Gifted: A contemporary Sci-Fi role playing game
happysmellyfish:
Yeah, I'm interested in the investigation part as well. How do you see that playing out? Have you got any ideas for that system?
sprightx:
Hi guys, thanks for your interest.
To be honest I hadn't thought of introducing a specific mechanic. I was thinking more in terms of having the GM develop adequate stories and simply role playing them but like you said, an investigative framework often develops like a book and is very linear. This can be fun if the story is really good but it can also be very limiting on the players' choices of action.
I've never played a game that included an investigation mechanic (does that even exist?) and it may be a possibility worth looking into. I remember reading a post that discussed a randomized content generation system, where certain concepts were assigned to numerical values and the story was generated by making a series of rolls and using the randomly selected concepts to generate parts of the universe. Could the same mechanism be applied to story generation?
We assign values from 1 to 6 in two columns to different terms that we could use to design a story, we roll dice, select the concepts and build the story around them.
FACTION // FOCUS
1 Government // Experimentation
2 Military // Corruption
3 Police // Murder/Assassination
4 Corporation // Espionage
5 Religious sect //Secret technology
6 Secret services // Armed intervention
Example: Gaming group X rolls story dice obtaining a 5 and a 3, Religious Sect and Murder/Assassination. They then roll for the subcategories and get a 1 and 6, Christian and High Profile (other options could be Muslim, Jewish, low profile, serial, etc.). The GM takes these 4 key concepts and weaves them together into 'A Christian fundamentalist religious sect kills a high profile target'. The GM then calls on a little memory and decides to incorporate elements from The Pelican Brief, making the story "A Christian religious sects kills a supreme court justice with the complicity of certain government elements who want to replace him for someone they deem more suitable". The GM then decides that the players' connection to this event could be that they happened to witness the killing by coincidence because it happened in broad daylight in a park where they were running, having a picnic, chatting with some friends, going on a date, etc.
Of course this is only an example. The real thing, if I were to to go with it, would have to have many more options and would include subcharts so that once a main concept was selected the gaming group could roll again to generate some of the details and the specifics of the story. This approach could make the story generation process more unpredictable and more dynamic for the players. There is one problem though, and it is that if the players know beforehand what they're going to be playing, even if they don't know any of the specifics, it would remove some of the suspense and the interest of making discoveries and uncovering things. Alternately, a similar system could be used throughout the game at critical 'junction points', moments when something dramatic that affects the storyline happens. Whenever one of these moments comes along the GM could ask the players to make a roll without telling them what the result means and use the numerical values to determine how the scene unfolds and what happens.
-Sam
contracycle:
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Essentially, would you be interested in playing a game that used a similar mechanic?
I'm afraid I don't really understand sufficiently to have an opinion. As far as I can tell your mechanic is "the GM applies their judgement and awards bonuses or penalties". There are lots of problems with that sort of approach, notably the fact that the players have little means of determining what will actually be rewarded or penalised, penalties removing control of the character ala Vampire's Humanity, etc.
Come to think of it, are you familiar with Pendragon? This has paired traits that both influence the characters behaviour and represent that behaviour. In this case, "violating" the character has causes it to decline and its mirror to rise, so this isn't really a bonus or penalty as such.
Callan S.:
sprightx
Just a couple of short ideas. It might be worth looking at universalis, simply to break out of the 'players play PC's and that's how they input into the game'. In universalis, everyone in the group uses the system to build the world and it's events. In your game, perhaps everyone could build the story? Do you need players playing PC's?
Second with your faction/focus chart, I'd suggest rolling twice on faction, then someone (or by some mechanism, the group) chooses which one to go with. Then the same, rolling twice, on the focus chart. It blends both randomness and choice together, instead of just having one or the other. Good luck with it all :)
happysmellyfish:
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To be honest I hadn't thought of introducing a specific mechanic. I was thinking more in terms of having the GM develop adequate stories and simply role playing them but like you said, an investigative framework often develops like a book and is very linear. This can be fun if the story is really good but it can also be very limiting on the players' choices of action.
Assuming you're talking about investigation/mystery, there are a bunch of interesting threads here on the Forge about that. Somebody else can probably direct you to the best ones, because I haven't delved too much into the vast backlog of closed forums. But, from my point of view, a good mystery game is a bit of a holy grail.
There's a game called Trail of Cthulhu which deals with one of the problems with investigative RPGs - what if PCs fail their skill check, and miss a clue? In ToC, the players can never fail to receive core clues. If they need it to solve the mystery, they automatically get it. If you're interested in that sort of thing, I'd recommend that game as a starting place.
Other issues are:
How can we prevent investigative games from being railroady?
Does it matter if they're railroady?
Does there need to be a predetermined mystery, or can it be generated in response to player choice?
Can the players be involved in forming the mystery?
In actual play, I have a feeling that mystery games end up chugging along just fine, and I think you could probably just leave it in the hands of individual GMs to sort out. But, as an exercise in game design, investigative RPGs seem tricky to really handle.
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