SLURPS - Harlekin-Maus Monthly RPG

[Zak Arntson]

http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse/">SLURPS

This the Simplest Little Unitarian Role Playing System.

This one's kind of hard to explain. What if you played a Character and the manifestation of your Character's monotheism?  And what if EVERYONE'S Character followed the same God only with different interpretations?

Anyhow, it's a competitive RPG where you play a Divinity (who can be merciful, evil, or somewhere in between) and a string of poor Supplicants who inevitably die from all the divine wrath thrown about.

Inspiration for the game came mostly from trying to find funny words for the acronym SLURPS.

Have fun!

_________________
Zak
http://mailto:zak@mimir.net">zak@mimir.net
http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse">Harlekin-Maus Games

[ This Message was edited by: Zak Arntson on 2001-11-01 02:01 ]

[Zak Arntson]

Oops ... I forgot that this is Indie Game Design.

So maybe I should talk a little about how I picture the game to be played:

Everyone plays a Divinity with a certain level of Mercy and controls one Supplicant (a little mortal) at a time.

The goal of the game is to keep your Supplicants alive while killing everyone elses, usually through creating Tenets of faith that the other Supplicants aren't adhering to.

So how did I go about doing that?  All the mechanics are percentile rolls.

First up, every Player gets a double-edged sword attribute: Mercy.  This is simply a percentile, if you roll <= Mercy, you are merciful.  If you roll above, your are wrathful.

Next, you get a little Supplicant.  Since I wanted the game to concentrate on blasting all the other Supplicants away, I decided Supplicants need: A small amount of "Hit Points" (called Fate) and a single skill, Mission. The simplest form of Fortune I could think of: Roll against 50%.  (and if your Mission applies, you can flip-flop a la Unknown Armies).  Fate points are simple:  You get to zero, you die, and you create a new Supplicant.

Here's the meat of the competitive nature:

There are Divine Tenets that everyone's Supplicant must hold to. And if any Supplicant breaks a Tenet, another Player can call it out and the guilty Player must roll against her Mercy or suffer divine wrath (i.e., lose a Fate point). So with Players doing Round-Robin GMing, of course the GM is going to put everyone in situations where you have to break Tenets to survive.

And here's where the double-edged nature of Mercy comes in.  A Supplicant can condemn any other Supplicant by creating a Tenet (not Divine, yet), sort of like, "God just told me X, and you're all guilty!"  You then roll against your own Mercy to smite the others.

So a Player with a high Mercy will be fairly safe about breaking Tenets, but also be unable to call wrath on the other Players.  Vice versa with a low Mercy, your Supplicant AND the others will suffer more.

Points are earned when someone dies:  You just add your surviving Supplicant's Fate points to you current score. The more opponents that croak, the higher your score will be.

So how do I picture all this working?  Supplicants running around like madmen, condemning each other while trying to stay devoted, and blasts of divine wrath everywhere. Tons of backstabbing, GM craziness and, ideally, fun.


Anyhow, what do y'all think?

_________________
Zak
http://mailto:zak@mimir.net">zak@mimir.net
http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse">Harlekin-Maus Games

[ This Message was edited by: Zak Arntson on 2001-11-01 11:30 ]

[Matt Machell]

The idea is cool. Have only skimmed, so can't comment much beyond that.

Matt

[Zak Arntson]

I just updated SLURPS.  Cleaned up the rules a little, added funny examples, and did a little graphic logo.

The examples are the important part, because it shows how I picture the game playing. If anyone's up for complete player versus player (with players all having turns gming), I'd highly suggest this game.

(That's a veiled attempt to get people to playtest, by the way