The Forge Archives

or, FLCL-inspired play design.

(FLCL - pronounced 'Fooly Cooly' - is a six-episode anime series from Gainax. i watched it again after a space of a few years this past week, and have been grooving on it for the whole time. in it, there's a kid, named Naota.. who has a lot of.. crazy things happen to him. Adult Swim on Cartoon Network is re-airing it - first run just finished - starting tonight, Wednesday, at midnight. check it out. can also rent the three dvds from somewhere like netflix.com)

Typically, you have a GM of some sort and a motley assortment of Players. Yes, yes, the GM is also a player, but I'm not sure what else I'd call the people playing the characters. PCs are the characters in question, not the people, so... anyway.

One GM, and he's got his Players spread out before him. What if you swapped that around? One Player, and a motley assortment of GMs..

The player and his PC are, obviously, the main character. The protagonist, focus, et cetera. The whole story focuses around him and what's going on his life.

The GMs each control a handful of NPCs. GMs would have some kind of resource pool; spending something from this pool would allow them to push a character of theirs to the forefront, or steer a scene one direction or another.

If it were an anime-style game - and I think this would work great for just about -any- kind of anime/manga game - the PC would start out weak, inexperienced, et cetera. The GMs would be working to help, hurt, influence, mold the PC in a certain direction.

This is kind of sketchy, but I got to thinking about this as I was trying to fall asleep this morning, and figured it might be kind of interested to some people.

Hey Michael,

What if you swapped that around? One Player, and a motley assortment of GMs..

I know of two games with this setup, and bizarrely, without realizing they were both alike in this way, our group played them on the same day. I posted about it http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6635">here. Anyway, as a result, I think it's productive design territory.

Paul

Hah! The terrible part is, I remember reading this thread now that you've linked it. Maybe it just sat unnoticed in my brain for awhile and came out this way. It's doubly-weird because 'My Love For You is Way Out of Line' is maybe the best title of anything, ever.

Thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll see if I can spin it off into something non-match-make-y.

The idea for the anime game is based on the concept that there ought to only be a single protagonist? That's pretty cool, thinking about it. I assume that any number of GMs is appropriate? This would solve a lot of certain kinds of problems that I can think of.

Two questions. First, do you think that it would be hard to decide on who gets to play the protagonist. Deciding on a single GM can be hard at times, but that has the advantage that the GMing is often somewhat onerous, and players seem to outnumber GMs. So with your game, won't we all be clamoring to play the protagonist? Could rotation of that role be incorporated, perhaps?

Second, how do you split up the power of the GMs? Especially if their number is variable. See Rob's (AKA RobMaudDib) game COTEC, in he design forum for some possible ideas. Though I'd think that they might be inappropriate for what you're going for. Still...

Anyhow, sounds interesting.

Mike

Different GMs could have their "traits" reference what themes they'll be inflicting on the poor, hapless, FLCL-style protagonist. For example, using FLCL as an example, one GM could be in charge of anything having to do with robots, while another GM controls the NPCs the protagonist knows from school, and yet another controls all aspects of the alien pirate metaplot. The GMs take turns introducing their story elements for a little while, the player gets to react, then it's the next GM's turn.

Mike,

I think using this as some kind of base for anime-style games has some promise, so I'm going to go with that assumption for the mechanics in the rest of this.

On the matter of who gets to be the main character:

There are three main formats for anime:
* the "full season" run; 26 episodes, each approx. 20 minutes;
* the "half season" run; 12-13 episodes, each approx. 20 minutes;
* the OVA/straight-to-video; two to six episodes, generally, and 30-45 minutes.

Such a game, then, could be built around a very theme-appropriate episodic and seasonal structure. In a short game, it'd be okay if only one or two people out of, say, five or six got to be the protagonist that time; next game, other people would play.

In the TV season runs, it'd be easy to have different "episodes" (sessions) on different characters, and swap about that way.

Rotation of roles, then, is easily incorporated into the theme.

As for second..

I think gobi's suggestion is probably pretty great. =) Was about what I was thinking.

I'll take a look at Rob's stuff tonight.

A more streamlined form of what I was thinking about:

A player makes a character with a rough archetypal concept and maybe they get to decide their genre as well. Nothing more.

The GMs have plots that they introduce to the protagonist. These introduction scenes last around 5-10 minutes of real-time each and are essentially the same as a normal session with a single player and a single GM. After one GM's scene is over, it's the next GM's turn to do their scene.

After all the GMs have had their introductions, the player chooses which part of the collective story the protagonist wishes to pursue, in effect rewarding the GM who made that story element with the protagonist's interest. At the end of the session, the player distributes Director Points to the GMs who entertained the player the most with their story elements.

Those director points can be used at any time to interrupt another GMs turn and run the scene for exactly five minutes, after which point the original GM can conclude what remains of his scene.

This sort of reminds me of a Greek tragedy role-playing game where the GMs are the Olympian gods toying with the fate of a single hero protagonist.

Competitive storytelling?