So my campaign has been favorably compared to GTA at times, and with good reason-we don't do the whole World of Darkness glimmering angst crap, we are too busy blowing shit up, seducing strippers and shooting each other in the dick. I'm sure that we wouldn't last a day with the campaign diary on the official White Wolf forums, but it doesn't bother me much, because we have fun every time. In the end, that and nothing else is the point, so if my PC's don't want to press their hands to the back of their foreheads and moan about the nihilistic absurdity of the cosmos, I don't make them-I hand them the chainsaw and some really nasty unlikeable foes and let them go to town.
Our next campaign is going to be a marvelous case study of this kind of gaming-I have a cheap mechanism to avoid player death and to encourage torture, sodomy and two fisted diplomacy. Our characters are going to be shallow, violent, amoral parodies of ourselves...with bad ass superpowers. The Pc's will be attending a sort of evil version of the X-Men academy, a Wyrm driven, Pentex funded school for promising supervillains. There is a satanic daycare, a Basic Torture class, a Malfean Fraternity and now, Achievements.
The concept is similar to what you see on Xbox live, where doing certain things rewards the player with one of the Achievement cards I am working up, with the added bonus of giving the player the ability to use the card for some small (or large) game related ability. I'll be handing the cards out every session, whenever someone fulfills the conditions of the card. In addition, there are Negative Achievements-these are cards for when the players fuck up and they go into effect immediately. Finally, there are Wild or Gag achievements, which may be negative or positive but usually relate to inside jokes from previous games or our greater nerd culture. I'm going to write them out by hand on various colored pieces of construction paper and keep them mostly secret until the players discover them, but here are a few examples.
The Ogg Iran Memorial Overkill Award (Wild) - Do at least five health levels of damage on an enemy that is already Crippled or worse . Play this card for three extra successes on any damage roll.
It's Necrophilia, Jim (Positive) - Have sex with a vampire and survive. Play this card to render your character immune to Presence and Dominate for a scene.
Team Killing Fucktard (Negative) - Incapacitate another player character. This card adds an automatic three 1's to your next die roll.
Ho Hum, Get the Woodchipper (Negative) - Act too blase at scenes of extreme torture or murder. Lose 1 Willpower.
Piggy Pie (Positive) - Kill 10 cops. Play this card for an automatic 2 successes on any die roll.
Balls to the Wall (Positive) - Do at least 5 damage (after soak) to an enemy's groin. Play this card to nullify all wound penalties for a scene.
Oh yeah, there are more too, including a favorite of mine called Table for Three, and a really nasty unpleasant secret achievement called Fly Like A Rock. It doesn't exactly mesh with your vanilla WoD, but I think it is going to spice up our game better than a hot teenage babysitter.
I'll let you know how it goes.
I propose another, based on my interactions with our Brujah/Highlander in the last two campaigns I was part of...
ReplyDeleteNo One But Me Is Allowed to Hit My Brother (Positive)- Awarded for going back into the fight to help out someone you have dicked over that session. Play this card to give both you and your buddy a chance to re-roll a crappy soak result.
Oh, and of course, the Run Like Hell Memorial Award (Positive)- Given out for knowing when it's time to run like hell instead of standing and fighting. Play this card to add three successes to a roll involving getting away from a fight scene.