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Subject: 
Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.gaming
Date: 
Wed, 15 May 2002 16:05:28 GMT
Viewed: 
6435 times
  
In lugnet.fun.gaming, Frank Filz writes:
> 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).

Yah.  They certainly seem to have fun. :)  I haven't looked at it too
deeply, but the mechanics seem fairly clean.


> > > 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.

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.  Also for this sort of
thing, consider a mechanic like the various tile-laying board games (names
escape me ATM) where you draw from a random pool of face-down tiles to
figure out what's behind the door or around the corner.

> > 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.

Traveller might translate well, so reduced.  It could also be run with the
sort of Space Opera feel that a lot of .space MOCS seem to carry.

Rune Quest is a system I never really got into, so I can't comment there.

> > > 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 was mostly tounge-in-cheek with that; given GURPS's propensity to licencse
other properties. :)  And the tie-in with Evil Stevie and the Pirate Game,
of course.

> > > 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 had some neat ideas while I was mulling this over last night.  I'll try to
throw a mock-up character sheet together tonight to give an example of how I
was thinking.  (...but I'll point to my track record before offering
guarantees of anything)


James



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
 
(...) I can't comment really on Traveller because my only experience is with the original dreadful system (fun to roll up characters, and that was it). RuneQuest experience was all about mini-maxing. I hated it almost as much as I hated the endless (...) (24 years ago, 16-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
 
(...) 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 (...) (24 years ago, 15-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)

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