RPG idea, Joker minions

I came up with this idea while trying to fall asleep. I'm not sure if it kept me awake or if I was filling time until I could relax enough to sleep. Anyway, the big idea is that you play as a minion of the DC character The Joker. Not playing the big guy himself but rather playing one of the little people that makes his plan possible.

I see the PCs as something slightly above completely disposable. You'll play the characters that offer skills or abilities that the funny guy wants and can use. So he'll be abusive, mean, and ungrateful to them but wont kill them out of hand... hopefully. In fact the "will he kill you" question could be a mechanic of the game.

So as his minions, you're the one that's got to get the bombs on the other boat, piling the money into a nice burnable pyramid. Maybe you never even follow the big guy onto a heist, those guys are the disposable ones.

I don't see your PCs as able to take on big names, the Batman would shrug them off, the Joker likewise would shrug off any aggression from the PCs. That's not to say the PCs cant do anything, they are completely capable of defeating civilians and cops, they are thug-like henchmen that get things done.

I've no idea what system would work best for this idea, or if it even needs its own system. If you know if this idea's been done, or if you know what system might suit this idea best, please post a comment below. 

Short Sessions are Good Sessions

We were all young once, and we had free time, so much in fact that we could spend entire days playing roleplaying games. But no more. Mortgages needs to be paid, spouses want attention, children needs parenting. So we adults all have much less time to spend playing games.

But this is a good thing, and here's why! (<== What great headline.)

I remember days long games of the classics, MERP, D&D, Runequest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu (in which we did some dungeon crawls), Spacemaster, and these games lasted the entire day. Yet... the more I think back, those days were actually long drawn out affairs. I remember them included trips to the shops for snacks, or even pizza. I remember taking breaks to watch films (on VHS!), and even the odd game on Nintendo. Therefore when I probe a little deeper, they were great fun times, but they were more "themed" around roleplaying rather than doing the actual roleplaying.

Fast forward to today, my last year long campaign was played in strict two hour sessions. My IP blast of games using FATE  to play in the Dune, Judge Dredd, and Tron universes were likewise only 2 hour sessions. When I joined a group playing Monster Hunters, they were running two hour sessions.

In short the two hour time frame is much easier for a grown ass adult to carve out and reserve for play, and the two hour sessions are packed full. I've never played a two hour game where it was session-zeroed, that sh*t would take the entire session. No, instead players were given pre-gens, rolled them up before hand, or we were playing games where characters are created through play. The point here being that no one playing wanted to "waste" time on the preliminaries.

A little note on using pregens here. When I provide pregens, they are a place holder, and if the game goes beyond one session, the player can come back to the second session with their own new character and just drop it in to replace the pregen.

With only two hours to play, the scenarios have no filler-scenes, no slow initial pacing to ease players in, the time constraint means that you drop the characters into the middle of the scenario and game just goes. There's no roleplaying of "the boring bits", the journeys between locations are reduced to "cut to the next scene". Combats can not be long drawn out affairs, with staid and reserved counting squares on the board and moving slowly, it needs to move at pace. The end result is that its a literally action packed session that everyone gets the most out of.

If you haven't tried strict short sessions, I urge you to try it. If you are still able to play for a day, try and organise your day into a series of different 2 hour games. It could be great experience, almost like a con.

There are games out there that are designed for short sessions, one of which you might want to look at is called Challenge Dungeon.

Skylanders as a boardgame

My son has been collecting the Skylanders figures for quite some time, and I love the look of these

things, I've wanted to come up with a board game for them for the longest time. Well I finally pulled

Sample card

my finger out and started what promises to be a long term project.

The card image on the right is my first stab at creating a character card for the game. What follows are my first thoughts about the game rules. These are not finalised, not even play tested, just the results of a brain-dump.

The playing surface needs to be a 6cm grid to fit the figure bases, perhaps with stand up terrain in some squares to block line of sight and add interest.

• The "Allies" in the top right corner might say anything and indicates some kind of affiliation.
• The 1 in the orange circle is the cost to "buy" the figure into your army, a process done before game play starts, players take alternate turns buying figures up to an agreed amount.
• The text at the bottom is usually flavour text, but may describe a special in-game ability.
• The stats in the blue box are, Melee Attack dice, Defence dice, Range of attacks, Health.
• Melee attack into adjacent boxes, roll 1 D6 for each Melee Attack point, all 5s and 6s count as hits.
• Defence, used when attacked, roll 1 D6 for each Defence point, all 5s and 6s block one incoming attack point.
• Range, this indicates the range over which you may make attacks, Ranged attack are different to Melee. They can not be made into adjacent squares (that would be melee). The Ranged value indicates the number of dice you attack with, but reduces with each square of range between attacker and target.
• The Health number, indicate how many points of damage you can take before the character is killed (removed from the game).
• All figures may move 2 squares.
• Blood tokens will be placed on a characters card to indicate hits.
• The board will be sprinkled with 3D "crates". Moving into a square allows the character to pick up the crate. Each crate may be burned (discarded) when the players wants, to do one of the following things. Heal one point, move two additional spaces, add two to Range, Melee, or Defence score for one turn.
• There may be terrain effects, such as height or cover.

Well that's all my thoughts from a first session of brain storming. There are a lot of possible additions to such a simple system but to be honest, I want it kept simple.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.