footcreme

No, it's not a make-over game, although it could be. FTCRM = Found Text Conflict Resolution Mechanic = (footcreme)

The strategies and variations page is still under construction, but the main rules are up to the playtesting and polishing stage. footcreme will be published for free as a webpage at http://evilbobdayjob.tripod.com/ftcrm/index.html.

What the back cover would say if it had a back cover:
Not only will it kill time nicely, but you'll have the added thrill of knowing that you extracted a role-playing game from your junk mail, or from your sister's Government textbook, or any fistfull of pages within reach. You could be waiting for a Greyhound bus in Yazoo City, Mississippi, with nothing but a discarded newspaper and a willing friend, and you'd have everything necessary for a game of footcreme.

Imagine extracting the dice and technical stuff from your favorite elaborate role-playing game, saving the full-bodied exoskeleton of your favorite game setting and atmosphere, then filling the empty cavity with two chapters from a Doc Savage novel and reanimating the corpse with bits and pieces from The Newlywed Game and a vocabulary test.

Wait, come back! It's not that bad!! Doc Savage is just an example. You could use any book or story or advertisement as fuel for your game. The vocabulary test is just looking at a book or magazine title and guessing a few words that are likely to be inside. Players use their correct guesses to narrate the way they solve the conflict or overcome an opponent. The organ stolen from The Newlywed Game is the way players try to guess what each other might say. If you can guess how your opponent will try to narrate his action, you can prevent it from happening.

Think of it as a customizable collectible word game, only the "Starter Pack" is what you're reading now for free, and a library would provide enough free "booster packs" that you'd never run out.

Here are a few specific questions:

1. Is it clear and easy to read? Any suggestions for ways to make it clearer, or sections that need work?

2. Is there any need for "target subject" or should that be replaced with a rule that players must guess words longer than four letters? Maybe "target subject" could be an optional rule for people who want the challenge of narrating an intergalactic battle with recipe ingredients, or lawyers arguing a murder trial with sports terminology.

3. Character building round. This part still bothers me. So you have three more words you picked -- what's so magical about these three character words when you already have free reign to use any words in the narration round? You don't need to find the word "assassin" in Character Building round if you feel like using it in your narration anyway. What kind of bonus can be planted in the game to encourage use of character words, without unbalancing the other parts of the game?

Thanks,
Rob Northrup
(Deidzoeb)