Now that I am, how do I have? (or, Stuff) <- More rules.

Now that I am, how do I have? (or, Stuff)



Oh Yeah.  Throw in a mask, and I'll drive it off the lot !

If you need something that isn’t permanently linked to your character, you need to roll enough successes, which vary by the value & scarcity.  The career you use is citizen, unless your adventuring career would be more appropriate. As a guide, your social class is defined by your CITIZEN career.

Night Train Rockafeller,
Millionaire Hobo
(rejected player character)

Class                                         CITIZEN

·        RICH                                   5

·        UPPER                                 4

·        WORKING                             3

·        POOR                                   2

·        BUM                                     1

·        DESTITUTE                         0

 

Forobtaining  stuff, determine how many successes it costs from the table below:

·        If your CITIZEN is greater, you have it (until it gets blown up) !

·        If your CITIZEN is equal, you can be assumed to be renting it, but have to make a single success citizen roll each adventure to keep it.  If it is blown up, you now have a new hobby –paying it off !

Ha !  Thought you were safe up here !
Luckily I have
MY VERY OWN HELICOPTER !

·        Otherwise, roll the above number of dice, adding the citizen rating to each.  Yes, the rich can have it all.   As ever, each 7+ is a success.  If you have enough successes, you have it till you don’t

You can only roll if it is possible to succeed.  However,  if the item requires more successes than possible, a player can gain one free success before rolling by reducing your Citizen by one . Two successes requires lowering it by  TWO levels. OUCH ! If you get it, you lose it between adventures, but regain your CITIZEN points.  

While lots of common stuff is bought using your CITIZEN skill, career specific stuff can be different.  Any time you need to roll for an item, instead of your CITIZEN, you can use an appropriate CAREER . The adds are still the citizen rating, but the number of dice rolled is determined by the career.  Thus, a BUM (1) would normally  be unable to obtain a pistol (cost 2) as he can only roll one dice at +1 (CITIZEN dice +CITIZEN) ; however, an ex Army (3) BUM rolls three dice for +1 (ARMY dice +CITIZEN).  Two successes and hes a Hobo with a pistol !

NOTE that in a major pinch, you can reduce the career you substitute as if it was CITIZEN.

If you have NATURE instead of CITIZEN, your effective CITIZEN is BUM.  Use careers where you can, Tarzan.   In his case “RICH BASTARD HEIR” turned out to be his career.

Cost of stuff with some examples, or, everything has its price, sweetheart !

NOTE: that Items rated at 6+ require either being WEALTHY, or reducing you CITIZEN or CAREER, or being an NPC villan or patron, who can have a citizen higher than 5. Characters, never.

Free/dumpster divings      0             Rags. Old butts.  Ketchup and chickenbone soup. Squirrel.  Shank. Club. Beano.

Cheap/Ubiquitous               1            Old clothing, gum, shiv, smokes, Poison Liquor. flop

Inexpensive/common           2            Zip gun, , Cheap Booze, Old Car. hardscrabble, apartment

Affordable/uncommon         3            Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun Sm House, Car,  good stuff Booze, farm    

costly/Unusual                    4            Lg House, fancier car, sm airplane,country estate Military arms (BAR, Grenade) top                                                               shelf Booze:

Luxury/uncommon               5            Mansion,Yacht, fighter, race car, lab, big/new plane, tank, plantation,  best Booze

Ruinous/Rare                      6            Secret base, rocket, flying yacht/HQ

Priceless/Unique               7+           Hope Diamond, The Mona Lisa, Battle cruiser, Spy army

Examples of transport:  match with value (hints: one is 0, one is 6)

 

 

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.

Some last thoughts on the T5 Kickstarter

Well, it broke 2000 backers and $250,000; as has been posted elsewhere, to the grump all this proves it that it is mindless peer pressure and fanboi lack of critical thinking (1) ;  a somewhat questionable assumption, but perhaps they know best.  However, reading one reasonable complaint (2), I realized why I chipped in, and it has little to do with critical thinking (of the kind that weighs everything in terms of what fungible value it gets for me right now)

Here's my thought on the matter:

Honestly, I could not care less [about where the money raise over and above producing the promised product if there is any] . Seriously, I get a product I already like the beta version of, in a format that is, by todays expenses, worth the basic retail price: 75$. If the extra money goes to Marc and FFE for their 501K, no problem for me. plus, consider how much of the final price of any gaming product does not go tho the actual author - I can easily see it as helping him getting a better than 20% return for each dollar you spend on his product when it goes thru normal production. Basic wholesale is 30 -40% of cover -and ask Matt how much of that gets lost due to every other damned thing before the owner gets paid.

See, I like RPGs, I appreciate the work and passion that goes into them, and the ways they enrich my free time and friendships. Assuming even 75% of the money is over and above the upgraded version that the stretches represent, amortize it over 40 years of RPG design for Marc, and it is a small annuity indeed.

Frankly, too, of the main designers of my favorite hobby, a distressing number of them can hardly be said to have profited by their efforts; and if one of them gets a bit of a bump at the end of his career, well, okay by me. Perhaps that will encourage the next generation when faced with the choice of making a decent living from not doing RPG design work or following their muse, and thus making my life more entertaining. In fact, it represents about a $ 2.50 per person per year 35 year subscription for the 2000 backers alone. Not a bad deal for 35 years of traveller fun; especially given the number of crappy movies and books I've plopped down more than 2.50 (or even 25.00) for in any given year, each of those years.

Honestly, for what we give to creators vs what get, we have a great deal going; and I'm speaking of the whole industry here.