Bizarre RPGs

[Shieldhaven]

No discussion of bizarre gaming would be complete without a mention of Noumenon.

Dominoes are your conflict resolution mechanic.

You're playing a giant bug (called a Sarcophagus) who lacks memory and identity. You spend your time in the game exploring a place called the Silhouette Rouge.

It gets a whole hell of a lot weirder and more purely into the language of symbols from there.

I want a reason to buy and run this someday, but for all that I love my various gaming groups, I doubt they'd go for this. I may buy this anyway, just for the pleasure of reading the weirdness - and idea-mining for astral spaces in my Mage: the Awakening game.

Haven

 

[Tetsubo]

This is a great game. I wish I hadn't sold my copy.

I haven't played it but it was an entertaining read...

 

[HellHound]

Thanks for the Junk Dreams encouragement. I'm still working out the system for the game (since I have the setting pretty much locked down now).

I just saw Chia Chian the other day at my FLGS. I'll give it a look-see next time I'm in town.

I hadn't heard of Noumenon before. Sounds right up there on the weird-scale.

Another one mentioned in passing was ZERO. I have this game, and I hate the mechanics, as well as that the cool ideas were buried in what ended up being a typical survival oriented RPG.

 

[DMH]

In pdf land, there is Liquid Crystal. You are a robot that has 24 hours to live, learn and then to convince a human council that you will not go amuck if you are given freedom. It is card based.

 

[Modoc]

Thanks for the Junk Dreams encouragement. I'm still working out the system for the game (since I have the setting pretty much locked down now).

HellHound,

Would you provide some of the background setting material (via email) for play testing?

 

[Dr Simon]

Damn, someone beat me to the Scarlet Johansson comment!

The now defunct UK gamaing magazine of the late 90s, 'arcane' (non-capitalisation deliberate), published a little freebie game called Puppetland which was kind of cool.

Basically, the player characters are puppets in a sort of dark fairy-tale land ruled by the tyrannical Mr Punch and his Nutcracker soldiers. As I recall player character choice ran the gamut from the tiny finger puppets to marionettes who had the best manipulation skills but were vulnerable because of their strings.

There was a wonderfully subversive atmosphere around the loss of innocence - the puppets were like children in their wonderful little fantasy land made by The Toymaker, but Mr. Punch had rebelled against The Toymaker, some say killed him, and brought about an end to the puppety Eden with his totalitarian regime. Reading between the lines, it would seem that in the real world outside the toyshop was Nazi occupied Eastern Europe and perhaps the Toymaker was a gentleman of the Jewish faith.

I must admit to never having played it but it seemed like a fun little mini-game. Character damage was charted by removing pieces from a jigsaw picture of your character, for example.

 

[Modoc]

Anyone have any good recommendations for military-esk type games.

I wouldn't mind finding something set in WWII. I know of a few, (1) for GURPS and (2) weird wars.

A bizarre one based in WWII would be interesting.. Does anything exist?

 

[HellHound]

HellHound,

Would you provide some of the background setting material (via email) for play testing?

A majority of the material is there in the first post, or on www.dreadgazebo.com

The game mechanics will settle the rest of the material down properly. The issue is that I have to work out mechanics that work and then I can finish conforming the setting to the mechanics.

Honestly, It could be played with the mechanics of Lacuna with some minor changes (making access a special ability, making static into a bad trip).

 

[HellHound]

The now defunct UK gamaing magazine of the late 90s, 'arcane' (non-capitalisation deliberate), published a little freebie game called Puppetland which was kind of cool.

Puppetland was also reprinted by Hogshead publishing, and was paired with another RPG that was at least as weird, and much harder to get into, called Powerkill (also written by John Tynes).

Here's John Kim's review of PowerKill

As mentioned, "Power Kill" is meta roleplaying game. After a normal RPG session, a brief session of "Power Kill" follows. The GM acts as a psychiatrist interviewing each player, who are ostensibly delusional mental patients. The GM then describes the events of the last session in the context of the real world: i.e. attacking an orcish fort might be shooting up a slum apartment building. Unfortunately, the tone of Power Kill is highly judgemental and it directly associates fantasy violence with real-world violence, and in a way that I do not consider particularly insightful. Quoting from it:

"Murder, theft, extortion, burglary, and other serious crimes are the bread and butter of RPG storytelling; regardless of a game's higher purpose, it still amount to story after story that consist of nothing more than gross criminal behavior covered in a glossy coat of genre acceptability."

While it might not literally say that this is "bad", I think that describing it as "nothing more" than criminal behavior certainly heavily implies this. I am also rather doubtful of its claim that no roleplaying game in print encourages law-abiding behavior. For example, Star Trek is a good example of an RPG with more-or-less law-abiding PC's.

It defines itself by saying "POWER KILL is meant to suggest a few answers. Or at least, to ask a few questions." In my opinion, it does ask some good questions -- but it does so in a judgemental tone that is biased to put pulp action in a negative light. A great many games do fall into a rut of action-adventure motifs, but I don't see that this game suggests anything useful about that rut.

 

[migo]

Anyone have any good recommendations for military-esk type games.

I wouldn't mind finding something set in WWII. I know of a few, (1) for GURPS and (2) weird wars.

A bizarre one based in WWII would be interesting.. Does anything exist?

Carry. I think it's for Vietnam. But you play a stretcher carrier.