#RPG – Soon… (soon being a relative term for me)

Crowdsourcing: Kagai! Design Assistance.

So Kagai! (which is my game of gory, Japanese B-Movie, ero-guro action) is just about done – it’s only a mini game – but I’d like to solicit some help.

I need to know what people would like to know about the setting and the game elements, if they were going to play or run it. What guidelines and assistance they would like to have. Here’s some basic info on the game, tell me the kinds of things you’d like/need to know so I can wrap this puppy up!

Elevator Pitch

The world has been invaded by monsters straight out of people’s nightmares and most of the world population is dead, or at war. One place is a little bit safer, a hyper-consumerist, high-tech Japanese arcology. Most of the remaining population is women and you’re a class of schoolgirls from the arcology who do a bit of vigilante monster hunting on the side, in a game styled after the hyper-kinetic, b-movie gorefests of Japanese B-list cinema. The system emphasises team tactics and differs from many games in that you roll first and then describe what you do from what you’ve rolled, rather than vice versa. You can also save dice for following turns, or push them into a pool for everyone to use.

Example Character

Ima Hasegawa – Age 18
Heterosexual.
Factory worker family.
Mother was killed by monsters, Father died in the war. Twin sister, Imako. Younger sister Ami – 16
She fights for kicks, getting a perverse excitement from it.
She fights with a baseball bat, Power +2, Accuracy -1.
Punk style.

Power: 3
Agility: 3
Coordination: 3
Fitness: 3
Social: 2
Beauty: 3
Awareness: 3
Smarts: 3
Health: OOOOOO
Defence: 2
Initiative: 6
Genki: OOOOO

Design & Technology: 1
English Language: 1
Geography: 1
Gym: 3
History: 1
Japanese Language: 1
Mathematics: 1
Science: 1
Social Studies: 1

Art: 0
Computing: 1
Home Economics: 3
Music: 4
Religious Studies: 0
Extracurricular Activities
Baseball: 4
Jiu-Jitsu: 2

Hand to hand attack: 5D, Power 3D.
Baseball bat attack: 6D, Power 5D.

Example Combat (Minion)

Ima is exploring a blood-stained contraception clinic in the lower levels when a pantsless zombie falls out of a cupboard and lurches at her, groaning ‘Booooobs…’

Ima only manages to roll one success for initiative, while the pantsless zombie she’s fighting manages to get 2.

It lunges forward, but it’s not pantsless exactly, they’re around its ankles, so with zero successes it fails to grab hold of her.

Backing away, Ima swings her bat and gets one success. That’s enough to hit a zombie (defence 1) but leaves her no extra dice. Rolling damage she gets two successes and decides to do that as damage, to make it easier to kill later on, if need be. It’s not a special hit, just a Health hit, a solid smash in the chest, fracturing a couple of ribs.

This time the zombie grabs hold of her, practically tripping over its own pants and tumbling into her, all stinking hands and foul, drooling mouth. The zombie barely hit and did one damage – rolling a 5. Rather than do any damage though, the Games Master pulls the zombie’s dice, saving it for another action.

Ima tries to get it off her, struggling using her jiu-jitsu. Neither her, nor the zombie, roll any successes but since she’s already grappled she remains grappled.

Pressing the attack the zombie gets two successes – enough to hit – and bites at her for 3D damage, getting one success. The Games Master decides to hold onto that two, giving the zombie two extra dice in his pool of pulled dice.

Ima strives to struggle free, getting one success – matched by the zombie. Spending Genki gets her an extra dice and a success. The zombie tries to use his own pool but fails to get any more successes and is thrown off, landing with a thump and immeditely scrabbling back at her but failing to get hold.

Ima throws everything into her next attack and gets two successes, one more than she needed, which she throws into damage. With the bonus she rolls four successes for damage, but wants to get five so she can take out the zombie with a single stroke. Spending more Genki she fails – sadly – to get the success she needs and so banks the four successes with a pull action. The swing lashes out, over the head of the zombie, stalling it and giving her a great wind-up for her next attack.

Desperately the hunched over zombie makes a grab for her legs, but only gets one success – where it needed two. Its hands slip of her legs.

Ima swings down, dumping her previously banked dice into the attack. She gets four successes and banks three of them for damage after the one to hit. On the damage roll she finally gets five successes! Enough to damage the zombie’s smarts (1) and crush its skull.

“My bat strikes the top of the zombies head and smashes its skull open like a rotten gourd. Brains splash in all directions, staining my legs. A fragment of brain hits my cheek. I lick it up with my tongue and spit it out onto the zombie’s corpse.”

“Gross, regain one Genki.”

Sword-Fodder and Big Bads

Zombies aren’t the real point of the game, ‘big bads’ are. Tough and very dangerous monsters that require luck and friends to destroy. Being able to push dice means that characters can work together, help each other out and be good at things – like causing distractions – that aren’t directly combat, but which help everyone else.

Questions

So what would you want to know about the setting, the rules, the background? What tools would you like to help you run games? A random monster generator? Some example monsters? How in depth would the background need to be? What could I do to make it cool and to sell you on the idea?