Superpets - Harlekin-Maus November RPG

[Zak Arntson]

http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse/index.html">Superpets

The RPG of Animal Super Heroes, with pictures!

Indie Game Design notes:

* Check out the forceful use of Fortune in the Beginning and a single narrator for a conflict.

* Also not the use of props & language to support the Premise: Stinky Treats, Master Die, Tricks.

[lumpley]

Hot.

Fortune at beginning + single narrator = very interesting situation where you get to say not only what happens to your fellow player's characters, but also what your fellow player's characters DO.  The big sacrosanct in conventional rpgs, more even than having a gm and one-player-one-pc.  I'm wowed.

-lumpley Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

Your resolution order is: declare goal, die resolution, narration. This is classic Fortune in the Middle (intent, resolution, description). Fortune in the beginning would be something like: die resolution, declare what your goal was, narrate success.

Or, perhaps I don't unserstand FitM as well as I thought.

I'm guessing that the superpets "setting" is solely to test some of these concepts. But as such, we must assume that the Premise is the generic superhero "Good vs. Evil" with the novel pets twist. Is that your intent? Or is there something more forthcoming?

Mike

[Zak Arntson]

On 2001-12-03 12:24, Mike Holmes wrote:
Your resolution order is: declare goal, die resolution, narration.

Oops.  You got me there.  I'm not sure WHAT I was thinking when I declared it Fortune in the Beginning ... If it were FitB, it would be Roll, then the Goals & Successes.

What was I thinking?  Hrmm ... oh well, I just changed the text in the thing, and problem solved!

I'm guessing that the superpets "setting" is solely to test some of these concepts. But as such, we must assume that the Premise is the generic superhero "Good vs. Evil" with the novel pets twist. Is that your intent? Or is there something more forthcoming?

My Premise is Superpets!  Yay!  It's basically playing those really dumb super animals, like Krypto (Superman's Dog). It's not much deeper than that.

If I had to analyze it, I'd say that the lack of standard attributes, and dividing all traits between Trick and Problem provides a strong focus on the Super part of superpets.

By making the Tricks and Problems heavily influence conflicts, the Players (and Villains) will be highly encouraged to play up their Tricks, and take advantage of Problems. This should make things more like a cheezy comic book, where the villains always have some vast supply of Kryptonite.

Add in Stinky Treats and you can try to even the odds, but you suffer later.  This was the only real gimmick I threw in to test the idea of "Bad Karma."  And I want to make players eat doggy biscuits.

[Zak Arntson]

After some thought on the implications of complete narrative control ... I stuck in the "Voice-Over Option" in the Conflicts section.

When this option is used, the Master still has narrative control except when dialogue is presented. Dialogue is filled in by the speaker's Player. This lets Players give expository Dialogue that can influence the events.

For example, if the Conflict's successful goal is: Evil Dr. Chimp crushes Super Frog. Manic Millipede's Player is Master, but Super Frog's Player gets some dialogue. Trying to prolong the inevitable, Super Frog shouts,
"You almost caught me, Dr. Chimp! But my Strontium Legs are too fast!"  Then the Master has to cope with it.

Of course, the Master will probably whip out Antistrontium or something.