The year is Nineteen -Thirty-Nazi !

 

Basic Adventure Game System

BAGS is a game for bags, written by bags.  As such, the design goals were to be:

·        Simple

·        Short

·        easy,

·        simple

·        short

The inspiration was a boardgame and lots of random cards to create adventures, perils, villains, treasures, etc.  Plus, Pete wasn’t ready for the western game, and this got thrown together. See: Baggishness.

Setting ?  This setting is PULP ADVENTURE, set in Nineteen-thirty-Nazi.  You are playing a character in a roleplaying game. I am running it.   If you don’t know what a roleplaying game is, get the hell out of my house.  Come back when you don’t have a life, okay ?

"Nineteen-thirty-Nazi"? That ill defined period of time for pulp adventures which includes:

• Nazi Germany  as a source of mooks and plots and bizarre occult investigations (either as an actual government or just nearly about to be);
• Airships, flying boats, the last of the biplanes, and no rockets, jets or flying wings
• Less Rays, no RAdio Detection And Ranging apparatus. *
• Revolvers, shotguns, rifles, Thompson guns, Styr SMG's, BARs
• Big fast mobster type cars and motorcycles with sidecars
• Cool diesel & tube (valve for purists) crazy science, often in the service of the New occult….
• Unexplored and poorly mapped Pacific and African wilderness with big game hunting, lost tribes, cities and treasures; often forgotten by time.
• Maybe starting to recover from the Great depression, maybe post prohibition, but still lots of gun running, rum running, and Mobsters.
• Revolutionary ferment, Banana Republic wars, Anarchy vs Communism vs Fascism....
• Less commandoes and rangers, more international spies & Comintern
• A world at peace, just running up to, but not into, world war two actually just yet. 

How do I play this?  What do I do ? Where is My Butt?  I’ve used both hands and I can’t find it !!   Okay, here is the topline: You pretend to be a someone else having a bad day, otherwise called a HERO having an ADVENTURE. 

·        Since adults argue even more than five year olds playing cowboy (got ya !  Nuh UH!) we have numbers and rules to make decisions asy and (sorta) impartial. 

·        To do stuff you roll dice to see if what you want to do works, and how well.  The better you are at stuff, the more dice and higher numbers you generate –which is good, because harder stuff needs bigger results.

·        When you screw up, bad things can happen, like when you fail to jump a chasm (you fall to your doom), or fail to not be punched (you get ouched).  In which case, since no one here is very creative, usually this means you get hurt or lose cool stuff. Sometimes you die.  Again, we have numbers and rolls to determine when or if this happens (see: playing cowboys).

·        Players work together , dealing with a scenario designed and run by a referee.  Everyone says it isn’t player vs GM, but we all know the truth after our first game.

·        If you make a point of doing well, you can get better at what you do, or learn new things. Plus, you get to keep cool stuff, especially when the bad guys “don’t need it any more”.

·        Got all that ?

How would some online academic wannabe describe the game: Dice pool resolution, stat and skill, task numbers & opposed rolls. D6 only.  Rules-lite.  Minimalist chargen, stats as skills.  Retro-Stupid.  Gamist. Genre simulation, non-narrative, screened (gamemaster controlled, low player agency). 

While we are answering questions, what is all this about “Bags” ? If you have to ask, consider yourself blessed.

Who is this “Pete” (or “Joel”) of whom you speak ? See above.