All right, Jake wants to blow things up. (I'm hoping he jumps right on this thread. :) Mike has suggested that there aren't any games devoted to this genre of the type that Jake describes. So, here's a sort of poll thread:

Given a game that focuses on violence, what mechanical conventions do you want to see? Pretend we're making Unreal Tournament the RPG or Max Payne the RPG (No lectures on IP Ron... it's just an example. :)

The big questions:

What GNS mode do we want to encourage? We've already got a theme... causing destruction. Doesn't sound to me like this is a terribly narrativist premise. It could be made into one, but it sounds to me like "blowing things up" is an actual goal of play, which suggest Simulation with Exploration of Situation (SES) to me. Our guys blow things up / kill people / use big guns / etc. Where do they do it, and what happens when they do?

What do the players do in the game? They have their characters wreak havoc, okay, but what sort of social structure are we talking about here? Is it appropriate for players in a SES game to use Director or Author stance, or should they stick to Actor stance? I'm thinking that for a SES game, Actor stance is going to be important. However, I'm also thinking that it would be cool if players could get a little Director stance to narrate complications... that is, whenever something totally whacked out and unexpectedly harsh needs to happen to the character, the player gets to narrate it. As in "Dang! I rolled a complication. Guess I run out of ammo."

What sort of resolution is appropriate? Action resolution or conflict resolution? I'm going to say action resolution, since a focus on destruction is desired and everyone's going to want get into the action.

Now, some more color-based questions:

What sort of people blow things up? Since every character in the game blows things up in some way we're going to want to have archetypes for different types. I'm thinking along the lines of "Street Samurai," "Gun Bunny," "Military Expert," and so on.

What sort of "feel" should the resolution mechanic have?

What sort of damage system fits the theme?

Get a piece of paper and create a "control panel" by drawing some empty boxes and writing the following labels next to them:

Ammo
Health
Jumping
Speed
Damage
...etc.

You roll a pool of dice each round and place the dice within the various boxes. This represents your characters upcoming "moves." Opponents then throw obstacles at you, hoping to "hit" you with something that you can't counter (because you have a low score in that field). When rolling dice, you need a score of 6 to successfully deal with the obstacle...

Example: A pit opens up, you only have 1 die assigned to Jump. You need to roll a 6 on that one die or else you DO die.

In-game weapons and items would appear to give you die bonuses. For extra variety, a character creation system could be created that gives your characters free dice/re-rolls/whatever in certain areas.

I'd say that, to cut down on book keeping, you should only die/run out of ammo/wear out your armor if you fail a roll. aside from that, you should be fine. if you ever botch a shooting roll, or a roll opposed to someone's shooting roll, etc., you could rule that something like that happens.
that way, if you roll well, you'll keep on shooting and living and being (armored).

I just had this bizarre visualization for a game that used those little green army men...and lobbing dice, rather than rolling them. The better one's dice pool for a specific attack, the more dice missiles one could throw.

Accidentally tossing dice into one's own beer would count as friendly fire.

When I was yonger, and all my characters had psionics and 18(00) Strength (I rolled it, I swear to god!), we used to use richochet dice. Especialy with percentiles.

If the die went off the table, it could be rerolled, so you would throw the 10's percentile, then if it came up scratch, try and nail it with the 1's die to knock it off the table. You had to pop it pretty good because if the 1's die stayed on the table, it had to be kept...and you didn't have anything to nail the second roll with if it sucked too. Sometimes the GM would make us roll in the lid of a FASA Star Trek rpg box, and we got good and slamming them so hard they both jumped out of the box. Once, a die landed in my coke, and the pizza always ended up with die-shaped craters.

Laurel wrote: I just had this bizarre visualization for a game that used those little green army men...and lobbing dice, rather than rolling them. The better one's dice pool for a specific attack, the more dice missiles one could throw.

Accidentally tossing dice into one's own beer would count as friendly fire.

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that a "blow em up game" that had some kind of physical component (lincoln logs, green army men, dice missiles, zippo flame attacks) would be more satisfying than a game without it. The trick would be to make the carnage containable, affordable, and ensure no physical harm actually came to players (well, nothing worse than playing a game of "spoons").

Jared: Well, they already have Frag, the boardgame, so I think a direct FPS emulation is out. While a FPS RPG would probably be the extreme of Gamism, it would basicly be a straight out combat system benchmark. From what I heard this might be fun in RoS.

Damage could go too ways:

1)Players shouldn't die to often.
2)Players should die ALOT, but respawn.

Both fit the FPS model, the first just ignores the save's/ restores(It is theoretically possible to an entire game with dieing. Kinda like that old DOOM demo where the guy does the entire game in an hour and 5 minutes)



In General, how about something like this.
1)GM & Players agree on premis, I.e. WHY they are running around blowing the crap out of stuff. This can be pretty vague, aliens(DN,Life/2), invasion, daemons from dimension X(Doom), vengance on the mob who took my family(MP?), terrorists(DeusEx), ect. You could also do a Rifts theme, A.la
battleground of the universe, anything goes.


When a player 'dies' they narrate how they die and then become GM. GM narrates themself in as a reinforcement somehow.

Just some random thoughts.

One of my favorite games as a child was some GI Joe tie in called "missile command" or something like that.

There were two sides, each had a plastic base about 2' x 1' in size (irregulaly shaped). On the top surface of this base were several compartments, and in each compartment (some assemply required) was a plastic and rubberband equivelent to a moustrap device. The lid on the compartment (set carefully in place) was a colorful representation of buildings in the base.

In the middle of the base was a rubber band powered launcher that fired foam missiles wieghted like a badmitton birdie. By adusting the angle and the number of notches the launcher was cocked (and rotating the base) you'd control the trajectory.

The object of course being to hit the building targets thereby triggering the moustrap device and launching the buildings into the air.


Another favorite was the classic Crossbows and Catapults (far superior to Weapons and Warriors) where you'd build forts with loose lego type bricks and blast them down with rubber band powered catapults and ballistae.

Since we played those even more than Risk or monopoly, I think your theory is correct...or at least it was until the safty nazis took all the fun out of toys.

damion wrote: Jared: Well, they already have Frag, the boardgame, so I think a direct FPS emulation is out. While a FPS RPG would probably be the extreme of Gamism, it would basicly be a straight out combat system benchmark. From what I heard this might be fun in RoS.

When a player 'dies' they narrate how they die and then become GM. GM narrates themself in as a reinforcement somehow.

Laurel wrote: The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that a "blow em up game" that had some kind of physical component (lincoln logs, green army men, dice missiles, zippo flame attacks) would be more satisfying than a game without it. The trick would be to make the carnage containable, affordable, and ensure no physical harm actually came to players (well, nothing worse than playing a game of "spoons").

Valamir wrote:
Another favorite was the classic Crossbows and Catapults (far superior to Weapons and Warriors) where you'd build forts with loose lego type bricks and blast them down with rubber band powered catapults and ballistae.

I think that was a spin off on Crossbows and Catapults. Weapons and Warriors used annoying orange marbles for projectiles, C&C used the heavy thick plastic disks with decals called Battle Caroms. In the basic set there were advanced rules for capturing using the viking and barbarian figures from the rival castles.

Valamir wrote: I think that was a spin off on Crossbows and Catapults. Weapons and Warriors used annoying orange marbles for projectiles, C&C used the heavy thick plastic disks with decals called Battle Caroms. In the basic set there were advanced rules for capturing using the viking and barbarian figures from the rival castles.

Paganini wrote: What sort of "feel" should the resolution mechanic have?
What sort of damage system fits the theme?

Hi...I'm sorry to have jumped in late on a thread that called me out by name...

There are two thing developing here. One is a FRAG RPG, more or less, and the other (more original intent) is the Blow the Crap out of Stuff RPG...no respawns, still an RPG, but really chaotic and violent.

I would like to see something with a lot of random complications, and both stark Director-stance stuff and really stark you-rolled-it-you-keep it stuff...thing like 100% randomy rolled characters, insane blow-stuff-up tables, and other stuff on that end. On the flip side the "narrate your own death and become GM bit is brilliant, and I'd want to see more of that.

I gotta go now, but believe you me, I'll be back!

Jake

Okay, I'm back.

Mechanically, I'm thinking something like this:
Lots of tables, because the game I envision is a bit over-the-top. These aren't RoleMaster or even TROS tables, though. They have several out-there details to make things really interesting. This doesn't have to exclude Memento-Mori kind of Director stuff, though. Something like this:

(*Note: the numbers are arbitrary, as there's no die mechanic in my head yet)

Table 2.6: Hitting, Missing and Damage
1-Hit friend
2-Hit something in the environment that is really bad (gas tanks, glass floor, whatever)
3-Miss: stuff splatters or shatters everywhere, causing terrain problems for 2 x damage yards
4-Miss: nothng happens...
5-10: Damage
5-surface wound, like a cheek graze, or a bullet goes through the coat. Heros gain one die, mooks loose one die
6-flesh wound or equipment gets hosed. Heros gain 2 dice, mooks lose 2 die
7-chunks go flying. Roll on Table 2.7: Chunks. Heros loose 1 die, mooks lose 3.
8-Permanent resulting disability. See Table 2.8: Amputation and Other Fun Stuff. Heroes loose 3 dice, mooks loose 4.
9-mortal wound, but it'll take a while to die. Heroes lose 5 dice, but get a one-time 10-die bonus this scene; mooks loose 5 dice.
10-kill, either really slick-clean or TROS messy. Heroes become the GM, Mooks are donwn-and-out.

Jake Norwood wrote: I've actually got a whole bunch of ideas for this now, but I don't want to hijack the thread. What I'd really like to do is sit down and design this now...it's got me going. Too bad I have "real" books to write...

Actually, I'm feeling a little burnt-out right now, so last night I penciled out a bunch of "rules" for the game...

I'll be posting a link to them shortly, maybe today.

Either way, I'd love to hear what ya'll think of what's up above.

Jake

The overall idea of your charts there seem quite intriguing, as do the projected results. What I'm not certain of is exactly why you chose the scale you did. Perhaps it's just my ingrained idea that the roll to hit and determining the effects should be more separate than that. I do like the fact that when you make the roll, it's not a matter of "Do I hit?" or "Do I miss?" It's more a matter of "Okay, I rolled blah. What happens?"

I'd like to see the dice-mechanic you're thinking of tying into this. I'm assuming that it'll be a dicepool system from your comments, and from your stated preference for rolling lotsa dice. If that's the case, what exactly would the numbers on the chart refer to, successes? If that's the case, it seems like it ought to be easy to get successes, because it takes 5 just to hit your target.

Oh, and one suggestion.. No matter what happens, no matter who rolls what, or who "wins" what contest, I think the player should always have the option to describe their own character's death. If they choose to have the GM do so, or even another player, that is their choice, but the right should always be theirs. One of the most deprotagonizing ways to die is to have no control over the circumstances of character death.

The 1-10 scale is what you roll on one die. You get dice from your pool to add to that one die, and you keep the best one. More later.

Jake