BOS RPG Thread. (3 Viewers)

[transcendent]

there are ideas going around about a possible RPG. i want ideas as to the kind of RPG that most users/writers would enjoy. those that want to join must be committed to it for a certain period of time. characters that are unused will have to meet a tragic fate or a reason for disappearing or if good enough be run by another user.

ideas:

Fantasy: wizards, dragons and knights etc.
Twenties: the crime lords of America, gangsters themed.
Pirates: yarrgh!

 

[bscienceboi]

How about a small boarding school. One area, many characters.

(would make it very interesting to see how we would kill off characters)

 

[jhakka]

I would love to see a pirate RPG. I wouldn't participate because I'm lazy, but it would be great fun to watch.

 

[Xayma]

Depending on how long you are going for it, try
We're all going to die. It's diceless should produce some fun and has quick rules.

Of course this depends on the style of RPG you wish to use. A pure interactive story with no GM interference (leads to God characters occassionaly and dictating others actions) or with a GM.

Anyway, we're all going to die rules for those too lazy to click.

Genre: cinematic modern horror. Playing time: 2-4 hours tops. Players: 3-8, ideally around 5.

1. GM supplies general setting of the game, e.g. Teenage Slasher or Suburban Zombie Apocalypse. Everyone creates a character accordingly.

2. List FOUR things that the character is especially GOOD at, such as running, driving, climbing, picking locks, survival in the outdoors, fast talking or decapitating zombies using only a vintage 1940s tea set. The GM must ratify these.

3. List TWO things that the character is especially BAD at, such as swimming, finding their way in the wild, avoiding alcohol, keeping their cool in a fight, or not flipping out in confined spaces. GM ratifies as before.

4. Everyone writes their name on a piece of paper and gives it to the GM.

5. The GM picks out one name at random. This person is the Survivor. No matter WHAT happens (except see below), this person will survive, so long as he is trying to. Everyone else will die. Without exception. Everyone. The players are not told who the Survivor is.

6. The game proceeds. There are no die rolls. The GM decides the outcome of any situation based on that ONE initial intervention of fate - the selection of the Survivor - and on the Players' selection of things that they are good at and bad at. If the GM wishes, however, he can roll dice in private to see which way a situation goes.

7. Even if a player is fated to die, they can keep that fate from occurring for as long as possible by simply being practical and efficient, as in any other game. If you run away from zombies, you may escape for the moment. Not being the Survivor does not mean that you get randomly hit by a bus within five minutes of starting the game. However, there is no way to tell whether, on any given occasion, you survived because you were the Survivor or because the GM decided that your actions were sufficient to let you escape. The only sure thing is that even the Survivor has to make an effort to survive. The difference is that the Survivor *will always* survive.

8. Because of this, the GM is at liberty (and is positively ENCOURAGED) to mess with the players' heads as much as possible. Every narrow escape is a hint that the person MIGHT be the Survivor, OR is the GM screwing with you to make you THINK that the person might be the Survivor.

THE META RULE
9. The Survivor's immunity to death covers NPC actions ONLY. It does not apply to Players, including the Survivor himself. Thus, any attempt to 'test' who the Survivor is, such as by having a character jump into a pool of lava to see whether he dies or not, or any action that the GM interprets as deliberately suicidal, revokes the Survivor's status for the duration of the test. That is, if you shoot yourself in the head to see whether you will die, you will die, whether you were the Survivor or not. In that event, everyone else will still die. The mantle of Survivor does not pass.

THE OPTIONAL BOO-HOO HE WAS SO NOBLE AND SELFLESS RULE
10. The mantle of Survivor *may* be passed to a new character if the Survivor deliberately sacrifices himself so that others can live. 'You go on! I'll hold the zombies back!' 'But you'll DIE!' 'I know. RUN!' etc etc etc.

Should be easily adaptable to a message board system. Although will take longer.

 

[Logain]

That one sounds cool. I'm up for that.

 

[Lundy]

How about...we're all members on an online student forum. When suddenly, it's attacked by pirate ninja zombies.

 

[Arvin Sloane]

How about...we're all members on an online student forum. When suddenly, it's attacked by pirate ninja zombies.

With sexy results?

 

[Benny_]

That we're all gonna die thing sounds cool.

 

[bscienceboi]

Boarding school? Make it a remote island off the coast of Japan, populated by a hundred Japanese Year 9ers and you'll have a story that sounds awfully alot like a certain film.

I know the film and its killing me cause I can't name it. ARRGH!G!H#G!H i'm gonna go crazy !@!@

EDIT: BATTLE ROYAL@! !!...booya!

 

[Capitalist Pig]

My post was relevant, siff delete it

 

[Xayma]

Here is a quick adaption of the rules made for a play by post RPG.

Genre: cinematic modern horror. Players: 3-12 (Opening scenes are so brutal)

1. GM supplies general setting of the game, e.g. Teenage Slasher or Suburban Zombie Apocalypse. Everyone creates a character accordingly.

2. List FOUR things that the character is especially GOOD at, such as running, driving, climbing, picking locks, survival in the outdoors, fast talking or decapitating zombies using only a vintage 1940s tea set. The GM must ratify these.

3. List TWO things that the character is especially BAD at, such as swimming, finding their way in the wild, avoiding alcohol, keeping their cool in a fight, or not flipping out in confined spaces. GM ratifies as before.

4. Everyone PM's their name on a piece of paper and gives it to the GM.

5. The GM picks out one name at random. This person is the Survivor. No matter WHAT happens (except see below), this person will survive, so long as he is trying to. Everyone else will die. Without exception. Everyone. The players are not told who the Survivor is.

6. The game proceeds. There are no die rolls. The GM decides the outcome of any situation based on that ONE initial intervention of fate - the selection of the Survivor - and on the Players' selection of things that they are good at and bad at. If the GM wishes, however, he can roll dice in private to see which way a situation goes.

7. Even if a player is fated to die, they can keep that fate from occurring for as long as possible by simply being practical and efficient, as in any other game. If you run away from zombies, you may escape for the moment. Not being the Survivor does not mean that you get randomly hit by a bus within five minutes of starting the game. However, there is no way to tell whether, on any given occasion, you survived because you were the Survivor or because the GM decided that your actions were sufficient to let you escape. The only sure thing is that even the Survivor has to make an effort to survive. The difference is that the Survivor *will always* survive.

8. Because of this, the GM is at liberty (and is positively ENCOURAGED) to mess with the players' heads as much as possible. Every narrow escape is a hint that the person MIGHT be the Survivor, OR is the GM screwing with you to make you THINK that the person might be the Survivor.

THE META RULE
9. The Survivor's immunity to death covers NPC actions ONLY. It does not apply to Players, including the Survivor himself. Thus, any attempt to 'test' who the Survivor is, such as by having a character jump into a pool of lava to see whether he dies or not, or any action that the GM interprets as deliberately suicidal, revokes the Survivor's status for the duration of the test. That is, if you shoot yourself in the head to see whether you will die, you will die, whether you were the Survivor or not. In that event, everyone else will still die. The mantle of Survivor does not pass.

THE OPTIONAL BOO-HOO HE WAS SO NOBLE AND SELFLESS RULE
10. The mantle of Survivor *may* be passed to a new character if the Survivor deliberately sacrifices himself so that others can live. 'You go on! I'll hold the zombies back!' 'But you'll DIE!' 'I know. RUN!' etc etc etc.

PLAY BY POST MODIFICATIONS

11. Players, including the survivor, must respond to a situation within n days (where n is an integer between 1 and 3 (preferably 1)) [this will require constant time discpline by the GM]. After all we all know what happens to people who hesitate in horror movies.

12. If the survivor is killed early on due to 11, a new survivor is chosen if the death happened early on.

13. Only in character actions happen in a thread. Whatever you type without quotation marks your character is assumed to do. In quotation marks is what they say.

14. In combat, your character is limited to 2 lines of talk and 1 line of action (slight lee-way dependent upon resolution word limit will be better).

15. If you are killed/get pregnant/eaten as the horror case may be, stop posting in the thread. If you can't access a computer to post, tough, electrical equipment never works in horror movies anyway.

16. An out of character thread may be created to discuss the game and who the survivor might be, but don't discuss strategy to fight/survive, let the others die, remember it takes time to kill other characters allowing yours to survive that much longer.


*Acknowledge I wasnt the original creator of said rules and go pay homage to the person linked above*

 

[jhakka]

Thread stuck until something solid is decided on, and a new thread is created.

 

[kami]

Hmm..if there were to be an official BoS RPG thingo then it might be a good idea to have a stickied sign up thread for it that gets replaced periodically much like the Birthday threads, that way everyone has their marching orders so to speak and there isn't too much clutter in the RPG itself.

Another problem would be character control, as in making other people's character's do what you want when you shouldn't eg:
Player 1(Zombie Queen): I eat your brains
Player 2(Pixie Bozo): I roll my eyes as Zombie Queen falls over and starts having seizures.
^obviously that sort of thing would kill a game pretty quickly, so maybe a rule for something like that would be good?

 

[Enlightened_One]

This sounds interesting and sounds as if it could become a permanent part of the site. Every time an old one ends a new one could begin.

Perhaps if a player was gone too long someone could inherent their character etc.

Also, wouldn't you need a mod to keep out others and limit it to twelve or so, otherwise you may get spammers.

Is there any example of this you could show me? I might try it with my mates.

As for the kami's noting that players may not do what they're supposed to, a person may get a limited amount of chances before they're barred from the thread and someone else takes over their character.

After that they should be in the same status as interruptors and spammers in that they get a limited amount of chances to put in annoying posts (which the mod deletes) and after that the mod can ban them. A big warning should be put somewhere they can't miss it though.


By the way, I'm not saying I'm in or anything. I'm just interested. At the moment I have access to the internet daily, but that may change.

 

[Diddimz]

I'm up for it, i play text based RPG's all the time. A good place to look at how they are run is warseer. Im willing to help run any if need be. In my experiences the best way for text RPGs to be run is for the GM to have minimal control, advancing the story as necessary, but on the main letting the characters do as they please, using common sense. If something stupidly insane happens, then the GM should intervene, but apart from that let them do what they want in their posts, as long as they
A) dont kill off another character
B) dont powergame
C) leave things up to chance

For character creation, i find the following format works the best

Name:who they are
Age:how old they are
Sex:male/female/other
Position: what they do for a living, teacher, bus driver, bounty hunter, evil demon etc
Equipment: what they carry
Skills &Drawbacks: I find that drawbacks should be equal to your skills, so if you are good at 4 things, you suck big time at 4things as well.
Appearance:what they look like
History: a brief story of their past.

thats just my 2cents from my experiences

 

[Lazarus]

Another problem would be character control, as in making other people's character's do what you want when you shouldn't eg:
Player 1(Zombie Queen): I eat your brains
Player 2(Pixie Bozo): I roll my eyes as Zombie Queen falls over and starts having seizures.
^obviously that sort of thing would kill a game pretty quickly, so maybe a rule for something like that would be good?

They're called 'closed emotes' - closed because they restrict player action and don't leave the outcomes of actions undetermined or open. They're generally highly frowned upon.

e.g. "James leans forward hungrily, slurping your brains out of your very skull" is far too closed, forces the other person into an exceedingly narrow course of roleplay

but "James leans forward hungrily, baring his sharpened teeth as he prepares to siphon your headmeat from your cranium" would be OK, because the other person gets a chance to respond.

You should be able to borrow a template of such rules from some other game out there.

Oh, you guys might also find it easier to play this sort of thing in a real-time chat room as opposed to a forum... obviously up to you though.

 

[Cyan_phoeniX]

ok, this sounds really interesting, but im very confused at what this is exactly? i know that RPG = role-playing game, but how exactly are you going to make one? is it text based? is there some editor on the web that lets you make text-based RPG's? only asking because it sounds very interesting.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

*casts magic missile*

 

[transcendent]

I've played one based on an arcade racing game, we provide details of characters, their cars and their driving abilities. It was niche so it didn't get past 7 pages but it was interesting.

 

[Diddimz]

7 pages? thats a shame, i cant stand when RP's die early, one im currently in has just the 2750 post mark, so its going nice and strong still. How many people are interested in an RP, it would probably be easier to open up a sub forum first to begin with and work from there. They are easy enough to start once your topic is decided upon but i feel this thread really isnt big enough to work out what sort of support it would have.