Not-so-OSSR: Danger Patrol

[Prak]

So, I have a bottle of Woodchuck, a request to review Danger Patrol, and a pdf thereof. I also have a pdf of the Pocket Edition, and it's two pages, so what the fuck, I'll look at that too.

Danger Patrol is a "narrative RPG" (read, most likely, Story Game). It has character Styles (sort of like races) and Roles (sort of like classes). It's meant to emulate 50's SciFi, as well as be pretty quick to set up and play it would seem (the Beta Edition is 34 pages, the Pocket Edition is seriously 2).

Looking over the RPG Geek page for this summary, it seems to have something like Fate Points:

players are encouraged to take risks and accumulate "danger dice." As they fail rolls, they earn valuable power chips, but they open up the possibility of grievous injury to their characters.

This isn't quite an OSSR, as Danger Patrol Beta Edition came out in October of '09. This is important to note, as it was well into 4e.
The reigning king of Roleplaying had become the mad king, with it's shitastic skill challanges, great-idea-but-shitty-execution Daily/Encounter/At Will power schedule, and the court full of fools like Mearls.
And White Wolf, well...


So indies thought the coast was clear like they were the little rat-like mammals after the Age of the Dinosaurs

Which one is Luke Crane? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thus the RPG market was more of a free for all than it had been for years. Fate had come out six years before Danger Patrol, so I'm curious to see how much is cribbed from Fate for this whole "players are encouraged to take risks thing."

So,

Danger Patrol

Beta Edition

Danger Patrol is a very lean book. Whereas most gaming books would start off with silly stuff like credits, introduction, or table of contents, DP starts with "The Steps."

1. Gather Everyone At The Table
2. Introduce the Style Cards
3. Introduce the Role Cards, Talents, Powers & Special Abilities
4. Create Names for the Heroes
5. Introduce the Heroes
6. Introduce Rocket City & The Solar System
7. Time to Start the Show! (this isn't really a step, is it? More a... bit of ado?)
8. Set Up the Action Arena
9. Action! (Again, this isn't actually a step...)
10. Round Two (And Beyond)
11. Interlude
12. Suspense!
13. More Action! More Suspense!

Ok, so I'm guessing that these will be expanded upon, but you already get a bit of the idea. The idea I'm getting so far is that, like Fiasco, Danger Patrol sells itself as an RPG, but is really more of a "Bits and Pieces German Boardgame, minus the board." That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're looking for a typical ongoing RPG...

This says kind of damning things about RPGs. Or Story Games. I'm not sure which.

It then goes into "The Stuff You Need." This is both the expected stuff (dice, table, Character Sheets) and less expected stuff ("character sheets printed from this pdf and cut in half to make 8 style cards and 8 role cards," "gaming stones," "red danger dice," paperclips, specifically a sharpie*, bowls to hold the dice).

Ok, here's where it expands on the steps.
Step 1 gives you an "opening speech" for your players:

We’re going to play Danger Patrol, an action/adventure retro sci-fi game. The idea is to create the episodes of a 50s-style TV show in the vein of the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials (with maybe a dash of the Venture Bros., Star Wars, and Indiana Jones).
You’re all going to play members of the elite Danger Patrol—special super-powered crime fighters who protect Rocket City from evil Stygian Adepts, the nefarious agents of the Crimson Republic, rampaging monsters set loose by mad scientists, and other crazy threats.
To make your Danger Patrol hero, you’re going to pick a Style and a role. Your style tells us what kind of being you are: A Robot, a Mystic, a cybernetic Atomic, or something else. Your role tells us what your job is on the team: A super-spy Agent, an elite soldier Commando, a wiley Detective, etc.
Are you ready? Let’s go!

Pretty much what I expected, really. They do a really good job of setting the mood. I'm three pages in, and so far the only real surprise is the awareness of including send ups of the genre like Venture Bros. Hell, the fact that they just mention it totally makes me want to fucking play this game. Brock's a Two-Fisted Commando, Rusty's an Intrepid Professor, Helper is a Robot Warrior... hell yes.

The Styles are Alien (Build your own style, pick a planet to be from, which can include Pluto or Planet X), Atomic (atomic reactor powered cybernetic soldier, Metallo, but also Superman), Ghost (Klauss, from BRPD), Intrepid (Mundane brave, lucky resourceful guy), Mystic (Dr Strange), Psychic (Jean Grey), Robot (Robot), Two-Fisted (Mundane strong tough guy). Nice to see that it's cool if a style is picked by more than one person.
So every style has Traits (pick your skill level in each role), a Talent, a Power, four Special Abilities, a Danger Meter, and a condition track. So far my only real beef with this thing is that I'm on page 4, learning how to make a character, but have no clue how the damned game works.

What I get so far is "assign dice to role traits, your style gives you a unique ability like Atomic's 'suffer no penalty when taking Stuns or Injuries,' a power which you activate for power tokens which you get for being in danger, and four special abilities which have flavourful names and one or two [+]s next to each, and you have Bashed and Stunned boxes."

Personally, I like to know a game's basic resolution mechanic as soon as I can, since that tends to lend context to things like character creation.

Like this picture, the first few pages of Danger Patrol lack just enough context to be certain of which of several possible scenarios is going on.

I should have looked at page 5. It starts to explain a few things about the cards after briefly talking about the roles:
Agent (super spy manipulator/stealth guy)
Commando (tactics and shootey guy)
Daredevil (probably pretty close to the comic character of the same name--blindness and bad movie adaptations optional)
Detective (You are Batman)
Explorer (You wear a space suit, but are probably pretty much one part Great White Hunter one part Charles Darwin)
Flyboy (drivey guy)
Professor (smarty guy)
Warrior (Punchy guy)

It's frowned upon for two players to pick the same Style/Role combo, but it's probably ok for two players to share Style or role.

So character creation continues.
You get a d12 in your main role trait (you know which it is because the traits are the same as the roles, so a Commando has a d12 in the Commando trait). You then have 1d10, 2d8, 3d6, and 1d4 to distribute across the rest, no more than one die per trait.
The team chooses it's uniform colours, everyone wears the same colours, because the difference between Pulp Team and Street Gang is kind of small, to be honest.
You choose a weapon- Raygun, Electro-Blaster, Turbo-Rifle.
You get Stuff, which is probably a genericized gear pack for your role which has no use limit, but you can check off a box next to a stuff to get a bonus die. This probably means you can't use that Stuff.

It also explains the symbols on the character sheets. The system logo symbol means that an ability costs a power token, but power tokens can also be spent to do generic things like get +1 hit or reduce a hit (according to the Atomic Style Sheet).
a + means the adjacent power is an ally buff, Shield denotes defensive powers, arrow means the power involves actions, and * is misc. The [+] next to powers means you get bonus die, first a d10, then a d8, then a d6. If you have multiple [+]s next to a power it means multiple uses, not "you get +d10+d8+d6 when you use this." Well, apparently it can, but you can't have more than three bonus dice. You mark off [+]s as you use them, and refresh in interludes.
But still...

Seriously. I know what I'm rolling, but not what I'm rolling against, or how often to roll, or how I figure out who the fuck rolls when.

Your role card has a space for Uniform Colours up top (that's twice they've mentioned it, which makes me think it's actually important. It's probably not), the other four roles (you're supposed to put your Style and Role cards side by side, the first four roles, alphabetically, are on Style, the last four on Role. The Role also gives you another Talent, another Pwer, Gear and Weapons (your Stuff, I gather) and the rest of your Danger and Damage Meters. It's a pretty slick presentation still, but I'd rather have generic sheets that I write in the talents and such than have to fuck around with two half sheets.

Then you just have to name your characters (Secret Identity or Real Name, no one really cares, it's just more fluff), and you introduce your characters to each other ...because you haven't just been talking this stuff over for the past ten minutes with your bodies at least...
So yeah, you stand up and say "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm an alcoh-" wait, sorry. No, you say "Ok, so I'm playing Doctor Palladium, an Atomic Professor. I have a cyborg body which is resistant to harm and atomic strength, speed, beams and Z-Ray vision, and I can make Crazy Theories that make it easier for me or allies to do things, and tinker with stuff. I have an Omni-scanner and a jetpack." You can also go into some background about your character, or not, whatever your group prefers.

There's a checklist for setting the game up which is handy, but I'm still waiting to learn the resolution mechanic.


So everyone makes their characters, everyone gets a rules summary, a power token, and a paperclip, and you put out bowls of red d6s as danger dice, and normal polyhedrals. The GM has a stack index cards and a sharpie for "Threat Markers."

Since that's the end of character creation and game set up, it seems a reasonable place to break the posts.

Next up-- Introduce Rocket City & The Solar System

[darkmaster]

First post and the quote tags are already fucked, this promises to be a clever deconstructionist look at source book reviews.

[silva]

Great review so dar, Prak! Keep it up!

Also, is only me that see a glass of beer in that WoD image over there ?

(I know, Im bad at photoshop)

[Swok]

Alcohol would go a long way to explaining the...whatever that is.

[silva]

So, where is the other parts Prak ? Its Saturday, day of staying at home playing video games and writing reviews.

[Prak]

I'll probably have more up tonight.

[Judging__Eagle]

Here's the brief experiences I've had with Danger Patrol:

1. Players make combos; and don't know how to make their characters work well against bosses.

2. Players start making "Danger Checks" (or whatever it's called); and add +1-2 D6 per Awesome, or Terrible, thing that can happen.

The more terrible things that are suggested; the more dice the player can roll.

Then when the roll comes; the ratio between successes to failures on dicep is what determines how many good, and bad, things happened as a result.

Checking for 4+ on all dice, I believe? Making your d4 stat an effective dump stat; unless you go all "dangerous" on the action.

3. The game is super easy to break.

-Focus fire on BBEGs
-Always use "area of attack" powers on the mobs many GMs tend to favour
-Always suggest the worst and implausible things to occur during other people's actions.

A safe staple is that "the PCs actions summon monsters from an other dimension"; because a) it doesn't endanger the player directly, b) few GMs will pick it b/c it forces them to add and stat up a bunch more creatures; before the encounter is over; c) it's usually bad enough of an effect that you'll get +2 dice instead of the +1 almost anything else suggested could happen.

In general; imagining, and pushing the 'danger' of PC actions into the stratosphere isn't that hard. Random earthquakes/sinkholes that swallow/trap the player; their equipment having been sabotaged ahead of time by enemies, and their current actions setting off a mini-nuke.

Things that in general would completely scrub the current encounter, tend to never be picked as potential failures.

It's fun, but a lack of a rubric of creature actions makes it slide too much into magical tea party, or grimderpitude if played with people who are used to very constraining engines like Runquest/CoC, d20, SR or WW; and think that they're good engines and settings unironically.

[Prak]

Sorry I haven't been able to do more, I've been alternately helping friends move/working on my game/nagging at players to finish their fucking character pages.

[silva]

The game is super easy to break:

- Always suggest the worst and implausible things to occur during other people's actions.

A safe staple is that "the PCs actions summon monsters from an other dimension"; because a) it doesn't endanger the player directly, b) few GMs will pick it b/c it forces them to add and stat up a bunch more creatures; before the encounter is over; c) it's usually bad enough of an effect that you'll get +2 dice instead of the +1 almost anything else suggested could happen.

In general; imagining, and pushing the 'danger' of PC actions into the stratosphere isn't that hard. Random earthquakes/sinkholes that swallow/trap the player; their equipment having been sabotaged ahead of time by enemies, and their current actions setting off a mini-nuke.

From my reading of the rules, this entire passage is wrong.

For adding Danger Dice, players can add only details to the action ("A civilian car passes right in front of you while you shoot the Bear!" + 1 danger die ), they cannot add new threats (earthquakes, summoned monsters, etc) to it. New threats can only be added as a consequence of a Threat move, and even so, it must be 1 level below the threat that triggered the move in the first place. So, a "major" threat (say, a big monster) can generate a "minor" threat (say, setting fire on a nearby building with innocent citizens inside) if the player facing it rolled enough danger. Thats it.

[silva]

Lets go Prak, dont give up now man. Im counting on you!

[Judging__Eagle]

Silva, the Mister Cavern I was playing with must have sort of totally forgot that rule.

Specifically because they've had existing enemies get stronger when an attack aimed at them failed.

Honestly, I don't care enough to correct them, but I'll keep it in mind.

[fectin]

You use the danger rolls (ie failures) to pay for MC moves. one of those is escalating a threat, which is cheap, easy, and requires less thought. Your MCs probably chose it for that reason.

[Judging__Eagle]

You use the danger rolls (ie failures) to pay for MC moves. one of those is escalating a threat, which is cheap, easy, and requires less thought. Your MCs probably chose it for that reason.

That helps to explain the difference between what Silva said, and what I've seen.

Beefing up the targetted BBeG is generally easier than adding more actors to the encounter.

[silva]

Yeah, but between escalating a threat and producing entirely new threats from outer dimensions is a huuuuuuge step! Your GM got high, Eagle. Though if you had some fun, theres no problem with that.

[silva]

Wake up Prak!

[radthemad4]

I'm waiting for this as well. I suspect Prak's preoccupied with his gaming group at the moment. But yeah, whenever you're in the mood Prak, no rush.

[silva]

I wonder how Danger Patrol compares to Agon, the author subsequent game.