Pace.pdf

PACE

Contents

1: Introduction......................................2

What I Have In Mind...................................2

Influences....................................................2

Thanks........................................................2

5: Concerns for the GM.......................13

Players and Their Pips...............................13

Notions of Advancement............................13

Non-Player Characters...............................13

To Fiat or Not To Fiat..................................15

Example: The Cliffhanger...............................15

Sizing Your Adventure...............................15

Example: Setting Up the Count.......................16

2: Creating Characters..........................3

Choosing Descriptors...................................3

Example: Descriptor Pairs................................3

Rounding It Out...........................................4

Looking At What You’ve Got........................4

Appendix: Pace and Other Systems.....17

Dice Pools.................................................17

Fudge.......................................................17

Additive Systems.......................................17

Roll Under Systems....................................17

3: Characters in Action..........................5

You’re Good At What You Do.......................5

Example: Basic Success Mechanics...................5

Example: No Descriptor Applies.......................5

What a Success Means................................5

Example: Awning Acrobatics............................5

Character Against Character........................6

Example: Roderigo vs. Draco...........................6

Margins of Success......................................7

Losing.........................................................7

Example: Dracos Wound................................7

4: Pips..................................................9

Physical Representation...............................9

Spending Pips.............................................9

Getting Pips................................................9

Example: Roderigos Embarrassment...............10

Using Negative Descriptors........................10

Example: BTR-FNGRZ-3.................................10

Deficit Spending........................................11

Example: Roderigos Predicament...................11

Timing and Contests..................................11

Example: Roderigo & the Counts Men, Take 2.11

The Ebb and Flow of Pips...........................12

Example: Now Youve Made Me Mad............12

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PACE

1: Introduction

Pace is a 24 Hour Game, which means it was

started with the intention of writing a 24 page

RPG inside of 24 contiguous hours. In this, it has

a strong relationship to the National Novel Writ-

ing Month (NaNoWriMo), in that the intention is

to crank out a work without looking back at any

point, without pausing and wondering if youre

doing it right. The point is to get the ideas out

of your head and onto the page. This game will

doubtless reflect the warts of such an approach;

one hopes it also has a shot at reflecting the

beauty.

At any rate, this is probably the last time Ill say

such things, so there they are, take em or leave

em.

On with the show.

Influences

Always worth mentioning. They are:

Risus

Over the Edge

Amber Diceless

If youre interested in learning more about the

24 Hour Game concept, it was kicked off in this

thread on the Forge:

Fudge

What little I know about Nobilis, the new

Marvel Supers game, Theatrix, and a bunch of

others.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5951

What I Have In Mind

The degree to which these fellows show up in the

text is entirely by chance, however. They just hap-

pen to be the game systems I most fancy today.

Pace will be a diceless game of resource alloca-

tion, where the choices a player or GM makes to

resolve a situation involve spending pips to get

a result rather than rolling dice.

Thanks

It will also focus on very, very lightweight charac-

ter sheets. Ive named the game Pace because

Im particularly concerned with the game running

quickly when played, despite there being a touch

of bookkeeping to it in the form of the pips. The

complexity of spending the pips, too, should be

kept as basic as possible.

Much thanks for this goes to my usual partner in

crime, Rob Donoghue, who helped to plant the

vestiges of the seed that grew into this game.

Additional thanks doubtless go to the indie-

rpgs.com community, without whom I would prob-

ably still be procrastinating on getting this puppy

done.

Ultimately, this means I intend Pace to be a game

that gets out of the way of the story. This places

some burden back on the players and the GM,

though, to cooperate, to trust one another, and to

exercise a certain amount of get-on-with-it impa-

tience in a context of keeping things fun. If a

detail in the system is a hang-up for you, ignore it.

If an actions cost doesnt look right or isnt, dare I

say the dread word, balanced, change it.

PACE

2: Creating Characters

Choosing Descriptors

descriptors instead of two (Cowboy Ninja Dip-

lomat). Also, under such an option, the same

number of points will be available for distribution

among the descriptors, so these broad charac-

ters will also tend to have lower ratings in each

individual descriptor:

Characters are built simply, using a pair of

descriptors. One of them should be a noun, but

the other can be whatever seems to pair up well.

Sometimes a single descriptor may be made of

multiple words, but this should be avoided if pos-

sible. If it does happen, though, hyphenate the

descriptor to make it clear. Alliteration can be

fun, but is not required.

Cowboy[2] Ninja[3] Diplomat[2]

Example: Descriptor Pairs

Dashing Duellist

Swashbuckling Pirate

Dwarven Drummer

Wisecracking Space-Pilot

Warrior Poet

Butterfingers Robot

Zen Bounty-Hunter

Negative descriptors (such as butterfingers) may

be disallowed or disallowed as suits the sensibili-

ties of the game. Their use is covered specifically

in chapter 4.

Descriptors are then rated with numbers. The GM

should determine what the characters total level

should be in this regard (picking an odd number

is best). Truly, it can be anything, but seven is a

nice, solid number, and its what well be using

here.

The higher a descriptor is rated, the more potent it

is. No descriptor may be rated at zero. For exam-

ple, our Dashing Duellist could be Dashing[1]

Duellist[6], all the way through Dashing[6] Duel-

list[1]. The former is only a little dashing but is

hell on toast with a sword. The latter knows how

to use a sword, but really shines when it comes to

turning on the charm and looking heroic.

GMs may wish to offer a broadly talented

character option where someone gets to use three

Rounding It Out

PACE

sense, as its a form of the all eggs, one bas-

ket principle.

The usual character gimmicks of equipment,

wealth, contacts, and so on are really relegated

to color or otherwise subsumed by the chosen

descriptors for the character. If it makes sense

for a Dashing Duellist to have a sword, he has a

sword. When these sorts of judgement calls are

made during game time, you may wish to write

them down so the decision remains consistent as

things progress.

2. Youll probably want to define your descrip-

tors broadly enough that youll be able to cover

a number of actions with them, but narrowly

enough that you dont end up stepping on the

toes of other players schticks. Regardless,

enough focus should be there that the term cho-

sen has some amount of evocativeness to it and

easily implies its scope of action.

3. If youre called upon to do something that is

not clearly covered by one of your descriptors,

youll end up limited by whatever your lowest

rating is. See what I meant about eggs and

baskets?

Looking At What You’ve Got

Ultimately, the ratings in the descriptors are the

tools with which the character assails the game

world. The specific mechanics will be covered

more in later chapters. However, it is useful to

keep, at the least, the following in mind:

1. Youll probably get more mileage out of a

more balanced pair (3 and 4) than a spiked

pair (1 and 6). This is to some extent common

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