'In Violation 2', the idea so far...

From today, In Violation is officially dead. As you can see, I have done some major pruning in the In Violation forum - but don't worry, all the material has been sent over to the archives for future generations.

IV is dead because I wasn't happy with the format. Essentially I think I took a potentially cool idea, then mucked it up a bit. Things were being rushed, as the story line was awkward and stiff.

As I said to Molotov while discussing it on MSN, it was "a series of minor encounters linked by stretches of nothing", and that's not what you want from a gangland RP, especially not one that was intended to be essentially free roaming.

So, what comes next? Well, IV2 (working title) does.

The basic premise of IV2 will be as follows:

The mafia running the underhive of hive Voku employ hundreds and thousands of underhivers to do their dirty work. Gangs of these mafioso make their way around the hive, essentially policing the streets. They are free to do whatever they want, as long as they keep their eyes and ears open, answer whenever their bosses call, and don't spoil the 'good name' of the mafia.The players in the RP will write characters who have just entered the payroll of the mafia. They will form a gang that has free reign of the hive city. Wherever you go in the hive, work will be waiting for you. Be it from your bosses in the mafia, or anything else that catches your eye. Whatever you do goes.

In this respect, it will be very much like a good old fashioned fantasy roleplay game. Anyone here every played Morrowind or Oblivion?

Instead of quests, you'll have jobs, contracts and missions. Each job will be short and shappy, with fast paced action, and hopefully good fun. The nature of jobs will vary enormously: some might be assassinations, others robberies, even protection duty - whatever you come across.

An important factor in the wellbeing of the RP will be the ability to come to group decisions fast. One of the major problems with IV was that there was too much filler, too much waiting around to do things, and this is one of my top priorities for things to sort out for IV2. IF the group can't come to a decision, I'll come to it for you. But I want to stress that wherever you go, fun will be had. There won't be much in the way of an over-all story line when it comes to this, and so I won't be pushing you in any directions. If you choose to go to the station, there will be someone there willing to give you work, if you go to the commercial district, there will be people there with contracts too.

Essentially, the most important decisions you make will be what work to take, and how to go about doing it. Not where you go, and other questions that threaten to slow down the pace of the action.

Players from In Violation '1' will most likely get first dibs on characters for IV2. You won't be able to use your remaining characters though, not in their current state at least. Rather than from the slums, the members of this gang will have spent time living in the underhive. They will not have as much of the 'drive' as the original gang in many respects - being part of the mafia is more like a fun job, rather than the struggle for recognition that the SlumRunners faced.

I am also, inspired by Do or Die, going to have a 'rolling' enlistment system. Players will be allowed to apply for entry into the gang at any point in the roleplay. Their Bios will be considered, and if I think there is room, they'll be slotted in at the next opportune moment (if someone applies during a mission, i'll wait till the missions conclusion before introducing them). Players will also be allowed to leave whenever they feel like. In most cases this will be represented by just being shifted around by 'the powers that be' in the mafia, and will happen between missions. If a player really wants to leave during a mission, then I'll remove them in a suitably gory and amusing fashion. Unlike in Do or Die, I won't be 'killing' players. It will be up to you when and if you leave.

This essentially opens the floor to anyone who wants a quick mission, while still accomodating for those interested in the long term, and forming a close knit group. It also lets me (if I choose to) introduce a bigger story line, over time.

I have to work out the formalities of the thing a bit more thoroughly first, but an roll call of sorts will be up soon enough. Until then, I open the floor to your thoughts.

Sounds interesting. It was a pitty that IV 1 died, I was starting to like it.

Question about equipment. Will we start of with the same kind of weapons as IV 1 or can we get more sofisticated ones?

Sounds a lot like 40K-based Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. Which is good.

I think this is a very good thing. A crime based game in a crowded underhive lends itself exceptionally well to a rolling enlistment. I am also extremely pro-having two such constant games so that new board members can join in as soon as they sign up. It also sounds like this will require slightly more in depth characters yes? This is also a very good thing, as it allows people to choose between low and high involvement games.

This however, I strongly disagree with.

I don't know about other people on this board, but removing the threat of death from a game reduces my enjoyment of said game to almost nil. Nothing kills an RPG faster for me than GM-babysitting.

Having no threat of death means I can do whatever I want, and get away with it until I choose to stop. That for me is where it ceases to be a roleplay and instead becomes cooperative storytelling.

Now, like I said, that is just MY preference. I don't know about other people on the board.


Last question - are you going to use a system, or just pure narrative?

another_marine: the weapons will probably be quite simple, but more sophisticated than what the SlumRunners started with. The mafia gang you will play in the new IV will have been armed by the mafia - the SlumRunners just scrounged together some knives and pistols.

Lith: Don't get me wrong when I say I "won't be killing people". What I mean by this is that, although the enlistment system will be quite similar to Do or Die, the players won't go in expecting to come to a gruesome end quite swiftly. Part of the fun of Do or Die is that its a free-for-all, players expect to be in the thick of it from moment one - and if they die, they just dive in again with a new character. In IV2, death will be a larger event. If that makes sense..

Essentially, the casuality/injuries rate won't be as high as Do or Die.

Characters would be quite in depth yeah, or at least more filled out than those going into Do or Die. I think they needn't be as complex as those from IV1 though.

As for system vs. narrative. I think I need a mix of both.

I'd like to randomise the encounters system a bit, so that I don't end up getting carried away with myself as a GM. I am also considering some sort of a combat system, probably based on a similar framework to your own Do or Die system, but I've got to put some thought into that first. Any thoughts?

Anyway glad you like the idea. Hopefully it'll typify the gang setting a lot better than IV1 did.

One thing, you don't really need a combat system, with stats and what not.

You can go two ways besides the system:
1- Go full narrative.
2- Let the players choose a skill, and make them get the benefits and drawbacks of it.

I prefer not to go for a combat system simply because this gives me that much more freedom. The drawback is the loss of the excitement over the dice-roll. It really depends on what you draw the fun from. Do you like leaving things to Lady Luck, and watch with excitement what happens? Or do you prefer to go full-blood mode and write in total freedom?

I'm excited that you're starting another Gangland RP. IV was, as you stated, just a bunch of series of minor encounters linked by stretches of nothing. Also, I'm glad that the players from IV will have first dibs.

I like draks idea about the skills that Ganger can chose, this would give for a wide range of differentiality and a little more room for creativity.

I am currently leaning towards having a purely narrative approach to combat.

I do though think that I'll need a system for encounters.

What you could do is have a system to fall back on, to look at the odds of certain things happening, but stick to what feels right for the narrative. For example, say a player attempts to shoot someone. You have a system to determine what would happen, say the odds of hitting, then odds of cover being hit instead, wounding etc. In the instance this is happening, maybe it would be more dramatic for the 'baddie' to be hit, falls over the railings, and go splat!. If this is the case, then go for it. If it doesn't matter either way, roll using your system.

Basically have the odds to hand if you're stuck on what to do.

That's a good idea, but could require a lot of leg work for something that might not neccessarily be a big feature. I'll have to think on it.

I'd like to see something like this in action. I honestly like the idea a lot.

If you can factor in all different kinds of things into a single dice roll for whether a baddie is hit or not, it could get really interesting - but I think a lot of players would look for opportunities to exploit the dice roll, which could be good or bad. I know for certain that if I was playing I would specify exactly what I was doing; rather than simply saying that my character squeezed off some shots, I would say my character steadied his pistol on his forearm and aimed carefully before pulling the trigger.

Adding dice roll modifiiers for certain things - +1 for high ground, -5 for running, -3 for rain or wind, the possibilities are endless. I would like to see something like that come into play.

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As for the entire idea, I love, love love, it. I would be onboard in an instant. The rolling joining would be superb.

The thing with the the 'endless possibilities' for dice roll modifiers, is that you might as well just turn it over to narrative once it gets past a certain point. The dice leaves it up to luck, but if it relies so much on wind speed, range, cover, etc etc, you may as well rely on an impartial, objective narrator to give you the result.

Glad you like the general idea.

When I began to grasp that point as I was writing that last post, I began to kind of doubt the dice roll. But if you set certain conditions that will affect the roll, then it might be more successful. If just for the sake of seeing how the dice work in a game like this, I would love to see them used.

It is an undoubtably interesting concept, that I will have to give a lot of thought. I think the best idea would be to have a very very simple dice system in the background, working as a way of 'randomising' the events that I as the GM come up with.

I could in fact come up with a series of outcomes, then roll the dice to see which occurs. So its not like, 'on a 4+ you hit'. But 'on a 1 you hit the guy square in the face, killing him dead, on a 2-4 you hit him in the torso, on a 5 you miss, on a 6 the gun explodes' or whatever is appropriate for the mission. This could work for (almost) any event, not just combat.

It does indeed. It's what I assumed, but I wanted to make sure. A lack of some sort of accountability for the players is a Very Bad Thing in my humble opinion as both a player and a GM. People enjoy a game a lot more if they at least believe they can die .


As for the dice system, here is what I use for DoD:

All dice rolls are on a d10 versus the relevant statistic, or the average of two stats. Equal to or lower is a success, higher is a failure. the amount the roll succeeded or failed by gauges the level of success or failure, or the amount of pain. A near miss is an injury, a far miss is a brutal, brutal death. Lastly, unless the situation is too extreme and would automatically be a success or a failure, a 1 always succeeds and a 10 always fails.

The dice roll is modified by two things:

1. Difficulty or situational modifiers. A really difficult shot would attract a 4 point penalty, a point blank blaze away would get a 4 point bonus (or something like that). This is completely intuitive on the part of the GM based on the situation.

2. Player posts. I modify dice rolls in a negative fashion for posts that are too short (only one or two lines) or too hard to understand. For characterful posts I grant a bonus. This is never more than two points in either direction.

In this way good players are rewarded for bringing character and fun to the game, whilst crap posters might find they go through quite a few characters .

If you are interested in the system I'm quite happy to discuss it further on MSN as DoD progresses, or you can join and find out for yourself from the players perspective .

You may as well add me on msn whippinpiccadilly (at) gmail (dot) com, it does sound like an interesting system, and I'd like to hear more. I especially like the bonuses for characterful posts.

The only thing I worry about is the idea of stats, something which is of course intergral to a system such as yours. I can understand how in a straight combat RP, like DoD, stats are a boon, but I have a nagging feeling that in an RP requiring much more in depth Bios, and with combat a large but not total proportion of the gaming, they might make players seem stiff in the way they write the bios.

One thing that comes to mind as a solution would be to get players to write bios, without any stats, and then for me to assign stats to them, based on what they have written. This would encourage players to write characterful and interesting characters, but without forcing them to structure their bio around a set of stats.

It might also be interesting to give each player a 'character' stat, based on how characterful their posts are, starting with their bio. This way, I could keep a running tally of 'characterfullness', and use it to affect more of the narrative, rather than just combat resolutions etc.