[PUNK] Update agogo

[Daniel Solis]

Last update to PUNK was around August last year. It's time to take a another stab at the concept.

In case people have forgotten about PUNK, it's an attempt at making a set of simple rules for playing in -punk subgenre worlds beyond cyberpunk, steampunk or biopunk. The system is designed to encourage the underdog without making him so powered up that he actually ceases to be the underdog.

I've recently been dabbling in the creation of board games and dice games. I've also been spending a lot of time discussing game design with Greg Stolze. Both experiences have given me a very strong appreciation for concise rules and a "get to the point" mindset with regards to system writeups.

This latest version of the PUNK is therefore a lot shorter than the excessively wordy iteration seen here. In fact, it's meant to fit onto a single page of a CD booklet. At 400 words, I may have been unsuccessful in that goal, in which case I'll have to trim down the wordcount or just have it run over into a second page for a double-page spread. No biggie. The ultimate layout I'd like is a single sheet of paper trimmed to the dimensions of a CD booklet double-page spread. The front is the cover, the inside spread is the rules, and the back cover is the character sheet.

Punk world supplements would follow a similar format. Front is the cover. Inside-spread to the back cover is an intro to the world and new rules specific to that world. I'm not expecting long-term play from PUNK.

With regards to the mechanics themselves: The biggest thing I've removed from the system is the ("Little Fish, Big Fish, Shark") social food chain setup. After objectively evaluating its necessity, I decided there had to be more elegant methods of showing a sense of underdog-ness. I may end up salvaging the food chain for the criminal heist RPG I've got cooking on the back burner.

The second biggest edit is the absence of any sort of combat system per se. The way I see it, a punk fight isn't about injuries, the strengths of weapons or the durability of your protection. It's about the righteous anger of the downtrodden boiling from the surface to scald the face of the Man. w00t. So, combat is just another task resolution roll. The only way you "lose" or "die" in PUNK is if your discontent becomes too great ("burning out), or becomes too subdued ("fading away"). Both outcomes have very different in-game results.

There are no more exploding dice, as they tended to increase search & handling time with uncomfortable frequency. PUNK now uses d6s instead of d10s, since I'm not so concerned with explosion probabilites anymore. Also, there is no more self-conscious advise on carefully defining DIY traits. That stuff just annoyed me.

There are probably things I've forgotten to mention, but let's get to the point:

PUNK - Worlds of Wonder, Danger and Filth
You and your gang are rebels in a monolithic, dystopian alternate Earth.

TRAITS
Describe your three passions:
Fight - Something that pisses you off. You want it to stop.
Fuck - Something you desire. You want to get or achieve it.
Flight - Something you fear. You want to avoid or get away from it.

Write down the following details about yourself:
* A simple character concept. ("Corrupt Cop," "Perversion of Science," "Drunken Master," etc.)
* Two things you're really good at doing. ("Lying," "Vandalism," "Holding my Liquor," etc.)
* A notable characteristic. Good or bad, they all have the same mechanical weight.

Grab five tokens of Anarchy.
Assemble ten punk rock songs for your character's personal soundtrack.

ACTION
Say what you want to do. Gather a six-sided die for each of your beneficially relevant traits. The Man gathers a die for every one of an opponent's beneficially relevant traits. If there is no opponent, then the difficulty of whatever you're trying to do is humanized in some way. (Ex: Player rolls to lock pick. The Man rolls for the lock.) Roll 'em. Whoever gets the highest result wins. If you lost the roll, you describe your failure. If you won the roll, the Man describes your success.

ANARCHY
If you fail a passionate action, you gain a token of Anarchy for every triggered passion. Spend Anarchy before a roll to increase each of your die results by one value on a 1:1 basis. Spend Anarchy after a successful roll to describe the success. If you have more than ten or more Anarchy tokens, you burn out. Your character has a heart attack and dies. Your Anarchy tokens are distributed evenly among the rest of the group, favoring those with compatible passions. If you have zero Anarchy tokens, you fade away. The forces of the Man ambush your character and the Man can do with him as he pleases.

AUTHORITY
Every time you succeed a passionate action, the Man gains an Authority token. The Man spends Authority before a roll to increase the value of his die results on a 1:1 basis. He spends it after your unsuccessful rolls to describe your failure.

JUKEBOX
If you have the resources available, put each character's soundtrack in an mp3 player or multi-disc CD changer. Keep the music playing in the background on a random setting. While a character's song is running, the player narrates his successes for free and the Man can't spend Authority to describe his failures.

Soooo.... Yeah. I haven't playtested it yet, but it looks like it could work. Comments and questions are welcome.

Does the task resolution system adequately convey a sense of "winning by losing" underdog-ness?

It feels like there are two many steps in character creation. Which bits could be omitted or blended into one another?

[Mark Johnson]

Concise.  Neat.

What happens on a tied roll?

It is clear to me that the Man is the GM of this game.  Is it really that obvious though?

Rust Never Sleeps,
Mark

[Daniel Solis]

Good question. Hm. I guess the Man ought to win ties since it's, y'know, the Man.

As for the Man's GM-role, I've so far had no trouble with at least semi-experienced gamers recognizing it. PUNK probably isn't the best introductory experience for new gamers anyway.

[Jasper]

The "win by losing" certainly seems clear.  In fact I would suggest that there's a definite sense of futility in fighting the man.  It's pretty darn dystopian.

You might want to clarify what exactly defines a "passionate action."  I can pretty well guess, but it's a term you use in the Anarchy and Authority sections without having defined previously.

Two questions, from someone who hasn't read the previous editions of the rules, so these might indicate to you what's not clear or needs to be present here as much as genuine additions/changes:

1. What happens if you ever manage to destroy your "fight," get your "fuck," or escape your "flight," once and for all?  Would the passion be replaced by a new one?  Would there be a reward of some kind?  Or maybe the character just needs to be retired at that point?  I really like the other endigns for the character, which are very point-blank (ambushed by The Man, or burns out), so this wouldn't be out of place I think.

2. You give The Man extra dice to use through Authority tokens.  Since his ability to create challenge is not normally circumscribed in any way, I assume the main point of this is to indicate clearly that things should get harder after the character succeeds at something?  Can Authority tokens obtained (by the GM) from one character's success be used against another character?  (If it were me, I wouldn't allow this.)  How long can Authority tokens be held on to?  There's apparently no limit to how many the GM can have.


Side question that you may have answered at some other time: Why so much focus on trying to get it to fit into a CD jacket?  It seems to me like the rules need to be a little more verbose for clarity's sake...and clarity is probably better than brevity per se, at least IMHO.

[edited for typos]

[Calithena]

What if, say, the Fight and Flight are both relevant to a situation?

Could the Man derive dice from the punk's Flight while the Punk derived dice from his Fight?

I guess what I'm asking is whether you can employ other people's traits as dice in your roll, or only your own. In various directions. (Like could you get extra dice if you figured out that some pissy cop was afraid of whipped cream and sprayed it in his face during a conflict or something.)

[Daniel Solis]

I guess what I'm asking is whether you can employ other people's traits as dice in your roll, or only your own. In various directions. (Like could you get extra dice if you figured out that some pissy cop was afraid of whipped cream and sprayed it in his face during a conflict or something.)

Oooooh. I hadn't considered that possibility. In a word, I'd say yes, because that adds a bit of incentive to learn more about notable characters. However, I should probably mention in the rules that only notable characters get passions. Mooks, like the pissy cop, are just tools of the Man. They're abstract "obstacles" with a human face.

[Daniel Solis]

You might want to clarify what exactly defines a "passionate action."  I can pretty well guess, but it's a term you use in the Anarchy and Authority sections without having defined previously.

A passionate action is any action that follows the motivations of your character's passion(s). It's just like any other trait in that sense. If a passion is beneficially relevant to the task, the action is now considered passionate.

1. What happens if you ever manage to destroy your "fight," get your "fuck," or escape your "flight," once and for all?  Would the passion be replaced by a new one?  Would there be a reward of some kind?  Or maybe the character just needs to be retired at that point?  I really like the other endigns for the character, which are very point-blank (ambushed by The Man, or burns out), so this wouldn't be out of place I think.

Yeah, I think the resolution of passions is essentially the "victory condition" for PUNK. I'd say that when one passion is resolved, it becomes a non-trait. It has no mechanical advantage or disadvantage until such time as the passion is no longer satisfied.

Example: Your Fight Passion, "Take down the oppressive despot," has been successful. The passion is now a resolved non-trait. It may become re-activated if a new despot comes to power or you discover a despot oppressing people in some other part of the world, however.

So, let's say that the only way to win PUNK is to have each passion resolved at the same time. At that point, I dunno what will happen. Happy endings seem somewhat inappropriate in this genre, dontcha think?

2. You give The Man extra dice to use through Authority tokens.  Since his ability to create challenge is not normally circumscribed in any way, I assume the main point of this is to indicate clearly that things should get harder after the character succeeds at something?  Can Authority tokens obtained (by the GM) from one character's success be used against another character?  (If it were me, I wouldn't allow this.)  How long can Authority tokens be held on to?  There's apparently no limit to how many the GM can have.

I had considered capping the authority tokens at ten, just like the anarchy tokens, but I couldn't find an adequate justification for it. Now that you mention each character having their own built-up reservoir of karma, I think a good cap might be that each character can have no more than ten authority tokens built up against them. Authority tokens might be gradually removed if the character lays low for a few weeks while the heat dies down.

Side question that you may have answered at some other time: Why so much focus on trying to get it to fit into a CD jacket?

Honest? It's kind of an arbitrary limit, but one that sounded rather appropriate considering the punk rock inspiration. If given free rein, I have a nasty habit of being way too verbose and so tend to overcompensate towards the other extreme. I suppose saying too much is a little better than saying too little.

EDIT: Of course, the other big reason is the time constraints of my major. Short little games like this are far easier to develop, for me anyway.

[DevP]

Short answer: total rocking, and it cuts much clearer to the point of what you were trying to do. Great stuff. I'll tenatively offer to play this out a bit via post or such, if you want your playtest. (Granted, neither of us has time. But I'm just saying.)

the highest result wins. If you lost the roll, you describe your failure. If you won the roll, the Man describes your success.

Maybe I'm lame; at first, I glossed over this bit, so the bit about Anarchy tokens was a bit confusing. Formatwise, do it in bold and/or on its on paragraph? It is the big key line.

It feels like there are two many steps in character creation. Which bits could be omitted or blended into one another?

It's pretty spare as is. Notable Characteristic is a bit blank, so you could try making that another kind of character concept (so it's 2 Character Concepts, 2 Things Good At). You do want to make clear that passions = traits, in case of folks like me.

Other idea: "Now that you have your passions, you need to tell your backstory. Everybody starts their players in a bar, and just start talking freely, asking questions, being rude, etc. Whenever you answer a question that shows some Trait of yours, write it down; once everyone has 5 Traits, you all leave the Bar and you start this adventure." It's a little longer in text than just listing characteristics, but it gives a very clear "beginning" to the game: your punks all meet in a bar. I think it fits the genre enough.

If you have more than ten or more Anarchy tokens, you burn out. Your character has a heart attack and dies. Your Anarchy tokens are distributed evenly among the rest of the group, favoring those with compatible passions. If you have zero Anarchy tokens, you fade away. The forces of the Man ambush your character and the Man can do with him as he pleases.

Worst case scenario: guy dies, gives his tokens away evenly, more folks burn out, distribute their many tokens, etc. It's kinda funny on this side of the screen, I'm afraid. <g> Maybe it's a feature.

I wanted to suggest enabling a Cypher-like burnout, where a guy is forced to turn on his mates, but that's a bit too situation-specific. I do think you should suggest generalizing the Burn Out / Fade Out endings for players.

The ultimate layout I'd like is a single sheet of paper trimmed to the dimensions of a CD booklet double-page spread. The front is the cover, the inside spread is the rules, and the back cover is the character sheet.

I am very much with you. I think presentation matters a whole damn lot, as well as consiseness; it may be helpful to put online an extended "design notes/explanation" for those who are curious. (Or, if you will, a "Developer's Commentary".)

[anonymouse]

Side-question: what would go on the CD? Or was the liner-note design simply for easy description? It'd be cool to load up each setting-CD with appropriate music (probably tonnes of MP3s or, to be all punk-y, .ogg) and images and other "source material".

[Daniel Solis]

Short answer: total rocking, and it cuts much clearer to the point of what you were trying to do. Great stuff. I'll tenatively offer to play this out a bit via post or such, if you want your playtest. (Granted, neither of us has time. But I'm just saying.)

I'd be much appreciative of any assistance you can offer. :)

Maybe I'm lame; at first, I glossed over this bit, so the bit about Anarchy tokens was a bit confusing. Formatwise, do it in bold and/or on its on paragraph? It is the big key line.
...
You do want to make clear that passions = traits, in case of folks like me.

Will do, on both counts.

Other idea: "Now that you have your passions, you need to tell your backstory. Everybody starts their players in a bar, and just start talking freely, asking questions, being rude, etc. Whenever you answer a question that shows some Trait of yours, write it down; once everyone has 5 Traits, you all leave the Bar and you start this adventure." It's a little longer in text than just listing characteristics, but it gives a very clear "beginning" to the game: your punks all meet in a bar. I think it fits the genre enough.

Hmmm... I like the concept, but I wonder if there may be a more appropriate beginning to the "campaign." This setup may also present problems for characters introduced in the middle of the game.

Worst case scenario: guy dies, gives his tokens away evenly, more folks burn out, distribute their many tokens, etc. It's kinda funny on this side of the screen, I'm afraid. <g> Maybe it's a feature.

Think I should explicitly encourage players to make a stable of characters, considering the high mortality rate?

I wanted to suggest enabling a Cypher-like burnout, where a guy is forced to turn on his mates, but that's a bit too situation-specific. I do think you should suggest generalizing the Burn Out / Fade Out endings for players.

I had hoped I was implying just such a betrayal with the line: "The forces of the Man ambush your character and the Man can do with him as he pleases." Maybe I should be less vague. :)

I am very much with you. I think presentation matters a whole damn lot, as well as consiseness; it may be helpful to put online an extended "design notes/explanation" for those who are curious. (Or, if you will, a "Developer's Commentary".)

Sure thing. :)

Side-question: what would go on the CD?

Your character's soundtrack, of course! I plan on including space in the character sheet specifically to list the songs on the mix CD.

[DevP]

Other idea: "Everybody starts their players in a bar...

Hmmm... I like the concept, but I wonder if there may be a more appropriate beginning to the "campaign." This setup may also present problems for characters introduced in the middle of the game.

Well, it's pretty much just "5 any traits whatsoever".

Worst case scenario: guy dies, gives his tokens away evenly, more folks burn out, distribute their many tokens, etc. It's kinda funny on this side of the screen, I'm afraid. <g> Maybe it's a feature.

To clarify what I meant here is chain reaction: one player dying instantly (by virtue of token redistribution) causes other players to burn out & die themselves.

[Daniel Solis]

To clarify what I meant here is chain reaction: one player dying instantly (by virtue of token redistribution) causes other players to burn out & die themselves.

Oh! Ha! I hadn't even realized that was a possibility. I suppose it makes sense. You have the single-most pissed-off punk taken down at the prime of their rage, suddenly everyone else gets pissed off beyond physical capacity and dies too. Wow. That's just... nutty. I'd hate to be the last punk standing in that situation. :p

Here's how PUNK looks with some revisions thanks to the this thread. Hopefully, this answers people's questions without presenting new ones. It still fits nicely into a CD booklet's double-page spread. I'll post a PDF once I get a napkin nice and dirty enough to scan for the character sheet.

PUNK
You and your gang are rebels in a monolithic, dystopian alternate Earth. The faceless nemesis is a special player called the Man. In other games, he’s called the GM and acts as sort of referee and moderator, but this is PUNK, so he’s the Man and you fight him.

Traits
Describe three passions:
Fight – Something that pisses you off. You want it to stop.
Fuck – Something you desire. You want to get or achieve it.
Flight – Something you fear. You want to avoid or get away from it.

You’re all in a bar. Describe how you act, what you’re doing and how you interact with one another. Before you leave the bar, write down  three of your character’s notable characteristics (skills, quirks, personality, etc.) as expressed through role-playing this first scene.

Grab five tokens of Anarchy. Assemble ten punk rock songs for your character’s soundtrack.

Let’s go!

Action
Say what you want to do. Gather a six-sided die for each of your beneficially relevant traits. (Passions and Characteristics are both considered “traits.”) The Man gathers a die for every one of an opponent’s beneficially relevant traits. Opponents, if they have access to such personal information, can get a die for each of their enemy’s negatively relevant traits. If there is no opponent, then the obstacle is humanized in some way. (Ex: Player rolls to pick a lock. The Man rolls for the lock.)

Roll ‘em. Whoever gets the highest result wins.

If you lost the roll, you describe your failure. If you won the roll, the Man describes your success. The Man wins all ties.

Anarchy
Say you’re doing an action that follows the motivation of one or more of your passions. If you fail that act, you gain a token of Anarchy for every triggered passion.

Spend Anarchy before a roll to increase each of your die results by one value on a 1-for-1 basis. Spend Anarchy after a successful roll to describe the success.

If you have more than ten or more Anarchy tokens, you burn out. Your character has a heart attack and dies. Your Anarchy tokens are then distributed evenly among the rest of the group, favoring those with compatible passions. If you have zero Anarchy tokens, you fade away. The forces of the Man ambush your character and the Man can do with him as he pleases.

Authority
Every time you succeed a passionate action, the Man gains an Authority token. The Man spends Authority before a roll to increase the value of his die results on a 1:1 basis. He spends it after your unsuccessful rolls to describe your failure.

Each punk has their own seperate “karma account.” Characters cannot individually have more than ten authority tokens. Finally, characters can choose to lay low until the heat dies down, thus reducing their authority tokens gradually. Every week spent avoiding passsionate actions removes one authority token from their account.

Authority tokens garnered by one character cannot be used against another.

Jukebox
If you have the resources available, put each character’s soundtrack in an mp3 player or multi-disc CD changer. Keep the music playing in the background on a random setting. While a character’s song is running, the player narrates his successes for free and the Man can’t spend Authority to describe his failures.

How To Win
Once one passion is resolved, it effectively becomes a non-trait. It can not be used for your benefit or to your detriment. If you have resolved all of your character’s passions at the same time, you can have whatever sappy happy ending you can imagine. The catch is that you can’t take anyone with you (unless that’s part of your passion or something).

[Shreyas Sampat]

Daniel, that "you're in a bar" character creation thing is brilliant.  I love what you've done with this.

I think you could explain the 'karma account' thing more concisely; instead of giving the Man Authority, you can have it associated with the character:

Authority
Every time you succeed a passionate action, you get an Authority token.  The Man can exercise his Authority by discarding one of these tokens ...game mechanical effects...

Characters cannot have more than ten Authority tokens etc. etc

Are you still going to do that series of different -punk settings?  I think that the punk ideal is strong enough in your mechanics that you can have little "liner notes" setting booklets, which would be beyond awesome.

[Jeph]

The big problem with the Exploding Punk Phenomenon is that it's a chain reaction. As more Punks have cardiac arrests, more points of Anarchy are being redistributed among more players.

F'rex: you've got five Punks, with Anarchies of 9, 7, 5, 4, and 2. Number Nine blows it, falls down dead. Seven and Two each get three tokesn, Five and four each get two. Now you're got:

10, 7, 6, 5.

Oops! Our new Ten just exploded! That's another three to Seven and Six, and four to five. Now we have:

10, 9, 9

BAM! Another Punk bites the bullet! Now there's:

14, 14

Holy fuck! The force of that ripped out their ribcages!

Actually, it's quite likely that this will almost always happen, if there are two Punks in the group with 7s or higher. You might want to rethink that mechanic a bit...maybe, instead of distributing the 10 points among the others, it would be wisest to just give them +1s?

--Jeff

[Jasper]

Looks great.  

One thing I realised is that I'm not sure exactly sure what the die mechanic is from the rules: is "best result" the single highest die result from each person's pool, or does it refer to the best sum, between player and Man?  

Also, maybe this was a conscious decision, but the rules still don't mention how the game might end; i.e. "victory conditions" or whatever.