(This might be the wrong forum for this, please move it if so)

So I was thinking today (dangerous, that), and I thought, "Gee, wouldn't a Film Noir RPG be interesting..."

It goes like this. 30s detective game. You can't speak for your character, only narrate. Or maybe just you can't say things like "I open the door", you must narrate it in a noir style.

Would this work? Would it be interesting? Has it been done before? Or is it just retarded?

Nope, not retarded at all. I'd play, depending on the rules, of course. At a start, look at how Adventure! handles Pulp (a close cousin of Noir) and also seek out a game from GDW (I think) called Daredevils.

I think there may be several freely available RPGs online that cover this ground as well, although none to my knowledge enforce the 'voice over' so common to Film Noir.

Good Luck and keep us posted.

Cheers.

Cool idea.

You might also want to check out Puppetland. A very very different genre, but it is built around very interesting rules that govern how players can narrate things.

The short version is, players must only speak "in character", while the GM only narrates in third person past tense, as if they were all telling a story to a child. (This is explained better in Ron's review and better still in the rules, which are available online here. )

Another thing to potentially look at would be Mean Streets, a film noir genre game by Deep7.

The narration thing is a neat twist that I haven't seen done, for whatever that's worth.

Damn, Rob beat me to Puppetland. But I'll back him up; this is the game to look at for prescribed narrative style. Also, see the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Mike

Indeed. Puppetland is your first stop in this conceptual quest.

Best,
Ron

Might be worth a look at pp. 24-25 of Spaceship Zero as well.

dunno what the mechanics were like, but there actually was an rpg called "film noire". saw it in a second-games shelf.

still, a narration restriction on players seems so obvious for the genre, yet I don't think I've seen any game do a Puppetland-like set of rules to represent that noire feature.

I played in a con game once which attempted to capture a cinematic, noir, road movie sort of feel (a gang of bank robbers show up in a dusty town on the border, and find themselves in even deeper trouble than what they're running away from). The only "rule" the GM had (we played freeform) was that we could either do dialogue or do narration, i.e, we could either speak for the character or describe what the character does in third person.
This did cause trouble (for me, at least) when we attempted to narrate an action in a way the GM found unrealistic (i.e, throwing a steak knife at someone as a weapon). If I could have ask the GM for clarifications, I would have pre-empted my action and narrated something different.
However, the benefit of keeping us focused on the story, in character and in the cinematic mood was definately worth it.

- Dotan