Plot? Setting? Rules beyond the vanilla 1d6 set?
PPE: I started writing this reply. Then I wrote more. Things escalated quickly from there.
Tyrin, if that RTD guide ever gets published, feel free to throw this in if you think it's worthwhile.
Not really edited. There may be a spectacular number of errors.
How to Brainstorm for an RTD: From the first step of an idea to finished rules and OP.
Basic Setting and Plot, also entitled: What the hell am I even doing? 1. Striking Sparks This step is perhaps the most fun, and the most dangerous. You can throw out a zillion interesting ideas a second once you get the basic theory down, and the trouble will quickly become sorting through for something useful. Still, right now you're interested in unlocking that flow, so we'll focus on that step.
Be silent for a moment, and think about anything you want. The last song you heard, a paradox you thought of recently, a philosophical argument, an interesting quote, the last animal you saw, etc. It doesn't matter. When I do this exercise, without attempting to control, two things immediately float to mind. Goats (my family owns a sizable goat farm, and it's the season for me to get baby goat pictures), and a Rihanna song (unusual for me) called Disturbia.
Just as an example, I'm going to develop both.
2. Heating Embers This paragraph is going to develop the idea that began with me thinking 'goats'. So, what kind of Goat themed RTD am I making? Are my players goat ranchers? Too realistic, not funny, and boring as twice used sin. Are my players goats? Interesting. There is some potential there. If so, why are my players goats? Are they desperate goats, struggling to earn money in order to save their farm from foreclosure? No, too Disney, plus it limits the players. Generic goats with no backstory? This RTD might kick off, I don't know, but it isn't really my style. What if these were goats that were exposed to radiation/lab testing and developed super intelligence and powers beyond mortal ken? I'm also pretty sure that's been the plot of a zillion movies, except with dogs and gerbils and cats and moles instead of goats. What about if the players were cursed into the shape of goats, you know, like the princess and the frog? This idea has something. Sure, the story has been done to death, but it's always played straight. If I can twist it, then I can do something interesting. More importantly, why is it only goats? Good question, and I can answer it using setting OR by making it not entirely about goats, but making goats one selectable race for our cursed individuals. I opt for the latter, since it plays nicely into the rules section later on.
So now I have an RTD that's about people cursed into the shape of animals, with one of the possible races being goats.
The section below is going to develop the idea that began with Rihanna's Disturbia. First, I listen to the lyrics and try to see what brought it to mind. I also pull up the lyrics on the internet, just for ease of review.
No more gas in the rig
Can't even get it started
Nothing heard, nothing said
Can't even speak about it
Don't care. Nothing useful here. Not without perspective from later.
It's a thief in the night
To come and grab you
It can creep up inside you
And consume you
A disease of the mind
It can control you
It's too close for comfort
Now this is interesting. My first instinct is a possessing spirit that comes in darkness. Some ghost, malevolent or otherwise, capable of taking control of the individual. However, the last line indicates that the possessed is aware of it, and is capable of keeping it at bay with some effort.
We're in the city of wonder
Ain't gonna play nice
Watch out, you might just go under
Better think twice
Your train of thought will be altered
This gives us a bit of setting, a 'city of wonder'. It's not so specific that you're ripping anybody off, but it's something to start from. The lines about going under, playing nice, and trains of thought further reinforce my ideas of some form of spirit, but also of an active relationship between the spirit and the host. Perhaps, in some situations, even an amicable one.
Faded pictures on the wall
It's like they talkin' to me
Disconnecting all the calls
Your phone don't even ring
I gotta get out
Or figure this shit out
It's too close for comfort,
At first glance, this doesn't seem important, but when taken with the idea of the possessing spirit, it becomes interesting. The first two lines strike me as a reference to the possessing spirits, and because of the plural, we know that instead of one spirit, we have a multitude of spirits in each host. Which strikes inspiration in me. What if the protagonists are individuals that carry the ancestral spirits of their family with them? What if they can access the thoughts, memories, and knowledge of the past, at the cost of running the razor of insanity and risking possession? That's really kinda cool.
Release me from this curse I'm in
Trying to maintain
But I'm struggling
With the rest of the setting in play, this line informs us that the protagonists are not, at least not by majority, willing recipients of these abilities. Most likely, they inherited them from some dead family member. The second and third lines merely reinforce the idea that a main component of the game is the fact that these powers come with a massive price.
Your mind is in disturbia
It's like the darkness is the light
Disturbia
Am I scaring you tonight?
Disturbia
Ain't used to what you like
These final lines aren't much on their own, but when taken as a whole, I think they set up the 'big bad' for the story.
Now, after listening to this song multiple times, and reviewing the lyrics through the skewed lens of whatever-seems-interesting-must-be-true, I have a basic idea. The players are individuals who carry the spirits of their ancestors with them, mantling them for power, but always gambling with the control of their own minds. That idea was based off a Rihanna song, but nobody would ever guess that unless they were told.
3. Kindling Fire This section is devoted to fleshing out the idea that started with goat. Anyway, now we have one idea that's about a bunch of cursed players who are in various shapes, including, but not limited to, goat. Now, I think we can leave the reason for being cursed open, that gives the players something to have fun with while writing characters. The bigger question is, what is going to make this group band together? Is it because their magic forest, lake, gully, etc, is being turned into a preserve? No, that reeks of cutesy animated films. What if, by and large, these people weren't particularly important even BEFORE they were cursed? Eh. Princesses wouldn't be able to tell a royal frog from a non-royal one, so that idea is plausible, and interesting, and it might make for a good component, but it isn't the driving force of the story. Hmm. What if there was an enterprising thief in the mix, an individual who recognizes the capacities of a group of highly intelligent 'animals' for a series of rather... unique tasks? I actually like this. If we also say that this thief is a princess herself, perhaps of a kingdom destroyed or otherwise wronged by the kingdom she's robbing. Certainly brings a whole new meaning to 'stealing kisses'. In fact, I think we just found a title for our RTD.
So we have a main princess NPC who can serve as the voice of the GM, as well as serving for a great deal of hilarious shipping or other comedy. She also allows us to have a LOT of exposition from an in-world source. The first couple jobs can be simple test runs (stealing parts from mills, etc), while later jobs can involve robbing noblemen, treasuries, armories, and, eventually, the king himself. The setting is something that we can safely borrow from a variety of idealized fairy-tale sources. This isn't intellectual theft, because we need it to achieve the effect of the story, which is, at its core, a satire of the naive and innocent princess kissing random woodland creatures of goodwill and love. We've got this story in the bag, as well as a chunk of its setting.
This section is devoted to fleshing out the idea that started with Disturbia. Well, we've got our spirit mantling protagonists, so what are they doing? Are anti-paranormal gov units hunting them? Eh. Cliche in a bad way. Are paranormal things hunting them? Possible, I suppose, but that's a really broad force that doesn't bring people together. Well, we already know that they have dead ancestors riding with them, so what if there was some event in common between them? This is possible, and it makes a good binding element, but again, it needs combination to form a cogent story piece. So, what if we take that last set of lines I mentioned, and make "Am I scaring you tonight?" a line that comes up in the intro, a ghost-dream that each of the characters experiences through one of his forebears, and is said by another, unknown individual that all of the ghosts inside the player's head seem to fear? Well, that's really specific, but sometimes that happens when we're story boarding. So, we have this new individual who ancestral spirits are afraid of, who are they? To me, the obvious answer pops out as a fallen hero; one of these people who carried the souls of their ancestors. They took part in some hugely important, world saving, endeavor in the past and have since lost control. The exist now as a Moroi (pulling a word for possessing undead out of my ass), the term for those who have been overwhelmed by the spirits they once controlled, existing now merely as a mortal husk. Now, why is this individual a problem? Again, for some reason I have a relatively plausible reason pop into my head. The hugely important endeavor that was accomplished by the player's ancestors and this Moroi was to put to rest an awakening of Expositi (the spirits of children who were put in the elements to die shortly after birth). Expositi swarms possess great emotion and power, but little personality. The idea was for each of the spirit carriers to trap a portion of the swarm within themselves and carry the burden as they carried all the burdens before. Something went wrong, however, and this Moroi got the entirety of the swarm instead of just a chunk. For a while, they were able to contain it, but they have since broken. Part of their mind taken over by the angry dead, and the other part occupied by an army of dead children who know nothing but fury, hunger, and abandonment.
And now we have a plot. The rest of the setting is easy. City of wonder, conjures a modern city, maybe even postmodern, so this will be urban fantasy. We have a rough plot idea (Moroi is probably going to do something bad now that they are completely out of control), and all the information the players get in the beginning of the game is limited enough that it's possible to make sense of it. Modern setting consisting of ghost mantling urbanites, bound together by an alliance of their ancestors, and set up to stop a Moroi of unspeakable power. Looks good to me. Because it struck me as I wrote this, the title is now Ghost Town.
Writing Rules, also entitled: The fastest way to kill a good idea. Unless you have a real affinity for self inflicted sado-masochism, don't make your rules complex. If you know anything about me, you should be aware that this is a do as I say, not as I do, statement. Pick simple rules that make sense, and that you can transfer to a cheat sheet easily. Rules, when you first start out writing RTDs, should be simple, loose, and able to fit to a variety of situations. The first step of each rule system is the character sheet. I'm going to post the character sheets for both Stealing Kisses and Ghost Town, and then explain why each sheet is made the way it was, and how each rule system will work.
Stealing KissesName: (Obvious Flavor)
Gender: (Obvious Flavor)
Cursed Species: (Not actually flavor, will probably give species based bonuses, depending on species)
Description (as cursed): (Obvious Flavor)
Reason for Curse: (Obvious Flavor)
Backstory: (Obvious Flavor)
Strength: (Ability to hit and take a hit)
Dexterity: (Fine and gross motor skills)
Guile: (Charisma and intelligence)
Skills: (Player made, bonuses as decided by GM)
This is, as you can see, a sheet that's fairly simple. There are only three stats, and species and skill bonuses will probably be decided on the fly. Doing species on the fly allows players to have a lot of play in deciding what they want to be. (Yes, of course my character was cursed into the form a Pangolin! [Note: I'm not entirely sure that's a curse.]) Having only three stats allows checks to be quick and easy, and it makes a system where you start with one point and can adjust stats into the negative to gain additional points very easy. Some ground rules like: You can't go below a -3, and you can't go above a +3, should be set up. Then you can decide how these skills actually work. In this instance, I'd say that each attribute point gives you a 1/3 chance to get a +1. This allows a +3 to get a +1 almost all the time, and +3 1/27th of the time.
Skills allow the players to select areas of expertise oriented to their character. "Oh, yeah, my guy was a blacksmith before he was cursed, so he gets a bonus to metalworking!" To which the GM can flick over a +1 in that specific instance.
This is a really common, really simple, layout that should work to cover most any RTD with a bit of adaptation.
Ghost TownName: (Obvious Flavor)
Gender: (Obvious Flavor)
Age: (Obvious Flavor)
Description: (Obvious Flavor)
Backstory: (Obvious Flavor)
Physique: (All physical abilities)
Heart: (Charisma, Courage, and use of some spirit abilities)
Will: (Resistance, Sanity, and use of the other spirit abilities)
Mantling Strength: (Determines how well strength, intelligence, dexterity, physical prowess, etc can be drawn from ancestral spirits by the Ectomancer. Heart)
Projection Strength: (Determines how well the Ectomancer can effect the physical word with their host spirits. Heart/Will)
Possession Strength: (Determines how well the Ectomancer can take control of spirits that are NOT those of his ancestors. Will)
Perks and Flaws (Standard, you can buy one perk, at the cost of buying one flaw. Perks and Flaws are character traits that have an effect on gameplay)
At first blush this sheet is quite similar to the one before. This is largely because the top section is the common region for RTD sheets. Things like age and gender can be opted out (often simply smoothed into the description section), but the majority of the top block just covers the basics. Physique is a stand in for dexterity/endurance/strength, Heart works for Charisma/Wisdom, and Will is pretty much itself. For the sake of simplicity, we'll apply the bonus system in the same way as Stealing Kisses. This RTD has skills, however, which are different than attributes. Arbitrarily, lets rank these skills 1-5, with 1 being "absolutely terrible" and 5 being "near peerless", and give the players seven points to distribute. Each point above three gives a +1 in that field, and each point below a -1. This puts in place a system that provides for things going SPECTACULARLY wrong if the players are forced into a situation that makes them use abilities they aren't as familiar with. (Which the GM should do as the opportunity presents.
Perks and flaws operate like skills, player defined and GM arbitrated, except that the addition of Flaws allows them to open up new ways to hurt the players and move the game along.
Both of these rule sets operate on the Keep It Simple Stupid policy, and, if you don't actually
like writing rules, that's probably the way it should stay. Now, onto the final chapter. The Example OP itself.
Making a big OPening, also entitled: The beginning of the end The OP is critical. It showcases your story, hooks the reader, and draws people in. Different kinds of OP's draw different kinds of people. One to two short paragraphs in an OP will bring in the minimalist crowd. A massive spoiler of top block word data with a dozen sub spoilers for rules and locations and spells and unnecessarily complicated diagrams will bring in the more hardcore RPG crowd. Both of these examples are somewhere in between, with one being a light-hearted heist based caper, and the other a darker RPG of ghosts, insanity, and urban badassery.
My OPs tend to be pretty similar, so be warned. There are a lot of different styles to this.
Stealing Kisses
An RTD of smooches and grand larceny
You are not who you used to be. Once you lived a normal, or at least mostly normal, life. You had friends, some sort of home, a way to earn your keep. You had a life. Now, you have a very different life. Now you spend a lot of your time foraging in the woods for food, hoping you don't run afoul of trappers, and generally hoping for a princess to wander by with a desire to kiss random forest creatures.
Once upon a time, you were human, now you're a cursed animal. Maybe you stepped on a witches cat, paid a compliment gone wrong to the protuberant multitude of the village herbalist's warts, or miffed the wrong mother. It doesn't matter how it happened. All that matters now is surviving, of lasting long enough to get the opportunity to convince a princess to kiss you. You don't know why that is the universal curse-breaker for a polymorph spell, but it is, and it doesn't happen as often as the stories say.
Until last night, getting one of those kisses was a prime goal in your life. The prime goal, setting aside a few sundry needs like surviving until the next morning. Things have changed a little since last night, because that's the night you were trapped. You don't remember a lot of the event, but you certainly remember waking up in a dark box that smelled of lemons and wax. You are trapped, and the sound of footsteps announce that you are not alone.
Of course, all this fails to answer one critical question: Just who are you?
[[CHARACTER_CREATION]]
Ghost Town
The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging, they also would cling -
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.
-Mortality, William Knox
The room you dream is dark, lit only by fitful strands of ghostly fire. It is a memory from long ago, but the memory is not your own. The room is empty of furniture, but you are not alone. You stand in a circle with [CHARACTER COUNT -1] others, surrounding a(n) [nth] person. You can feel that the others in the circle are like you, possessed of the same powers and skills. There is a familiarity to them, as old friends and companions in battle. The individual that the group of you surround carries the same familiarity, a familiarity that is covered in the webbed cracks of controlled fear. The fear is not your fear, but it slicks your sleeping skin with sweat regardless. You can't see the face of the individual in the center of your ring, even when they turn to face your directly. Oily darkness like rotted shadows obscures their face. Still, you can feel them smiling at you, the smile of an old friend.
"Am I scaring you this night?"
You wake, sitting bolt upright, your body reacting reflexively to the command of one of the ghosts within. The morning is a dangerous time for you, a time when the ancestors you carry have freer reign in your body. After all, they have no need to sleep, and no concept of exhaustion. You flex your hand a few times experimentally, reasserting your control over the old ghosts. They lay dormant in most times when you are not calling on them, but now they seem... afraid. Ghost dreams are seldom of pleasant memories, but this one has haunted your nights for the last week.
You shake your head and get out of bed, heading to the bathroom to splash water in your face and meet this day. You are an ectomancer, born with all of the spirits of your family living inside of you, their souls bound to yours. You can, at will, mantle their memories and skills, or harness the physical force of their shades. You can do things that no human should be able to do, things out of comic books and legends. It wouldn't be a bad gig if they didn't try to take over your mind. You scrub your face and look in the mirror. You are an ectomancer, but, in days where even your dreams are not your own, who are you really?
[[CHARACTER_CREATION]]
And that's how making an RTD works!
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 743174 times)