Subject:
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Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming
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Date:
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Wed, 15 May 2002 05:52:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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3566 times
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James Brown wrote:
> 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 minis.
Having got interested in 7th Sea about the same time as LEGO, I
certainly considered a connection there... Actually, I think my interest
in LEGO Pirate ships may have been an influence on checking out 7th Sea
(a demo game which I was actually able to attend the day after I picked
it up in the store helped also). 7th Sea mechanics seem to be a good
possibility for a brick based RPG also in that they are geared to
"cinematic" play (i.e. less serious).
> > 3. Do I use a rules light system, or a heavy system, or something in
> > between?
>
> I would suggest something in between. It's been my experience that light
> and heavy rules systems each need to have the setting carry them, or they'll
> only really appeal to the (relatively smaller) chunk of gamers that like
> that extreme of system.
That's my inclination also.
> > 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?
>
> Building from scratch is always a lot of work, in design and playtesting. I
> would suggest starting with another system that you like, or that has the
> right "feel", and strip it down to it's basic mechanics and then build up again.
Again my inclination.
> > 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 would suggest the latter two; a well-built game is certainly adaptable
> enough to be either a short break from other games or a long running game in
> it's own right. For con events, I would suggest that the Pirate Game and
> Brick Wars are probably better suited, although a appendix that would gave a
> conversion formula to Brick Wars would be neat.
Though it could be neat to spec out a HUGE dungeon and have players
supply various bits of it, and set up the whole dungeon. Then perhaps
the game is run as two teams. One running the defenders, one running the
adventurers... Of course there would have to be rules on activation of
the defenders and possibly reasons they won't stray far from home. Of
course the adventurers have a map (which probably has some inaccuracies)
to justify the layout of the whole dungeon from the start.
> If you wanted to go with something like this, you could fairly easily run
> "parallel" games, where the Pirate Game governed interactions on the sea,
> and the RPG governed what else went on in the setting. Look at how FASA
> split Battletech and Mechwarrior.
I'm definitely considering that the Pirate Game would make a fine set of
mechanics for naval combat with minor tweaking to how cannon shot
affects people.
> Something like the Pendragon system might work for this, where you mark off
> the skills you use (successfully) in the games and once every X sessions,
> you can attempt to improve those skills. Or look at a system like Star Wars
> where you can usually gain enough points in an adventure or two to raise a
> skill, but need to save if you want to raise something you're already very
> good at.
Rune Quest had a decent system which allowed incremental experience.
There was also a system a friend developed for Traveller where each game
session you got a few experience rolls. To raise a skill to the next
level (N+1), you needed N+1 skill points. To get a skill point, you
rolled 2d6 against 8+N (7 + new level). If you failed that roll, you
made a tick beside the skill. You added the ticks (failure points) to
the roll. I ran a game for a while where I ended up reducing the skills
list to about 30 skills (each with binary specializations) with a max
skill level of 6. It worked pretty well.
> > 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).
>
> Sounds like you need GURPS LEGO. :)
GURPS would be a nice start, especially as it's a well known game
system. Unfortunately, I think it has way too much detail, and I have
serious problems with it's core mechanics (skill rolls, combat, damage).
It does have a great set of advantages and disadvantages though (the
game I spent the most effort at designing, which actually started from
that Traveler system but sought to replace the experience die rolls with
a points system, ended up with a points based character system which
conveniently used a similar enough point scale that GURPS advantages and
disadvantages could be easily converted over).
> > 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).
>
> Have the character generation be a building process, and then put on plain
> paper. There's a lot of graphical possibility for making a character sheet
> look "LEGO". Skills are listed with a number of bricks above them that are
> shaded in as you go up in skill, as an example. Include a sticker sheet (or
> printable file) that has all the skills etc. for a character. This would
> let the die hards make their own sheets by stickering tiles. Lego offers
> some neat possibilities for 3D character sheets.
Hmm, using brick graphics on the character sheet is a thought. Certainly
if I go with the printed tiles to represent items, I would be printing
some stickers.
> > 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 would agree with you on the set design aspects, although I'd add that it's
> quite easy to have a landscape that's very mutable by having it on baseplate
> sized chunks. Having a few baseplates each of "heavy forest" "light forest"
> "plains" "ruins" "rocky/hilly" can give you a lot of variation in outdoors.
Modular set pieces would be a good idea. It's also not necessarily bad
to re-use sets for campsites. I re-used the GURPS maps many times. LEGO
of course is easy enough to modify that you can quickly change the set
by moving a few trees and rocks about.
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) Yah. They certainly seem to have fun. :) I haven't looked at it too deeply, but the mechanics seem fairly clean. (...) Take a peek at Space Hulk. It's a board game spin-off of Warhammer, but it's got *good* two player good-guy/bad-guy balance. (...) (23 years ago, 15-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | 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 (...) (23 years ago, 14-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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