Tuesday 19 July 2011

Blooper reels and bonus features

A gaming idea and the latest piece of flash fiction for Jennie's Expansion Joints. The idea with EJ is to write a narrative in 15 words, with one given; this week the word is cut. And a it's cruel cut... 

   "Cut!" 

   "A star! World at my feet. Celluloid queen..." 

   "... enthroned on the cutting room floor."

The gaming idea is propluristemic, meaning it's intended for use in various systems and settings assuming some adaptation, and it's inspired by the cinema-themed take on roleplaying in the Advanced Fighting Fantasy system. Given the styling, it's likely not useable as is, but will hopefully trigger one or two ideas that might suit a given gaming group better.

The cutting room floor

Once per game or session each player or party may choose to either a) exclude at first appearance the use of any one character, unit, vehicle or other protagonist or group of protagonists, b) skip any one encounter, c) resolve any one combat as if the player or party rolled the best possible result on each die or d) remove a number of turns equal to no more than one quarter of the standard or average game or session length.

Any one of these elements may be spliced back once into any future game or session by any other player, or by the GM/DM or equivalent, even in breach of usual restrictions.
_

4 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

They're good especially c), very nice.

Ray Rousell said...

They sound interesting ideas, I could use these in my FIW skirmish. What some of the lads have been doing recently during games is, at a certain time during the game it may be time for some re-enforcements, throw a dice then answer a historical question, with no help from anyone, answer right you get your troops, answer wrong, tough luck!!

Gotthammer said...

Good ol' AFF, it's what got me started in RPGs properly those many years ago.

I can certainly think of a few scenes in adventures I'd have liked to have relegated to the floor, mostly involving tedious discussions of exactly what angle someone was swinging a sword at...

Porky said...

@ The Angry Lurker - I like c) too. It doesn't mean coming through without a scratch necessarily, but that's all the better, as if the editing creates a continuity problem.

@ Ray Rousell - The historical question idea is fun. At first it might seem just a little silly - like the cinema idea - but if the questions relate to things a commander in that setting might be expected to know, in a sense it's as relevant to the game as tactical understanding.

@ Gotthammer - I enjoyed AFF a lot, and it was a good bridge out of the solo gamebooks. The point about dull out of character stuff is a very good one. Maybe some kind of 'yawn point' mechanism is needed, a small reserve a player can use to force a resolution when things get drawn out.