Mutant Animal Game continued
"Shadows and Sewers"
"Mutagen Showdown"
"Other Strangeness"
I'm still tossing up names for this one, but that hasn't stopped me thinking about it. My aim for revamping this game is not to produce one of those GM-less troupe-style, minimal rules affairs...I'm just trying to streamline the play, get rid of the crunchy crap but keep the essence of dark, gritty, mutant animals hiding in a modern day dystopia (and occasionally having adventures that lead them to strange and far off places that are surreal and exotic but also filled with dangerous shadows crawling with exotic mutant animals).
I'm thinking about the way a game like 3:16 streamlines the experience of playing space marines, while adding something deeply subversive to the standard tropes. It makes characters quickly, it makes them disposable, it builds on them through the course of play and allows characters to become more significant as they survive longer. I expect the characters to be a bit more developed when they enter play, and that's all a part of the fun for this style of game. Players like to build something quirky, with points that make them think a bit about the creature they'll be injecting into the story. Some people like random tables, so that option should be there, but some players don't, so the option to ignore them should be valid.
Now I'm wondering whether lists and lists, and pages and pages of equipment to choose from are a Palladium thing, or something that's integral to the Mutant animal experience. The memories of playing this game in high school often bring back memories of raiding convenience stores, hardware stores, department stores and pharmacies for the equipment we'd need before a mission. We believed the end would justify the means, and we'd be playing "good" alignments so we'd always try to put the equipment back the next day or put some cash from our winnings back in the storekeeper's till before opening the next day. But this ga,e could just as easily function without specific stats for equipment, after all most of the equipment in the TMNT game never had specific stats, they just justified the viability of certain tasks. Maybe I'm overthinking this.
The true essence comes from the construction of the mutant animals, including the animalistic weapons and other advantages, and the psychic powers.
But there are other things I'd like to explore with this game, Palladium games never had a great way of integrating characters with their environment, or with one another for that matter. They handled conflict with incredible minutiae, but the bits between combat were always a bit vague. Personally, that's where I think the roleplaying lies, so that's where I'd be focusing the game.
How do the character's feel about each other? Who do they deal with in the outside world? How did they come to be? What forces guide their decisions? What are their fears? Their desires? Who are their enemies? Their friends?
Then we need a way for all the players to collaboratively build the city where their adventures unfold (and maybe a few exotic settings for one off quests as well).
Still lots to think about on this one.
"Mutagen Showdown"
"Other Strangeness"
I'm still tossing up names for this one, but that hasn't stopped me thinking about it. My aim for revamping this game is not to produce one of those GM-less troupe-style, minimal rules affairs...I'm just trying to streamline the play, get rid of the crunchy crap but keep the essence of dark, gritty, mutant animals hiding in a modern day dystopia (and occasionally having adventures that lead them to strange and far off places that are surreal and exotic but also filled with dangerous shadows crawling with exotic mutant animals).
I'm thinking about the way a game like 3:16 streamlines the experience of playing space marines, while adding something deeply subversive to the standard tropes. It makes characters quickly, it makes them disposable, it builds on them through the course of play and allows characters to become more significant as they survive longer. I expect the characters to be a bit more developed when they enter play, and that's all a part of the fun for this style of game. Players like to build something quirky, with points that make them think a bit about the creature they'll be injecting into the story. Some people like random tables, so that option should be there, but some players don't, so the option to ignore them should be valid.
Now I'm wondering whether lists and lists, and pages and pages of equipment to choose from are a Palladium thing, or something that's integral to the Mutant animal experience. The memories of playing this game in high school often bring back memories of raiding convenience stores, hardware stores, department stores and pharmacies for the equipment we'd need before a mission. We believed the end would justify the means, and we'd be playing "good" alignments so we'd always try to put the equipment back the next day or put some cash from our winnings back in the storekeeper's till before opening the next day. But this ga,e could just as easily function without specific stats for equipment, after all most of the equipment in the TMNT game never had specific stats, they just justified the viability of certain tasks. Maybe I'm overthinking this.
The true essence comes from the construction of the mutant animals, including the animalistic weapons and other advantages, and the psychic powers.
But there are other things I'd like to explore with this game, Palladium games never had a great way of integrating characters with their environment, or with one another for that matter. They handled conflict with incredible minutiae, but the bits between combat were always a bit vague. Personally, that's where I think the roleplaying lies, so that's where I'd be focusing the game.
How do the character's feel about each other? Who do they deal with in the outside world? How did they come to be? What forces guide their decisions? What are their fears? Their desires? Who are their enemies? Their friends?
Then we need a way for all the players to collaboratively build the city where their adventures unfold (and maybe a few exotic settings for one off quests as well).
Still lots to think about on this one.
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