Potential Buffy Game
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I figured I'd open this here so it has it's own thing instead of derailing the other thread. A lot of this is contingent on me looking at my Buffy code and finding that it's usable but...
I'm thinking of opening a Buffy game. That's about as far as I've gotten with the idea but here are the seeds I've been pondering...
1: Put it in a big city that hasn't been explored in the Buffy-verse(so not L.A.)
2: Have it be in real time since the show went off the air. So it's been 15 years since all the potential slayers were made active.
3: No limit on slayers aside from them having to be women. Given the time period since all slayers were made active this is all the current generation has known, Buffy may even be a legend at this point (ala Luke Skywalker).
4: No comic continuity. Keep it strictly TV canon.
5: No real limits on what PCs could be. If it was in the Buffy/Angel core rules I think it should be supported on the game.And that's it for now. Those are the ideas I'm thinking about running with. Thoughts? Ideas? Thanks!
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@zombiegenesis Okay, I'll start!
What differentiates a Buffy game from any other supernatural game if PCs can be anything (as opposed to being teenagers, the monsters of which the original TV show was an allegory for)? I don't mean that as criticism but as a point of discussion; what makes it stand apart compared to, say, a Hunter game?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:
I figured I'd open this here so it has it's own thing instead of derailing the other thread. A lot of this is contingent on me looking at my Buffy code and finding that it's usable but...
I'm thinking of opening a Buffy game. That's about as far as I've gotten with the idea but here are the seeds I've been pondering...
1: Put it in a big city that hasn't been explored in the Buffy-verse(so not L.A.)
2: Have it be in real time since the show went off the air. So it's been 15 years since all the potential slayers were made active.
3: No limit on slayers aside from them having to be women. Given the time period since all slayers were made active this is all the current generation has known, Buffy may even be a legend at this point (ala Luke Skywalker).
4: No comic continuity. Keep it strictly TV canon.
5: No real limits on what PCs could be. If it was in the Buffy/Angel core rules I think it should be supported on the game.And that's it for now. Those are the ideas I'm thinking about running with. Thoughts? Ideas? Thanks!
I think you need someone to write up some good, chronologically sound news files about what happened post-Angel finale, and I think you need to figure out the absolute shit-show that is balance when it comes to "quality packages", etc. Honestly I wouldn't allow more than one package per person, for starters.
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@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
@zombiegenesis Okay, I'll start!
What differentiates a Buffy game from any other supernatural game if PCs can be anything? I don't mean that as criticism but as a point of discussion; what makes it stand apart compared to, say, a Hunter game?
It would come with an actual compendium of demons and other monsters; it comes with lore; it comes with an actual system (the cinematic unisystem) that is built to simulate play in a "cinematic" fashion so you can do shit like what happened in the show.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@coin said in Potential Buffy Game:
It would come with an actual compendium of demons and other monsters; it comes with lore; it comes with an actual system (the cinematic unisystem) that is built to simulate play in a "cinematic" fashion so you can do shit like what happened in the show.
I suppose what made Buffy special to me (perhaps due to my own age when I first watched it) is that everything was placed at a school and the characters were figuring their shit out - supernatural, dating, sexuality, family, career - at the same time... all while monsters tried to eat them.
I'm not saying it can't be done with older characters, just that it'd probably feel very similar to other kinds of Hunter-y games then. Different setting, sure, and the lore could make all the difference, but it'd still be quite a lot like those.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
@coin said in Potential Buffy Game:
It would come with an actual compendium of demons and other monsters; it comes with lore; it comes with an actual system (the cinematic unisystem) that is built to simulate play in a "cinematic" fashion so you can do shit like what happened in the show.
I suppose what made Buffy special to me (perhaps due to my own age when I first watched it) is that everything was placed at a school and the characters were figuring their shit out - supernatural, dating, sexuality, family, career - at the same time... all while monsters tried to eat them.
I'm not saying it can't be done with older characters, just that it'd probably feel very similar to other kinds of Hunter-y games then. Different setting, sure, and the lore could make all the difference, but it'd still be quite a lot like those.
Watch some angel and the later seasons of Buffy (like 6-7) for non-school related hijinks in the Buffyverse, I guess?
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@Arkandel Well, that's certainly a way we could go. We could start with setting the game in Place A and grow from there. If most people want to play teenagers/college students I have no problem creating a game based on that theme. From there we could grow as characters age and head out on their own some move on to other things, new plots and more adult oriented stories, and maybe some people create new "school characters" and we continue with those stories as well.
Like I said, I'm in the planning stages still so hearing what people want and how they want to play is very important.
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The good news is I had a working backup of my Buffy DB. That makes me happy.
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@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:
1: Put it in a big city that hasn't been explored in the Buffy-verse(so not L.A.)
I like big city, though I'd try to go medium-big, but what the hell does that mean. There should be some sort of supernatural lure, ideally not a hellmouth, that gives a why there's so many supers around and no one is noticing big time. Can make something weird up.
2: Have it be in real time since the show went off the air. So it's been 15 years since all the potential slayers were made active.
3: No limit on slayers aside from them having to be women. Given the time period since all slayers were made active this is all the current generation has known, Buffy may even be a legend at this point (ala Luke Skywalker).IMHO, these are problematic. #1 means that slayers HAVE to be basically age 28-33, and now almost have to have 15 years of experience so are easily veterans or it doesn't really make sense.
Buffy doesn't have to be played in a school setting but if you take "young-adult" out of it you lose a LOT, imho.
(Aside: Why would Buffy be a legend? What if someone wants to play a slayer who was there WITH Buffy? This isn't all the current generation has known. They were regular girls, many then got hunted and barely escaped their lives until their activation. There's a clear before/after though.)
I'd heave the entire series up and transplant it 12-13 years in the future and plop it down and tell people to correct for pop culture references in their heads.
So the Bringers attempted to wipe out the Potentials, Buffy gathered as many up as she could. activated the entire line. Won, barely.
Now what? Buffy is in Rome coordinating slayer-squads with the new, less dickish Watcher Council.
5: No real limits on what PCs could be. If it was in the Buffy/Angel core rules I think it should be supported on the game.
If I ever made my dream Buffy game, I'd support custom powers too, personally.
Off the top of my head, you'd need to think about how you want to handle white vs black magic vs just magic addiction in general; set some limit on packages (my HR is always no more then 2 with no overlaps in features)
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@ixokai My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that any potential slayer born post-Willow's spell would be active. So anyone born after the show went off the air would become a Slayer at some point (age 12 or 13?) So there could have been new slayers popping up from the end of the show till now meaning slayer ages could range from 12 - 38 or so? Again, unless I'm misunderstanding how the spell worked? And even then we could always house rule it I suppose.
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@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:
@ixokai My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that any potential slayer born post-Willow's spell would be active. So anyone born after the show went off the air would become a Slayer at some point (age 12 or 13?) So there could have been new slayers popping up from the end of the show till now meaning slayer ages could range from 12 - 38 or so? Again, unless I'm misunderstanding how the spell worked? And even then we could always house rule it I suppose.
Oh no, in fact, that's a big deal. You could always decide to HR that away, but I LIKE that about the post-Buffy season, it creates a sorta tension: the Slayers need to WIN before its too late. Otherwise a post-Buffy world is almost too easy. There's slayers everywhere.
The spell with the scythe tapped into the well of power the Shadow Men created that was supposed to forever empower Slayers. (That well of power was a big ass demon's soul/power/whatever). There's a lot of power in that well, because hell, Slayers don't have long half-lives. It popped off the handle and poured pour into everyone.
Every Potential who was alive at the time was activated.
So now there's a lot of slayers! Yay!
Except the pool of power that makes Slayers is now empty. It'll take centuries to replenish.
So once all these Slayers are dead there won't be any more. omnious voice
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@zombiegenesis I'd honestly just go with that, whether or not it's canonical. In YOUR buffyverse it's what happened.
I also like the idea of a large city with a supernatural lure-- what about say New Orleans? Or even Portland, Or. Or Savannah, GA. Etc.
I'd like young-ish adult but adult. Not high school, but college.
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Despite my nigh-infamous bad luck with Buffy games, I am so there for this. And basically, what @Cobaltasaurus said: take what works from the canon and don't worry about what doesn't.
I am pretty much fucking obsessed with the canon though, and I'm pretty comfy with the Eden system if that's what you're using.
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@ixokai Ahhh, I gotcha! I never saw it that way but I get it and I think it works wonderfully for the show! For a game, however, I think I'd want something more open. Something that didn't cause conflict and restricting slayers to 1 or even none would cause conflict in fairly understandable ways.
As for the rest, here's what I'm leaning towards...A fictional southern city that is a so-called "college town" (the college is integrated with the city so it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins). This way if the focus becomes college students that's easy enough but it's also easy enough to shift to other stories for those who want something more "adult"(for lack of a better phrase) we can use the same setting, same grid, and things won't be weird or contrived.
At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment.
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@zombiegenesis YISSSSSSS. Lemme know if you want any help.
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@cobaltasaurus said in Potential Buffy Game:
I'd like young-ish adult but adult. Not high school, but college.
Either could work. I think Buffyverse would work best for an incestuous crowd; let drama build up between people fighting against the apocalypse who've also used to date, or who're in study groups together but someone's slacking off due to the extracurricular activities involved, etc.
IC drama should drive this game as much as saving the world - IMHO.
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I mean, my interpretation of the 'end of buffy/angel' was that all the potential slayers would become slayers. And that this would be an ongoing thing; so there's no reason you couldn't have 'new' potential slayers. Supposedly, that's even the angle they are going for in the reboot/continuation?
Just, for the love of god pick somewhere interesting. There are so many 'genetic smalltown' or 'generic bigcity' games its -tiresome-. Shake things up a little. I don't know how, something interesting. Perhaps everyone is attending some college in D.C. (and it turns out Congress is stupid because some lizard-demons from pluto or vampires have been replacing the politicians) - perhaps its in South America, or Puerto Rico, or Wakanda or Hong Kong or something. Hell, make something up if you have to. -Anything- other then 'generic small boring little town with a college'.
If its a mundane town, at least flesh out whats going on with its 'supernatural politics' enough that its really interesting. Perhaps it has a dimensional portal to <x> dimension, and the creatures come over and pretend to be immigrants, or people from the civil-war era get zapped into the present periodically. Something with meat. We've had literally 9,000 mu* with 'very light supernatural themes in a generic boring town'.
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But I want to play Buffy. Not Buffy on Venus or Buffy in Space or Buffy in Wakanda. None of the suggestions you've made sound like much fun to me at all, and they surely don't sound like Buffy to me. 'Generic small town with a big college' IS Buffy. Like if you don't like the premise or the show or the themes or whatever, that's fine? But 'make a D&D game except no swords and no wizards and no castles' ? Er. What ZG's proposed is EXACTLY what I'm hoping for from a Buffy game, personally.
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@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:
As for the rest, here's what I'm leaning towards...A fictional southern city that is a so-called "college town" (the college is integrated with the city so it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins). This way if the focus becomes college students that's easy enough but it's also easy enough to shift to other stories for those who want something more "adult"(for lack of a better phrase) we can use the same setting, same grid, and things won't be weird or contrived.
Why not Dayton, Ohio?
I mean, I live here. I can tell you all about it. Do a Wikipedia on the place. Let that do the talking.
Here's some highlights:
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Home of Charles Kettering, once-home of NCR, and the nation's highest rate of patents per capita. (Mad scientists? Yes, please.)
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Site of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the largest continental USAF installation, along with every other known, substantial defense contractor in the United States. (Government or military conspiracies? All over.)
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Minutes away from Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of the revered Antioch College and Dave Chappelle; also, damned hippie island in the middle of Trump country. (Hippie, witchy, spiritual respite? Yep.)
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An hour away from Cincinnati, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio; two hours from Indianapolis, Indiana; and three hours from Cleveland, Ohio, Lexington, Kentucky, and Detroit, Michigan, all of which can be alternate shenanigan sites. (Urban decay! Shenanigans! Bengals fans! Boo!)
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Smallish, mid-western, great little burg, and, hey, I can even help you write up a realistic grid.
Just some earnest thoughts.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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The last Buffy game I was going to make I was going to set into Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges. And have it be unknowingly a trans-dimensional intersection point-- or at least, to have one. That something is trying to get out of. There was plot fu to that.
