Tabletops & Tropers: That would make such a…

While looking at the TV Tropes Wiki for inspiration for my next trope post, a recurring idea kept coming back.

You know that thing where a bunch of gamer geeks come out of the latest Superhero/Spy/ Action/Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie and they have this discussion:

“Dude, this, like, totally rocked!” says the extroverted enthusiastic geek!

“Yeah, ’twas cool” says the cautious, analytical one.

They both turn toward the third one, often the group’s DM or the Supercool-seeking player. They know what he’s going to say…

“This would make such a cool game… ”

And both nod without answering… having heard it a thousand times. They know that it almost never does.

As I was pondering this, several ideas formed in my mind to try to prove this thing wrong. Insights were had, things were discussed with friends, and a project was born…(More on this later)

Then it hit me, I got me an honest to god RPG trope on my hands here. Heck I even started talking to other people about it by saying ‘You know that thing where…’, which is basically TV trope’s entry page for creating new tropes…. and the people I talked to knew about that trope of mine! Weeee!

Now a caveat, there have been numerous successful adaptations of stories to RPGs. The various incarnations of the Star Wars RPGs are a prime example… and technically so is D&D. So the list could go on for quite a while… killing my own argument in the egg.

Ah I love writing when I think on the fly… I’ve got quite a few levels of painting myself in corners it seems…

That’s when the windows exploded inwards in thousand of gem-like shards! Once again, the NaNoWriMo Ninjas attacked our poor writer to save him from his poorly planned plot dead-end!

What I mean is that I strongly believe that when Joe Gamer runs out to buy the Serenity RPG after seeing the movie/series he does not find what he’s really looking for. While I was told that Serenity is a pretty decent game, I believe that buying it, learning it, and then setting up a game is a large investment that often fails to bring the same emotions and thrills felt during the movie.

Which is what sparked the comment in the first place. The gamer wants to re-live the emotion of the movie in his games.

Like many things in life, I strongly believe that there is a cheat out there that allows a crafty DM to capture the thrills of a cool (insert favorite media narrative) in a game session without actually making a game/adventure specifically about it.

And I think that the cheat is to explore and exploits the tropes of that cool movie/novel/etc… and add a sprinkle of crunch when necessary. You then mix together and apply them in your game. Voilà! Feeling recaptured.

I’ll put my money where my typing fingers are and try to do this with a classic scene (Tackling something bigger is part of a special team project… stay tuned).

The Chase Scene

Hollywood has only actually filmed one chase scene and they simply reuse it over and over. Often features a Cool Car. It frequently results in Television Geography, since the scene is edited together to be dramatically compelling, not physically possible.

The Chase Scene is a gimmick I have very rarely seen done right in RPGs. Mainly because what’s cool about a chase scene is often killed by overly complicated (and/or quite boring) mechanics or it becomes an overly crunchy mini game that can derails from the feel of a chase.

For example, in D&D, if played straight, the fastest character wins the chase… end of story. Or you can do an extended opposed Dexterity check (A series of rolls vs each Dex scores) with hopefully some color commentary from the DM. Zzzzz…

But look at the entry on the TVTrope wiki, there are a ton of tropes associated with the Chase Scene. So to make a successful chase scene in your RPG:

• Pick the coolest conflict resolution you have in your game system and base the chase on it using some sort of metric to keep things honest (Relative Distance ranks, Chase Hit Points, actual range, etc.).
• Assume both parties have approximately the same speeds. If needed, give a very slight bonus to the faster party whenever a conflict resolution is needed.
• Chart the chase on a simple Decision Diagram.
• On the chart, add your favorite trope-based ‘encounters’ in the decision boxes. Pick the ones that force interaction with the environment in a cool way (a Chain-link fence, a Road block, an Exploding vehicle, a fruit cart, a canyon/alley ripe for a Wronski Feint, etc)
• At each encounter point:
  • Have the opposed party be near each other enough to interact with both the environment and each other.
  • Give PCs key choices that can affect the outcome of the chase.
  • Have conflict rolls to resolve the encounter.
  • Adjust chase metric based on result
• Aim to have the chase end at one of the key encounter point.
• If it’s your style, fudge rolls (to prevent bad NPC or PC failures) when needed to make the scene build to sufficient tension before acting out the final resolution.

So you see, while mechanics are necessary, your players will recognize and react more strongly to the chase-associated tropes and will probably enjoy it more than just rolling on Chase Chart F and cross-reference it to Armour types and local Humidity…

Expect more on this soon…

Have a nice week!

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