My Games

Monday, January 6, 2020

Ghostbusting, Fire Fighting, Kart Racing, and Cooking Combat!

A followup to my meandering post about combat. Despite what I said, these so far haven't involved hacking FATE into OSR or TNT, and are just modifications of regular combat. I tried to design these with OSR and TNT in mind. Many of these involve a blend of Saving Throws (STs) for OSR or Saving Rolls (SRs) for TNT with regular combat actions. In many cases where I refer to Saving Throws for OSR, it might make more sense to just do a roll under attribute, depending on your preferred system.



Fire Fighting / Ghost Hunting: Inspired by the anime Fire Force (loosely), Mario Sunshine, Ghostbusters, and Luigi's Mansion. It seems strange to put these together but they work similarly. You have to be able to get within a certain range, and maintain your hold, either dousing the fire, or sucking up the ghost.

  • A successful SR / ST gets you in range. 
  • You may occasionally need to re-roll to stay in range. Other environmental obstacles or enemies may get in the way. The fire / ghost regenerates HP if you're throw out of range.
  • An "attack" is dousing the fire / sucking up the ghost. A successful hit against you is fire/heat damage or an attack from the ghost (in TNT, just an opposed roll).
  • Depleting enemy HP means dousing the fire or sucking up the ghost.
This should be more like a "boss-fight" game, where there are fewer enemies; one stronger one, and maybe a few weaker ones, or only obstacles. The key is to not only get in range, but be able to stay in range, so there's tactics in understanding your environment, or positioning yourself for the unexpected. The fire / ghosts should be less mobile and more reactive than active, at least until it's too late to turn back...



Kart Racing: Inspired by Mario Kart and other "Kart" Racers, Road Rage, Fast & Furious, and other action racing games, movies, etc. The players can still work as a team, where victory depends on one or more players ranking in the top three.
  • Fixed number of turns (laps).
  • Initiative determines starting position (if applicable). Otherwise SR / ST. There are as many positions as racers+2, and racers can hold the same position.
  • First is the attack round, where all racers make their attacks. Most attacks can only target enemies at the same position or one position ahead or behind ("neck and neck"), and generally cause the target to decelerate and take damage. Running out of HP means the kart is destroyed or blown off the track. Deceleration means moving one position behind.
  • Then comes the move round, where all racers make their move actions. SR / ST at full success (accelerate), partial success (hold position), or failure (decelerate). A racer may choose to hold position or decelerate without the need for a roll. Accelerating means moving up one position, decelerating means moving down one position. Cannot go past max/min position.
  • Environmental obstacles or certain items may also trigger SR / STs.
  • At the end of the last lap, the person in the first position wins. Rewards at first, second, and third place.
While enemies can still be KOed, this is more about positioning in a race. I do think some additional work needs to be done for this for it to feel fully fleshed out, like a list of items with varying effects, including AoE attack options or attacks outside of normal range. Tentatively, my thought would be that you get an item when you decelerate on the move turn, giving struggling racers a potential advantage, or allowing racers that are far ahead to tactically hold or decelerate. The racers+2 positions is to pad out room for the leader to be far ahead or loser to be far behind. There could also be rules for collateral from spinning out.



Food Wars: Inspired by Iron Chef and other food competition shows, and the anime Food Wars and Yakitate Japan. Here I'm assuming the party is cooking as a team but you can adjust accordingly.
  • The theme ingredient(s) or chosen main ingredient(s) of the dish are the "enemies". There should probably be 1-3 main ingredients with the highest stats and 1-5 other notable ingredients with lower stats. Alternatively, you can have fewer ingredients, but refresh their HP at each stage of preparation.
  • "Attacks" reflect progress towards preparing the ingredient using a given technique, such as slicing, cubing, garnishing, etc. Tally successful "damage" in addition to subtracting from the ingredient. If an ingredient runs out of HP, it is done being prepared or done with that stage of preparation.
  • Hits against a cook reflect making a critical mistake, or injuring oneself (e.g. cut or burn). Subtract damage taken from the total tally in addition to subtracting from HP. If the cook runs out of HP, they've been injured so badly that they can no longer proceed, or have ruined the dish beyond recovery.
  • The ingredients or techniques may elicit additional SR / STs or have other special conditions. Kitchen "mishaps" or sabotage may also come into play.
  • The total tally reflects the score of the dish, meaning the maximum score would be the total HP of all ingredients / stages of ingredients. This should be compared against some fixed acceptable score or an opposed team's pre-determined score. In addition, you may want to throw in some variability at the end for dramatic effect, like an SR / ST, or two flat die rolls like 2d10 or 2d6, where the first die adds a percent of the maximum possible score to the party or opposition's score and the second subtracts a percent of the maximum to the respective scores. These could also be flat values rather than percentages of the total if that's easier, but should be enough to sway the outcome, without being so large as to make the entire cooking challenge totally random.
I think this one might need some work. It may be a bit tricky to crunch the numbers since the scoring system is tied to the maximum HP of the ingredients. Maybe it should just be standardized in some other way. Also, I do think adding some randomness at the end is a good way to keep the outcome from being totally pre-determined, but I could see it being really dissatisfying for the party to lose because of it. Also, the fact that the outcome is so dependent on the total score, while true to a cooking competition, may not be satisfying in tabletop.

2 comments:

  1. 'Food Wars' variation doesn't have to be Iron Chief - I've read a couple of mangas ('Love for curry' and 'Bartender', IIRC; 'Ratatouille' could be a western example ), which can only be characterized as 'magical food /drink' idea: the idea that skilled cook or bartender, using their knowledge of human nature and food can prepare a food or a drink so evocative, it changes a specific person's life.
    So the food combat could be this as a goal. Although in that case DM, probably, cannot use a clip of Gordon Ramsay shouting 'Its RAW!!!' if combat fails.

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    1. I like this idea, it makes it more of a social conflict by way of cooking by way of combat 0.o. You could make it like a Persona 5 Phantom Thieves except instead of stealing hearts they steal stomachs.

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