I'm working on a tongue in cheek, Star Trek-style game in which each player is dealt a card representing a different bridge officer and they play that officer throughout the game, but there are also 2 other cards: the Captain and the Alien, both of which rotate from player to player, with the Captain narrating a problem and giving an order to the other players, except the Alien, who represents the other side in that conflict.

The issue I'm having is with the dice pool system I'm using, which has dice from d4 to d12 in each pool; I want the dice to be dynamic, with a lot of swapping, losing & gaining them and I'm stuck between two broad types of pool system, not to mention other minor effects that relate to both.

System 1: Each player has their own personal pool, consisting of 2 of each type; when the Captain issues an order, the player uses 1 die from their pool against the Alien, who uses 1 from their's. After the challenge is resoolved, the winner gives the die they used to the Captain and adds the loser's die to their pool, then the Captain & Alien rotate.

System 2: There is an Engine pool used by the crew and an Encounter pool used by the Alien; each player chooses 1 die from the appropriate pool and, after the challenge, the winner keeps the die they drew and adds the loser's die to the pool they used. In future challenges, you can add one of you personal dice to a challenge and take the best of the 2 reults you roll, but both dice are at risk if you do so.

There are other points that modify your chances of winning or losing and could change the fate of the dice, e.g. you can 'Shoot to Kill' in a challenge, causing the loser to lose extra dice, for example, but the broad outline of options is as above... so which of these seems more appealing? I'm not just thinking about this in terms of role-playing, but also the practicality of having multiple pools of different die-types and aiming towards a victory/end-game condition such as having to roll a certain total on all your dice or get so many matching/sequential numbers. Feedback please?

I'm diggin the feeling.  It's like classic Star-Trek with a similar mechanic to the Shab-al-Hiri Roach.... erm, sort-of :D
Definitely, the Alien should get a dice pool boost, because it's one vs many.  I also like that you don't seem to have the Captain get a direct boost, but those following his orders get gift dice from his pool.  I imagine that you would find people still winging it, but in general they'd try to incorporate the Captain's orders into their actions to get the free dice.

How often do you imagine the roles of Captain and Alien would change hands?

Also, don't forget that a good last resort option in any science fiction flick is to "Reverse the Polarity".  That could be like a one-time dice-pool reversal or something.

mutex wrote:
Definitely, the Alien should get a dice pool boost, because it's one vs many. I also like that you don't seem to have the Captain get a direct boost, but those following his orders get gift dice from his pool. I imagine that you would find people still winging it, but in general they'd try to incorporate the Captain's orders into their actions to get the free dice.

mutex wrote:
How often do you imagine the roles of Captain and Alien would change hands?

mutex wrote:
Also, don't forget that a good last resort option in any science fiction flick is to "Reverse the Polarity". That could be like a one-time dice-pool reversal or something.

knicknevin wrote:
Well, I do have a Technobabble rule that lets you roll one extra die but then you have to get rid of the highest result rolled; basically, you have less chance of success but if you do succeed, you can narrate a result that would normally be impossible on that kind of action, e.g. causing damage with the comms gear or using the shields to move the ship, etc.

MikeSands wrote:
If you just want to encourage this sort of dialog, then technobabble should be all bonus with no drawbacks.

knicknevin wrote: I do have a Technobabble rule that lets you roll one extra die but then you have to get rid of the highest result rolled; basically, you have less chance of success but if you do succeed, you can narrate a result that would normally be impossible on that kind of action

Yeah, I'm scrapping my first take on Technobabble now, since it no longer sits with the dice pool dynamics I went for; in the end, I went for the 2nd option, having one pool controlled by the Captain and one by the Alien, with players earning dice, taken from these pools, by successfully following orders.

Good idea though Joshua: I was looking for some kind of cap to the narrative and spending your dice on Technobabble would certainly fit the bill, e.g. when you have earned enough, you get to throw them in to narrate a creative solution to whatever the big issue is.

OK, question 2...

There is now a Commision pool, which is used by the Captain to 'bribe' the Crew into carrying out an Order, and an Encounter pool, which the Alien uses to add spice to conflicts: players also have Officer pools which all dice they earn (including those they earn while they are the Captain or the Alien) are put into.
So: players start with very few dice in their Officer pool but add more as they progress and succeed at various tasks... where does that end though? Should I go for a strictly narrativist ending, e.g. it ends when the players reach the end of the story? Or should there be more of a gamist goal, e.g. when any player can roll a total of X using their Officer pool, they can narrate the climax of the story? Comments & feedback please.

If your 'chassis' is Star Trek, I'd say that the individual game session is over when a climax is reached, but the same characters are assumed to go on to other adventures in the next 'episode'.

I can't tell by what's here if the players customize the individual officer roles into real characters, or if they're more like Clue characters (Mrs White, Miss Peacock, Colenol Mustard -- names, no personality), though.  If there's something worth keeping around for the next game, you might design a reward system that encourages the serial, episodic play that you'd find on television.

Neat concepts. I like the idea of adding something a bit more gamist. Your system seems to allow the main pools to be depleted, so what if that was a trigger for an end game of some sort? Maybe once the Encounter pool loses its last die, have everyone roll the dice in their Officer pool and let the player with the highest result narrate the final scene.

That sounds like a neat idea, thanks Smithy! I'll see baout incorporating a mechanic like that this weekend.

As to continued play, then no: the characters are too simplified to sustain anything like that. Of course, players could agree to continue playing with the same Crew session after session, but there is no real room for growth other than purely narrative: I really see this as a one-shot game, but with enough flexibility to be replayable indefinitely, though I do have some ideas for an extended version of the game which are still in the embryonic stage.

OK, so this is my 'oh-my-God-its-so-obvious' solution: when you are Captain, you have the option to Save The Day, instead of giving an Order. If you decide to Save The Day, you roll all the dice in your Officer Pool, but not Commsission dice, and the Alien rolls all the dice in the Encounter Pool, but not any Officer dice. Whoever gets the higher total wins; if the Captain loses, then he puts half of his dice, rounding up, into the Commission pool, but if he wins, he ends the story however he wishes.

Feedback?

I'm going to restate what I think the mechanics will do over a session here to confirm I have it right.

So... at the beginning the Encounter and Commission pool are large.

As game play goes on, Officer pools grow and the Encounter pool shrinks

Then, sooner or later, Officer pool is large enough for the current Captain to Save the Day and wrap everything up. And if they fail, I guess someone else can have a go pretty soon.

Sounds pretty good to me.

That's it spot on Mike. The flow for an Order carried out successfully is Commission to Officer (the Crew) and Encounter to Commission; for an unsuccessful Order, the flow is Encounter to Officer (the Alien) and Commision to Encounter. Even a series of unsuccessful Orders will eventually give players substantial Officer pools, though the Encounter pool will also be substantial; a series of successful Orders increases the average Officer pool size at the expense of the Encounter pool, which shrinks rapidly.

OK, a complete draft of this game can be seen at:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/randomsolids/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c11_BlogPart_blogpart=myspace&_c=BlogPart&_c02_owner=1

Apologies for the presentation, but I don't currently have anywhere else to host my work (hint, hint)
Any feedback on this game? I'd quite like the crew cards to do something else besides help with carrying out orders but I can't decide what... any suggestions?

Whoops, sorry, wrong one: should be:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/randomsolids/

And here's an even better place to look it over (should have thought of this sooner):

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/Bridge_Crew.php

I now have a much better space for this game, and several others I'm working on, at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/jigsawesome/

Yesterday, I got to playtest Bridge Crew for the first time with a group of brave volunteers (they were doubly-brave, since they had just finished playtesting another game of mine!) and we used the system outlined above.

Once issue that cropped up though was the bidding for the Captain's Order: as one player pointed out, he had nothing to lose by bidding as low as possible straight away! If he bid low, then no-one else could underbid him, so he was guaranteed to be able to carry out the order and the worst outcome that would happen is that the Alien player would gain that die... which wouldn't be very high anyway!

So, how can I give players an incentive to gamble for higher dice? What could be changed, added or removed that would make players think twice about going straight to the lowest bid in order to secure themselves a chance to win a die?

There is also a related issue to this, in that the lowest bid possible is "With respect, Sir..." which secures you the Order, but the Captain does not give you a die; instead, you have to gamble one from your Officer Pool. This makes sense tactically if you adopt a Hostile or Friendly attitude, since you could still get end up ahead (Friendly: you get to swap dice; Hostile: Winner takes all dice used) or just secure your place in the Captain's seat. The problem we experienced was that players kept undercutting each other by bidding "With respect, Sir..." so the Encounter Pool was being drained much faster than the Commission Pool and the Captain's Order was rarely being followed!

OK, that's two issues, but they are linked: what can be done to encourage players not to make the lowest bid possible?

Anyhoo, one of the playtest group members got back to me with some helpful feedback, so there is now yet another draft of this game at my Yahoo! group page, along with some expansion rules that I consider to be entirely optional.