Hi!

I'm taking a break from my other stuff that's slowly brewing (no! really! there's progress!), and decided to go for something silly and childish instead...

You're a crew on a Landship that carves magical runes into the very face of an earth half-eaten by an interdimensional monster. You zip around the landscape, get stuff from place to place, upgrade your landship, fight battles using weapons and world-wrecking runes, and probably other stuff.

Currently all I've got is a vague feel for a setting (teddy bears with panzerfausts! Corporate logo mechas! Scientists that want want to blow up the earth and use the resulting explosion to propel themselves to an uninfested world!) and an equally vague battle mechanic:

You lay out a napkin. That'll be your terrain (you can jot down a sketch of a mini-map, but that's more for feel than anything).

On the napkin, you place enemies (can be anything: other landships; tanks; evil spirits, fortresses; whatever). You can use anything for these, as long as they're indentifiable (though I'd personally recommend some sort of candies, so you could munch down an enemy right after defeat).

Finally, you use crayons to show how your landship's natural landcarving, explosions, and paths left by defeated enemies etch out runes of horrible destructive power into the soil, with your landship all the while dodging enemy fire and shooting back. Half the fun is working the accidentally produced carvings into a useful rune, while the other half is trying to dodge the effects of those you created inadvertedly.

Currently, the ideas behind the magic system are primitive - a figure that consists of a single continuos line (circle, triangle, square, etc.) "gathers" energy, a slashing line(s) at the border(s) show where this energy would goes, and a dot in the center "initiates" the run, unleashing the powers within.

So I need two things from you guys - one, more ideas (any ideas!) for how this magical rune-carving could work...

And two - I'm at a complete loss at what characters could do onboard such a ship, or what their skills could be... Jake's Awesome Fantasy Game Contest gave me the motivation to start this thing, and skill system is sort of a prereq for entry there.* I feel like there's tonnes of stuff that can be done in this direction, but I feel like I need a little nudge, or at least be aware of possible options.

So yeah. Halp?

*"My game must fit contest rules!" may not be the best motivation, but "so what do characters do?" is an important enough question irregardless of why I ask it.

The first question that jumps to my mind is, where does roleplaying come in? You want to make sure there's a point somewhere where fiction-y stuff that someone makes up can actually impact gameplay, unless you just want to make a pen-and-paper combat game.

...which would be fine, actually. The concept is certainly promising. I can see it going in a Waving Hands direction.

here's an idea that might help direct you towards some more concrete gameplay stuff.

What if, on each turn, a player could only draw a certain number of straight lines? i.e. 1 or 2. Shapes with more sides (triangles, squares, pentagon, etc.) have greater effects (because they take longer to draw). These can be raw damage, but maybe when a rune is completed, you can choose what sort of effect it has (damage, healing, etc. to use some obvious examples). You can even allow players to draw on other people's runes (each player has their own color?).

It's definitely a cool idea. I'd love to see where it goes.

Mike - Waving Hands? Hmm, thanks! I'll have to check it out and see how they make this work.

In regards to the roleplaying aspect... Well, troubles in that area are partly why I made this post! I was thinking of maybe having a separate "big" map for this, with factions and resources and major terrain thingies and other stuff on it, and then the players work to shape the world to the advantage of whatever faction the belong to. There'd be somewhat little inter-character drama, I guess... They'd have to be more like a coherent D&Desque party or somesuch.

Basically, you pick something to do (like... build a mountain in the middle of the supply line of the Fluffy Guardian Bears, or melt a Great Corporate Pyramid with a well-aimed volcano), then you go out and do it, or fail horribly trying... And then you go back to your faction chat with the locals, refuel, and upgrade your landship.

Geethree - thanks for the idea! Not going to use it as given, but it did get me thinking... See, I'd like the players to all be part of a single landship crew, and taking turns like that is difficult to justify fiction-wise... But, it would work out great if different roles had the abilities to draw differently.

So the Captain commands the ship and gets to draw the main path the ship takes with a black crayon.

The Gunner takes down enemy ships (by flicking them off the napkin with a red marker, likely leaving traces on the earth) and is also the person who can draw single "dots" via the use of explosions.

The Pilot mans a craft that rests on the landship until it is needed - this craft can tug around the Landship in the air for a very limited time (allowing to start drawing from another place, which'd definitelly be needed), can also bombard things or drop away teams to take over larger vessels or perform other missions (get the McGuffin/VIP/important info! or some such).

Magineer/Engimage - can make the landship go slower or faster when needed, can also take control of smaller enemy craft at will, using them for ad-hoc drawing of little lines or dots.

If anyone has further suggestions in this vein, I'd really love to hear them.