SS, Now what?
Posted in Game Design, StockHolm Syndrome on May 9th, 2006Okay, 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.