Asmor
First Post
I'll try to be brief in explaining my motivations here. Combat in most RPGs is its own game, it's own subsystem distinct from the game as a whole. Sometimes it's even the focus of the entire system, as often seems to be the case with D&D.
But most other things usually come down to a single die roll, or some slightly glorified set of die rolls (e.g. skill challenges).
So I was thinking... what if there were an RPG where most things were resolved with their own minigames.
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Ideally, these minigames should meet the following criteria.
1. Fast to set up. This should be something which, with appropriate preparation, is quick and easy to pull out at a moment's notice.
2. Fast and easy to play. Someone should be able to learn a minigame they've never played before very, very quickly, and be able to resolve it just as quickly. This is also important because no matter how many different minigames there are, they will get repetitive fairly quickly and so you don't want the process to be involved.
3. Have a clear victory condition. Going along with this, the game should only be used when there are clear rewards and consequences for victory or defeat. If it's the sort of thing where players can keep trying until they succeed, just let them succeed. As a general rule of thumb, each character should only ever get one single attempt at the minigame for any given challenge.
4. Most importantly, it should be evocative. The whole point of using minigames is to make it feel like you're actually doing whatever it is your character is trying to accomplish. It doesn't need to be deep or strategic or even challenging. It just has to be evocative!
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I've come up with two of them so far. Both of them use a deck of cards, using red cards as successes and black cards as failures.
Searching The GM assigns a difficulty to the search. That's how many failures are in the deck. There is a single success. The cards are shuffled and laid out on the table. The player gets to look at a certain number of cards based on their search skill; they win if they find the success.
Stealth There is a single failure, representing the player, in the deck. There are a number of successes based on the player's stealth skill. The GM draws a number of cards from the deck based on the difficulty of the task. As long as the player's card (the failure) avoids being found-- i.e. if the GM draws only successes-- the player wins.
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So that's what I've got so far. Besides decks of cards, I'm also interesting in using chess boards and pieces, dice, and other items that most gamers would have lying around.
I'd like to have minigames for climbing, jumping, swimming, picking locks/deactivating traps, etc, but haven't yet hit on any ideas which meet all of my criteria above.
Actually, I haven't put a whole lot of thought into this at all... I literally just started thinking about it less than an hour ago while trying to go to sleep and decided I'd never be able to get to sleep unless I wrote it down! So... sorry for my sleep-addled ideas.
But most other things usually come down to a single die roll, or some slightly glorified set of die rolls (e.g. skill challenges).
So I was thinking... what if there were an RPG where most things were resolved with their own minigames.
-------------------
Ideally, these minigames should meet the following criteria.
1. Fast to set up. This should be something which, with appropriate preparation, is quick and easy to pull out at a moment's notice.
2. Fast and easy to play. Someone should be able to learn a minigame they've never played before very, very quickly, and be able to resolve it just as quickly. This is also important because no matter how many different minigames there are, they will get repetitive fairly quickly and so you don't want the process to be involved.
3. Have a clear victory condition. Going along with this, the game should only be used when there are clear rewards and consequences for victory or defeat. If it's the sort of thing where players can keep trying until they succeed, just let them succeed. As a general rule of thumb, each character should only ever get one single attempt at the minigame for any given challenge.
4. Most importantly, it should be evocative. The whole point of using minigames is to make it feel like you're actually doing whatever it is your character is trying to accomplish. It doesn't need to be deep or strategic or even challenging. It just has to be evocative!
-------------------
I've come up with two of them so far. Both of them use a deck of cards, using red cards as successes and black cards as failures.
Searching The GM assigns a difficulty to the search. That's how many failures are in the deck. There is a single success. The cards are shuffled and laid out on the table. The player gets to look at a certain number of cards based on their search skill; they win if they find the success.
Stealth There is a single failure, representing the player, in the deck. There are a number of successes based on the player's stealth skill. The GM draws a number of cards from the deck based on the difficulty of the task. As long as the player's card (the failure) avoids being found-- i.e. if the GM draws only successes-- the player wins.
--------------------
So that's what I've got so far. Besides decks of cards, I'm also interesting in using chess boards and pieces, dice, and other items that most gamers would have lying around.
I'd like to have minigames for climbing, jumping, swimming, picking locks/deactivating traps, etc, but haven't yet hit on any ideas which meet all of my criteria above.
Actually, I haven't put a whole lot of thought into this at all... I literally just started thinking about it less than an hour ago while trying to go to sleep and decided I'd never be able to get to sleep unless I wrote it down! So... sorry for my sleep-addled ideas.
