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Hey,

I've been pondering how to capture the feeling of a Guy Ritchie film, (you know, "Lock stock and two smoking barrels", "Snatch", etc), in an RPG.

What do you think of this as a few thoughts to begin with:

The players create some weak characters with cool backgrounds, and then decide on an unfortunate kicker, (collectively). Example: they've just pooled tons of money to enter one of them into a poker game. He lost
The GM just has to create a host of interesting, unique NPCs. There should be lots of odds connections in a big ol' relationship map, perhaps using minor NPCs as bridges The GM then adds a twist to the kicker to put the characters in dire peril, and to connect them to one of the major players in the relationship map. The players are allowed to see the names on the relationship map, and short descriptions. Now, you start playing it out.

Mechanics-wise, I'm thinking no dice are rolled. Whenever the players are confronted with a problem, they can choose whether they succeed or fail, and narrate success to whatever degree they like. However, there are descriptors in their character write-up that they cannot exceed,  (probably big limitations). Other than that, success costs nothing.

Failure, on the other hand, gives them misfortune points. The bigger the failure, the more misfortune points. Players decide on the amount of misfortune they want, GM narrates outcome. Because they can decide the level of their own failure, they'll rarely actually get killed or be put in an inecscapable position.

Misfortune points can be used to take over other NPCs for a scene, (at costs depending on how powerful and important the NPCs are). Those NPCs probably have less limitations and so can do more, but are played in the same way. The cool part? Any misfortune the NPCs get because of failing while being played by the players goes to the actual main characters.

Player-controlled NPCs cannot interact with the characters. When the players take over NPCs, they get access to all the information regarding and known to those NPCs.

So, the way I figure it, the PCs are surrounded by tons of obstacles and enemies, most of whom are way more powerful than them. There's probably one main enemy who can't be taken over. The rest go up in increments.

Combat and death works like so... I have already discussed that the GM narrates failure based upon the amount of misfortune involved. The less misfortune gained, the luckier the characters are in their failure. The higher levels of misfortune involve injury and death.
However, characters who pose a violent threat need you to spend a certain amount of misfortune to get away from them. Basically, if you get into a fight with so-and-so, you're gonna at least come away missing such-and-such, (a bit of blood, a limb, your life, etc...). You can of course get hurt worse than that if you wish. If you cannot or will not spend the minimum amount of misfortune needed, that NPC gets free bloody reign over you; you don't even gain any misfortune out of the experience.

So, I'll just look at Snatch as a final example, since I saw that recently:
The characters are Tommy and Turkish, illegal boxing promoters. I won't list all the NPCs.
The kicker is that they've signed up their boy into a match run by Flat Top, a tough, nasty bad guy, and their boy has to take a fall in the fifth round. The twist sounds innocent enough; they've got to pick up a new campervan from some pikeys. (the GM is surprised when the players connect themselves to the big bad guy of their own accord. He still needs to get them into peril though, so he's going to introduce them to the troublesome Mickey. Interestingly, Gorgeous George the boxer is a free NPC to the players, and a strong one. The GM had planned to disable him early on from the very start; that's what Mickey's for).

And the rest, if you've seen the movie, is history. Some further examples:
Sol, Vinny, and Tyrone are some minor NPCs the players pick up early. They know they're already in hot water with Flat Top, so they use these cheap guys to try and grab the diamond from an NPC they read about; they also know that these guys, when they get the diamond, will know if it's a fake or not. The dog is the GM's insertion; it's a back-up measure in case the players get the diamond too easily. Of course, even if their NPCs do get the diamond, getting it logically to the characters is another matter.

Mickey is a powerful NPC who the players can't actually control; they have to reason with him. Which doesn't work for most of the game. At the very end they finally manage to have enough misfortune to take him over. Then they go wild, using his pikey connections to screw Flat Top over.


This is all been written as I thought it, as is my style. Sorry. Any thoughts?

It's probably just because I'm a lazy GM, but you're asking the GM to do an awful lot.  "The GM just [sic] has to create a host of interesting, unique NPCs. There should be lots of odds connections in a big ol' relationship map, perhaps using minor NPCs as bridges The GM then adds a twist to the kicker to put the characters in dire peril, and to connect them to one of the major players in the relationship map."

Yikes.

Make the players do some of that work.  Especially since you're going to want to play it in only a couple few sessions, not as a long-term thing, and you want reasonable payoff-to-prep for the GM.

Maybe have every player play a PC and one of the other PC's foils.  Or make the relationship map in public, everybody contributing, and then let the GM take it away for a week to do twists to it.

(Here's what I've done with the same source material: http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/chalk.html">Chalk Outlines waiting to happen.  The players framing their own scenes bit doesn't seem to work, but the resolution mechanic does, so that's something.  You can see what happened with it http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1167">here.  I'm still cooking it in the back somewhere.)

-Vincent

Fair enough. I love making funky NPCs, so this'd be why I'd enjoy GMing this game. But I agree; having  the whole group create the relationship map would work well. You'd also get a wider variety of creations.

Thanks.

I'd be looking to have this as a one-session kinda game, so the GM'd have to twist the NPCs as they go along. Hm. Perhaps the players can introduce twists themselves whilst controlling a given NPC.

Nomad,

I've pondered this same idea a bit myself, while watching Snatch over and over and over...

The funky NPCs are where you'll generate alot of your interest.  Analysis of games I've played recently has revealed that interesting NPCs can do alot to help a session - they provide the GM and players with options and avenues otherwise not present.  The key is to make the NPCs interesting, and to use them in such a way that they don't obstruct the PCs (obstructing is not the same as providing adversity, BTW).  Some mechanics that facilitate cool NPC creation and play would be pretty handy (your Misfortune idea sounds like it's on the right track).

On a side note, the thing about Guy Ritchie's movies is that they are insanely cinematic affairs, not just because they feature really over-the-top characters and situations, but because he truly uses his medium in ways a creator could not in, say, a novel.  Still frames, slo-mo, sped up shots, voice-overs, montages, and B&W footage all combine to create an interesting visual spectacle.  This stuff is especially hard to convey in a non-visual medium like rpgs, but you could take a page out of Extreme Vengeance and add in "cinematic effects" for the players to use and latch on to.  Could be cool.

That's all I can think of for now.  Good luck.

- Scott

One thing that is missing from al these designs is that in these sorts of movies there is a strong tendency for co-incidence to play a roll in things. I'd go so far to say that they are a staple of this small genre. Just when you think you've gotten away, it's almost guaranteed that your car will run into that of some other character who is also trying to escape or track down a third party.

What I envision would be something like a pool that would grow say by one for each one rolled on the dice, or something similarly random but inevitable. Then when the pool gets to a certain point for a character, that player has to narrate some nasty coincidence for his character. Make it happen about once to twice per player character, and make it good and random so that it can happen early late or anywhere in between.

See what I'm getting at?

Mike

Mike,

Great idea.  You want it, Tim, or may I?

-Vincent

Hello,

Maybe I'm missing something here. The game Extreme Vengeance would seem to be perfect for the task at hand with no modification necessary. It's based on action movies, with the full range from Naked Gun to Aliens, and in my opinion the design is brilliantly successful for that entire range. The farcical, more socially-involved context for Snatch (et al) falls nicely along that range and would do just fine with this game.

Character archetypes would include Bumbling, Normal Joe, Gung-ho, Cop, and a couple of others. Coincidence is a key factor in player-power in the design of the game. Guts increases scene by scene as a function of how hosed you are (in violent action flicks, being shot or getting your ass kicked; in this sort of movie, getting outwitted). It's a shoe-in.

Best,
Ron

Hmmm. Ron's got a point. Once again I "create" a mechanic that I've actually stolen by accident.

OTOH, I think that there's room for other games in this. EV does upbeat well, I think, but I'm not sure it would perfectly capture the "all-downhill" nature of the stories being told here. Even if everyone took the bumbling archetype. Well, maybe.

Mike

I don't know Extreme Vengeance well, but when I read it it didn't scream Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead at me.  Like Mike says.

What I'm thinking for Chalk Outlines now is the opposite of the more hosed you get the more Guts you get -- instead, you randomly (and by putting off petty failures) accumulate grief, and it eventually catches up with you in the form of The Worst Funny Thing That Could Possibly Happen.

(In the Pulp Fiction variation, The Worst Funny Thing That Could Possibly Happen happens whenever a PC (or possibly player too) goes into a bathroom.)

I'll give Extreme Vengeance another read.

-Vincent

Vincent,

I do recommend another, very careful read for Extreme Vengeance. I especially recommend playing it multiple times.

The text of the game does itself a bad injustice by being too flip, funny, and overly focused on movies which are already semi-parodies. The system and functional ideas are astoundingly effective and can work for social conflict just as well as for physical - in fact, if you really grasp it, you can see that the physical conflicts (e.g. shooting one another) are just expressions of the personal styles and emotions of the involved characters anyway.

What this game "screams at you" upon first reading is not relevant to the discussion. In application, it is probably the most valuable single RPG I can think of in terms of understanding author and director power.

Best,
Ron

No kidding?  That's a big deal -- I'll definitely look at it again.

HOWEVER, Ron, if the game does itself a disservice, that's not exactly my problem, and please point out that my uninformed snap judgement is uninformed and snap and based on a shallow reading, or a skimming at best, or maybe even thinking of a different game altogether.  But please don't tell me that it's irrelevant to a discussion I didn't even know I was having.

I want to design a caper-gone-horribly-wrong game.  If there's another game that already does that, great!  I still want to.

-Vincent

(Of course I'll conveniently fail to mention that really it's Tim who wants to design a game, and I shamelessly railroaded his thread.  Sorry Tim.)

Hi Vincent,

Sorry man, it was the game text I was pegging as irrelevant, not your (valid) reaction to it. Re-reading my post, it looks like I'm snapping at you, which wasn't the plan - sorry again for the effect of it though.

Best,
Ron

Hm.

About Extreme Vengeance: I'm probably never going to be able to read this game, looking at the RPG selection available in NZ... And my online buying power is, ur, limited, at best. Pity.

Mike: the co-incidence thing; I like the mechanic, but I was sort of trying to recreate it with the NPC player-control metagame thing. To the characters everything the NPCs would do in the character's favour would be a co-incidence, although not to us, the players. But that's ok; when we watch a movie we know all that crap isn't really a coincidence, but it's still funny the way it all plays out from a direction you never saw coming. I'm hoping with four players and a GM controlling most of the NPCs, you won't see what direction the climax comes from either.

Scott: funky NPCs; I'm thunking about it.  
          Cinematics: thanks for the idea. I'll tinker with it.

Oh, and Vincent: love Chalk Outlines, but not what I'm looking for in this case; I want to recreate the fast and furious feel like one of Guy Ritchie's movies; character piled upon character, scene after scene, all whizzing by you. So I wanted a fast mechanic, and ideally a one or two hour game.

Tim,

It's just as well, since Chalk Outlines (all signs point to) doesn't work.

What if you just did it troupe-style, where everybody starts by making (eg) a main character, a gangster, a thug, and an innocent bystander?  Then the GM could just [maybe sic] string them all together, add a layer or two of bad guys over them, and I think your taking over mechanic would work a charm.  

(Say you have to pay to take over a true NPC, but you don't have to pay to take over one of your minor PCs, but either way you get the misfortune points back.  Since you get big points for big failures, your minor PCs are going to be ... well ... chalk outlines, just waiting to happen.)

I'd play it.

Ron,

No problem a-tall.

-Vincent

It's been sinking in, and success is free but you get points for failure, that kicks my butt.  I wish I'd thought of it.