Vincent's latest post has me thinking about cool ways to apply that to games. It'd need to be a subtle thing for me, so I can slowly work it past my stupid gamer baggage.
Like imagine a bribery system. Say John, Meredith and I are playing, and we each pick a powerful emotional concept that appeals to us. Maybe I take Justice, and John takes Peace, and Meredith takes Anger.
Then we get a pool of dice, like maybe of various kinds.
What makes sense for those three.... let's say it's a game about being police. John's playing his detective, and he's trying to interrogate a suspect.
I say, "dude, I'll give you 1d6 if you play it by the book and don't pull any dirty tricks."
Meredith says, "no, get angry with him and do something intimidating and rough, and I'll give you 1d8."
And we only have so many dice, so I have to decide if I'd be willing to up the ante and offer John a d10. How much does this situation grab me?
Truth be told, this is a more formalized version of supporting characters in Galactic (and it reminds me a bit of Universalis, too). It'd work just fine for that game as long as the supporting characters embody a concept like the above. So Petty Officer Wu might be built around the concept of kindness, so whenever you do something kind, I'll help you out, but when you do something cruel, I just might roll for the opposition instead.
It'd really rock if the game had the right stuff in place so that the qualities I can offer bonus dice for really push and pull at character concepts that are important to both you and me.
It's different, though, than having direct authority over a character's internal workings. Different than Meredith saying, "oh, I decree that the dude is definitely angry." But not completely different. It's more of a baby step, at least for me.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
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6 comments:
I had mentioned the idea of "Bribes" in D&D to a couple of people as an alternative reward system... "I'll give you 100 xp if you oppose the king" etc. I was thinking like the GM giving lots of various bribe options, different, but each interesting. Like a slightly more guided version of TSOY's keys.
No reason why it wouldn't work group wise either :)
This sounds like it would be a baby step that would work well for most folks. It would give them a strong incentive to incoporate other folks' visions, while still keeping the veto power they might want. A security blanket so to speak. Cool.
I suggested/designed a system that's completely based on bribes/voluntary rewards (at least for main characters) on the Forge a while ago:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15040.0
I like it. It seems like a tangible, mechnical step towards some of the pull-based game elements Mo and I have been looking at, and for, recently.
Really, bribery and currency may be crude, but they're things that we're all familiar with.
I like it. It seems like a tangible, mechnical step towards some of the pull-based game elements Mo and I have been looking at, and for, recently.
I just made some revisions to Galactic that better support the whole bribery thing. Hooray for the pulling.
Heya,
Really, bribery and currency may be crude, but they're things that we're all familiar with.
New innovations in RPGs will always start out crudely and mechanically. Take games like Sorcerer and Dust Devils for instance. They're starting to show their age compared to newer versions of Nar games out there. But that's okay. Everything needs a begining. I'm just glad to see people who have the ballz to start it.
Peace,
-Troy
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