_hibbs]

Sounds more like a boardgame/non-board game thing than an RPG.
How does it become an RPG?

How does it stop?

You play Hacks, who are assigned to research stories by an Editor. Classic mission based team roleplaying, IMHO. I don't see how limiting what you can do in the game, and the kinds of stories the Editor (GM) can assign in the way a board or card game does would make the game better.


Simon Hibbs

[Fishy]

TSR actually published a game called Tabloid that was pretty much what you describe. It was an Amazing Engine game and while it never had the oomph to be played regularly it was great for those drunken Xmas sessions or when only half the group turned up.
It might be worth your while looking out a copy if only to see that you don't tread on any toes.