Murder: the table game by Me

Murder

There is a video game that is part of "Gary's Mod" on the Steam video game service.  In that game all the players are put into an area.  One person is designated "The Murderer" and the others are the "Bystanders".  The Murderer has a knife and can kill the other players.  Only one of the players gets a gun, which they can drop and it can be picked up by the other Bystanders.  The trick is for the Murderer to isolate the players and kill them without alerting the one with the gun.  There is no way for anyone to be able to tell who is a Bystander and who is a Murderer aside from what they say and do.

I have come up with a sort of table top game based on this.  I did a little Google searching and did not find anyone that had done this already, but it seems like such a no-brainer that I'm sure I am not the first to do it, so I claim no right of "first".

A Game of Notes

What you will need is some form of hat or bucket and several pieces of paper.  The game is separated into Rounds and Turns.  You begin a round by writing "Knife" on one piece of paper, "Gun" on another piece of paper, and "Bystander" on all the others.  You put these in the container and the players draw them.  Until all the players have had a chance to take a piece of paper, no words are spoken.  After the last piece of paper is drawn the players are free to say what they will.  They can declare they are bystanders, they can even declare they have the gun, it would probably be unwise to claim to have the knife.

Playing a Round

The players begin the round by each getting a turn to make a case for their innocence.  They may not show their piece of paper at all, unless the person with the gun wishes to use it as proof they are not the Murderer.  The choice to show the gun is up to the player, if they wish, they may hide the fact that they have the gun.

After each person has had the chance to defend/declare themselves, new paper is passed around to the players that is blank.  If the player is a Bystander(even if they have the gun), all they can write down on this paper is Innocent.  No one is yet to share what they write down.  The player with the Knife may also write down Innocent, or they may write down the name of a non-Gun holding player they wish to kill.  All the papers are folded and put into a container.  Before the papers are revealed, the person with the gun may reveal they have the gun and kill a player using it.  This is the only way to pre-preemptively stop a murder from happening and can only be done once per round.  They can also just wait and see what happens if they wish, and not kill anyone.  After the first piece of paper is revealed, the person with the gun can no longer shoot it this round.  If the Murderer tries to kill the Bystander with the gun, without anyone knowing that person has the gun, then the Murderer is shot and dies instantly losing the game.

Each piece of paper is revealed.  If the Murderer has killed someone, they leave this game.  If the Bystander with the gun killed someone innocent, the killed Bystander killed will profess their innocence and leaves the game.  If the Bystander with the Gun kills the Murderer, the game is over.  If there are Bystanders left, the game starts a new Round, repeat the steps of the Round.  If only the Murderer and the Bystander with the gun is left, the Murderer kills him or her and wins the game.  Repeat the rounds until either the Murderer kills the Bystander with the Gun, or the Murderer is dead.

There are some scenarios that players can do to be jackasses and ruin the fun.  A point system can fix this and I've wrote down a few, but I'm not sure I want to go the points route.  I think this will work good enough for some light fun.  A simple, quick rule that will encourage Gun holders to fire and Murderers to murder is that for each person dead at the end of the game, the Murderer gets 1 point, for each one alive at the end of the game the Murderer gets -1 point.

FATE Points vs Bennies

On the surface of things, Fate's "Fate Point" and Savage World's "Benny" systems look similar, but if you take a moment to learn about them you will see that they serve different purposes.

What is a Benny?

In Savage Worlds you can be awarded a Benny by the GM(or by other players in some alternate rules).  This makes Benny rules kind of liquid, as you simply get them when someone judges what you do merits it.  This makes them flexible.  If the GM wants more action, he'll reward the players for being more proactive in things.  If the GM wants clever resolutions to problems, he'll start rewarding that.  It is kind of like Dog Treats.  

Some people do not like this non-codified giving of bennies because someone can become a "favorite", or you can encourage bad behavior.  Someone making an offhand joke about a situation makes everyone laugh wildly for 5 minutes, so they get a benny.  Now for the next 30 minutes, everyone's cracking jokes trying to get the next "you're the funniest person" benny.  This does not even take into account straight up favortism from a bad GM.

In the end, Bennies are not nearly as strong as Fate Points.  Bennies are "do overs".  They let you re-roll an action that you are not happy with.  If you're trying to diffuse a bomb, its a second chance at a better shot.  If you get hit by a bullet, that benny can be a split second dodge out of the way.  If you're injured and bleeding, that benny can be a shot of adrenaline that pushes you off the floor and into heroism.  Bennies are more plentiful and fly around in use much more than Fate Points.  They create tension and extreme acts of heroics that cause Savage Worlds games to be more "seat of the pants" style than other games.

What is a Fate Point?

Fate Points are earned by a player putting their character through hardship.  To get a Fate Point you have to invoke a negative aspect of your character, and fail at some task or ability. The favored way of getting Fate Points is to spring the failure only after you build up your idea as awesome and great to the group.

Fate Point acquisition is a sort of anti-min/max thing built into the game.  It forces you to think of real disadvantages of your character that you can call on in situations so you can get these Fate Points.  If you choose a disadvantage that rarely comes up(pineapple allergy), then you're going to find it hard to come by Fate Points.  Fate Points are not in the hands of a GM, and so there is not the potential for abuse as there is with Bennies.

Fate Points are sort of your "dream powers" if you go by the idea that Fate is sort of a group of lucid dreamers trying to make a story together.  You can use them for mundane things like adding +'s to your roles or -'s to other's rolls, but the real power is when you take narrative control of a situation.  You can find clues, you can know contacts, you can create "bridges" between the players and the goals that make it more interesting or move the story along.  You find out the bad guy's fortress is  hidden, you can use a Fate point to know a former guard is in prison and the group can go interrogate him for the location.  You get into a car that won't start, spend a Fate Point to do the "start up" routine your shitty car in college did and it causes the car to work!  Stuff like that.

On the flip side you can also change it to the detriment of other characters.  The bandits are on top of the train, so you spend a Fate Point to say "a storm rolls up out of the plains, causing heavy wind and rain" now the bandits have trouble moving while up there.  The Non-player character in the corner of a gas station is actually an undercover cop, and joins the group in subduing the criminals.  It can be simple too, spend a Fate Point to make a gun jam.  

End.

So that's the differences.  There are some more, but this is enough of an explanation to get you started.  Bennies are more free for the awarding, but are more rule tied to their usage.  Fate Points are very codified in how you attain them, but the use of them is very free form.  Both are really cool additions to the old gaming formula, and even though I'm pretty much the GM of games I play, I love anything that takes control away from me, and gives the players the ability to affect the world.

Initial Thoughts: FATE Accelerated

FATE Accelerated is a newer version of FATE, which in itself is a variation of FUDGE.  You don't have to know the difference or the history... though I might do a history piece of on it one day; gotta have that blog fodder, you know?

Evil Hat Productions are old hat at doing genre specific versions of Fate.  Their releases garner almost universal acclaim and they have even got awarded top honors a few times for new RPG.  I initially was very skeptical of these honors, because I had a prejudice against Fate.  I wondered if what amounted to "setting" or "campaign" books should be considered different games altogether.  I still haven't shaken that thought, but it might be due to my ignorance of the system.  Lately they have gotten away from Genre or licensed property games and have been trying to produce universal "works for everything" systems.

So I came across this dilemma.  I love 3x D&D and I love Savage Worlds, but if I was ever going to make a Harry Potter Universe game for my girlfriend, it would require SOOO much work and research into the spells.  Then, at the end of the day, the game would not feel like Harry Potter because they don't care about how many times you can cast a spell, or knowing specifically the distances and all that.  The game SYSTEM would care, but the characters should not.  Then I read about Fate Accelerated's stat system.

Fate Accelerated was a Kickstarter project.  They have the PDF for free on the website.  Really, its there, all legal and everything, go grab it and have yourself a read(link at the bottom if I remember to put it there).  It was designed to be a quick version of Fate so that you and your friends could just decide to play, and get characters and a world going in less than 20 minutes.  This "group together" thing is emphasized by the fact that its almost impossible to finish a character without the group's input into relationships and stuff.  The game is geared to make NEW stories right when you all sit down.  This is not a game for those that like to create self contained characters and GM's that like to create a novel for the group to play through, this is not that kind of game.(the GM could easily keep a list of settings and even scenes though)

Fate's stat system is a system of "approaches" instead of physical/mental attributes.  They describe how your character approaches a problem or situation.  Instead of muscle and wisdom, your approaches are: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky.  That's your stats and basically your "skills" all in one go.  In my example, you do not make a huge list of spells you know; you simply say "I use my exspeloramus(spelling, I know) spell to cleverly knock the wand from their hand".  The GM can argue that's force, but in the end the group settles the discussion and there ya go.

You do get some stunts, but they just augment your abilities instead of being something you'd use as a spell list.  Again, taking Potter, you might list "Petronus materialization" which means that when you cast your expecto Patronus spell, instead of being a cone of force(like Early Prisoner of Azkarban), you summon the spirit creature(like in Order of Phoenix), giving you a +2 to things it would help with.  Harry might also have that summon spell that, but his stunt is that he can call his broom from insanely long distances.  You get the picture... I hope.

The Fate points and how the game works is really neat too.  It gives the players a bit of "GM'ing" ability while playing, so that they can create their own parts of the story.  They can create problems so that they can get Fate points, or they can create advantageous conditions to help during a challenge.  Someone can just say "its raining" and there it is, raining.  Someone can say "I check under the doormat and find the key" instead of going through what the GM planned.  That might scare some GM's, but its not quite that easy to alter the world, you'll have to learn the system to find out.

My girlfriend said its like playing a dream where all the players are lucid dreamers.  Since I'm a lucid dreamer, I think this analogy fits really well.

I'll do some more Fate related posts later.  I want to talk about the differences between Bennies and Fate Points, and I might give some better examples on how the players create the world.

Fate Accelerated Official site