RPG Idea : Deathtrap Maintenance

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Nenad

This idea was originally inspired by the stories The Trouble With Death Traps and The Ghost in the Death Trap, both by Marjorie James.

The setting is a very cliched, standard fantasy one, and the players are a groups of builders, smiths and planners whose job is to build and equip dungeons for those that want them.

The characters would have to deal with the poltergeists union, dissatisfied clients (a bit tricky when the client in question is a thousand-year old Litch)

There is still room for a classic dungeon crawl in such a campaign… Perhaps an trap needs to be reset deep in the dungeon, and the originals blueprints have been lost?

RPG Idea: Fantasy Characters in the Modern World

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Nenad

This is an outgrowth of a thread a read a long time ago on RPG.net (which I will not link to, since I cannot find it). It discussed what would happen if a bunch of High-level Player Characters from a typical fantasy setting somehow came to our world.

In my opinion, I think the result would be complete chaos, involving loss of life and property destruction on a massive scale (i.e. standard PC behavior)

So, we can use this in a game. This time the characters would be the people investigating these events, and trying to figure out how to deal with the superpowered troublemakers that have suddenly appeared.

For a more interesting game, you can do this with two groups, one playing the fantasy characters, and the other one the modern ones.

RPG Idea: Conflicting GMs

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Nenad

I got this idea while writing my article about the Adjustment Bureau, but I thought it deserved a post on its own.

In this game, we have two GMs, each one trying to guide the party to a separate goal. Perhaps the GMs are representing feuding Gods? Or, they are just an abstraction, with one GM trying to help the party achieve their goals, while the other one acts to prevent them.

Of course, there will need to be some sort of currency expressing what each GM can do, and how often. Perhaps each has control over one aspect of the setting?

Anyway, this is just a rough idea, which would need to be expanded and detailed a lot to turn into a proper game, but I think it could be a fun experience.

RPG Idea: Housemates of the Antichrist

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Nenad

This was an idea I had years ago, originally intended for the Buffy system, since I think it would fit in well with the Buffyverse… It could work just as well in other systems (I think Dresden Files might actually be a better fit)

The idea is simple, all the characters are friends at university, living together, and sharing a house. The only problem is, one of them is the antichrist, prophesied to doom the world, raise hell, that kind of thing. IF it was up to him, he would really prefer to just stay at home and play video games, since he is basically a good person at heart.

So, most of the game will be taken up with the character and his friends dealing with the forces of evil trying to recruit him, with the occasional do-gooder that has decided to kill him, since he is Eviiil. I think this could make a fun darkly comic game.

RPG Idea: What Happened to Humanity?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Nenad

Like a lot of my other ideas, this one could either be truly awesome, or fail miserably when tried in practice.

The characters are all intelligent robots, dong something far away from Earth, perhaps setting the ground work for a colony on Titan, with no direct human supervision, and no little or no contact with Earth.

After a while, they realize that they have not had any updates, or requests for information from Earth for a long time, and their queries go unanswered.

Being independent AIs, they decide to investigate, and use some of the construction machinery to build a way to get back to Earth. There they find that humanity has disappeared.

The players are playing the robots, trying to figure out what happened to their human masters, as they slowly piece together the puzzle, the players will play through brief vignettes of the humans in the days leading to whatever happened to them.

RPG Inspiration: The Adjustment Bureau

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Nenad

The Adjustment Bureau is based on the Story ”Adjustment Team” by Phillip K. Dick. Like pretty much all of the movie versions of his stories, it is entertaining, but does not do justice to the original.

The Adjustment Bureau is a 2011 movie, directed by George Nolfi and starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and Michael Kelly. (IMDB page)

Small things matter

The entire movie happens because the main character does not spill coffee on himself at a correct time.

Perhaps the characters are playing the adjustment bureau? and their job is to implement the small changes necessary to maintain the plan.

Unclear goals

I find it interesting that the Adjustment Bureau never lets its operative know of the full plan. When the coffee plan does not work, if Harry had known that the point of it was to make the main character 10 minutes late, it would have been very easy for him to engineer something.

I am not really sure of what the application to games of this is, but I did find it very interesting.

Seeing things you are not supposed to

I like the idea of the characters getting to see things that they are not really supposed to. Perhaps the characters in a fantasy game get an artifact allowing them to see the machinations of the Gods. How will the characters react when they find out that the war which killed thousands of people, including their loved ones, was just to settle a bet?

Doors

I love the running through doors idea… I really need to add that into an RPG one day… Not a 1005 sure how to best handle it, though.

Adjustment Bureau Fate book

Railroading

The whole movie is an example of how players deal with a railroading GM… Trying anything possible to get out of the railroad… Really, most of the time, just give the characters somebody trying to force them to follow any kind of plan, and you can watch them struggle against it, by any mean possible.

Trust no one with a hat

I just really like the idea that some innocuous characteristic suddenly becomes threatening. Perhaps the characters in a fantasy setting are told not to trust anyone with clean hands? Or perhaps, no-one wearing gloves.?

Not really bad guys

Finally, I like the fact that the antagonists in this movie are not bad guys… They do not really want to make the main character suffer, they are just sticking to their plan, which is never explained in the movie (if memory serves me, in the original story their purpose was to prevent a nuclear war). In a sense, the plan called for the characters to reach their full potential.

I have always like having morally grey antagonists, who oppose the characters for a good reason.

Stacking Dice as a Mechanic

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Nenad

We have all seen it, all the dice of one player stacked into a tower reaching for the heavens (or at least the ceiling). This normally means that the GM needs to do something to keep him in the game, but I got to thinking about how you could use this as a mechanic for resolution in a game.

Perhaps the difficulty can be the number and type of dice to be stacked? For a simple action, the player just needs to put a d6 on top of the other one… For a one in a million shot, he will have to balance his d20 on top of a d4…

Another way would be to use it as a pacing mechanic, with the players building their stacks (perhaps they could have a unified stack?) as they preform actions, with things happening as they reach a certain height. If the stack falls over, a major tuning point in the story happens.

For another variant, all the dice are placed in the center of the table, and the players can chose which ones to use to build their towers, which will get more difficult as the game progresses.

For a more fun option, for an action, the GM builds a stack, and as part of resolution, they players have to try to knock it down, by throwing dice at it.

The combat mechanic could be this, with each character having their own stack, representing their health, and a bunch of other dice they use as ammo… Once that runs out, they can take dice from their stack to attack their opponent, this would represent pushing themselves as the battle progresses.

RPG Inspiration: Skyline

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Nenad

This time I am going to talk about Skyline. It is one of those movies that I wanted to like, since it had so much potential, but the script should have been a lot tighter.

Skyline is a 2010 movie, directed by Colin Strause and Greg Strause starring Eric Balfour, Donald Faison and Scottie Thompson (IMDB page)

Use tricks wisely

The movie starts off in media res, then flashes back to 15 hours earlier. I have seen this technique used numerous times, and I normally like it, but here it fell flat for me, and I have figured out why., there are two reasons.

The times I have seen it work has normally been in a series, normally once I have already gotten to know the characters, which makes me actually care about their plight.
The other thing is, the events preceding the event should somehow explain it, show how the characters have gotten themselves into that situation. In this case, the alien invasion had nothing to do with the characters actions during the preceding fifteen hours, so why show them to me?

Party

You could let the players to get to know the other characters at a party. Just a time to roleplay what the characters do in their down time, without it necessarily tying into a deeper plot.

In a fantasy or historical setting, you could play through a couple of quick scenes from a spring festival at the village.

Know when to end a scene

This is more a what not to do example from the movie. It spends a lot of time setting up conflicts which turn out to be completely irrelevant to the main story. A couple of short scenes to get an idea of the characters are really useful, but don’t over do it.

Of course, in an RPG situation, if the characters are really having a blast at the party, then let them, but most of the time, you can just move on.

Don’t look at it!

I really like the idea of a weapon that will do harm when you just look at it. Something about it also brings the idea of Lovercraftian horrors to mind, where just seeing something may be enough to drive a character insane. How do you fight something that you cannot even look at?

Redshirt

This is the traditional trope of having somebody die horribly early on to show how dangerous the situation/villain is.

In order to do this, you need to have some NPCs hanging around with the characters, preferably ones that the players are not too attached to, but that they will still react when they meet a horrible end.

Other people are doing things too

At times it seems like the characters seem to be the only ones doing anything in the whole world. Sometimes, just for variety, make sure that they see other people trying to act as well. Perhaps they are not the only adventurers going to slay the dragon?

Of course, those other characters will fail, possibly in a way that will highlight the danger, or give the characters a clue how to defeat the evil.

Put the characters at the centre

For most of the movie, the main characters are hiding, while the battles are being fought by others.

Most of the time, you want to avoid this in an RPG… Put the PCs in the center of the action. Don’t let them be just observers, unless it is as a change of pace.

Waiting

Sometimes the characters have nothing to do, perhaps they are waiting for a contact, hiding out, or are on a long ship voyage. It is easy to gloss over these times “After four days, you think it is safe to come out”. There is nothing wrong with this, but you can also use those times to highlight the characters, and let them do just short snippets of roleplaying.

Coming back to life

This is a classic trope, which I have not seen often enough in RPGs. The players have just killed the Big Bad, when he suddenly pulls himself back together. I think it could be really effective during the final battle, or perhaps during what the players think is the final battle, until the dragon gets back up, forcing them to rethink their tactics.

Acquired Immunity

It seems as if surviving the initial exposure to the light gave the character some sort of immunity later on. I have always liked the idea that surviving an attack gives you some sort of immunity, or perhaps some type of additional ability.

You can use this in a fantasy game, the classical werewolf would be a good example of gaining extra power by surviving the initial attack… Perhaps surviving a dragon’s breath would give you immunity to it?

Alien Aliens

I really liked the aliens in this movie, they did not explain what they were doing, and just collected people for reasons which are not entirely clear.

I think that aliens should be alien, both in how they look and in the outlook they have on life.

RPG Idea: Star Miners

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Nenad

Since the last couple of ideas I have posted have been SciFi in nature, I have decided do some fantasy for you.

In this setting, the sky is made of crystal, with the sun and stars being jewels embedded in it.

The few stars that came detached from the heavens and fell to Earth have been found to be a source of great magic, and now they are being mined from the sky.

The original miners used hot air balloons and magic to fly up to the skies, and in some places they still do so. In other places, they have established cities, hanging off the sky, as they mine deeper into the crystal, since the stars on the surface have been mined out long ago.

At least one kingdom is busy building a tower towards a rich constelation, to help with the transport of the mined stars back to the ground.

Of course, with all the industry in the sky, it is only a question of time until somebody break through to the other side… Miners have already started talking of finding passages in the sky, which no miner has ever seen before, with strange creatures living in them…

RPG Idea: Singularity Recruiters

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Nenad

Fairly recently, the singularity happened. The vast majority of humanity got uploaded into huge arrays of computronium, there to live out eternity in pleasure and abundance.

Alas, some people were left behind, either those that distrust the AIs that run the birtual realities, or those living very far from civilisation when the singularity happened.

The survivors now live in a world where the infrastructure has began to break down due to the lack of people and resources, barely managing to survive in a decaying world.

The AIs are actually keeping the survivors alive, sometimes overtly, for those that were simply left out due to being far from civilization, or covertly, for those that would refuse the help if they knew the it came from the machines.

The characters are working to upload the last remnants of humanity. They have downloaded themselves into new bodies, and they are travelling the Earth trying to convince the remaining people to agree to an upload. The AIs sense of ethics prevents them from uploading an unwilling human, or using violence to convince somebody to get uploaded.

This would be a campaign with the emphasis on social interaction, with each story dealing with the characters trying to recruit a settlement, here are a couple of ideas:

A survivalist encampment, convinced that all the uploaded humans have been sentenced to hell, and that the day of reckoning has come and gone.
A stone age-tribe, lost in the depths of what is left of the Amazon rain-forest
A lone survivor, driven insane by isolation

Just Nenad

My contemplations and Meanderings

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