Stockholm Syndrome
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.
If you havent seen the movie Dog Day Afternoon check it out on amazon. Or read the script if your cheap. You can get it here
Dog Day Afternoon isnt the only example of the genre I am trying to emulate, but its one of the best examples.
Anyways
So the goal is to emulate hostage movies. How do I go about doing that? Well first off I see three different viewpoints that I want to make part of the game. Those are :
- Negotiator
- Hostage
- Hostage-Taker
Theres others that I could probably include, relatives of the hostage or hostage-takers, the Media, etc. But I want to focus on the above three.
Next I suppose, is what the hell are we going to be doing in this game? I envision creating a story about hostage crisis, where theres all kinds of emotions being traded around, The hostages can either make the hostage-takers angry by defying them or compassionate by appealing to there humanity. The Hostage takers can make the hostages fearful by threatening them or compassionate to there cause, whatever it may be. Negotiators are in on all this too, the obviously have the power to anger takers or even sway the hostages emotions.
So this whole game is about the 3 groups manipulating eachother with whatever means they have at there disposal.
Now
How do I represent this?
Well, the groups can manipulate eachother thru all kinds of means, hostage-takers can kill hostages to manipule the survivors and negotiators. That is an action that says lots of things.
- I mean Business
- I am crazy
- I am willing to kill
- I may not be someone who can be negotiated with.
and quite possibly all sorts of other things. The point of taking such an action, was to manipulate everyone else. The hostages and Negotiator also have similiar power to manipulate, by talking by actions, whatever. This i suppose could all be handled by Scene Narration, but since the point of this would be to manipulate the other groups, how do I want to handle this mechanically? Heres a rough very unformed idea I have come up with.
4 Stats/Resources :
Compassion : Makes you care about the other person, making you less able to increase there anger or fear.
Hostage Taker : can be used to lower any of Hostages stats.
Fear : Makes you afraid of the other person, making you less able to raise confidence or anger.
Hostage : can be used to RAISE any of hostage takers stats.
Hostage-Taker : can be used to RAISE any of hostage stats.
Anger : makes you angry at EVERYTHING making you less able to raise or lower anything except the other players fear. (including your own stats)
Hostage : Can be used to RAISE hostage takers Fear at the cost of raising his anger as well.
Hostage Taker : can be used to raise Hostages fear. maybe lower Hostage takers compassion?
Confidence :
Raise and/or lower any of your stats. Force scenes.
a TimeClock called
Tension
Starts at 0. raises by 1 each..turn/scene? Can also be raised and lowered other ways. For every point spent there is a chance this will raise? like for every 10 rolled on a d10, or every 2 1’s rolled in a single roll it is lowered.
I seriously have to refine this idea, theres lots and lots of stuff missing. But this is the basic idea.
What do you all think? feel free to post comments, since thats kinda the point.
April 19th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
I should probably note, the rules-y section of this blog are from a period in the design that I wasnt going to include negotiators. I really like the idea of negotiators in the game though, so they will most likely get included, I just havent made any rules for them at all.