So I have taken a break from telling people of the Mantid threat and the inevitable hyperspace war that is to come(though seriously guys, its gonna happen) in order to do some design work for Game Chef. I have a lot of ideas, so lets get to digging.
Theme: Technology
Alright technology can mean a whole lot of things. So I think I might want interleave technology with the rest of the game. I am not sure I can come up with a new method or device to use while gaming so I think I will need to have technology sit as the ever present landscape upon which the game will play out. So I am thinking maybe doing something with VR as a major setting element, or perhaps holodecks, or some such reality thing. I have just always liked the idea that people get trapped in technology as it makes them virtual gods, and the weirdness that happens because of it. But we shall see, this is just the rough brainstorming of ideas.
Maybe you are people with technology attempting to save the world from ignorance. Or perhaps you are all students at mad scientist preparatory school and you need to complete your projects all while trying to get up the nerve to talk to that special someone and live up to your parents unrealistic expectations. Hard to say at this point. Lets see where it goes.
...ooh, here's a thought a beneficent AI collective is fighting the Bad AI AUTHORITY and must enlist the aid of elite agents in this struggle for the very soul of the world...or something.
Ingredients: alarm, dance, sketch, and sunlight
So the ingredient, Alarm, jumps right out at me from the start. I keep thinking security alarms and the like. Also the idea of a clock counting down to some terrible thing(like waking up?) and you must accomplish you task before the alarm reaches that time. So I am thinking Heists, which is good because it also gives me a framework from which to build my game. You play a crew of thieves, or secret agents, or some other clandestine type. you are taking down marks and committing heists. Maybe corporate espionage? Stealing technology for your corp. Like a competent version of Nedry from Jurassic Park. Stealing tomorrows tech, today!
The other ones are bit harder to nail down. For dancing all I can think is, you must commit heists so you can come to the enchantment under the sea dance? Maybe you are committing heists in order to bring two lover together despite the vast chasm that separate them and it all culminates in a dance? Or perhaps this is a Bollywood style heist and you must do everything to a dance number? I guess I can think of very little to deal with dancing just yet.
Sketch is either a rough drawing or a humorous skit. I am really unsure how to implement this...guess I will think on this a bit more?
Sunlight is really quite expansive though my first thought is vampires(and how they are the work of our secret mantid overlords). If I used vampires in this game it would give a nice parallel with Alarm, as you must complete your goal before sunrise. Maybe vampires are genetic super-soldiers built for corporate espionage. Sunlight also leads me to other interesting ideas, solar panels/power, Lions(I had heard that they were created from the sun), Vitamin D, Photic Sneeze Reflex, and space exploration(solar sails).
So right now I am leaning toward technologically created vampires who commit corporate espionage in a near future, and must do so before dawn.
So let us now brainstorm some interesting mechanics. Are you excited? I know I sure am. I would very much like character creation to be pretty simple, yet leave room for some complexity in play. I am leaning toward something like keywords. You have X number of keywords that describe your characters background and competencies. I also really like Keys from Shadows of Yesterday, so I will probably do something like taht for the characters. I am also a fan of not rolling unless the situation is dire, or only rolling when something interesting can happen no matter what. So I think I want the basic difficulty of tasks to be around 50% for basic tasks. I also like dice pools and that tactile feel of empowerment they bring to the game.
Perhaps some sort of resource management and group mechanics...
H'okay, here is the basic idea for the mechanics. You flip coins. Each character has a pool of coins that they can use to complete tasks. You have a list(or paragraph, or whatever, of keywords that describe your competencies. You can choose one coin per competency, and then you flip the coins(or toss them, I like the idea of an I Ching style thing going on here(not sure how to incorporate hexagrams just yet). Heads means you succeed, more head means you succeed better. Tails make things complicated, more tails makes things more complicated. So it is possible, in this methodology to virtually guaranty success, but get enough complication that it causes even more danger. You can succeed and still botch, so the game will partially be about deciding how much you want to risk versus how much you need to succeed. There will also be a group pool of coins which you can take from and add to. For everyone of your coins you add to the group pool the group pool actually grows by two coins. However anyone can use those coins at any time. I want to do more with this idea, but I am still fiddling around with the basics of the idea.
There will be an alarm meter that runs throughout the game as well as a sunlight meter that counts down to sunrise. For every time something gets too obvious the alarm meter will go up. When it is mixed then the op is blow and you just need to get out of their with your lives intact and hope your employers don't hold a grudge. The sunrise meter ticks down after every every scene, when it hits zero it is sunrise and you are now trapped, or must sleep, or something. You have a choice at each complication of either raising the alarm meter a little bit, lowering the sunrise meter a bit more than you normally would for that scene, or taking ongoing consequences of a more immediate nature(like damage, or getting stressed out and sloppy).
The other ones are bit harder to nail down. For dancing all I can think is, you must commit heists so you can come to the enchantment under the sea dance? Maybe you are committing heists in order to bring two lover together despite the vast chasm that separate them and it all culminates in a dance? Or perhaps this is a Bollywood style heist and you must do everything to a dance number? I guess I can think of very little to deal with dancing just yet.
Sketch is either a rough drawing or a humorous skit. I am really unsure how to implement this...guess I will think on this a bit more?
Sunlight is really quite expansive though my first thought is vampires(and how they are the work of our secret mantid overlords). If I used vampires in this game it would give a nice parallel with Alarm, as you must complete your goal before sunrise. Maybe vampires are genetic super-soldiers built for corporate espionage. Sunlight also leads me to other interesting ideas, solar panels/power, Lions(I had heard that they were created from the sun), Vitamin D, Photic Sneeze Reflex, and space exploration(solar sails).
So right now I am leaning toward technologically created vampires who commit corporate espionage in a near future, and must do so before dawn.
So let us now brainstorm some interesting mechanics. Are you excited? I know I sure am. I would very much like character creation to be pretty simple, yet leave room for some complexity in play. I am leaning toward something like keywords. You have X number of keywords that describe your characters background and competencies. I also really like Keys from Shadows of Yesterday, so I will probably do something like taht for the characters. I am also a fan of not rolling unless the situation is dire, or only rolling when something interesting can happen no matter what. So I think I want the basic difficulty of tasks to be around 50% for basic tasks. I also like dice pools and that tactile feel of empowerment they bring to the game.
Perhaps some sort of resource management and group mechanics...
H'okay, here is the basic idea for the mechanics. You flip coins. Each character has a pool of coins that they can use to complete tasks. You have a list(or paragraph, or whatever, of keywords that describe your competencies. You can choose one coin per competency, and then you flip the coins(or toss them, I like the idea of an I Ching style thing going on here(not sure how to incorporate hexagrams just yet). Heads means you succeed, more head means you succeed better. Tails make things complicated, more tails makes things more complicated. So it is possible, in this methodology to virtually guaranty success, but get enough complication that it causes even more danger. You can succeed and still botch, so the game will partially be about deciding how much you want to risk versus how much you need to succeed. There will also be a group pool of coins which you can take from and add to. For everyone of your coins you add to the group pool the group pool actually grows by two coins. However anyone can use those coins at any time. I want to do more with this idea, but I am still fiddling around with the basics of the idea.
There will be an alarm meter that runs throughout the game as well as a sunlight meter that counts down to sunrise. For every time something gets too obvious the alarm meter will go up. When it is mixed then the op is blow and you just need to get out of their with your lives intact and hope your employers don't hold a grudge. The sunrise meter ticks down after every every scene, when it hits zero it is sunrise and you are now trapped, or must sleep, or something. You have a choice at each complication of either raising the alarm meter a little bit, lowering the sunrise meter a bit more than you normally would for that scene, or taking ongoing consequences of a more immediate nature(like damage, or getting stressed out and sloppy).
So that is what I have so far, for this year's Game Chef. I would love to hear what you think. This is all just brainstorming at this point, so all of this is subject to change. Anyway, that is enough for now. I have to go deal with this Mantid mind control nonsense before they kick off the inevitable hyperspace war that is to come.
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