the good guys

a roleplaying game by liam burke

and you
you could be mean
and I
I'll drink all the time
--david bowie, heroes

CHARACTER CREATION

Choose a thing -- that's a noun that isn't a person or place. Examples: Sword, Fire, Sun, Refrigerator

Write down that thing. Make a name based on it.  That's your name. Examples: Heriko, the Sword; All-Consuming Fire; Peri, Refrigerator of Chaos

Write down two Verbs that are associated with that noun.  Examples: Sword - Cut, Parry; Fire: Destroy, Warm; Refrigerator - Freeze, Contain

Put an exclamation point after one of those Verbs.  Example: Sword - Cut, Parry!; Fire: Destroy!, Warm

For each of those Verbs, put down an Asset -- some great artifact, powerful organization, or immense magic that you control utterly -- for now.  Come up with a story as to how you got that Asset by applying your immense personal power in the field of whatever the verb in question is.
Example: Peri, Refrigerator of Chaos, lives in the Citadel Polaris, created when he prevented the Deluge by freezing the rain as it fell to earth, then stacking the shards in the form of a great icy fortress.

Example: Heriko, the Sword, commands the Ten Thousand Warriors, due to an oath they swore that they would serve forever any hero who could face them all at once without missing a single parry.

Share your chararacter sheets with one another.  Together, you are the last best hope of the universe. You're the good guys.  You've come together to fight a great and devastating evil from beyond the known world, which will not directly appear in the game.

Choose two Assets owned by two other players.  You Covet them. Come up with a reason why. If desired, roll on the random motivation table below:

1 - Sex
2 - Hatred
3 - Fear
4 - Envy
5 - Pride
6 - Sex

Feel free to make your motivations sound more positive.

The awesomest player goes first.

PLAY

When it is your turn, you frame a scene in which you try to Acquire something you Covet.

Of course, because of The Evil, you've all agreed to join forces, so you can't just go out and beat the hell out of your erstwhile ally and take their stuff. Before you can actually do an Acquirement scene, you need Casus Belli.

CASUS BELLI

That's Latin for "a reason to fight."  In a Casus Belli scene, choose somebody you want to mess with, and go mess with them.  Come up, between the two of you, with something that that person cares about, and horn in on it, as dramatically as you want to without directly attacking them.

That person can let you do it.  If they do that, they have Casus Belli against you.

Otherwise, they can come in and try to stop you.  If they do that, there's a conflict.  The OTHER player is the attacker, because they're the one trying to stop you from doing what you want to do. Regardless of who wins the conflict, you both have Casus Belli against each other.

CONFLICT

When two characters disagree about what ought to happen, there's a conflict.  Here's how you resolve that:

1) The attacking party describes what they are doing. Here's a place where they might look to their Verbs.
2) The defending party does the same.
3) Both parties roll one die if what they're doing corresponds with one of their Verbs, plus one die for each exclamation point after that Verb.
4) The highest roll wins and describes their action being successful.
5) The loser can choose to Escalate.  If they do so, they describe being violently unwilling to accept their defeat.  If not...
6) The conflict ends.  The winner describes achieving their goal; the loser describes their failure.

If the loser chooses to Escalate:

5a) The winner can immediately choose to concede.  If they do so, they become the loser.  Go to 6.
5b) If the winner does not do so, collateral damage occurs, and conflict continues.  Go back to 1.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Every time the loser chooses to Escalate and the winner does not concede, the conflict becomes more destructive to everything around them:

First Escalation: A bystander is injured; maybe a cup is broken
Second Escalation: The room is wrecked; a few people might be injured
Third Escalation: The building is demolished; at least one person is killed
Fourth Escalation: The neighborhood is levelled; countless injuries
Fifth Escalation: The city is ravaged; hundreds of people die
Sixth Escalation: The entire nation is devastated; widespread chaos and loss of life
Seventh Escalation: The world is destroyed; everybody dies

When this happens, describe how the unwillingness of both parties to cease their conflict leads to suffering for those nearby. The winner now has Casus Belli against the loser.  To explain this, make sure to wreck more of their stuff.

SIDEBAR: APOTHEOSIS

When you Escalate, you can undergo Apotheosis.  Write down another Verb that is associated with your noun. Describe how you use THAT Verb to avoid defeat and cause collateral damage. The first time you do this, add an exclamation point to one of your Verbs.

ACQUIREMENT

Acquirement scenes work exactly like Casus Belli scenes, except that you must describe how you use your Verb to attempt to seize their Asset, and if the other party does not get involved or loses, you gain the Asset and they lose it. The other party adds an exclamation point to one of their Verbs, and has Casus Belli against you, and Covets the Asset they just lost (in addition to anything they already Coveted). At the beginning of your next turn, if you still have the Asset, choose something new to Covet.

PASSING

You can pass on your turn, and choose not to do a scene.  The first turn cannot be passed.

ENDGAME

If one person has five total Assets, they win, and everybody else loses.

If everybody passes in a row, the person with the most Assets wins, and everybody else loses.  If this is a tie then they tie instead.

If the world is destroyed, everybody loses twice.