[Caterpillar] A Space Game of Space Pirates in Space
David Berg:
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 05, 2011, 03:09:13 PM
I see what you're saying with Persistery. It does seem a little more trait-like upon a second look. Are there any others that jump out at you?
All the ones whose descriptions sound more like attempts than outcomes: Ballsery, Persistery, Asshattery & Mockery (it's not in doubt whether you mock or are an asshat, but it could be in doubt whether your mockery/asshattery matters at all -- change it to Griefery, focusing on the outcome of someone else feeling grief, and that'd fix that). Wackery also depends on situations where being unpredictable is somehow advantageous; used in any other case, I'd say the same issue applies.
Vackery strikes me as an oddball, being 100% about situation whereas all the other ones say something about what the character is trying to achieve. I don't see this as a problem, but just thought I'd mention it.
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7. The Pirate King Rule: If you are the first pirate to achieve the rank of Pirate King, your pirate gets to engineer the end of the game. First, you will be given your own pirate ship (not a submarine, like the Caterpillar) by the pirate council. Second, you are tasked with striking the final blow against the Royal Empire, to take care of them once and for all. You will be given your choice of crew, and all the resources at the pirate council's disposal. Whatever plan your pirate comes up with, that plan is the last mission of the game. Whether it succeeds or fails, the game will end once the mission is completed, and it will be amazing. No pressure.
I don't know how that interacts with the rest of the game, but hell yeah, that totally makes me want to be Pirate King! (The other players are also invested in taking out the Royal Empire, right? If not, there could be issues...)
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The Death of a Pirate. . .
The other pirates must then, one at a time, share their most cherished memories of the dead pirate. The dead pirate's player may request any one of the memories be written on his death torpedo. . . .
If everyone is in agreement, the dead pirate's player can step up and be the RA starting with the next game session, and the current RA can choose to create a pirate of her own. . . .
Fantastic options.
I assume that if my character gets a funeral and I want to keep playing with the same RA, then I make a new swabbie, right?
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4. The dead pirate's player can call for the end of the game.
I love that this marks an occasion for the group to discuss whether or not to continue.
Giving one player the option to dictate that is pretty ballsy. Are you comfortable with the "most bored person trumps most enthused people" value here? It might play better in some social contexts (e.g. the long-running group that moves from game to game) than others.
Personally, I don't see a problem with it, as long as everyone knows it's on the table and no one is blindsided. Might lead to some interesting game-play incentives, like "Joe's about done with this game, but we want one more session, so we must save his nearly-dead character at all costs!"
Kyle Van Pelt:
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 01:35:32 PM
7. The Pirate King Rule: If you are the first pirate to achieve the rank of Pirate King, your pirate gets to engineer the end of the game. First, you will be given your own pirate ship (not a submarine, like the Caterpillar) by the pirate council. Second, you are tasked with striking the final blow against the Royal Empire, to take care of them once and for all. You will be given your choice of crew, and all the resources at the pirate council's disposal. Whatever plan your pirate comes up with, that plan is the last mission of the game. Whether it succeeds or fails, the game will end once the mission is completed, and it will be amazing. No pressure.
Beautiful. I really like this.
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 01:35:32 PM
The Death of a Pirate
...
Any number of the following stages of grief may be called for upon the death of one of The Terrible Butterflies.
1. The dead pirate can be resuscitated postmortem. If there is a living pirate that can use Medicinery (the Earthling or the ship's surgeon, if there is one), that pirate can try some postmortem resuscitation. It must be done quickly in order to succeed. If the roll succeeds, the dead pirate comes back to life with his BoneTrack still full. He cannot be resuscitated again if he dies a second time unless he has completely emptied his BoneTrack first.
2. The dead pirate's player can demand a funeral. If a funeral is called for, it must take place. The pirate's body is loaded into an empty torpedo and placed into a torpedo tube. The other pirates must then, one at a time, share their most cherished memories of the dead pirate. The dead pirate's player may request any one of the memories be written on his death torpedo. Captain Swallowtail, through the RA, gets the last word in the memory sharing. The captain vows that the dead pirate's torpedo will be the first to be fired at the next enemy ship they find. And so the Caterpillar casts off again to hunt for their next plunder.
3. The dead pirate's player can swap places with the RA. If everyone is in agreement, the dead pirate's player can step up and be the RA starting with the next game session, and the current RA can choose to create a pirate of her own. This new pirate will start as a swabbie, and, as her player wishes, she may be a pre-existing member of the crew or a new recruit.
4. The dead pirate's player can call for the end of the game. If the dead pirate's player is too sad to continue without his beloved pirate, he can declare the game to be over at the conclusion of the current session. This puts some pressure on the crew to finish the game in style. In order to properly end the game, all the pirates are required to take the biggest risks they can possibly take. If all the pirates are dead by the end of the session, then the game was a good one. If they succeed against all odds, then the game was a good one. There can be no half measures taken at the end of the game. The game must end boldly and proudly so the players can hold their heads high.
The fourth option really shines. I think it's a great way to immortalize the character through his death rallying his teammates into action. I can see this being the way to end a campaign with style. I also like the second option, as it provides a clear way to handle player death without losing the flow of the game. #1 and #3 are useful, although they lack the badass factor of the others.
Overall, though, this is a step in the right direction, and I like the way you've set this up. I'm looking to get this playtested during the first week of January, hopefully. Scheduling a game during this time of year is difficult to say the least.
Josh Porter:
Awesome. Thanks David. I sincerely appreciate your feedback.
I understand more clearly now your points about the starting list of Skulls. Attempts vs. outcomes is a good way of explaining it. I have to say that I really love Ballsery, but it may need some tweaking or might even need to be let go. Now what if, instead of Griefery, Mockery was described as "making other humans feel bad about themselves"? Would that be enough to assign more of an outcome-based view of it.
Now Vackery is kind of a special case. It seems inherently dangerous (to non-astronaut me) to be doing anything out in space in a space suit, so I can see the inherent consequence of it. But it might indeed be too circumstantial. When we've been playtesting the game, the pirates are in space suits all the time, boarding ships and the like. But since there's so much setting left vague (on purpose), other groups might not ever end up using space suits at all. I suppose I want it in there to actually reveal little bits of "what you do in the game world" stuff without spelling out the setting. I just want the rules to imply it so that the players can fill in the blanks. Also, the Rocket (one of the four kinds of pirates) has a whole special thing about Vackery and doing things while floating in space, so I wanted to make sure the game has the territory to go there.
Now about this part.Quote
I assume that if my character gets a funeral and I want to keep playing with the same RA, then I make a new swabbie, right?
This is something I'm very conflicted about. My gut reaction is "no", and I'll tell you why. In too many (D&D type) games, when you re-roll a new character (of the same class, specifically) to replace a dead one, that character turns into Dead Character 2. He's just like the first guy, and he gets played the same. It's like the scene in Beerfest where Kevin Heffernan's character dies, and his identical twin brother comes in and instantly replaces him.
Since this game pretty much has classes, I wanted to avoid that altogether. If there are four players, each is playing a pirate from each of the four homeworlds. If one of them dies and rolls a new pirate, he must (according to the rules) create a new pirate who is from a different homeworld than all the other pirates. And Dead Pirate 2 is created to exactly replace Dead Pirate 1, probably about half the time if not more. I put that first option in there as kind of a safety net to prevent this a little. But once that pirate comes back to life, he's gonna have to not die again for a while. It makes death a big deal still, but allows for a second chance just in case.
Now, if the game had three pirates from the outset, and the dead pirate's player could choose the one he didn't play before, that would sit perfectly with me. He would almost certainly create a distinct and different character from the one that just died. I should probably write this all into the rules somewhere, but it seems very clunky. So I kind of deliberately left it out. It's a hard nut to crack.
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Giving one player the option to dictate that is pretty ballsy. Are you comfortable with the "most bored person trumps most enthused people" value here?
I didn't think about it in this way when I wrote it, but thinking about it now... yes. I think I am comfortable with that. If this one dude is kind of done with this game, it's probably run its course. Now if everyone else wants to continue and he just needed an exit from the game all because of work or kids or whatever, that's totally cool. But I figure that this game was never designed to run in the "level one to level twenty campaign" style. At its longest, it's probably built for around 6-9 months of weekly play or so. By then, someone will have gotten to Pirate King and the game will wrap anyway. I believe that all the most memorable games I've played in, whether as a PC or a GM, have had concrete endings. I like that. It keeps the game from becoming a TV show that should have ended at the end of season three.
Kyle, I am seriously excited to see how this plays for you and your group. Seriously. I am really pumped to hear how it goes.
David Berg:
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 10:00:38 PM
I really love Ballsery, but it may need some tweaking or might even need to be let go.
Hey, I was just pointing out that some of those descriptions were different. Different doesn't mean bad! If looking at a high Ballsery stat gets your players to try ridiculous, risky things and make the game more exciting, keep it!
I'd say, just be clear on what the differences are, and communicate that somehow. For example, maybe Ballsery isn't a basic Skull, it's some other category of character attribute.
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 10:00:38 PM
Now what if, instead of Griefery, Mockery was described as "making other humans feel bad about themselves"?
Heh. Nice.
I assume the GM won't feel any resistance to this for NPCs. Telling another player "your character now feels bad about themself" can be tricky if your friends are allergic to mind-controly encroachments on character sovereignty the way mine are. But even then, I think a warning up front that this is on the table would probably cover it.
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 10:00:38 PM
Now Vackery is kind of a special case. It seems inherently dangerous . . . I suppose I want it in there to actually reveal little bits of "what you do in the game world" stuff without spelling out the setting.
Makes sense to me! The only oddity I see is that it's the only such Skull. Are there any other dangerous or difficult situations that could appropriately imply Caterpillar's setting and activities?
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 10:00:38 PM
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I assume that if my character gets a funeral and I want to keep playing with the same RA, then I make a new swabbie, right?
This is something I'm very conflicted about. My gut reaction is "no", and I'll tell you why. In too many (D&D type) games, when you re-roll a new character (of the same class, specifically) to replace a dead one, that character turns into Dead Character 2. He's just like the first guy, and he gets played the same.
What's your objection to that? I can't really weigh in until I know where you're coming from on this.
I'm also unclear on the alternative. My character dies, the RA and I don't want to switch roles, I don't want to end the game... what are my options? Just sit and watch?
Quote from: Josh Porter on December 16, 2011, 10:00:38 PM
Now, if the game had three pirates from the outset, and the dead pirate's player could choose the one he didn't play before, that would sit perfectly with me. He would almost certainly create a distinct and different character from the one that just died. I should probably write this all into the rules somewhere, but it seems very clunky.
"If the game had three pirates from the outset, the dead pirate's player must choose the one no one's played before." Doesn't seem clunky to me...
Alternative ideas:
1) More starting planets/character types
2) Keep your current 4 starting planets/character types, but character death "unlocks" additional planets/types
3) If the player of a dead pirate wants to play a new character, they must invent a new planet/type, and there are rules and guidelines for that
Josh Porter:
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What's your objection to that? I can't really weigh in until I know where you're coming from on this.
This is a great question. I feel that dead character clones inherently take away most (if not all) of the impact that character death has on a game. When your character dies and is replaced by virtually the same guy, no one in the group feels a sense of importance at that character's death. It takes away impact from both the players and the characters, and neither group really responds to the fact that a cherished character just died. There may be mechanical setbacks for the new character's player (lower starting level, no gear, etc.), but from a narrative perspective the character is exactly the same.
I don't know what purpose character death serves in a game under these kinds of circumstances. The only reason I can see to have characters die is so that the game's fiction can react and change because of it. Now, since Caterpillar is a class-based game (as far as character creation) it is especially prone to this kind of death minimization. I was trying to leave this exact point a little vague (probably so I won't see myself as responsible when this exact thing happens), but now that we're talking about it, I think it needs to be addressed after all.
I really like your idea here. Quote
3) If the player of a dead pirate wants to play a new character, they must invent a new planet/type, and there are rules and guidelines for that
I can totally create a character sheet full of blanks that can be filled in upon its necessity. That's perfect. This option wouldn't be available at the initial character creation, but only when a pirate dies and wants to make a new pirate. He can choose between the pirates no one has yet played or make up his own. BRILLIIANT! I'm stealing this right away.
Incidentally, I've also done a little retooling of the starting list of basic Skulls. Here's the revised version.
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1. Asshattery: offending other humans by being an asshat
2. Avoidery: getting out of bad situations
3. Ballsery: succeeding in situations which no sane human would dare attempt
4. Bombery: blowing stuff up with explosives and the like
5. Chancery: having more luck than the average human
6. Clevery: outsmarting other humans
7. Deepery: successfully navigating/staying sane in The Deeps
8. Impactery: creating a lasting impression with other humans
9. Mockery: making other humans feel bad about themselves (NPCs and pirates both)
10. Patchery: applying a quick-and-dirty fix to a bad situation
11. Punchery: hitting things (not limited to punching)
12. Riggery: jury-rigging broken or malfunctioning gizmos
13. Shootery: shooting things (not limited to guns)
14. Sneakery: sneaking around and hiding without being seen
15. Thievery: stealing things
16. Trickery: fooling other humans
17. Traitery: backstabbing the humans who trust you
18. Vackery: maneuvering gracefully out in the vaccuum (usually in a space suit)
Given your feedback, I tried to make sure each of these implied an outcome, not just an attempt. And I added Deepery to the mix, just for a little more setting flavor.
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