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Ocean's Great Caper Affair Job
Aug. 31st, 2013 10:52 amSo pondering the sort of game I want to run I considered a heist movie would be fun. And it would. Further reflection suggested that this would also be biting off more than I can chew as an inexperienced GM.
This did not stop game design brain from researching systems and pondering how it could work. Was particularly intrigued by a flashback mechanic.
Players start with an overview of the plan, a map of the venue, which is largely accurate (is there crime jargon for this?), and the results of casing the joint. They also get to hire NPCs for the jobs they don't have the skills for. They need to have a basic plan, and prepare an alibi.
Most gamers are not criminal masterminds with the planning ability of a chessmaster combined with the strategic genius of Napoleon.They simply don't have the ability to plan for every single possible contingency. Of course, their characters are. So to simulate this, they're presented with an overview of the arena, and plan each section in turn before playing out that section of the plan and improvising if they roll badly. Whether it goes to plan, or is a complete cock-up, it's assumed that this is an eventually we planned for. End of section, we have a flashback to the planning table.
We have a fixed number of dice. Each action requires the dice are rolled (this requires some experimentation with mechanics, a single d6 against difficulty would probably work adequately, although a handful of arbitrary polyhedrals adds a little more chaos). A failure means that an extra obstacle is thrown in the way But the eventuality has been planned for. A 1 is always a failure and means that the die is removed from the pool.
Players need to have enough dice to get in, get the loot and escape. Mistakes lead to a gradually increasing chance that the plan will fail and everyone will be arrested/killed. The diminishing dice pool gives players an idea of how likely they are to succeed and when they need to abort and try to get out of there.
Should be playable with a little experimentation and play testing/tweaking/balancing. Does need a skills mechanism, and I don't know enough to work out how that should behave.
So, I have no intention of running this. Aside from inexperience, it's not much more than a concept right now. Am sharing in case someomne else wants to run with it.
This did not stop game design brain from researching systems and pondering how it could work. Was particularly intrigued by a flashback mechanic.
Players start with an overview of the plan, a map of the venue, which is largely accurate (is there crime jargon for this?), and the results of casing the joint. They also get to hire NPCs for the jobs they don't have the skills for. They need to have a basic plan, and prepare an alibi.
Most gamers are not criminal masterminds with the planning ability of a chessmaster combined with the strategic genius of Napoleon.They simply don't have the ability to plan for every single possible contingency. Of course, their characters are. So to simulate this, they're presented with an overview of the arena, and plan each section in turn before playing out that section of the plan and improvising if they roll badly. Whether it goes to plan, or is a complete cock-up, it's assumed that this is an eventually we planned for. End of section, we have a flashback to the planning table.
We have a fixed number of dice. Each action requires the dice are rolled (this requires some experimentation with mechanics, a single d6 against difficulty would probably work adequately, although a handful of arbitrary polyhedrals adds a little more chaos). A failure means that an extra obstacle is thrown in the way But the eventuality has been planned for. A 1 is always a failure and means that the die is removed from the pool.
Players need to have enough dice to get in, get the loot and escape. Mistakes lead to a gradually increasing chance that the plan will fail and everyone will be arrested/killed. The diminishing dice pool gives players an idea of how likely they are to succeed and when they need to abort and try to get out of there.
Should be playable with a little experimentation and play testing/tweaking/balancing. Does need a skills mechanism, and I don't know enough to work out how that should behave.
So, I have no intention of running this. Aside from inexperience, it's not much more than a concept right now. Am sharing in case someomne else wants to run with it.
