I wasn't going to enter this contest, but since I had a neat idea for a setting and since Joe seems to like the idea of this, I'm working on a setting for Contenders.
Umläut: Contenders for the Throne of Steel
Vicious Demons.
Mighty Axes
Flaming Skulls.
These things adorn the covers of hundreds of Heavy Metal albums every year.
Heavy Metal. The very name itself drips with power, testosterone and hair spray. Warriors on the stage of history, wielding their axes and mics they do battle for glory! Trusts are forged and betrayed, mighty empires rise and fall, the only truth worth living for is Metal.
Long of hair and tight of pants, you join the ranks of Metal in your quest for babes, booze and glory. Try to Make It Big and hunt down an elusive record contract.
These are the heroes of an age.
This is their story.
Umläut is a pretty light hearted, affectionate and faintly absurd fun-poke at 70s and 80s Hard Rock using the Contenders system.
Players create metal bands rather than boxers. They are encouraged to come up with a consistent theme and image for their band (Do they wear black leather and make up like Kiss, flannel shirts and acid wash denim like Metalica or loincloths and cod-pieces like ManOWar?). At least one member of the band needs to be named at the start, usually the singer. Other members can be named either at the start or invented during play. The basic stats remain much the same:
Hope is the hope that the band will Make It Big.
Cash is cash.
Rep is again, pretty much as-is, but might be re-named to Fanbase as that seems to be more appropriate to the flavour of the thing.
Pain is renamed Ego. Ego drives the band towards success, but also damages them as people.
First band to 10 Rep gets a record contract from a big label and makes it big (If you want to play a "proper" metal game, I suggest playing to 11. Because that's, y'know, one more).
That may well lead to Sex Pistols style self destruction, or Alice Cooper style longevity. Epilogues should be narrated as a VH1 retrospective of the band's history over the last 20 years if they Made It Big, or as a footnote in The 2007 Rock Almanac for those who didn't.
In Ring Traits are called Performance Traits and work as follows:
Technique refers to the bands technical abilities. In short, it's how good they are at playing their instruments and how tight they sound when they play together.
Cover is renamed Penmanship. Good Penmanship might be catchy riffs, moving lyrics and rhythms the fans can't ignore. Essentially it's how well written the band's material is. Good Penmanship can make up for the odd substandard performance since you can gain certain cred with the fans for good lyrics and original sounds.
Power is a measure of the bands intensity and passion on stage. A high Power might come from a driven, wild eyed frontman with amazingly piercing voice, or it might just be a really loud PA system.
Material is how much decent material the band has and replaces Conditioning. A band that runs out of decent material has to play it's second rate numbers and B Sides and can't really belt out the face-melters the way the fans want.
Connections are all band members. Band members have crises and need Cash in order to stay out of the soul crushing 9-to-5 world. Threat scenes deal with the various pressures of life trying to pull people out of the Life Of Metal and into the 9-to-5.
Fights are renamed Gigs. Every Gig is a battle for the hearts and minds of the audience, fought on the stage of metal. I initially thought about having them be Band vs Crowd, but then I read Malcolm's post about UnRealPolitik and wanted to do something different to him. I also realised that I'd never been to a gig where there wasn't at least one support act. If there are two player bands at the Gig, the player with the highest Rep is the headliner and the other band is the support act.
Instead of Rounds, a Gig consists of a series of songs or Numbers. They are mechanically the same as fights in Contenders, but the the techniques are renamed and Damage done actually represents how memorable a performance is and how and likely to be talked about a given song was. A particularly weak performance can lead ta a band being boo'd off stage (OK'd), although this needs to be a rarer event than in a boxing match (7 damage +).
The "tactical options" for each Number in a Gig are:
Face Melter! (aggressive) - Crank the amps and really go for it!
Lyrics 1, Volume 5
Solid Performance (balanced) - Keep it tight, play well and try to deliver the goods.
Lyrics 3, Volume 3
Ballard (thought provoking) - Give the audience a chance to catch their breath.
Lyrics 5, Volume 1
Showboating (Dirty Tactics) - Do something outragous and really get the crowd going!
Lyrics 4, Volume 4
If a player gets caught Showboating (that is, if the crowd realises that it's a blatant bid for attention rather than part of the band's "proper" set) his opponent is awarded 2 Victory Points. "Dude, that band like, totally rocked without needing to bite the head off a bat!"
The narration of the last number in a Gig should take the form of a review in the next day's paper. Either a positive review of the winner if a player's band won, or a negative review of the loser if an NPC band won.
Other stuff:
Players create NPC bands at the start by drawing 2 cards from the deck. The first card determines the NPC band's style and also the first word of their name. The second card determines the second word of their name. Both cards together determine the NPC band's starting attributes.
There is no betting on the outcome of Gigs. Doesn't make any sense to me that you could.
Door funds for Gigs get split between the "winner" and the "loser" in the same way as in the regular Contenders game.
That's where I am with this right now.
Excellent. Glad to see
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Mon, 18/12/2006 - 17:21.
Excellent. Glad to see another variation on Contenders. It will be interesting to see how these games play out with their different settings.
So given that this is primarily a setting design contest, what will the setting be? Any juicy details on that?
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios
Setting.
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Tue, 19/12/2006 - 10:35.
I've been thinking about he function of setting in games like Contenders and Best Friends. That is, games with no GM.
In a traditional game, the setting informs the GM how to run the game. That is, the GM dictates what is true in the gameworld, so only he needs a high level of knowledge of the game world. So if I'm running something like Shadowrun for example, the GM reads the rulebook and the setting material and acts as a consultant to the players. In my experience, most of the players don't bother to read up too closely on the setting beyond the basics. They refer to the GM to make calls, asking questions like "Do they have so-and-so in this setting?" and deferring to the GM's answer.
When there's no GM, that has to be different. If I needed to get all the people at the table to read that 300 page rulebook before they could play in my Shadowrun game back in the 90s it never would have happened. So for Contenders style games, there needs to be a very low barrier to entry.
This kind of thing needs the setting explained via the system to a large degree. That is, any "pure" setting the players need that isn't just flavour on the mechanics has to be applicable to the actual gameplay in one of two ways:
1) It provides ideas to the player for things they can incorporate into the narrative.
Since the players are all equal in narrating stuff and creating scenes, it's useful to have some ready-rolled ideas for them to throw into the narrative. So for Umlaut, I'm thinking that's stuff like:
That kind of thing. I think of this as Micro Detail. Pick up the ideas and plug them pretty much straight into the narrative.
2) It gives the players broad brush stroke impressions of what the game is about.
This is stuff like:
That's the way I'm seeing it at the moment. I mean, I don't want to present anything that the players aren't going to interact with.
Sounds like Umlaut is
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Tue, 19/12/2006 - 16:12.
Sounds like Umlaut is shaping up well. Can't wait to see the finished thing!
JoE
+++
Prince of Darkness Games
Game-story mashups that put the fun into dysfunction.
Sounds cool Rich. I'm
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Tue, 19/12/2006 - 19:59.
Sounds cool Rich. I'm probably heading in a similar, but slightly different direction with my own design for Contenders. Then again, I just can't help adding colour and setting stuff. But, on the whole I agree: with the word limit as it stands, anything in the game is going to have to be useful to the players.
I'm keen to see the four paths of True Metal. How do you see that kind of stuff influencing play?
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios
Just for you, Malcolm...
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Thu, 21/12/2006 - 09:46.
The Four Paths Of Metal
Metal takes many forms, but in the world of Umläut most fits clearly into these four categories:
Classic Metal
The oldest of oldschool, Classic Metal uses clear vocals and varied themes backed up by heavy melodies, strong rhythms and tight axework. While Classic Metal originated in Great Britan in the 1970s, it's now played by bands from all over the world.
As the grandaddy of hard rock, Classic Metal gains the respect of all fans and is probably the most accessible to the 9-to-5ers.
Image: Jeans or leathers, t-shirts or shirts. Classic Metal bands probably have the most varied dress code, from biker leathers to faded demin jackets with the arms cut off.
Examples: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Led Zepelin.
Thrash Metal
Louder, faster and more agressive than Classic Metal, Thrash is tends to have a visceral experience. Lyrics are tend to focus more on hate than love, war rather than peace and are often political or tragic in nature.
Image: Jeans and t or flannel shirts are popular.
Examples: Metalica, Megadeth, Anthrax.
Glam Metal
An aggressive style (although less so than Thrash) characterised by anthemic choruses and lyrics almost exclusively focusing on girls, drinking and drug use.
Image: Tight leather or spandxed pants and skimpy vests or frilly shirts are the norm for Glam Metalers. While long hair is the norm for all Metal Warriors, for those who follow The Glam Path it is scripture, and outrageous dye-jobs, perms, highlights and lots of hairspray are a way of life. Many also wear make-up and in extreme cases men approach androgyny.
Examples: Bon Jovi, Poison, Mötley Crüe.
Death Metal
Originally popular in Finland and Norway, this recent addition to the World of Metal is characterised by a brutal aesthetic, raspy vocals and violent or dark lyrics focussing on death, satan, darkness, mortality, devil worship, dying and death.
Image: Any clothes are fine for followers of The Path Of Death, as long as they're black. Black jeans, Black t shirts and black leather pants are all de rigeur, as are long trenchcoats or hats. Many bands also make use of corpsepaint to intensify the band's image of forboding evil.
Examples: Entombed, Cradle of Filth, Cannibal Corpse
The Paths will heavily effect the narration of Gig scenes. That is, narrating a Thrash Band on stage will be different from a Glam band or a Death band. I'm also thinking that I might introduce a mechanic whereby the audience at certain venues have a predisposition towards certain styles. That is, the crowd at The Necronominightclub is particularly fond of Death Metal, and Bands following that path get a small bonus when they play there.
I'd have to be careful about who chooses what venue though in that instance, I'm not quite sure how that sort of thing ought to work mechanically...