Hey Man, well this is Babylon

Last weekend I spent some quality time revisiting all my notes for my new design project, Billions and Billions of Bullets. I decided to set them all aside, and use pieces of them to assemble a fresh start on the concept, bringing the ideas back clean and improved in my head before jumping back onto this project. Here are the results of my little brainstorming session:

The Basic Premise: The players are all killers of some kind who must work together to resolve some predetermined mutual goal. Some may be hardened assassins, convicted criminals, wizened warriors, trained crime-fighters, or even just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever their pasts, Fate has thrown them together, and before the end of the night, they must achieve their goals, or all is lost.

The Complication: Each character has a personal purpose in the game that will very likely conflict with that of the group goal. Additionally, in true bullet drama style, each second that passes brings the characters one step closer to death. Each action in the game has consequences, too, bringing them either closer to death, closer to their goals, or both.

Winning: While this game has scenario goals and various timers involved, there is no way to “win” a session, as far as the rules are concerned. Convention play and demos aside, the only way to “win” is to use the characters, timers, and narration to tell the most awesome bullet-drama story possible. Frequently, this involves the deaths of some or all of the characters, with unfinished goals and morally-shadowed outcomes.

The Basic Play Template: The basic game is played with a single player called the Director running the show. The Director sets up the game’s scenario, decides the connection between the characters, determines the main scenario goal they must work together to achieve, and provides the conflicts that drive the story forward. The other players take on the role of individual characters, who must overcome conflicts and try to accomplish their individual and scene goals while holding off their inevitable fates as much as possible. In this default game mode, the Director plays the cards of all conflict opposition for the characters, except in cases of character vs character conflicts.

Director’s Cut Mode: In this optional game mode, there is no singular Director running the show. Instead, the players all contribute equally to the establishment of the game’s setting. Each character’s Hand of Fate (see below) is responsible for creating special conflicts for that character, but they all work together to bring them more colorfully into play.

The Characters: Each Character consists of four major components: Sign, Gun, Purpose, and Fate.

The Sign: Your Sign represents the classic Bullet Drama archetype that your character embodies. The Sign is not so much a “template” for your character, but rather a “spiritual totem” that places that character within the narrative. Examples include The Loyal Soldier, The Lady in Red, The Stranger, The Black Widow, The Savant, and so on. In the core book there are 16 different Signs, one for each “royal” card of the four suits. Each Sign gives a small handful of corresponding mechanical empowerments (most of which require Bullet Tokens), and also sets the framework for how the character should primarily approach the resolution of their conflicts.

The Gun: Central to every mechanic in the game, your chosen Gun is perhaps the most important of the four character components. Your Gun sets the initial ranks of the four core character attributes, and is a part of every conflict your character is involved in. Thematically, the Gun and its numbers define not just the actuality of the piece of chrome your character uses, but also the nature of the character who would wield such a weapon as the tool for carving her own destiny out of this world. There are thirteen core Guns, which can be randomly drawn.

The Purpose: The Purpose is your will to live, the goal that keeps you in the game, the drive that pulls your trigger. Besides being a definite roleplaying focus, it also serves as your character’s “lifeline” in the game. Your Purpose is manifested as a statement (which can be randomly drawn) and a Lifetimer. As the game is played, your twelve-point Lifetimer slowly counts down to your own personal Doomsday, and it is your responsibility to fulfill your Purpose before this death-clock finishes its cycle.

The Hand of Fate: The Hand of Fate is another player at the table, chosen by the character’s player to play that character’s destiny. The Hand is responsible for initially drawing the Hidden Fate that represents that character’s ultimate demise. The Hand is responsible for bringing about this hidden fate in the game. She can use a fluctuating pool of bullet tokens to accomplish this. Additionally, as a character’s Lifetimer enters into different quadrants, the Hand of Fate will have increasing levels of dramatic power over your character.

Conflicts: When your character gets into a situation in which the outcome is unsure, but it could directly affect their goals, a conflict enters into play, and is resolved by a card-play Showdown. First and foremost, every conflict must involve a gun! Regardless of how it is used, a gun is required. Also, the conflict must be of definite importance to the character’s personal or scenario goals. If it doesn’t involve a gun and it isn’t important to the goals, it isn’t important and shouldn’t be played.

Conflict Failure: While “failure” exists as a mechanical concept, it is not considered a failure as far as the game goes. The primary point of this game is to create a damn cool bullet-drama story. Failure in a bullet drama only increases the story, sometimes more so than success. Good narration of outcomes can transform one character’s failure into an epic piece of dramatic storytelling, and create more conflicts and more fun for all.

Bullets: This game uses Bullet Tokens as a tangible currency of Fate. Every time a character uses a gun (meaning: every conflict), kills someone, uses certain powers, or does anything else on a short list of conditions, their Hand of Fate gains a bullet token. Actual bullet casings work very well for this. Bullet tokens can be used by the Hand to take over narration of your conflicts, spending a little for your failures or more for your successes. As the Hand is responsible for bringing about your character’s inevitable demise, their uses of bullet tokens will allow them to narrate you into situations in which this demise grows ever the more likely.

I seek your input, everyone – especially from the non-gamers who read this (if there are any of you at all, that is).

In Billions and Billions of Bullets, I kinda want there to be a lot of death. Not only will the main character be killing a lot of foo’s, but they’ll likely die painful deaths themselves before the game is over as well. To best facilitate the in-game narration of these deaths, and to give the players some ideas when narrating the deaths of others, I’d like to follow in the “everything can be randomly drawn if so desired” spirit of Cannibal Contagion and include a table containing 52 ways for a character to die, conveniently placed in the back of the book.

I’d be grateful honored if anyone who reads this would leave a comment or three with some ideas of ways that they would like to see a character. The rules:

* Must be under 12 words (I’d like to have it in a neat line-by-line chart)
* Must be adaptable to a variety of settings
* Can by gruesome, simple, embarrassing, epic, or ignoble, but I’d rather they not be intentionally amusing. This game is not being written with the tongue-in-cheek approach I took with Cannibal Contagion. One or two amusing ones might be snuck into the list, but please steer away from that.

So for example:
* Deadly fall from a building
* Ripped apart by pitbulls
* Bullet through both of the eyes, execution-style
* The worst food poisoning ever.
* Death by firing squad
* Poisoned champagne
* Lots and lots of scorpions

What are your ideas?

Some of you who read my private journal probably already know about this one, but consider this my official public announcement. For a few weeks now, I’ve been working in full steam-powered chuggalug motion on the new game. It’s called Billions and Billions of Bullets. It is a game in which you must solve all of your problems with the clever application of a gun. Bad day at work? Girlfriend break your heart? They put mayonnaise on your BLT despite you specifically asking for none? You have a gun. You know what to do.

Here’s the working Blurb I’m using to get into the spirit of things:

In 1835, Samuel Colt patented the first mass-produced, multi-shot, revolving firearm. The American firearm revolution had begun, and the great fucking of the world as we know it was thus completed.

It’s now the 21st century, and the modern world is split between two types of people: those who eat shit and die from it, and the elite few who rise above and change the world. The only things that separate them are a Gun, a Purpose, and a few billion Bullets, and if you haven’t figured out which side holds them, then you’re probably one of the shit-eaters, too.

Or is that a gun I see in your hand?

Get ready to change the world, one bullet at a time.

I want B&BoB to be game of high-tension bullet-hell gunfights. Your character starts the game with a gun, a purpose, a secret fate, and a countdown to their demise. It’s mostly based upon the core Showdown System mechanics of Cannibal Contagion, but takes them to a new step in their evolution. I’m unsure if the two systems will be ultimately interchangeable, but it is definitely an item on my design scheme.

I’ll be posting some backlogs of my recent dev journals in the coming days, as well as new ones as my work progresses. It is my intention to be more open with the design process and my ideas, and hopefully by sharing them I can in turn receive some helpful input. As the two games are intentionally very similar, my posts will frequently reference Cannibal Contagion, and a lot of my insights behind that game will come out as well. Please, comment on them and let me know what you think.

- NPC