[Hellball] Reward System
Some thoughts about the reward system for my Iron MACE Game Chef entry, Hellball. Recall that in Hellball, you play a pro football player who's been "recruited" by The Devil to play a ball game of few rules and much violence in Hell, where the stakes are the soul of a loved-one. Most of the screen time is on the athletes in their normal life back on earth, where they prepare for the next game.
The game is essentially about the dichotomy of personality on and off the field. I've decided that, in hell, the athletes (can) become monsters, quite literally. They can manifest their ugliest traits to transform into a beast on the hellball grid and this helps them win. But they must have those ugly traits going into the game, which means they need to develop them back on earth between games. This ruins their lives and drives away their family, friends, and significant others.
To make that happen in the game, the system needs to model personality traits. I'll probably pick a handful of opposed pairs of traits. I've looked at the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Contrary Virtues (invented by Prudentius in 410 AD to represent the diametric opposites of the Seven Deadly Sins). They don't really work as "things that make you good at hellball," so I need to come up with some interesting trait pairs. I'm thinking of things like Nice vs. Cruel, Fair vs. Cheating, Happy vs. Angry, and Healthy vs. Juiced. They're not exact opposites, and it's easy to imagine winning a game of football without being angry or cheating, but this is hellball played in Hell with The Devil -- the rules work a bit differently there.
Players will have opportunities between games to change their character's trait pairs in either direction. The GM will offer "devilish" choices to slide towards the nasty ends of things and he gets to enforce the fictional consequences of becoming a monster. Girlfriends leave, families break up, the athlete slaps his kid a little too hard, the press finds out about his illegal steroid use, and so on. The player gets to choose what is more important: winning hellball or being a good person. The GM is there to make sure that it's hard, perhaps even impossible, to do both.
In the end, the player either will have pushed his team to victory in Hell (and left his earthly life in ruins) or will have a good life back on earth (and lost the Hell League). Worse, the character is a member of a team of friends who might not agree with his choice. Or they might feel that they pulled all the weight in the hellball game while he got to have all the good stuff back in real life, and they may resent him for that.
Edit:
Oh, and as the player sells his character's soul by pushing all those sliders from the virtue end towards the sin end, he gets to add new freeform traits that relate to what he is becoming. Let's say you decide to push up your Happy-Angry slider. You play out a scene where you do something bad because you're angry -- let's say you punch your friend in the face for a dumb comment he makes. You push that trait up one or more points depending on conflict resolution then write a new trait under that slider. Maybe you add "Prone to violence." During the hellball game, you can check off that trait for extra dice but you have to do something showing how you're prone to violence. Back on earth, you do something to push it back down, but then you lose the trait. Maybe you get Happy-related traits for that, but you're not allowed to use those in Hell.
More Edit:
It seems that I need a carrot to encourage players to care about their "earth" relationships. What if damaged abilities from hellball games got healed up by earth things? Like, do something that makes you happy to heal your damaged knee or ailing confidence or whatever.
The game is essentially about the dichotomy of personality on and off the field. I've decided that, in hell, the athletes (can) become monsters, quite literally. They can manifest their ugliest traits to transform into a beast on the hellball grid and this helps them win. But they must have those ugly traits going into the game, which means they need to develop them back on earth between games. This ruins their lives and drives away their family, friends, and significant others.
To make that happen in the game, the system needs to model personality traits. I'll probably pick a handful of opposed pairs of traits. I've looked at the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Contrary Virtues (invented by Prudentius in 410 AD to represent the diametric opposites of the Seven Deadly Sins). They don't really work as "things that make you good at hellball," so I need to come up with some interesting trait pairs. I'm thinking of things like Nice vs. Cruel, Fair vs. Cheating, Happy vs. Angry, and Healthy vs. Juiced. They're not exact opposites, and it's easy to imagine winning a game of football without being angry or cheating, but this is hellball played in Hell with The Devil -- the rules work a bit differently there.
Players will have opportunities between games to change their character's trait pairs in either direction. The GM will offer "devilish" choices to slide towards the nasty ends of things and he gets to enforce the fictional consequences of becoming a monster. Girlfriends leave, families break up, the athlete slaps his kid a little too hard, the press finds out about his illegal steroid use, and so on. The player gets to choose what is more important: winning hellball or being a good person. The GM is there to make sure that it's hard, perhaps even impossible, to do both.
In the end, the player either will have pushed his team to victory in Hell (and left his earthly life in ruins) or will have a good life back on earth (and lost the Hell League). Worse, the character is a member of a team of friends who might not agree with his choice. Or they might feel that they pulled all the weight in the hellball game while he got to have all the good stuff back in real life, and they may resent him for that.
Edit:
Oh, and as the player sells his character's soul by pushing all those sliders from the virtue end towards the sin end, he gets to add new freeform traits that relate to what he is becoming. Let's say you decide to push up your Happy-Angry slider. You play out a scene where you do something bad because you're angry -- let's say you punch your friend in the face for a dumb comment he makes. You push that trait up one or more points depending on conflict resolution then write a new trait under that slider. Maybe you add "Prone to violence." During the hellball game, you can check off that trait for extra dice but you have to do something showing how you're prone to violence. Back on earth, you do something to push it back down, but then you lose the trait. Maybe you get Happy-related traits for that, but you're not allowed to use those in Hell.
More Edit:
It seems that I need a carrot to encourage players to care about their "earth" relationships. What if damaged abilities from hellball games got healed up by earth things? Like, do something that makes you happy to heal your damaged knee or ailing confidence or whatever.