I had an idea for a game, but I am like 90% sure that it's already been done and I wanted to know if anyone has seen the game discussed here on the Forge.

What I was thinking about was a game that takes place in an alternate dimension/shadow/realm/etc. where anything is possible.  Basically as far as the rules go, anything that someone can think of they can use.  For instance, a character is setup by a swordsman and thinks that a lightsaber would be a good tool right then, reaches down into her pocket and draws one out.  Later on, in the midst of a space battle, the character thinks "What I really need is the SDF-1" and boom! it appears.  Later, the character is trying to take over the world and thinks that a few axlotl tanks and a Tleiaxu Master or three might help.  And there it is.

I was wondering if anyone had heard of a game and if not, if I can come up with a decent set of rules, does it sound like fun.

Sounds like Toon.

Sounds like Mage.

And sounds like Cthulhu Dreamlands.

And there's probably a lot of games of this kind that don't come to my mind at the moment.

Which doesn't mean there's no point in developing the idea further. E.g. there's a lot of fantasy games out there, but people still come out with new - and if done right these new games are still worth attention.

And sounds like Amber, of course! :)

(See? Although Toon, Mage, Dreamlands and Amber have the "do whatever you can imagine", they are still different enough - different approaches, different context, different tone etc.)

I can't think of a game that quite does this. What it does remind me of is Universalis: where you pay coins to add things to the world.

Of course, Universalis is a very different game from the one you're describing (the coins are generally used to add things to the narration, not to specifically create objects to help your character). But there's something similar going on there.

Oh, and it's a cool idea.

Graham

Filip wrote:
And sounds like Amber, of course! :)

(See? Although Toon, Mage, Dreamlands and Amber have the "do whatever you can imagine", they are still different enough - different approaches, different context, different tone etc.)

My 2¢...

I think you can save time by skipping Toon--it's got the whole Acme thing, where you can "send away" for something you might want, but it is ultimately rather static in actual play.

Similarly, the Dreamlands setting of Lovecraft--while strange and fey--is still just a fixed world setting, swirled in odd time dislocation and funky mists and peopled by all manner of beast and men.

Amber is closer to what you want (as you know) but the whole crux of Shadow Walking is just that: the Amberite changes worlds to suit his or her needs; he or she doesn't bring that other thing into their current world. (I always felt this made any changes wrought by shadow walking sort of moot: so what if you walk to a world where cancer doesn't kill: you were trying to cure cancer HERE....)

But Mage... ah, Mage. If you just declared that every player has, say, 40 dots to put into spheres, you'd be playing the very game you describe, because those Mages would have SO much power that it would make trivial the concerns of paradox or paradigm. In fact (not to derail your own creativity) you might just be able to tweak the Mage rules a hair and have the system you want to play the type of game you describe.

But ultimately, you describe a game in which players are granted a significant level of credibility. This leads me to ask why you don't just use a freeform system, with a highly abstracted, simple, low granularity conflict resolution system? After all, when your example guy whips out his lightsaber, the enemy will just whip out his pistol and *tips hat to Indiana Jones* blow you away while you are activating the blade. TO which you will CLEARLY counter by Jedi Deflection, sending the shot back at him... but he's already got his laser-proof suit on, so....

There's an old comic this REALLY reminds me of... someone help me out, here: two brothers who could do what we're talking about, and their escapades were just long series of trump and counter-trump uses of this "create anything" power...?

Anyway, the point is that, when gods contend, who needs stats and skills and handfuls of dice and other granular resolution techniques? The game might well be played with TWERPS or TriStat (i.e. System won't matter; and might as well be hyper-simple). Because the real play will be in creativity and humor and stunning your adversaries into silence at how cool or effective your most recent trump was.

HTH;
David

If it's about using invented tools to struggle against or fight other characters, Wushu might do the trick...

Paul

And not to shill, but my Imp Game is a lot of that, provided you succeed (or fail, depending on the idea) a roll. At least one person in every group grabs "Pull Stuff From Thin Air", though even with the setting players can take it any direction at all. That's how we end up with Sean Connery and The Tick wandering around some of these worlds...for Imp, this comes mostly from it being freeform and GM less play, so anyone can toss anything in provided the table agrees to it~

Similarly, the Dreamlands setting of Lovecraft--while strange and fey--is still just a fixed world setting, swirled in odd time dislocation and funky mists and peopled by all manner of beast and men.

But Mage... ah, Mage. If you just declared that every player has, say, 40 dots to put into spheres, you'd be playing the very game you describe, because those Mages would have SO much power that it would make trivial the concerns of paradox or paradigm. In fact (not to derail your own creativity) you might just be able to tweak the Mage rules a hair and have the system you want to play the type of game you describe.

But ultimately, you describe a game in which players are granted a significant level of credibility. This leads me to ask why you don't just use a freeform system, with a highly abstracted, simple, low granularity conflict resolution system? After all, when your example guy whips out his lightsaber, the enemy will just whip out his pistol and *tips hat to Indiana Jones* blow you away while you are activating the blade. TO which you will CLEARLY counter by Jedi Deflection, sending the shot back at him... but he's already got his laser-proof suit on, so....

Hello,
sorry I am late.

source : Champions 3-D "the Dreamzone"
tool : dream pool (active pts = ego x 5)

Thanks for the memories.

Filip wrote: David, Dreamlands expansion for CoC had rules for Dreaming that basically allowed to change the environment however you liked.

But then, there is a significant question - is the power supposed to be only color, or should the quality and/or cleverness of player's ideas matter? If it's the latter oversimplified conflict resolution might not be enough (I tried Mage with something like that once, and it felt completely bland, there was no place for "oh, smart idea", cause it all boiled down to "cool description, but whatever, roll them dice"). Unless it's all about color, I think it would be better if the system produced the "ideas matter" feel and promoted looking for interesting solutions (even if it was illusory in fact).

Why not just give bonus dice or a bonus to the roll if someone's description is particularly good. That's how they handle it for Exalted. You get 1 bonus die for a basic description, 2 if the GM thinks the description is awesome, and 3 if the table votes that it was an awesome description.

David wrote:

Short of player voting, I don't know how you could put a mechanic behind "cool" or "smart idea." Probably be sufficient to do a Dogs-like traits system, where a player must narrate to gain the right to employ an arbitrary trait, then let the dice decide success from that. I can recall a Dogs game where I did a soliloquy that pinged something like five of my traits, and I picked up a fistful of dice and laid down the holy hammer, so to speak. Had I not "cleverly" pinged each element--i.e. if the other players had called BS on a particular ping--I wouldn't have had all those dice.

One thing I forgot to mention, if I go with the pocket idea, eventually the pocket collapses.  Those who can escape their mask get to be with the All-Thing.  Those that don't get some other end.  I can't figure out what yet.

Ok, the setting/situation idea is cool. It's interesting how the mask reminds me of Mage's paradigm.

As for the auction, although it sounds interesting (I like how you envision things escalating), it kind of strikes me how arbitrary the GM is. Basically, it all hinges on a fiat of one person, and no person is impartial. (In my Mage heartbreaker game, where I use token bidding mechanics, I finally gave a specific budget to the GM, and it's all about "how strongly do you believe your idea will be evaluated as good? / how possible/impossible you want to make this thing for the player to achieve?")

Btw, what's your name?

Filip wrote:
Ok, the setting/situation idea is cool. It's interesting how the mask reminds me of Mage's paradigm.

Filip wrote:

Btw, what's your name?

Another idea I was tinkering with is that instead of using an auction system which would basically make this game diceless, have the amount of points that you spend go into some stats for the item.  For instance, if you spend 100 points, you could put 50 points into defense and 50 into offense or something like that.  It makes things more abstract, but it does allow a 50 point Battlestar Galatica (Lorne Green commanding) have a chance against a 300 point Death Star.  I figure the only way this works is if the creator gets to define what attributes the created thing has.  For instance, a 50 point Battlestar Galactica could have a 10 point crew (good for 10D on all crew-based roles), 10 fighters with 1D of attack and 1D of armor, and 10D each of armor and 10D of weapons.

It's pretty ambiguous, but I was thinking that there would be a common set of attributes including attack power, armor or hit points, resistance, crew, subunits (like the fighters on Galactica) for ships and vessels.  Maybe attack power, sturdiness (how much damage the item could take.  This would be very high for shields.), damage type, shield points, resistance for equipment.

Resisance in the above example means that certain types of damage would not cause a loss of armor/hit points.  This would reflect that an AT-AT walker's armor is too thick for blasters (thereby necessitating the need for Rogue Group to use harpoons and go for the legs, it was their only hope.  Poor Dak.)

It's another thought I had.

Hi Chris,

I'm getting the impression that you want play to be about interesting choices for "what I can do with my finite points" on a grandiose scale.  I am guessing that you intend these choices to be about strategic effectiveness, rather than, say, humor value, character development, reinforcement of some particular aesthetic.  Is all that correct?

If so, I'd think that three things will make or break the game:
1) the list of options to buy that you offer
2) the costs you assign to these
and especially
3) the way you enable players to add to the list of options and determine the new options' costs

David wrote:
Hi Chris,

I'm getting the impression that you want play to be about interesting choices for "what I can do with my finite points" on a grandiose scale.  I am guessing that you intend these choices to be about strategic effectiveness, rather than, say, humor value, character development, reinforcement of some particular aesthetic.  Is all that correct?