Turning Tropes into Game Features

[JellyPooga]

So I was watching The Princess Bride yesterday and it occured to me that a game that plays in a similar vein would be awesome. Let me expand: The whole film is about these really cliche'd characters and the whole story revolves around this one aspect about them; Westly has a True Love which gives him his drive, Iniago has his Overdeveloped Sense of Vengeance which lets him continue fighting even though wounded, etc. The idea that sprung into my head was of a game that was given drive by these tropes. Something like Risus I suppose, but I can't see True Love or OSoV being a usable cliche in the Risus sense.

So I come here looking for ideas on how this could develop. Wether you think it something adaptable to a current system or whether it could be developed into a game of its own. Hit me with your thoughts!

Cheers,

JP

[DamnedIrishman]

You could use Tropes in a similar way to traits and weaknesses: selecting one or two at character creation which have a specific benefits and downsides.

May I also draw your attention to Lysander's Bestow Trope (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6266077) spell.

[Flickerdart]

You could take Trope flaws and each would give you the appropriate feat? So you'd take, say, Weak Will to represent any number of tropes, and then take, say, the Diehard feat to represent that extra zing of endurance.

[kamikasei]

Isn't this pretty much exactly what... is it FATE? The system underlying Spirit of the Century... does? Characters have a handful of aspects, and fate points; they can spend points to activate an aspect to their advantage, and gain points when the storyteller activates aspects to their disadvantage. As far as I understand it.

[Vortling]

You also might want to look into Prose Descriptive Qualities (http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/freebies.asp#pdq) for something like this. It's quite rules light and sounds like it would work well for what you're trying to do.

[Devils_Advocate]

So, wait. Are you talking about basing game rules on narrative conventions in general, or just on character motivation tropes?

I would guess that there are several narrative-based systems that deal with character motivation. Though I'm not familiar with any of them.

[Artanis]

You could probably do something like this with BESM.

[Quietus]

Isn't this pretty much exactly what... is it FATE? The system underlying Spirit of the Century... does? Characters have a handful of aspects, and fate points; they can spend points to activate an aspect to their advantage, and gain points when the storyteller activates aspects to their disadvantage. As far as I understand it.

You could even wing it. Give each player three tokens- poker chips, or something else identifiable. Tell them to come up with some cliche or trope regarding their character, maybe two or three. When that situation comes up in-game, they can give you one of those tokens to play off of that trope for that scene.

[Player, as Wesley] : "Crap, I failed my Diplomacy roll. She wants me to roll off down this hill... I'm going to use my 'True Love' trope to convince her that I'm really me as I roll away, shouting As you wish!!" *Hands over a tropechip*

[Yora]

You could make an ability of the stormtrooper effect or the conservation of ninjutsu.
All enemies in the area take a penalty to all roles equal to the number of enemies in the area. When enemies die, the penalty is lowered accordingly at the beginning of your turn.

[JellyPooga]

Just had a look at FATE and it's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! Thanks for the heads-up guys :smallwink:

[rampaging-poet]

I don't remember how far along it got, but there was a thread about such an RPG here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75973).


Just had a look at FATE and it's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! Thanks for the heads-up guys

Argh, you found something before I posted this. Oh well.

[bosssmiley]

Pendragon, Passions and Traits. They are designed for exactly this type of play.

[Knaight]

Stick with Fate, its a really good system. From there feel free to steal things from Fudge or Spirit of the Century, since Fate is a Fudge variant to begin with, and Spirit of the Century is basically another edition of Fate.