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I've been thinking about combining my hobbies of The Brick and Role
Playing. The question is what is the best way to go about it. Some
questions I've been asking myself:
1. Do I go with an existing RPG and just use LEGO bricks to build sets?
2. Do I use LEGO minifigs, or do I use standard metal miniatures?
3. Do I use a rules light system, or a heavy system, or something in
between?
4. Do I use a canned setting, or build my own setting which is keyed to
a LEGO theme?
5. If I key the setting to a LEGO theme, do I try and maintain purity,
or do I just use the theme as a starting point?
6. If I don't go with an existing game, do I build from scratch, or do I
start with an existing game, and adapt it?
7. What is the intention of the game? A game for one off con events? An
alternative RPG to give a break from something else? A long term
campaign as a primary game?
I'm very strongly thinking that I want to use LEGO elements for scenery
and miniatures. This will limit the inhabitants of the setting to those
easily representable by LEGO elements. A reasonable number of creatures
exist, and many more can be built from bricks, so a wide range of
settings should be possible. I'm mostly leaning to a fantasy setting
since I find that is what I enjoy gaming the most. Science Fiction also
works well and could be fun with LEGO.
There is some consideration of a Pirate themed game to interact with
Evil Stevie's Pirate Game.
I've been looking at FUDGE, http://www.fudgerpg.com for one possibility
of a game basis. My gut feel is that I want a game of modest complexity.
It should be skill based, and have enough detail in the skills to allow
for interesting characters. I would like to be able to run a moderately
long term campaign, but probably won't play too often, so character
development should be granular so something can improve at least every
few sessions, if not more often. On the flip side, there has to be
enough depth that a years worth of gaming doesn't result in unplayable
characters.
I'd like to base the game heavily in an existing rules set to make it
easier to recruit players (this makes me wonder if I should look at D20,
though long ago I got tired of many of the elements of D&D).
A brick based RPG clearly calls for a moderately detailed combat system
which is tactical in nature (this would probably eliminate Everway for
example [of course Everway's character generation system wouldn't
interact with LEGO too well either I don't think]). On the other hand,
the toyness of bricks suggest that the system should not be too serious
or too detailed.
I had been thinking of trying to use LEGO pieces to build the character
sheet, but I think that wouldn't really work out (you'd be constantly
looking at the rules to determine just what skills you had). On the
other hand, keeping track of things like hit points and spell points
screams out for use of bricks (for wounds, you can even use different
colors for different meanings [red=wounds, blue=stun, green=poison]).
Depending on the system, either a large plate or a baseplate could be
used (20-30 hit points would fit on a 6x6 plate, magic users could use a
6x10 plate to have room for their spell points (even larger if they have
things like crystals which store spell points, or familiars which have
their own).
It might be interesting to produce printed tiles for all the equipment
used in the game. Then you can just stick the tiles onto a plate and
have an easy record of your equipment, and encumbrance could even be
based on the space taken on a plate by all your equipment. Things like
arrows could be represented by bricks where different colors represent
different quantities (though don't use too many colors). An alternative
would be to just assume the quiver is the main encumbrance, and just
keep track of the arrows separately.
Of course treasure would be represented using LEGO treasure. Assume the
values of gold coins are the number of silver pieces. Use grey 1x1 round
plates to count silver pieces. You could make a little compartment for
small treasure on the hit point card. The compartment should have a
firmly closing lid (attaches by a few studs for example).
Character's minifigs should try to be representative of what the
character wears, but need not be absolute. Perhaps the system should
encourage modest or light armor so not everyone is wearing a helmet. A
fair range of armor is certainly representable given the variety of
armor pieces, and torso printings.
Even before thinking about a brick oriented RPG, I've actually had
thoughts about setting up a campaign world where most folks only wear
leather or similar light armors. The game system for such a campaign
should then balance the effects of armor with the benefits of mobility
for lightly armored folks. The common LEGO weapons, broad sword,
cutlass, hatchet, and spear all work well with light armor. The heavier
weapons, katana, lance, battle axe, and bastard sword would then be
restricted to knights and nobility. Making the world metal poor might be
interesting. Then the silveryness of the bastard sword might be easily
justified by implying that the only way to get such a large weapon is by
magic. Of course the silver breast plate would represent magical armor
which is much lighter. Of course implying magic by a silver weapon means
that no one has a common dagger, but perhaps you just assume everyone
has a common dagger, and silver daggers are the most common magic weapon
(of course the large number of silver daggers suggests playing in
Katherine Kerr's world...). Of course a number of constructed weapons
can be made and need to be dealt with (has anyone put together a nice
catalog of them?).
I haven't thought as much about non-Fantasy genres, but the whole
weapons issue is a whole lot easier there. You don't need anything more
than what's available for Pirate, Wild West, and other similar
historical genres. There's plenty of good space weapons ideas to fulfill
anyone's needs there.
One question is how the standard LEGO factions play into the game. I
think I would build a campaign world to suit. I would probably try and
make most of the factions available to the PCs, but I would probably ask
the players to decide as a group which set of compatible factions they
would play (though it might be possible to play a character from an
incompatible faction in certain circumstances). Generally PCs aren't
usually connected too tightly to the government though, so probably
there wouldn't be much of a problem (so perhaps the one or two
soldier/knight/noble characters come from a faction, and every one else
uses a generic factionless figure). Of course shields present somewhat
of a problem, but maybe the Dragon Masters and Black Knights are
declared to not be a faction, and perhaps the dragon is the symbol of
the adventurers guild or something.
I would make the campaign mostly human centric, but some non-humans are
clearly useable. I don't usually do elves in my FRPGs because they
generally are just set up as humans which are better at magic. Some of
the possible races (not all would be available for PCs):
- human
- dwarf (use stubby legs)
- wookies
- ewoks (well, maybe not - though I'm not personally offended by them)
- goblins
- cat people (Fabuland head)
- rat people (Fabuland head)
- wolfman (new head or Fabuland)
- Stingrays
- Bulls
- undead (skeletons, mummies, Darth Vader heads)
- lizard men (Fabuland head)
I think I would be inclined to restrict PCs to human, dwarf, goblin, and
perhaps cat people (the Fabuland cat head is just to nice [almost cute,
but not absurdly so, and hey, I'm a sucker for cats]). I'd probably
allow rat people also (I've used rat people in some of my FRPGs as a
race which lives in the undercity, too bad the Fabuland head looks a
little to goofy for such a shadowy racial concept.
I think I would set up the campaign to be strongly centered on a modest
town for which the important buildings and their neighborhoods could be
constructed as permanent sets. I've got some ideas on modular dungeon
pieces which would make it easy to set up dungeons for exploration (the
ease of this compared to building wild expanses of wilderness suggest a
return to the dungeon oriented campaigns, but with care, plenty of
outdoors can be done also).
I welcome additional thoughts and ideas.
FUT: lugnet.fun.gaming
Frank
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Message has 9 Replies:
 | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) [snip] (...) Check out this (URL) started it a long time ago and have not had a chance to expand on it. Feel free to strip mine it for any ideas. It's Pure! Too Pure(dice). Best DaveG (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| In lugnet.fun.gaming, Frank Filz writes: <Major snippage> (...) If you ask me, and this is just my opinion, a great set of movement based rules would be one following the Playstation game Final Fantasy Tactics. Here's how it works, and would (...) (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| Frank, this sounds like a game I would love to play. I'm such a visual person that I feel like I miss out in standard RPG's. I like them, but a hint of physical world like LEGO would be cool. Here are my suggestions to your questions posed: (...) (...) (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) Probably the simplest, but I suspect difficult to capture the "feel" of a brick built game. My wife is in a 7th Seas campaign that routinely uses my LEGO projects as sets and backdrops; it seems to work quite well, although they use metal (...) (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) I think a lot of these questions will answer themselves if you can answer one question: who is the game intended for? Lego fans, role-playing fans, or something in between? The more you intend it to be for Lego fans or one-off convention (...) (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) Hmmm...a brick RPG? This sounds sweet, I would go about borrowing several aspects from other brick RPGs on the net, and adapting them to your respective tastes. (...) Definitely, I prefer Science Fiction, but Fantasy also works well, but try (...) (22 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) Interesting questions... ...and right up my alley too.... =) (...) Depends on how detailed you want the role-playing to be, and whether you want to design a game to accomodate that detail. *Time for a shameless plug (surprisingly the first (...) (22 years ago, 15-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| As a long time gamer I thought I would make a few suggestions (...) If you plan to play locally with friends, i recommend us 3rd edition D&D. If you want quicker and easier for convention play, I suggest using brik war rules for the combat and (...) (22 years ago, 16-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| Hi Frank and all, I just got around to reading this thread and it seems that you've already decided to bag the idea, but I wanted to make some comments. (...) I think this is the heaviest question here. Everything else stems from how this is (...) (22 years ago, 19-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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