I am very tempted to do a ghost-busters themed RPG using Monster of the Week. I'm thinking a new franchise, just opening.
I'm going to do a little hacking:
-- Instead of stats, use advantage. and disadvantage That is, whenever a stat is positive and you'd use it, take the best 2 of 3d6.
-- More importantly, I need money as pressure. I don't want this to just be fictional positioning. I want to encourage the scene from the original wherein the team is eating Chinese food, and Ray announces that "this magnificent feast represents the last of the petty cash". Maybe that's as easy as a pool of dice to give bonuses to future rolls, which we'll call "cash".
-- It'll be great to see the overarching organization after a while. Have Ray or Egon show up and help out the team. Or, need their help.
tl;dr - I'm looking into theming MoTW for Ghostbusters. Any notion how to model economic pressure?
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Noah Stevens That's straight fiction -- and perfect. Without forcing any accounting, how do I get a game mechanic for it?
ReplyDelete... It may be as easy as tags. [In debt to the EPA] sucks, and can be paid off with [Mayor's grudging approval], though that starts getting into resources management.
ReplyDeleteOr, to use machinery already present -- are these fronts? The EPA and Ghozar the Ghozarian are pretty good fronts from the original movie. and in the second, the Mayor's Ambition is a front itself.
ReplyDeleteThat'd certainly be easier than resource management, and completely transparent to the players.
Not entirely relevant, but... Please run this on hangouts so I can play please please please.
ReplyDeleteIt would appear the internet likes this idea. Thanks, Kelley Vanda . I do most of my gaming in person, but you could run it. I give you full authority to run with this idea.
ReplyDeleteI would also be interested in trying this one out. As far as the money as a mechanic, you could just hack it so that 'crippling debt' is always the initial threat of the first session. Kinda like how in Lady Blackbird you start off being captured in the hand of sorrow. Even when you escape it for a time, the threat of the debt (or other expenses) catching back up is a constant concern
ReplyDeleteI suppose I could use InSpectres, too. That's, like, designed for it and everything. MoTW I already know ... and knowing a single front won't mess up the game, it'll just direct it in a way the table can agree upon.
ReplyDeleteInSpectres has a different focus, and different moves, and those will have an effect on the play experience.
ReplyDeleteExpand your list of Hard Moves to include some good economic strife. Include a start-of-session or start-of-mission roll to see where your finances are at.
Include a mechanic for bartering one shortage for another. (Well Ray, we can get the proton accelerators to work again, but it means we're going to have to go back to ramen for a month...)
Sooooo much potential here... keep playing around with the idea. :-D
So, I really like that, in InSpecters, the GM and players decide collaboratively on what the monster is. That fits what I want.
ReplyDeleteI prefer the stronger built-in characterization of playbooks in MoTW to the skill-based characters of InSpecters.
I may be able to get the players to tell me about the monster with a really minor hack of MoTW's investigate a Mystery move -- they ask the question, and I ask another player. "Sometimes, disclaim decision making" or whatever that move calls itself in other PbtA systems. I don't see it here, oddly.