Trash your own game

[Jonathan Ridd]

Dog Town: Core Rules the rpg of crime, money and violence set in the seedy underbelly of 1970's New York is an unashamed rip off of both Grand Theft Auto and Carlitos Way. It is also obvious that the author has a serious fetish for Scarface as the book is littered with fan boy references and quotes; indeed the game reads like a gangster film quote book. As well as the abundance of quotes the book is full of profanity and encouragement to commit vile deeds which rightfully offends right minded people.

The flaws are numerous with the biggest being the tortuously laboured criminal creation system which required an excel program to fix.

Next there is the preponderance of charts and modifiers which are a turn off for many combined with several variations of the mechanic. The game is proudly violent with a dozen or more visceral injury charts including one distastefully entitled "Disco Inferno".

The game is poorly edited because I was too cheap to employ someone else to do it.

Explanations aren't always clear thanks to the game being written in street dialect.

The running the game section entitled "Director's Chair" is sparse when compared to the excruciating detail in the rest of the book.

Thankfully I have seen sense and produced a stripped down rule set - Dog Town: Stripped which addresses many of these issues.

[misterecho]

I downloaded dogtown from drivethrurpg.com a few months ago

it looks cool. i will post you a play report. my group is keen on playing it after i explained it was a rip off/inspired by, taxi driver, warriors, carlitos way, good fellas, resivoir dogs, scarface etc etc!

my blog;
www.new2rpg.wordpress.com

[Jonathan Ridd]

The creating a criminal excel program makes criminal creation painless and once that is done resolution if you use the quick options makes the game medium crunchy. Alternatively if your group likes it quick and lite Dog Town: Stripped is your better option.

http://coldbloodedgames.typepad.com/dog ... -crim.html

I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

[misterecho]

I may use charactors from the 20 punks book. But i have plenty of time to generate some, we are just starting a four or five session CoC campaign.

[Kinslayer]

[Rob Lang]

Thank you, sir. I hope the slightly expanded version will still be of use. I am focussing on how the various society background pieces can be used in game. This is more useful for both player and GM.

[Thought]

Well the first full version of my game is still being written up (since I only recently overcame a problem that was preventing all the rules from working together), but conceptually there are certainly shortcomings.

Primarily, I think my game (Twilight of the Gods) trusts players way too much. The game is about playing full deities (not heroes, would-be gods, demi-gods, fake gods, etc) and thus the players have a hefty amount of world-changing (and creating) power. To an extent, this requires that one trust the players not to be jerks and abuse their powers. It also trusts players to be willing to tell an interesting story, rather than always trying to make their characters win, particularly since it is possible for players to veto the GM (and in turn the GM can veto the players). This is like heavily arming three-year olds, putting a single piece of candy in the center of the room, and expecting everything to turn out fine.

It also has a problem in that players can't really shop. Gathering loot and getting new equipment is a time honored tradition in RPGs, but the PCs are gods. Upgrading from cloth armor to full plate really isn't going to do much. Thus players aren't motivated with the promise of material wealth. This is like heavily arming three-year olds and putting them in the backseat of a car with no way to entertain themselves while you drive them across a continent.

And possibly the coup de grace is the fact that I expect players to be fine with the idea that their character will die. I didn't name the game Twilight of the Gods (aka, Ragnarok) for no reason. They're supposed to put their blood, sweat, and tears into these characters just to let them die at the apocalypse. This is like... um... heavily arming three-year olds, having them paint a picture for you, then telling them to crumple it up, throw it away, and never think of it again.

Okay, my analogy was starting to break down there.

Then there is the fact that the full system hasn't been play tested, so yeah... there are problems.

Just a problematic,

Thought

[Kinslayer]

Are you trying to say something about the emotional ages of players?

[Thought]

Only mine.