Bridge to Captain RPG - advice needed

[EvilCat]

Hi! It's my first post on the forums %) I hope I picked the right section to ask my question.

I was going to participate in 24-Hours RPG Contest this year with a Star Trek-inspired idea, but the idea turned out not so sleek and complete as I thought. So, I failed to finish the game until the deadline - or at all. But I keep thinking of how I could've make it work.

The game titled Bridge to Captain was going to be about a starship crew going on strange missions in space and succeeding despite odds. PCs are key Officers, each competent in their field. But the GM is also a character - the Captain, whose "expertise" is keeping things dynamic and introducing complications. The idea was that Officers need to think fast, or the Captain loses patience and does something rash - usually leading to a more complicated situation. They also need to convince the Captain to make more rational decisions, or he will do it anyway. The full text that I've written until I gave up can be read .

What was going wrong, in my opinion, is that the GM has nothing to keep him from highly subjective judgment of when the Captain is convinced and when he is not. There are only recommendations. And when the game proceeds from Deliberation scene to Action scene, I could think of no system that would support the required style of play... I didn't want to have a traditional system with skills and checks, and also I didn't want an abstract narrative system that would simplify what really happens in the story to beads, or story points, or something...

Another problem is that the game is supposed to be preparation-lite, and relies in part on improvisation, but there is no support for a group with lower-to-medium improvisation skill. Still, familiarity with spaceship TV series and random tables were going to address that.

So, please, share your wisdom with me %) Thank you!

[Edit -Rob]I totally moved it from the 24 hour RPG forum to Roleplaying Games because although it did start as a 24 hour RPG, I think it deserves a fatter thread here in Roleplaying Games with the other fat games. [/edit]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Welcome to 1km1kt.net, please enjoy your stay!

This sounds like a very interesting idea. It reminds me a bit of the classic game Paranoia, where all the players are troubleshooters and agents for Friend computer, the insane AI that runs Alpha Complex (That is only a rumor, rumors are treason!)

Any game with a GM/referee of course relies on their impartiality. The easiest solution to your problem is to just roll with it and make sure that everyone understands this is for fun. However, you do seem to want something a bit more concrete.

One idea would be to give the players a limited pool of override/mutiny tokens. If they really thing the GM made the wrong decision or is being too hard, they can spend a token. Of course, these may be tied to some longer term consequence. Machinery breaks down, or if too many are used everyone is court-marshaled at the end of the mission.

Following on that, perhaps there could be a method for the players to actually stage a mutiny. Of course, then one of them is stuck as the captain, and there would be disgruntled crew/other officers working against them.

Another possibility is to encourage short sessions and round-robin GM styling, so everyone gets a chance to be fair/unfair as they see fit. After everyone has had a chance, the person who was the most amusing captain gets to continue to GM. This is a rather slow to implement option, however, since in implies running three to six sessions to get everyone acclimated.

Yet another option would be to make mission plans - like dungeon modules - where the captain is to go on a set course and has designated difficulties for various decisions. Hence the captain is more a robot the GM manages than an all out character. Of course, the difficulty of adjusting it could be changed depending on role-play, or the ship's current status.

We have been talking about the "" format around here lately - even basing next month's contest on it. This would let you release tiny booklets that have the name of a captain, and the mission on the cover, but be folded up so the players don't know the leader's moods or proclivities. Perhaps captain Schuka is quite easy going about most things, but is enraged at a certain alien species and goes out of his way to attack them. so the TN for changing his mind on most things is four (ie 50-50 on a d6 roll, not including a crew memeber's skill/role-play) while making him act rational around Cling-offs is a six, a much harder roll.

Even if you don't have individual booklets, you could still have the "Random Captain Impulse", "First Officer Neurosis" and "Eventual breakdown chance" tables to roll against in the back of the book. Thus the fault can lie with the dice and not the GM trying to screw the players.

I hope this helps, and if you have any further questions, we'll be here.

[Rob Lang]

Welcome to 1km1kt! Don't feed the monkeys.

I wrote a nice long reply but CA has said it better, quicker. So this post is a cut-down. This happens a lot. I love the idea. I can totally see this working with my group - even as an event in an existing game: "Captain of Starship is a lunatic, use reason/technobabble/logic to keep him in line".

The GM is there is move the game along, inject fun and be impartial (as CA said). The use of tokens are only really useful when the PCs can't come up with a good reason to persuade him otherwise.

Insert all the ideas CA had about mutiny, round robin GMing and a fixed GM path

To make a game lite in prep, you have to do more work in the game design up front. I think lots of games say "SUPER LITE" when they mean "PLAYERS HAVE TO INVENT EVERYTHING DURING THE GAME!". Sure, that can be fun but for my player group, we're all too tired after work to come up with crazy cool ideas out of nowhere. Riffing off each other is doable but for that there needs to be a common thread of narrative.

For this, I would provide a bunch of missions in the book with key points like CA suggested. You could also complete take the GM out of it - having a "read as you go" story that explains what happens next. I think that might squash creativity, tho.

I would love to see this game expanded. What are you plans from here?

[EvilCat]

[kumakami]

[Rob Lang]

[Onix]

Hi, glad to have you here.

As a thought with the captain pocketmods. What if each page was a strategy that this captain might use. Each one is progressively more dangerous/unreasonable. The GM looks through the booklet, and each page helps them to decide if the input from the players would apply to that strategy in that situation. If they do, he goes with the earliest strategy.

The players would quickly learn what that captain's strategies are and what would push them into being more unreasonable, but the GM would be free(er) at that point to push to invalidate the player's strategies with the situation that they're in. Thus the challenge of the game on both fronts.

I'd love to see a Captain with an exception on the first (most reasonable) page of "To much information - If more than one player tries to convince the captain, skip to the next page"

[EvilCat]

[Lejonel]

I just had to pop back from my state as a long time forum lurker to say: Please quit whatever daytime occupation you have and focus on developing this rpg - it is a great idea! I'll definitely give the finished product a good readthrough and try to convince my gaming group to give it a go if you do.

For tips on random acts as response to whatever the players do I suggest a study of Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Although that may be a bit too random for an rpg...

If you feel up to it, I imagine a pirate version of the game would be fun as well. Basically it is the same constraints as a space setting and would offer some variation in the mission themes.

Best of luck to you!
//Lejonel

[EvilCat]