IDEA BY CHUPABOB:

I am thinking about creating a game thread in this group. The concept is for a roleplaying game experience that can be played in about sixty seconds. I tried this idea about a year ago on three websites, and it failed miserably each time. I am thinking about trying it again here because I am just that stubborn.

Movie Trailer
 The GM would begin by describing a broad scenario or a setting. A player would then describe his character in a single sentence. The player would also declare a single action. Based on the tone of the setting and the difficulty of the action, the GM would set her target number ranging from 1 to 10. The player rolls a D10 with the hopes of matching or beating the target number. Based upon that roll, the player narrates what happens to the character. Each player gets one character and one action. The actions declared need not be sequential, just a dramatic line of dialog or a single action stunt. The player only gets one chance to declare and action which defines the character, and then win or lose, everyone moves onto a new scenario.

 Here is an example...

 GM: The Mongol-Aztec War "In a world where history has spun off course, Ghengis Khan leads his horde of soldiers to North America in search of the Seven Cities of Gold. His invasion seems unstoppable until his army crashes into another continent-wide empire, the Aztecs. Martial arts action meet blood sacrifice sorcery, and only one culture will survive on the Obsidian Continent." Default difficulty is a 5.

 Player #1: "Song Kung is a grim veteran soldier, raised in the Shoalin Temples of China and labored in service to the Khan for over ten years. In a raid of an Aztec fort, Song will leap with his spear off of his horse's back and up thirty feet over the fort wall."

 GM: Your difficulty is 5. If you fail, Song Kung will be severely injured.

 Player #1: I rolled a 6. "Song Kung leads the charge over the wall with superhuman-like grace and power, landing on the top of the wall and burying his spear into the chest of an Aztec warrior."

 Player #2: "Po-pe is a young Navajo brave who is quick with a short bow and has been hired by the Mongols as a scout with the hope that he can save his home village by siding with the winning faction. On a dark night, Po-pe will sneak into an enemy city and assassinate the Aztec military leader.

 GM: Your difficulty is 6, Player 2. If you fail, Po-pe will be killed.

 Player #2: I rolled a 3, groan. "Po-pe sneaks into the enemy camp and takes aim with his arrow, but the Aztec Jaguar Warrior he is targeting mystically transforms into a real jaguar at the last instant, and the arrow sail's over the cat's head. The jaguar catches the assassin's scent, chases, and mauls Po-pe."

 To me, this concept seems simple enough. When I tried it, it just wouldn't work. On the first site, nobody would try it, and multiple gamers openly criticized the concept as something which seemed no fun at all to them. On the second site, one gamer agreed to give it a shot. She stuck around long enough to declare one action, but she quit before rolling her die. On the third site, I picked up a couple of players, but they just wouldn't declare any actions worthy of rolls. The actions they were declaring were "I check my inventory to see what I'm carrying" and "I look over the fence". I was quite fed up by this time, and I got snarky. They quit.

 This is one of the games that I am thinking of starting here for the Timewasters. Based on my experience with it, however, I am not going to even start it here without first getting a thumbs up from the gamers who have been here longer than me.
This message was last updated by the GM at 18:48, Wed 15 July 2015.

Scenario: Think D-Day, but with Mechs. U.S. just landed on the beach with their Gundam mechs and Germany has their own Jaegers. Go!

Corporal Russel Davis of the 92nd Division of the U.S. Army is among the first African Americans to pilot a Gundam for Uncle Sam, and he feels the weight of responsibility. During the Battle of the Bulge, he attempt to repel a sneak attack by a German Jaeger in the darkness of the Black Forrest.

What dice roll do you want, Grant?

Sidenote:  I should probably edit that explanation to remove the second example of gameplay and my own griping, right?

This message was deleted by the player at 20:59, Fri 17 July 2015.

Wait, we can have multiple scenarios going at once?  Anyways I made this one for Grant's.

A German man named Johan Faust stands as the only experienced Jaeger Pilot at Juno Beach but will stop the Canadian advance at any cost.  He must stop them from linking up with the British forces at Gold Beach or the battle will be lost regardless of what happens elsewhere.

jioan wrote, "Wait, we can have multiple scenarios going at once?  Anyways I made this one for Grant's."

Yes, we can. At least, I am not seeing any reason why wouldn't keep multiple scenarios open.

Confusion mostly.  If we do one at a time then everyone is focused on one scenario and then we can move on.  It's like having more than one riddle in the riddle thread.  It's certainly possible but makes things harder to follow and people are less likely to be participating on the same riddle or in this case scenario.

Okay, let's make this a rule. We run a single scenario at a time. Players may request a return to an older scenario that is found earlier in the thread, and thus we make a sequel.

How about this; we make it a bit like Roll to Dodge except that when you post, you can either continue the scenario (for example, responding to someone else's post and building/reacting off of it), or you can post a new scenario (whether it be "new" or just a sequel to an old one, as it were)? This way, if you don't really like the current scene then you can post a new one as long as at least one person responded already. And then if you did like it and never got to try it because it was skipped too soon then you can just reboot it.

Also, Bob will need a 6 and jioan will need a 7.

Okay, I am game to try that method, Grant.

I rolled a 3, failure.

"Corporal Davis used his Gundam to belly crawl along a country road. The mecha's huge bulk made it even height with many trees even this low to the ground. Out of the darkness and fog, a Jaeger with a pointed German helmet landed on the back of Davis' Gundam. The enemy pointed its UberLuger weapon at the Gundam's upper back and fired three shots."

I opt to continue this scenario.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:08, Sun 19 July 2015.

I rolled a 9!

Johan sees Ottawa's finest mech, a red and white fortress type, heading the assault on the beach.  On its chest was the image of a giant bear head depicted with enraged red eyes and written above in bold black font was the word "Grizzly".  It was at least four times the height of his German assault type the Kreuzotter MK IV descended from the first anti-mech machine ever built.  The Canadians were covering the Grizzly from the land, sea, and air as it forged its way through German machine gun fire.  A few artillery shots struck it to no effect.  Johan began his plan hoping the enemy didn't have intel on the MK IV which had only entered limited production earlier this spring and got into position.  He waited patiently until the Grizzly was right above him and sprang up from his underground camouflaged position he had buried himself in.  He only had moments before being destroyed but was able to plant both of his knives the infamous Reißzähne deep into the Grizzly's back.  It twitched for a moment before shutting down and then crumpling to the ground.  This broke the Canadian's morale and they were cut down by the hundreds as they attempted to flee back into the waters.

Now what?  Do I try to make another action in this scenario?

That's... A good question. Maybe if you want to keep it going you can add on to the current scenario, or you could always just do another roll if you'd like, just with a new/different reason, like saying that your "PC" has gotten redeployed somewhere else and you have to fight some other menacing robot or whatever.

Hm, I feel like this game could play out something like I Did Not Want To Hear That where there is a simple scenario active and people post as much as they want until people get bored and choose to move on.

Unlike that game I think this one could benefit from some sort of player interaction.  The heart of RPGs is having some sort of continuity to interact with and it's usually more fun when others can affect what you do.  I also like the idea of creating a PC of sorts who is active throughout the scenario.  That would allow the players to interact in some way.

I am willing to give a little interaction a shot.

Corporal Davis awoke with a start and spat water grim his face. He looked around the dark room in which he sat, tied to a chair. "Where an I, you goosestepping sausage-eating sons of -- I recognize you, Herr Jonah, ace pilot of the robowaffe. We were told that you were an honorable soldier. Was I told a lie?"

Davis attempts to slip out of his bindings and escape.

I think the previous scenario died out.

Scenario: Thor's Angels
In a world where the gods of Asgard fight for peace and justice, there are some places where even might Thor cannot go. Thor finds himself in representatives, woman who can travel to the realms that men cannot reach. Drawing inspiration from his father's Valkyrie warriors, the lord of thunder seeks female recruits who will carry his will and his power with them. He will draw upon the Valkyries themselves who are already pledged to their services to Asgard, but he will consider other Asgardian warriors, goddesses from other pantheons, and super-powered mortals. (Canon Marvel characters, mythological characters, and original characters are fair game)

Good premise, interesting concept, should be revived.

I agree, this reminds me of Roll for Shoes, but with more death and less crazyness.

Well, this playtest was never officially ended. Pick a scenario from above and post an action. Even better, start your own scenario, guys.

It's the first day of the new catalog, and your local super market has started selling magical wands.  There's a mad rush as everyone wants to get all the magic they can get their hands on.

In reply to Nyoze (msg # 20):
It's the first day of the new catalog, and your local super market has started selling magical wands.  There's a mad rush as everyone wants to get all the magic they can get their hands on.

Talon is a fourteen year old hooligan whose goal in life is to become more infamous than his friends before he is finally caught. Sneaks a bag full of magic-reacting smoke bombs into the store with a scheme to smoke out the entire store, cause some chaos, and maybe sneak away with a free wand of his own in the blind anarchy.

The store hired extra security for today, because they knew the wands were going to cause some Chaos.  Your difficulty is 7.

I rolled a 7. Talon's bombs cause a wild reaction, drawing on the magic in the wands to create a cloud bank which looks like a herd of charging rhinos (and sounds like one too). In the blind panic, he crawls towards the boxes of wands and reaches -- only to be yanked away by an orc in a security guard uniform. Talon wiggles free from his jacket and escapes from the store. He looks down at his hand and admires: a ruler? "Aw bullocks!"

Jadyn rolled into the smoke.  He had to get his hands on a wand!  He moved over to the counter and started feeling his way over to where he remembered the wand display was, his shirt pulled tightly over his mouth, his eyes watering, his nose running as the caustic gas ramped its irritation of his mucous membranes up to 11.  Does he make it?

I think one problem of this thread is that it 1) requires whoever is playing the part of the GM to respond to every player input to set a difficulty number, 2) that same player than has to get back to the game to roll the die and post a follow up.  Perhaps the game could be tweaked like this:

Player A posts something that they want to do, then assigns a difficulty number.
Player B then rolls the die, writes up what happened with A then writes a new attempted action.
Player C then rolls the die, writes up what happened with B...

And of course Player C might be Player A posting again.

I like it. We should test that new methodology with a fresh scenario.

Let's try this again using the suggested rules that Bart explained in his last post.

Ducks in Space
Scholars predicted that the first intelligent life form to develop a feasible form of faster-than-light travel would dominate the entire galaxy. That much proved to be true. The part that they missed was to predict that this species would be ducks. The Interstellar Waterfowl Fleet needs you. In the traditions of Darkwing Duck, The Duck Avenger, Howard the Duck, and Duck Dodgers, waddle to infinity and beyond!

Charles the Duck, usually just called Chuck, hopped into his velocipede and revved the engine.  Carefully looking around for oncoming traffic he attempted to merge onto the gopath and drive to the spacedock.

Roll 3d10, 8's and above are successes, if you roll a 10 it counts as a success and you get an additional reroll.  5 or more successes is an extraordinary success.  You need at least 1 success to drive to the spacedock.

rolled 5, 3, & 1

Charles the Duck suffered a terrible velocipede accident on his way to the spaceport. His beak was completely destroyed. The surgeons of the Interstellar Waterfowl Fleet will attempt to save his life, rebuild him, make his faster, stronger, better...

Roll 1d10. Even numbers are a success. The higher the number rolled, the more powers Charles will gain from his cyberfeather technology.

more

Chuck the Duck rolled out of the surgery, gingerly holding his stomach where the doctor had kicked him.

"Never come back, do you hear!" the surgeon shouted.

Chuck rolled onto his knees and carefully pushed up onto his feet.  What?  What had he said that was so bad?  He'd jokingly said that it had been easier to chew his food without a bill and then the surgeon had flipped the bed, ripped the IV out while Chuck moaned on the floor, then kicked the bandage-covered duck out of the operating bay.

"I'm never fixing you, if you don't even want a beak again.  Fine, live with the disfigurement, don't look like the rest of us duckly men.  You will live a long life in your pain, in your agony, crying yourself to sleep every day.  People shall call you a Boo-hoo-man!"

Chuck staggered to his feet.  Worker's Comp wasn't going to take this very well.  He had to get home, he had to get back to his blender and make a strawberry banana smoothie.

Roll 1d8.  On a 2-5, Chuck gets back home safely.  On a 6-7 he makes a strawberry banana smoothie.  One an 8 he makes it into a strawberry banana split.  One a 1 he ends up in Troubletown!

Wow, just wow.

I rolled 1.
Chuck the Duck staggers through a brightly lit futuristic cityscape, but with his fading vision, it looks more like a dim cyberpunk dystopia. His second-hand cybernetics ("Made on Mars") fizzle and fail one by one in a cascading pattern. Chuck has stumbled into the bad neighborhood of Trouble Town. He collapses in an alley.

In the static haze of his short-circuiting robotic vision, he begins to see a pattern emerge from the chaos. The figure of a duck with outstretched wings emerges from the static.


This vision of beauty greets him. "Hello Chuck, it is time for you to finally fly. Take my hand and come with me into the light."

THE END

The game seems a bit complicated, and I agree that the thread itself requires a mini gm for this to really work...

yea, seems fun.. but both those things could be reworked, maybe a rule update would make breathe some life into this

Let me know if you want me to close this thread. Chupabob will be sooo disappointed

I'm fine for closing this, since we already have the Dungeoneering thread.

Sorry ChupaBob!