I am looking to publish Battlejack, a new PVP-centric roleplaying game designed to use blackjack as the resolution mechanic.

Here is a bit of the fluff text. If the fluff is interesting to anyone here I can post more on the mechanics.

Introduction

What you are reading now is the rules for a game that is a combination of a role-playing game and fast action combat in an open setting using a card-based resolution system similar to Blackjack. A role-playing game (RPG) is a game of the imagination where the players make the choices for the characters as they navigate through an adventure created by a Dealer who controls everything outside of the player’s characters. Unlike many RPGs that use dice to determine success or failure, Battlejack embraces the popularity of card games and uses regular decks of playing cards to determine the success or failure of a soldier’s action. The basis of the game, fast action combat in an open setting is simple; the Dealer is encouraged to create a unique match environment for the soldiers to battle in. Dealers are encouraged to draw from movies, books, history, video games, television shows, and their own imagination to bring these arenas to life. The players are expected to do the same with the creation of their soldiers. A soldier could be a Spartan warrior, a military sniper, a motorcycle riding gangbanger, or a penguin with a rocket launcher, the possibilities are endless. A unique aspect of the game is that players can choose to spend extra effort on an attack action in return for a bigger result in hopes for a bigger payout. This gives them an even greater sense of risk versus reward and can create truly dramatic tension about the results of an action. The freedom to be as aggressive or cautious as the player wants to be allows for measure of control not found in most other RPGs.

The History of Battlejack

Wagering has always been a compulsive vice of man. It has come in many different forms throughout time, from the simple dice or card game, to betting on professional sports or the allure of mini-games on video slot machines. Enterprising individuals have always striven to envision and create the next big attraction in gambling. The latest face of the gambling world started with artificial interactive environments. Designers originally started with high definition settings that reacted instantly to input from the players. Players could visit the most spectacular casinos in the world, or play with artificial digitized versions of the greatest poker players in history, all without ever leaving their house. The technology quickly grew to allow multiple real world players to interact with each other in hosted private artificial environments. Casinos began to create server farms where hundreds of thousands of players could log on to play in tournaments hosted by the casino without a need for the actual casino. It wasn’t long before entrepreneurs began to see the possibilities of providing an action element to the games of chance using this interactive environment. From that point, much like themed video slot machines, these tournaments developed themes of their own. Casino owners discovered that they could change the way Blackjack was played to create a more competitive environment. Instead of having all the players compete against the Dealer, they instead competed against each other. They renamed it Battlejack due to its more combative nature, however most of the conventional rules of Blackjack still apply. The dealer would still control many of the aspects of the game, but by changing who the players competed against it created a much more popular game that could be played tournament style like a conventional poker tournament.

The most popular Battlejack tournament is Arena. Designed as a mesh of Battlejack and military combat, a player creates a Soldier, and that soldier fights in an arena style battlefield against the other players and the Dealer. While the actions of the soldier are controlled by the player, the outcome of each action is determined most often by the results of a single hand of Battlejack. Players are often grouped into squads, and while they are competing against other players, there is fierce competition among every squad’s soldiers to be the one to “clean out” an enemy soldier. Much of the poker terminology in the game is interchangeable with the player's slang of warfare and combat terms that has developed over the years. It is often easy to tell the difference between players that are gamblers playing to win chips and players that are gamers who play for the Player versus Player (PVP) aspects of the game.

A few years later, after all the bugs were worked out of the system, and the growth of new players had hit a plateau, there came the next step, tournament streams. Getting people to log in and play themselves was a great income stream, but it wasn't main stream, a large percentage of people would never log onto a server to wager the little bit of hard earned money they had. However, they would pay a nominal fee to watch it live, streamed into their homes and fed to them Point of View style from the eyes of their favorite player's soldier. It was a success.

A by-product of the streaming broadcasts was the introduction of subtle advertisements in the matches themselves. In the case of Arena, the combat options started out quite simple, each soldier had a rifle, a pistol, a knife and grenades, but as Arena grew in popularity, the marketing potential grew as well. Manufacturers of all manners of gear for the advancement of warfare invested millions into the casinos to get them to integrate their gear into the game. Now players are not limited to attacking with a simple rifle, their soldier can head into the Arena equipped with the latest HREF Assault rifle. As the upper echelon of players became established through a worldwide instant update ranking system, players began to realize that cashing out their chips hurt their rank, which caused the most hardcore players to seek out sponsorships to help them take care of real world costs, thereby turning the game into a profession career. So sponsorship of individual gamblers or even whole teams by a company is commonplace now. Every individual or team victory is instant credibility for a company’s new cutting edge gear. In fact, research shows that whoever sponsors the individual or team champion at the International Arena Tournament has the sales of their gear triple the next year. Obviously the desire and pressure to be a multi-year reigning champion is immense. So while the goal of any player is to accrue as many chips as possible; most elite players never cash out their chips, instead keeping their Winnings as high as possible to maintain the best possible World Ranking and also in case they need to draw from it in a future match.

As the rewards became bigger, the competition became more and more fierce. Out of this desire to win at any cost came a wave of hackers, players attempting to beat the system by any means possible. At first, corruption of the system ran rampant, players lost fortunes and their ranks overnight. In a few short months, hacking was nearly the end of Arena. However, after extensive testing in competitive matches the creators of Arena decided that while outright hacking of a Arena match would be considered cheating, result in an immediate lifetime ban from any Arena game, and the pursuit of criminal charges, “Stratagems” would be allowed. Stratagems in the end, added a new layer of strategy to the game. The sponsors agreed to allow surprises for two reasons. First, if they didn’t, their marketing tool would disappear. Secondly, there is no equivalent to Stratagems outside of Arena which means that no matter what, there would still be a consumers looking for the best real world gear money can buy.

Here are some of the answers to questions I have gotten from other forums about the game.

What medium am I using?
It is starting out as a pen and paper game and will be available in PDF in approximately 2 months.

It sounds like another gun-toting soldier game.
The idea of the role playing game is, that I make a player who represents a gambler playing in a casino. That player makes a soldier who represents his character in a virtual arena that in essence replaces the blackjack table. Your soldier can look like anything, you want a fire breathing dragon, a penguin with a grenade launcher or "Radiation-Mutated Super-Huge Cockroaches" you can do it. We encourage players to change the names of their gear, abilities etc because they are really just placeholders for the mechanics of the ability.

What does blackjack have to do with a combat game?
Instead of playing blackjack versus the dealer, you play blackjack against the other players. (blackjack is the equivalent of rolling the d20 to determine the result). If you beat the defender, your action happens. The unique part is, you can place a wager on your attack action against another player before you see your cards. If you hit, you deal an additional amount of damage equal to your wager. If you lose, then you lose your wager. Players have player abilities that allow them to manipulate the rules of blackjack itself, so you can force a player to stand or hit for example.

So if you die are you dead?
If you deal enough damage to wipe out a soldier's stack of chips, then they die, the player can choose to buy back in, thereby bringing his soldier back to life if he would like to. Or he can choose to quit if he doesn't think the odds are in his favor. At the end of the match, whatever chips you have in your stack are added to your winnings, and your winnings total is ranked by player to define the #1 ranked player and so on.

The gladiator arena concept is over-used.
The setting is purposedly left very vague and undefined. This allows the Dealer to make the environment whatever you want. You want to have your match in the jungle go for it, in a sunken submarine, no problem. That is simply flavor text that the Dealer adds to the description of the zones the soldiers are in. So I have held steampunk themed matches on giant steam powered galleons, we reskinned the weapons, so a sniper rifle was a long barrel, a rifle was a musket, a rocket launcher was a mortar, the blast suit armor became boilerplate and so on. If you want your soldier to have an attack that uses the mechanics of the flamethrower, but what your character to be a psionic juggernaut, no big deal buy a flamethrower and call it Mindfry and have at it.

What is the game going to let me do?
I think the idea is that this gives gamers a way to play the typical first person shooter computer game in a pen and paper environment where it isn't about who has the quickest reflexes, best video card or fastest internet connection. We don't need another 900 page D & D system, mine is a 40 page frame that allows the Dealer to recreate computer game environments, popular movie environments (for example Alien and Aliens recreations were lots of fun), book adapations (Harry Potter anyone?) and so on.

You can follow us on Twitter @battlejack.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them. We have started doing some alpha release play-testing of the game, but are still finding things that need to be tweaked.

Thanks

Crap, wrong forum and no way to edit apparently? Can someone please either move this to playtesting or delete it for me. Nice first impression on my part, sorry.

I'll move it soon. No big deal. However, it'll go into Connections, because I think you're soliciting feedback, not discussing actual playtesting results or playtesting-based development.

Best, Ron

Thanks ALOT, this is my first time ever designing a complete system from scratch. Once it gets moved I will post more, I figured I shouldn't keep adding to a post in the wrong place.

So the game is being played quite a bit by us, in fact you can follow the current world rankings on twitter. I haven't had any of my playtesters post about it because they were part of the development and I don't want to have people thinking we are fabricating reviews. Would anyone be interested in doing some playtesting giving us feedback and writing a review in return for a copy of the PDF when it is released?

If anyone is interested, drop a post with an email addy or pm me and I will get in touch.

I am going to be in Seattle this weekend (Friday through Saturday) to do some large scale playtesting (6-10 players). If anyone is in the area and interested in checking out how the game plays, let me know.

Ok, lots of changes, here is the list of developments for the game.

Player abilities and soldier stratagems changed to uses per life. So three points, three uses. Everyone kept forgetting the Recharge phase.

Added effect and feature slots to gear, changed prices to reflect upgradeability. Added rules for building specific gear into the Battlejack RPG section.

Removed turrets from the gear section. Add turrets and their related abilities to the zone feature section.

Added player abilities, tactics and stratagems that affect mercenaries, included that in the mercenary area of the zone feature section.

Changed zone features to only trigger once and to be more gear: 1 badges that you can pick up to grant you a bonus of some sort.

Added several soldier stratagems and solder tactics related to the buying, selling, and upgrading of gear.

Added the ability for a player to make a skill check against the dealer to regain 1 use of 1 soldier stratagem.

Added the ability for a player to make a skill check against an opponent to regain 1 use of 1 player ability.

Added the ability for a player to make a skill check against an opponent to gain a 1 pull advantage against another player either on attack or defense until the end of the player's next action.

Clarified the use and timing of player abilities. Basically, if it is your turn, you can declare you are using 1 player ability, then 1 other person can declare they are using 1 player ability in response to that, if they do, then you get to respond with 1 additional use of a player ability.

Some player abilities now specifically mention that they negate another player ability.

Broke down armor features, weapon features, equipment features and weapon effects so that you know exactly what upgrades you can put on what. Got rid of prototype, if you want to prototype use the rules for building your own weapon.

Added the prototype weapons that did exist into the main section of weapons priced correctly.

Added a couple of more melee weapons and changed grenades and the demolition charge to be melee weapons. Added the one use feature which basically means use it once then lose it, but the gear cost 30% less to buy.

Changed the sample arenas to be more of the 5 x 5 variety with one 7 x 7 and one 9 x 9 map

Removed race vehicles, added in a section that just says, take a portion of your stake and turn it into a vehicle stake, based upon how much life the vehicle has remaining it grants a bonus to your move action, nice and simple.

Added the Reserve Pile, which is where your two extra lives worth of chips reside. So you never tap your Winnings during a match now, whatever you have left in your stake and reserve gets added to winnings at the end of the match.

Added efficiency which is calculated then multiplied against your winnings to create your world rank. Moving up to higher tiers of play requires a minimum efficiency over a number of matches. This discourages players from buying huge gear in which they get a lot of kills but also get a lot of deaths

Revised the concept soldiers to have spent about 120 of their initial 150 gear, we find this to be about the typical amount players spend when they start.

Weapons no longer need to reload (speeds up gameplay), some equipment still does.

Clarified rules for the Capture the Flag matches.

Revised Achievements to be easier to unlock and track.

Added examples everywhere.

Started working on flavor text.

We playtested a 2 vs 2 Capture the Flag match this weekend. Had a blast, two of us built our soldier's seperately of each other and played on a team, the other two built their soldiers together to see what sort of synergies they could work out.

In the end, the match was a draw with the win going to my team because of overall chips won during the match.

I would have to say capture the flag is the most tactical version of the game because the dynamic of the game is not to just simply wipe out the other team, although, we did do a pretty good job of it.

We had great fun with the zone features, some highlights being, my team discovered a turret in the very first zone outside of our base, so that was a nice little defensive bonus to our team. One of the soldiers on the other team uncovered a trap zone that ended up doing enough damage to kill him. One of the soldiers on my team picked up a rocket launcher from one of the zones and that changed the way she played the rest of the game. All in all, the zone features added to the game play in a lot of great ways.

So the Battlejack RPG is a GM +1 player up to a GM +5 players ruleset. The rules are designed for GMs to create their own 2d side scrolling metroidvania style maps that they run the soldiers through. It captures what I think are the great elements of classic games like Metroid, Castlevania, Zelda, and Megaman.

Some of the differences from the main rules are:

Soldiers get additional chips in their Stake and additional Gear slots.

The arena may contain a resurrection room which allows the party to in essence save their game. If they get wiped out, they just restart and start over. Eliminates the frustration of the TPK.

The players can create truly custom armor, equipment and weapons.

The GM can create custom monsters and custom treasure.

Combat is still non-tacitcal, with monsters and players positioning on a 3 Row grid to determine whether they are at melee or missile range.

Killing pawns (minions if you will) gives you the ability to make a Save at the end of the round, in essence recovering that little bit of health that metroidvania games are known for.

Items like keys, maps, and raw materials (used for building gear) are much more abundant. Exploring the map and finding secret areas will allow you to find upgrades for you armor and weapons.

Mini-boss and Boss monsters have significantly larger Stakes but will have a weakness that can be exploited typical of the megaman games.

The soldier's home base has a party strongbox that can hold 200 gear slots worth of additional items.

The magic system has 8 different energy types and 6 different targeting methods, spells have between 2 and 6 different ways they can be used and you can mix and max energy types with targeting methods.

So that is a quick highlight of the RPG version of the rules. I think the ability for two players to be able to play a game without having to change the rules to balance the game will make it a great choice for a gaming group if players go missing from the game session.

Hi WP,

Have you ever played warhammer quest? It was a pretty awesome table top board game where you would go into random dungeons and hope to death blow the crap out of monsters before they wandering monster stomped you. Your game is sounding like it's interesting in the way you could just get down and play warhammer quest.

I'll ask though, does it have any point at which basically say a GM or such assigns resources based simply on how they themselves react to the prior spoken fiction around the table? Not that it needs to be there, just asking.

Also

Combat is still non-tacitcal

I have not played warhammer quest. The idea behind battlejack is that you can play a version that most suites both what you have enough people for and what is going to be most fun. For example, if you have an off number of players, you can play a battlejack race match where an odd number of players doesn't matter. If you have four or six players a team versus match might be best. If you have five players a battlejack RPG match may be great.

The Battlejack RPG match is the typical RPG version of the game, but even it is modelled more towards creating a metroidvania RPG, however, a good Dealer (GM) could do a freeform RPG match no problem.

When I say non-tactical, I mean it isn't 4e in which everything is based on 5 foot x 5 foot squares. It also isn't table top in which everything is measured in inches from target etc. My game is more abstract, as in, are you in missile range or are you in melee range, I hope that makes sense.

So lets elaborate a little, in a typical PvP match, the arena is laid out in zones, a zone is an undefined size. A weapon with a range of 0 can only be used against opponents in the same zone as you. A weapon with a range of 0 to 1 zone may be used against an opponent in the same zone as you or in an adjacent (non-diagonal) zone. You play blackjack (called battlejack in our game) as the resolution mechanic to resolve if you hit and if you hit how successful your attack is which them determines the damage you deal.

In the RPG match, when you enter a zone, if it has enemies in it, you move to a combat grid which consists of three rows, and that is used to determine what range you are at. In the RPG game instead of having different ranges, the ranged weapons have ammunition that you keep track of. Really think any sort of first person shooter.

Does that clarify things?

Hi,

Yeah, I get what you mean now (side note: As I understand it the RPG 3:16 uses fairly abstract range intervals). I'd say more that it doesn't cover minutiae (seems a good quality to my tastes, anyway). In terms of imagination element, I wasn't really refering to the extreme of freeform, I was talking about a blend (whether neither imagination has absolute control, nor does pure resource management have control), but that's okay. Thanks for the info. I didn't catch how you were going to sell it? Good luck with it, BTW!

Vigilance Press is going to handle the distribution of the PDF. Past that we will see if it merits a print on demand or actual print run. Supplements including adventures for the campaign version of the game will be forthcoming as well.

Sent the "lite" version of the Battlejack rules to Vigilance Press today. It includes 47 of 78 pages of the rules. An excellent preview!