I’ve loved the work of Vaughn Bode for a long time, as well as Simon Bisley, the Pinis, Bill Willingham, and a slew of others. Years ago I saw an ad in a comic (perhaps in John Carter Warlord of Mars) for another comic that was either an elfish comic of some kind or otherwise similar to Eflquest. The picture depicted a female and a male of child-like qualities each with little swords and they were in a darksome cavern on a small rocky isle. The image has stuck in my mind all these years though I can’t possibly tell you what it was.

Ever since then I’ve been somewhat taken with ideas like Elfquest, Smurfs, those little troll dolls, and anything like it. Now I have a great game in the works called Imp that is based on this long-standing fascination. Its a game of weirdness and angst, team spirit and wicked humor.

Here is the game in a nutshell:

There are many fairytale creatures with highly respected histories--imps are not one of them. Ignored, marginalized, and discriminated against, imps found the only way they could really make a name for themselves was in a line of work no one else would do: odd jobs.

So imps work together in bands doing gigs for wizards, kings, merchants, dragons, gods, or whoever else needs their special talents. And what are those talents? Imps suck at most everything. Even when they think they can do something, they probably can’t. But imps have a natural (or supernatural) flair for getting shit done. It never works out exactly the way they wanted, nor exactly the way the client wanted, but it still works out in some way. So, imps say balls to the effete snobs of fantasy land and dive in headfirst into the nastiest, dirtiest, most un-glamorous jobs anyone could possibly invent. And they are good at it.

In short: when you absolutely have to have something done, and you absolutely don’t want to ever be the one to do it...hire an imp band and stay out of their way.

The system works pretty simple. You have a few stats like Impotent and Impatient rated from 1 to 10. The higher the rating, the more that stat affects what you do. You roll a d10 vs. another d10 rolled either by the GM or a player. Higher result wins. You subtract the relative stat from your roll. So if you have Impotent 5 and you roll a 4, your result is -1. Chances are, you failed that roll. GM narrates the effects of such a hit or miss.

But you also have a pool of dice you can gamble (great beelzebub! I love gambling mechanics). These can be any kind of dice you want, as long as they have an even number of sides. Half the sides are good, half are bad. If you don’t like the result of your d10 roll, you can then gamble from this pool of “imp dice”. Every good result adds one to your roll, every bad result subtracts one. So the results cancel each other out. Whatever you end up with is applied to your d10result. If your gambled dice end up with a negative result, you lose that many dice from your pool.

When you succeed or fail in a gambled roll, you get to narrate the outcome (like a MoV). The catch is that the effect, whether positive or negative, must have nothing to do with what your character did.

Frex: You’re trying to dislodge a magic wand stuck in the scales of a sleeping dragon. You roll a success on a gamble. That means you do succeed in dislodging it, but it must have nothing to do with what you were doing to dislodge it. So, you narrate an outcome in which the dragon begins dreaming of some childhood event causing it to kick its legs. The kicking knocks over a bottle filled with weird little firefly creatures that then swarm all around the room and end up ticking the dragon who rolls over, snorting a firey wisp of smoke, and prods itself in the ass with a sword tip. The dragon belches and jumps, causing the wand to fall loose and land right between the legs of your imp who promptly nabs it and runs.

You earn dice for these narrations no matter if its a success or a failure. The more entertaining your narration, the more dice you’ll earn. The less the narration has to do with your own character, the more dice you’ll earn.

There are other little things about the game. One is the imps’ supernatural magical talent of casting imp tricks. This involves the player calling out a word that begins with “imp” and spending a die from his imp die pool. The circumstances under which the spell is thrown should make it obvious what the intent is. In fact, the player cannot explain what the intent is. All he can do is shout the name of the spell and pray the GM understands what he wants. If the GM gets it wrong, tough titty.

Frex: You were hired by a spooky sorcerer to clean out his troll cages. You’re doing it, grumbling about life and shit, when one of the nasty trolls wakes up from the sleeping spell the sorcerer put on it. You don’t have time to grab your massive sword and be all impish on it, so, as the thing bears down on you, you cry out “IMPOSSIBLE!!”, removing a die from your pool. Its pretty obvious what you mean to accomplish. The GM declares that the troll is actually shackled to the corner and cannot possibly get close enough to attack you. The chains are quite strong and the troll can’t break them. Thus, his attack is rendered impossible.

Characters are pretty simple, and based on a visual idea. You have to draw your own character. So the game would come with lots of drawings of imps that you can trace if you want. Here's a concept sketch:

http://www.geocities.com/randomordercreations/imp.html

I want to publish this in print format. Not a professional job, but a kinko's job in true small press style.

One thing I’m worried about is the similarities to Ron’s Elfs. I haven’t read that game yet, so I don’t know for certain. Based on the forum, I can see that Elfs and Imp are indeed along similar lines of thought. Both are meant to be funny, cartoony, and over the edge. But Ron’s game strikes me as being a helluva lot more slapsticky than Imp, with a stronger slant for no-holds-bared comedy. Imp is certainly meant to be funny, yet it is also capable of handling semi-seriousness. After all, the premise involves outcast, marginalized, punk-like characters.

I suppose I’m being too paranoid about thinking this is too similar to Ron’s game. The truth is, Ron and I share a lot of common interests. If I shy away from doing games similar to his, then I’ll never do games again. Hell, independent of ever knowing anything about his stuff, I’ve wanted to do a demon-summoning game, a sword and sorcery game, and this impish game for a long damn time.

What do you folks think?

James,

Sounds like fun to me. Have you ever checked out my game SCAB! It's nothing like what you describe, but it's definitely in the same camp.

For what it's worth, I'd write Imp and then pick up Elfs. You should definitely have a copy of Elfs just for the sake of having it, but I'd avoid it for now just to make sure it doesn't seep into your subconscious and influence you in undue ways Ron's games have a way of doing that). It's a helluva of a game though, and obviously something of interest to you.

So what about GenCon? If you're going to do print copies of the thing, I can't think of a better place to give them away.

- Moose

hardcoremoose wrote:
Sounds like fun to me. Have you ever checked out my game SCAB! It's nothing like what you describe, but it's definitely in the same camp.

For what it's worth, I'd write Imp and then pick up Elfs. You should definitely have a copy of Elfs just for the sake of having it, but I'd avoid it for now just to make sure it doesn't seep into your subconscious and influence you in undue ways Ron's games have a way of doing that). It's a helluva of a game though, and obviously something of interest to you.

So what about GenCon? If you're going to do print copies of the thing, I can't think of a better place to give them away.

Hi James,

I never did reply to this one, though I remember planning on it.

Imp and Elfs are definitely first cousins. As I've mentioned elsewhere though, first cousins are practically the norm in RPG design, and that seems perfectly all right to me. Hell, various instances of identical twins separated at birth have been known to occur, some under very dubious circumstances. The systems are different and the basic situation is too (roving adventurers / wage-slaves), so it's fine by me, as if that mattered.

The real point is that I love Vaughn Bode's work and a great deal of the associated attitude - tripped-out, not afraid to be stupid, surprisingly affecting, sexy, funny. So the more games and role-playing which tap into that, the happier for me.

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron

Thanks for the word. Imp is something I'll throw together as the mood strikes. Its pretty easy, and generally I think it'll write itself. Maybe I'll toss it on the sacred playtest pile soon. (Fingers crossed) I should be gaming this Friday night. Could be Imp, maybe Sorcerer (though unlikely as I've yet to meet all the players and I'd like to feel them out first), or maybe The Pool. Not sure yet.

Later