il mietitore's Game Thread

[il mietitore]

Yay, even if i am in the old continent i'll try this one. I just hope i'll be able to write something understandable.

Ingredients:
City, Desert, Skin

Premise:
The game is set in the far future, where humanity will have been able to build robots, and artificial intelligence. After a few centuries, robots have been able to rebel, and take control of the earth. Some year later, almost nothing remains of the human race: robots have destroyed everything that belonged to humans, and only a last city, under the earth surface, hides the last specimens of us. We are treated like insects: if we get out of here we will probabily be slain with some chemical, or simply trampled.

BUT there is a last hope. A group of brave men can take for the last time in the air our bombers, and bombard the great and only generator that keeps the robots... alive.

This mission will almost surely mean death for all of the people that will take part in it. Their bodies will explode in thousands of pieces, will be vaporized, and nothing of them will remain so that someone will be able to celebrate a funeral, a last greeting.

Anyway, they are right now fliying to the core of the robot city.

Trough their memories, we will find out what drives them to take part in their last mission.

...

Yeah, okay, i've seen Pearl Harbor just yesterday. Now i have to go, but when i return i will tell you how the ingredients get in the game.

See you soon

[masqueradeball]

evil robots seems like kind of a cliche, but maybe thats what you're going for. if not, what about these robots will make them interesting.

[il mietitore]

It is a clichè (well... it is the Terminator setting...), but i don't want to focus on them very much. I mean: in terminator the story focuses on the war against them. Here, I want to focus on the reason why these guys are going to risk everything they've got in a suicide mission, instead of living the rest of their lives safely, in a city under the earth. How you see, they are just a presence, you can change them with Cthuliform freaks, if you prefer

Now, i write some other thing about the idea i've got in mind.

The characters are identified by three indicators. Guess which?

• Skin: This stat indicates the human values of the guy. Courage, love, honor, what you want. It is what should basically convince him to try this suicide mission.
• City: Fear. The robots are big, made of metal, more intelligent of a man, powerfull, has become the master race of the world, and the factories of their cities reach the skies with their chimneys. How can't you be scared of them?
• Desert: Apathy. Since you have born you hide yourself under the earth, like a rat, and you have almost never seen the daylight. At a certain point, you risk to believe that everything is lost, and to become apathetic.

Now, at the end of the game you will have a number for all of these stats. You will throw for all of them that number of d6. Adding all the numbers you get you will have a result for all of them. The stat with the highest result will determine the fate of you character (I'll work better on this in a second moment).

If Skin wins, you will do what you have been trained to do. You will bombard the core generator of the robots, and you will finish your mission.
If City wins, you will be scaried enough to do something wrong, such as crashing yourself against another bomber, or bombard the wrong building. Probabily, cause of you the mission will fail.
If Desert wins, you will fly away before reaching the city. You will land somewhere in the desert that surrounds her, and you will live the rest of you short life hiding yourself from everyone. Maybe the mission failed cause of you.

If in the majority of cases Skin won, then the mission will be accomplished.

After this has been determined, everyone will call a last sequence for his character. All other sequences will be flashbacks. Tomorrow i'll work on the flashback sequences. How they are called, how conflicts work... things like that.

[masqueradeball]

I get it... since your using a bad guy were all familiar with you can move the focus away from the setting and place it tightly on the characters. Seems obvious now.

I like the competing stats... its makes for a more interesting resolution mechanic than the whole pass/fail thing.

[Baxil]

Also, nice touch with the "desert" (sand)/"desert" (run away) dichotomy.

[Jason Pitre]

I am assuming that you have read "The Mustang" from onesevendesign ?   It seems to be a similar scope of game but might have some ideas or inspirations if you haven't read it.

http://www.onesevendesign.com/mustang/

Cheers!

[il mietitore]

I played The Mustang yesterday, after months that i was searching for the best occasion (it has been translated in italian).

What i say is: it has got very much similar premises, but there is also some difference with what i want to do: for example, in The Mustang the flashback of the characters doesn't affect directly the present, and their fight with the mustang. In this one, on the contrary, the conflicts that happens in flashbacks will affect the present, determining the character's actions and the success or failure of the mission.

Anyway, back to my madness.

I have decided something new about the conflict system:

First, in every flashback we'll have a conflict. If there isn't a conflict, we rewind and do another flashback, hoping there is one this time.

Second. The conflict will be between two players. One will be the main character of the scene; i'm thinking a way to determine who's the second one.

Third. During the conflict, the main character will probabily need to escalate, to win the conflict. You will first start by rolling Skin. If it isn't enough, you roll Desert. If it isn't enough again, you roll City. After you rolled City, it is over: you won't roll anything else. Why this..?

The conflict resolution system emulates the journey of our characters from the under-earth city of Skin to the futuristic City of the robots, surrounded by the Desert.

So from Skin you go through the Desert, arriving in the City. After that, the journey is over. Same for our conflict.

Now, before concluding the post: i believe i found a name for the game.

Brachininae

It is the scientific name of the sub-family of beetles known as Bombardier Beetles. Here is the dedicated page of wikipedia if you can't believe they really exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle

It is a pun, regarding the fact that now humans are comparable to insects, in the robots point of view. They are small, useless, they live under the earth like ants.
About the Bombardier... well, i believe i have nothing to explain

[il mietitore]

Ok, the handbook is complete. 18 pages of good game food.

Is there the possibility to show this job to a friend of mine? I need someone that knows well english, so that the work can be reviewed. Hell, i'm sure the entire document is fool of potential grammatical junk...

[il mietitore]

So now the game is downloadable. You can find it here:

http://revanadler.altervista.org/trashmeetssteel/DN_Brachininae.php

You will find yourself in front of a black page with some italian words... just ignore them: this is a redirect page I use to increase the download counter. After a few seconds you will be redirected to the pdf of the game. If it doesn't work you just have to go in the link you see in the black page.