SS, Now what?

Posted in Game Design, StockHolm Syndrome on May 9th, 2006

Okay, I am attempting to go back and look at Stockholm Syndrome now that I have had some time away from the idea.

First off, I forgot to add in the Negotiators. So I will need to get to that.

Second. The Resources.

Fear, Compassion, Anger, Confidence.

Each of these would be a pool of resources, represented by coins, or points on a sheet or something. Each one has its advantages and drawbacks, Anger and Fear at least would have some sort of automatic effect when they reached a certain number, maybe the others too.

This effect would change gameplay in some sort of engaging way, sometimes resulting in an endgame scenario. Hostage-Takers Anger reaches 10? He blows away a hostage and starts going generally nuts, the SWAT team comes in, caps him in the head. Game over.

Not all effects should be endgame scenarios though, some should just change gameplay drastically, or subtely, or both, im still pretty indecisive.

The over all idea of all this resource swapping is to illustrate how people can succesfully manipulate eachother and eachothers emotions, but that is seldom simple, increasing someone elses fear of you increases your confidence which has some sort of effect on you which does X, which does Y, and so on, things spiral out of control at the slightest nudge. But since this is a game that is intended to entertain, the spiral should always be entertaining.

Meanwhile while you are all trying to manipulate eachother to get certain effects, there is the timeclock, the endgame getting closer and closer, tension escalating higher and higher.

Negotiators, should I still keep them? maybe give them sort of GM type control? I am still unsure on this as well.

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Does this apply to RPGs? could it?

Posted in Game Design on May 8th, 2006

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/08/why_is_it_so_fun_to_.html

Â An article about why Bosses in Computer Games are so satisfying, could the insights provided be used in RPG design?

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Zeroth Apostle

Posted in Game Design on May 5th, 2006

Okay, I havent posted in a while, what can I say, im following the footsteps of so many great un-updated blogs before me that posted 3-4 entries and then were never heard from again.

Anyways, I have actually had this idea for awhile but it kinda crystalized a bit more recently, still no workable ideas of rules but I thought id post it, you know, for posterity.

Zeroth Apostle

Im not even sure this is a “roleplaying” game or not. The idea is that each player plays a “religion” the whole religion, and trys to make that the main religion on the planet, the problem is that all the other players are doing the same thing. so theres a PvP element, you would do things like decide wether or not your religion sent peaceful messengers of there faith to other lands to spread the word, or bloodthirsty armys to strike down heathens. There would be probably be somewhat random complications like your faith splintering into subgroups or serious misunderstandings happening between the faith and its followers. Some of these random complications maybe even could be implemented by other players, making them not so random.

It would kind of be a screw your neighbor game, something like milles bornes, where you are trying to get to a defined “finish line” but you are also trying your damnedest to make sure noone else gets to that finish line before you. Along side this there would be a sort of narrative side that would end up playing something like…telephone, your religion starts out as X, what happens to your religion on the way to the finish line? what things get misunderstood or blown out of proportion?

Any comments? I know my wording isnt very clear, but I wanted to get what I had in my head written down before I lost it.

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Goblins

Posted in Sleepless Empire on May 5th, 2006

The first of my promised more detailed entries on the various factions of Sleepless Empire. This is kinda stream of conciousness as I havent actually written most of these ideas down yet, thats the idea behind this whole blog thing afterall.
Goblins. non-PC race

Mutated species that live entirely belowground. These are where most of the fantasy creatures come from. Most of the various species from many fantasy genres are in fact just a mutated goblin in Sleepless Empire. Minotaurs, Ogres, Kobolds, what have you, there all realy just goblins.

They live below the city making everything run, its a little distressing exactly how much of the citys vital services exist mainly below the surface. Electricity, steam and heating pipes, transportation via subway, even water, they all primarily exist underground. And the goblins control it all. But why? why do they do it? well, noone really knows for certain, maybe the PC’s should make a real effort at finding out? Mostly the goblins ignore us and we ignore them, a large and vocal minority even insist there are no such things, although the more than occasional sighting while riding the subway puts these people firmly in the crackpot category. There are rumours of goblins occasionally going “renegade” and attacking those from the surface, but that is surprisingly rare. There are of course rumours of people dissapearing forever when they have delved to far into there depths.

Those who have had the chance to study them, notice the large variety of subspecies, the goblins themselves seem to pay little attention to the fact that some are 6 feet tall and have horns and others are 3 feet tall and are sightless monstrosities. It seems that in there “society” if you can call it that, all are equal. It seems the vast majority of there time is spent repairing and maintaining all the equipment that exists below the city. They seem to have there own gibberish language that no surface dwellers can (or have bothered?) to learn. Many seem to have extraordinary abilities, chiefly a seemingly extrasensory understanding of any sort of machinery, there does not seem to be any training system involved at all in there knowledge of machinery, they simply “know” how it works and how to fix it when its broken. There are also reports of other abilities, healing powers, sorcerer like abilities, inhuman strength. None of these things have been proven conclusively.

The latest news and rumours surround a man calling himself, of all the silly things. The Goblin King. Oddly enough, he is human, but supposedly he is slowly working the goblins into a frenzy , convincing them that they should demand “equal rights” and “fair pay” for all the work they do under the city, after all, without them the city would be crippled? right? It is unclear wether this “goblin king” even exists, or wether he is just another of those odd rumours that occasionally pop up.

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Snow From Korea

Posted in Game Design on April 22nd, 2006

This is an awesome little game still in design. It has alot of the elements I am trying to capure in some of the games I am designing, although I hadnt considered making a custom deck of cards. Check it out, its worth the read.

http://njyar.thesmerf.com/blog/category/games/snow-from-korea/

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Stockholm Syndrome

Posted in StockHolm Syndrome on April 19th, 2006

My idea for a game.

The name of the game is “Stockholm Syndrome”

The goal of this game would be to simulate the genre of Cinematic Hostage Crisis situations. The best example of this I have found is Dog Day Afternoon. That has alot of my favorite elements such as the media element, the hostage-taker and hostages forming a relationship. Negotiator struggling with dealing with the hostage-taker in addition to pressure from his higher ups and the media. All that stuff is great.

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Sleepless Empire

Posted in Sleepless Empire on April 19th, 2006

Sleepless Empire, where shall I begin? This idea first started in my head years and years ago, I think I was 15 or so. It was originally titled ….get this..

Â Guns & Gangsters.

Â Isnt that just great? Gawd im a geek.

Â Anyways, the idea was basically lasersharked D&D, I thought D&D is cool, 1920’s Mobster Movies are cool, lets combine em, and that was more or less the whole idea.

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This blog

Posted in Game Design on April 19th, 2006

Okay, im gonna talk about game design a bit. I dont really know that much about game design since I havent really every designed any games yet. But I am going to try anyways. I have a bunch of ideas for games. Here they are with short synopsis’s

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