At my parent’s this weekend to celebrate my birthday (it’s a big one, in a way). That means I don’t have access to my Scrivener so I’m not able to update a lot of my projects.
I’m taking this as an opportunity to further develop my DCC funnel (which might be the most immediately fun game I have in development).
Project Run down
Sand & Stars
(Desert survival x Cairn, Ashcan here [link])
…
No progress.
Steam Thieves
(Steampunk x Forged in the Dark, Ashcan here [link])
…
No progress.
Goodnight Maus
(Mausritter adventure site inspired by Goodnight Moon)
…
No progress.
Trinakum
(Original design - 3d6 dice pool/grid-based/combat simulator with Iron Age Celtic/Gaulish flavour, Ashcan here [link])
…
No progress.
Gatekeepers
(Mythos inspired Breathless game for the Beyond the Gates Jam, Ashcan here [link])
…
No progress.
WAKE
(Completed Breathless game inspired by Control, Inception and The Matrix, Game Page here [link])
…
No progress.
GIANT PINBALL
(Dungeon Crawl Classic Funnel set inside a pinball machine)
Need a better (more silly) name than that. Giant Balls of Death?
Thinking more about this. When the PCs are inside the machine, giants are playing the game. I think this means that, periodically, the judge rolls on a random table and that determines what the giants do and what the ball activates on the pinball playfield.
The giants are playing with the intention of smashing all the people inside the machine.
The flow of the game should be:
Characters abducted by giant, put into a dark sack.
Characters are dumped into a chute, with no idea what is about to happen.
A plunger fires them into a neon magic hellscape with all manner of contraptions (and lots of spikes). They see some giants looming over them. Then a ball is sent onto the playfield.
Resolve that first ball, have special roll table for this one moment with especially brutal consequences to thin the herd a little. Folks are still standing around confused, hence why the repercussions are so harsh.
Players act, they see the map and choose where they want to seek refuge.
More balls are sent their way with more consequences to deal with.
Players traverse the map, encounter consequences and search for an escape.
The escape route is accessible by going under the playfield, through various holes in the surface designed for balls to fall through.
The ‘underground’ layer of the pinball table is a wasteland of bones and bodies and nasty things that scavenge them. PCs who escape to this level need to fight their way out, while avoiding tilts and balls dropping from the sky.
Somewhere in this layer there is an established survivors’ path that has been trod before and an exit, which allows the players to climb onto the outside leg of the table and then escape the giants’ arcade.
On that final leg, there is a risk of being spotted and unceremonious stomped flat.
Pinball features:
Lockdown bar
Action button
Add-a-ball
Ball lock
Ball saver
Bash target
Bumper
Captive ball
Drain
Drop target
Flipper
Gobble hole (Goblin hole?)
Habitrail
Inlane
Jackpot
Kickback
Lock
Magic post
Multi-ball
Peg
Pop bumper
Rollover
Shooter lane
Skill shot
Slam tilt
Slingshot
Subway
Tilt
Misc. ideas:
Flippers with spikes on them.
Bumper that releases poison gas.
A ball that shatters and releases deadly insects.
Giant spider.
Magnetic trap.
Section which looks like a trad dungeon, which is hard for the balls to enter.
Trapdoors.
Electrocution trap.
Doom track, which the giants are trying to light up. Leads to something chaotic and very dangerous.
Mutants living in the bottom layer, warped and corrupted by the magic of the table. A brutal insular society based on cannibalism and wyrd rites to the thunder gods (the giants who play this table). Space for more role-play with these characters. PCs might be captured, imprisoned and then primed for sacrifice (tied to a post and raised through a hole for the giants to hit with a ball).
See you next week.