Subject:
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RPG or PBM? (Was: 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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Mon, 20 May 2002 17:34:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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3458 times
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> the means of advancing in power and stature is in getting hold of
> basic bricks and building things with them.
This is a cool idea, but does it neccesitate no character advancement? Is the
goal to just get away from the traditional RPG aspects, to simplify the rules,
or something else? Would having both advancement mechanisms work?
> Sort of like if you made one of
> those real-time strategy games (starcraft, age of empires, etc.) into an
> RPG: players would have to go out and secure sources of bricks, harvest
> them, bring them back to wherever they wanted to build stuff, and begin the
> process of construction. Players could be required to construct devices and
> vehicles, as well as hire minifig workers and technicians, to help perform
> any of these tasks, especially as their constructions became larger and more
> complex.
So, the idea is still really intriguing, but I'm not sure it's really an RPG.
If I need my character to go to the woods to harvest brown bricks, what is the
role playing opportunity? It sounds to me more like a PB(E)M sim type of game.
Sort of an open-ended Roads and Boats ( http://www.splotter.nl/english/r&b.html
) with role playing (or maybe more appropriately, story-telling) opportunities.
> What would make the system interesting is how you limited the types of
> constructions players could build; you could try to relate it to the real
> world (players have to harvest forests to get timber and do some quarrying
> to get stones), or you could go full-on Lego and just say that each color of
> brick is available in certain places and carries specific advantages and
> disadvantages.
I like the former. A complete abstraction starts to get, I think, too far from
main stream. Though I'd be interested in seeing how it would work.
> You might possibly consider making some types of brick 'expendable,' so that
> (for instance) minifigs have to have a certain amount of yellow bricks to
> eat or they'll starve...
> This would limit players in the number of minifigs they could sustain
> at any one time, according to how much of their land they dedicated to
> growing food or how much of their money they dedicated to buying it.
Again, this sounds like you're not talking about an RPG in which a human
generally plays one character. But it's still grooving with me as way cool.
I'm also thinkig that housing would limit the number of folks you could
control, or their level of health, or their free time, etc.
> You might also consider creating a system in which minifig scientists and
> wise men can research new and efficient uses of ABS and its miraculous
> properties, although that is probably better left to the storytelling
> abilities of individual GMs rather than to a system of rules.
Agreed. And after the initial period of fooling around with the system, this
is the exciting part of the game.
> Equipment could be limited to what a minifig can hold in his hands and carry
> in one of various kinds of backpacks; it'd be fun to even limit money in
> this manner, so that if a minifig wanted to carry large sums of cash around
> he'd be required to have a cart with a chest.
Yeah! And if you wanted to store piles of gold, I guess you'd have to build a
strong hold and pay (or at least divert them from other opportunities0 guards.
> This is obviously a little
> unrealistic if you want the minifigs to represent humans (who have pockets
> and pouches and scabbards and all manner of things), but I don't see any
> reason to make things so human-centric. Let the minifigs represent
> minifigs, and it will be one more reason to encourage players to construct
> their way out of problems.
Totally Agreed. Minifigs don't have pockets, and the basic coin size is about
the size of a child's head. It doesn't have to make sense in humanesque way,
like accounting for quiver capacity and stuff.
> I agree, there's no real reason that a good RPG has to involve combat at
> all. I have a suspicion that most RPG's use combat as a distraction so
> players don't have to do any real role-playing.
Ummm...I'm not sure about this. It seems that conflict is a part of every good
tale. How do you envision removing conflict resolution from the game? I guess
minifigs can be said to be indestructible, that would change the nature of
conflict to a large degree even if it wouldn't eliminate it.
> For the type of game I'm picturing it would be best to limit each minifig to
> one or two 'special' skills, and let all other skills be covered under a
> generic 'skill' attribute.
Are you imagining the special skills to be just "written down" somehow, or
elemental in the construction of the minifig characters?
> > Silver Duplo 2x4...Cha-ching!
>
> Cha-ching, if you could find some way to transport it to a bank! Probably
> wouldn't even fit out through the dungeon entrance.
Well, you'd have to build a way to move it in situ and then excavate the cave
entrance...
> > There were several notes on constructing setting elements. I've been toying
> > with a terrain system that uses 4x4 plates offset so that they are
> > schematically hexagons (they border six other plates). You can assemble
> > modules of terrain (with varying elevations) based on these units (which are
> > each flat).
>
> This sounds like a good practical solution to force bricks to conform to
> existing rules, but it does make for some pretty harsh constrictions on the
> kinds of things you can build, I think. Better to force the rules to
> conform to the brick.
That's a good point. I was specifically thinking of an implementation of a
close combat system using LEGO. Something more intrinsically brickish would
make more sense.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: RPG or PBM? (Was: Elements of a brick oriented RPG)
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| (...) I didn't really mean to exclude anything, I really just meant to raise the idea that character advancement isn't really an absolute necessity. The game would be a lot simpler if it were left out; in any case, with only four possible ratings (...) (23 years ago, 20-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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| (...) One of the ideas I've been keeping on the back burner for BrikWars is a supplement for some kind of construction-campaign system. It's anybody's guess as to when (or if) this idea will ever get fleshed out, so I'd be just as happy to see it (...) (23 years ago, 20-May-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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