The Dog-Eared Superhero Resents his Father [Tabletop Card]

[Salamosam]

Edit: I just finished a big rewrite of the game, taking out a lot of the complexity, including the Chaos Pile rules and generally making it easier to pick up and play. It's a breeze now. You can find it here: http://bit.ly/pJ3L20.
Cheerio!

I made a game! It's a table-top collaborative story-generating card game, yes it is. Last night we made a female stripper who was banished from her home in the Everglades to the music school in Boston where she got kicked out when her pet alligator and her stash of marijuana was found. She starred in several porn films where she started questioning her sexuality and then got caught in a love-triangle with the mayor and his wife. Eventually she blackmailed the mayor for money to pay for her pet alligator's surgery, which destroyed the mayor's marriage. She started a relationship with the mayor's ex-wife, retired from the strip club and lived happily ever after.

Want to play?

[shouldice]

[...] a female stripper who was banished from her home in the Everglades to the music school in Boston where she got kicked out when her pet alligator and her stash of marijuana was found. She starred in several porn films where she started questioning her sexuality and then got caught in a love-triangle with the mayor and his wife. Eventually she blackmailed the mayor for money to pay for her pet alligator's surgery, which destroyed the mayor's marriage. She started a relationship with the mayor's ex-wife, retired from the strip club and lived happily ever after.

We've all been there, am I right?


(...How does your game work?)

[Darien]

Been there? I'm STILL paying for that damn alligator's surgery!

[Salamosam]

There are 4 phases: The Character, The Past, The Conflict, and the Future. You start with a seed card for the Character, ie. The Stripper, and then play proceeds in rounds. Each player either offers an element (written on a card) or votes for one of the elements already in contention. At the end of a round, 1 card is chosen to be added to "The Character" column. 4 players = 4 rounds = 4 cards chosen for each phase. Count up the votes to make a score (sort of - it's a bit more complex) then the winner of the round gets to make the seed card for the next phase. It works super well.

PS: Halifax represent! Saw that you went to the game jam. I was thinking about going but I'm more of a tabletop designer than digital designer.

[shouldice]

That sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Are the cards all made beforehand, or can people write cards mid-game? It sounds like this would be perfect for an "evolving playgroup deck" sort of thing.

Woo Halifax! I think it would be cool if we had some tabletop games come out of the next game jam. There were a lot of artist's there last time; maybe some collaboration could happen.

[Salamosam]

Only the four phase cards are made beforehand. All other cards are made during play. The game goes in totally unexpected directions, and that's the fun of it. It's a blast for sure! We started with "The Stripper", and everything else grew out of that one idea.

I have some rules for adding a measure of persistence to the game by using the "Chaos Pile", hopefully creating a long-form narrative, but I haven't had the opportunity to try them out yet. The rules are all typed up if anyone wants to have a gander. What's the best way to share a .pdf?

[Salamosam]

I just finished a big rewrite of the rules, hoping to make it more clear and a bit more punchy.
Could anyone help out with a bit of proofreading and critiquing? It's four pages, PDF. Thanks! I can email it to you or something.

[Salamosam]

Session report:

I played this again last week and it went really well. There were six players, all totally new to the game, divided up into 4 teams of 1 or 2. It took about 15-20 minutes of explanation and correction before everyone was up to speed. I'm happy with that amount of time. We played for about 90 minutes or so and everyone had a blast!

So:
We started this time with an Ice-Cream Sommelier. Turns out he's diabetic and lactose intolerant. He's terribly afraid of clowns, yet he has a romantic relationship with Charity, the ringmaster of the circus. He's a rollerblader. Oh, he also has ice-cream scoops for hands and has a cow who lactates 4 different kinds of ice cream. True story.

Years ago, he escaped from Nazi-ruled Germany with his gay lover Jerry and the two of them adopted a Jewish boy named Moon Mist, but then they were all abducted by aliens! They probed him and they all suffered long term emotional damage. Ben (of course) thought he was straight, Jerry thought he was a glass of orange juice, and Moon Mist decided to stay and live with the aliens. Ben creates an ice-cream flavour called Striped Pajamas and it's a huge success.

Back in the present, Charity has been promoted to head clown and so she tattoos a clowns face onto her own face. Because Ben is afraid of clowns, this means that when they do the horizontal polka she has to wear a bag over her head, but this makes her get really hot and she has to take it off so they have to do it doggy style. This reminds Ben of his homosexual roots, and so he hires a male prostitute from Mexico. Trouble ensues and Ben and Charity are quits.

To burn off all the extra energy he has Ben begins rollerblading in earnest once again. This means that his usual mode of transportation, Bessie the cow, is neglected and her ice-cream supply dries up. Sensing Ben's troubled situation, Moon Mist returns to Earth to help Ben find his old lover Jerry. However, Ben finds Jerry fat. To help him live a more healthy lifestyle, Ben replaces his ice-cream scoop hands with carrot-peeler hands. After this, Ben, Jerry and Moon Mist all live together in Heavenly Hash.

fin

[Jonathan Whiting]

I like the dream-like not quite connections that emerge during that.

Would certainly be interested in seeing the rules, but I'm not sure I can promise the time required for a proper proofread. Incidently, if you've not had much response in that line and you're prepared to, you'll probably get more input if you just stick it up somewhere that we can check it out easily.

[Salamosam]

Of course! It's shared on google docs at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C9sk2KBVnVH9WLU0UqW6lK51fy-nVU2nvHKU3yelGdg/edit?hl=en_US. Even a quick read-over to let me know if you think you could puzzle it out from the rules alone would be super helpful. It's pretty easy to pick up and get playing too, if you wanted to give it a shot.

The game doesn't necessarily have this dream-like quality. I've played a few games that are cohesive and sensible. Well, sort of. In a good way.