I'm working on a game design I hope to play test this Sunday that incorporates an idea I've wanted to try for a long time. In this approach there are not built in penalties or requirements for things like being hungry or wounded. Although there is a direct mechanical effect for these things in very specific instances, for the most part, a player chooses whether or not to acknowledge them, and if they do, they get a cookie. They get even more cookies for volunteering these kind of limitations. The exact mechanical nature of these cookies has to do with how aggressively the GM can hose the characters in the narrative, but thats not the thing I want to discuss the most. What I would like to discuss is people's general thoughts on this kind of mechanic and how they think it will affect play. Also, what design goals it would successfully fulfill. My design process is a little like spinning a globe and seeing where my finger lands, so I'm not sure exactly what this will do to how the game feels and functions, or even what I want it to do, at this point my best guess is it will allow for a "TV drama" approach to things... what I mean by this is, lets say your watching Star Trek or some such and a character gets injured early on, he'll be limping around and feeling limited and even failing dramatically here or there because of the injury, but in the climactic fight scene, he'll reach his gun on time despite the limp, it won't just disappear, it just won't cause him to fail when it really matters... Honestly, for gaming this sounds great, kind of seems like a way to make injuries part of the story (so you can have characters on the operating table or rushing to staunch the blood) but you won't have to worry about death spirals or player angst over ever accumulating penalties and book keeping becomes almost completely unnecessary.

This sounds very similar to player activated disadvantages, which is a mechanic I like much better than system-imposed disadvantages. (The latter is GURPS or Hero, where you get some kind of bonus during character creation in exchange for acting disadvantageously during play, and the former is Smallville, where you get a bonus during play for displaying the disadvantageous behavior.)

I think it could work quite well, depending on the feel of the rest of the system. However, if it is entirely voluntary then it would be mechanically beneficial to be wounded, starved etc, since it gives you the option of harvesting cookies. If you use this, I think you also need the option of other characters using the condition against them for some kind of mechanical benefit.

Other players? I don't understand why they would need to. The game is an absolute 0 PvP environment (there are no rules for it) and resolves all rolls from the player's point of view. Also, as mentioned before, there are specific instances when negative conditions affect the characters, and thats when the character is rolling dice. What's optional is imposing the limitations negative traits imply when not rolling dice (its almost mostly up to the players when dice are rolled).

Sorry for misunderstanding and being unclear!

I meant any character, not necessarily a player character.

And yes, I missed the bit about getting penalties when dice are involved. With that in place, you can disregard my comments besides "Looks good!"

Sounds interesting. I actually changed how disadvantages worked in my system (most of them, anyway) after I read through Smallville, which does that kind of thing. It used to work that disadvantages let you get a story point, but the GM could use them against you occasionally. Instead I switched it to Smallville's method, where the GM isn't involved in it at all, the player decides when to invoke their disadvantage and gains a story point for doing so. It sounds like you're extending the idea to cover wounds too, which is interesting.

Do you have a version of the game people can look at, or is it still in the early planning stages?

Pat

Its a choppy open office document but I could post it somewhere if anyone's interested (which I guess you are). There is no theory behind the design yet. The system is pretty much just there. I'm hoping to trim the fat and make it more unified and thematic through play testing. Also, its designed to feel like a traditional RPG from the player's perspective (the players in a traditional sense, as opposed to the GM) but not be one from the GM's perspective. The reason for this is the people I game with like playing Pathfinder and I hate running it or anything similar, so I want a game they like to play and I like to run.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?436qi9e8i9v69cq

Hey Nolan,

I'm not able to download it from that link. I just keep getting a Yahoo HotJobs pop-up advertisement.

Paul

The link works fine for me. Is anyone else having problems? It links to the mediafire page and after a few moments it shows a download button. Is there a more direct document sharing site I should use?

Y'know, now it worked for me. I tried several times before and got the popup ad each time. But this time it worked.

Paul