Saturday, June 13, 2009

Challenge 2: Second Assault

My major issue with the first strike on this challenge was that it did not address the "tabletop" aspect of the game enough. It sounded more like a Twisted Metal style racing game than a tabletop RPG. So in this Second Assault I intend to fix that.

As you know, the original challenge was: Design a tabletop RPG game about wolves that also advertises a product.

What I like about this take on the challenge (remember: badass anthropamorphic wolves in a NASCAR-like organization out to collect sponsorships and blow up caribou) is that it sweats IP. I see each player as starting out with some kind of toy car. Maybe you could sell big boxes of "Junkyard Scraps" so to speak, which would be like booster decks, filled with all sorts of different pieces you could put onto your car. So in a way your toy car would be like your character sheet.

So you build up your toy car with all sorts of guns and armor plating and such. How then do you get the hunts going? I would say the game comes with a few different terrain mats, each laid out in hex-grid format that the cars can drive around on. You would roll dice to move and perform actions like shoot your guns and do stunts like flying off of mountains and finding out whether your car lands upright or flips over. You could even have terrains that are just race tracks for players to race through, or terrains specifically designed for different game modes.

At the beginning of each race, you are given the opportunity to earn different sponsorships by completing different tasks. For example, Pepsi may offer you $10,000 for being the last surviving racer, while PenzOil may offer you $20,000 for never firing a shot and being in the top 5 racers. Each car can hold a different number of Sponsorship Stickers, and each sticker has a corresponding card with what you must do to earn the sponsorship money per round. Some sponsors offer one amount, while others offer different amounts depending on what you do. In order to maintain a sponsorship, you must meet at least one of their requirements per race. Bonuses for completing multiple requirements could also exist.

Once this game got popular enough, you could expand it into different formats like Twisted Metal style racing games, a cartoon series, a live action movie based on the cartoon, comic books, etc. As I said, it sweats IP.

Crap I may have to prototype this.

1 comment:

  1. What I worry about with this design is that Tabletop RPGs can be slow, while a car race is undeniably fast. What would make people not play the game once and think that they would rather just play a wolf-themed Twisted Metal (and maybe ignoring the game you worked upon). I also worry that your design doesn't so much express any roleplaying elements. It's more like a regular board game with collectable content. I want to know how this game would adress the story elements of RPG design. It looks intriguing, and I can envision the game better than I could from your first look :)

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