"Toybox Tales"- working on a Toy Story-alike RPG

[Prak]

As the title says, I've been idly poking at the idea of a Toy Story-alike RPG. I was actually specifically put in this mind space by some phone app, but it's easier to make a function call to Toy Story, and it's more true to what I'm thinking (sort of).

So, the idea is that players take the roles of toys in, normally, a kid's room. Unlike Toy Story, I don't, necessarily, see the premise as being "toys come to life when humans aren't watching." I think the game could just as easily be the fiction created by the hypothetical kid when playing with their toys as the toys having their own lives when humans aren't around. I don't particularly have any real stance on how the toys interact with the wider "real" world, except that I definitely want to say "if your toy is a dragon, it can actually breath fire, but that fire won't necessarily have any long term effects." Essentially, the way I'm thinking of it is that all of the toy interactions take place in an in-universe imagined reality, whether they are happening because the kid isn't around and the toys came alive, or the game is representing the kid playing with the toys. I kind of consider that question not important.

It's still very much in the idea stage, and I'm thinking about the following questions-

What is the game, mechanically, about?
Which is to say, what do the mechanics incentivize through rewards. I think that it's primarily more social interaction and story focused, but still with the possibility of combat for solving problems. Kids, generally, create their own (simple) stories when playing with their toys, and sometimes those stories do, indeed, mimic super hero action cartoons, but other times they are more about characters interacting. Which I guess is a lot of words to say that I think advancement is more about milestones and overcoming obstacles than "killing dudes." I think I also however, want advancement to reward learning, sort of like World of Darkness' "what did you learn this session?" xp (or, the point you can get from saying something you learned something from when I played WoD. I don't actually know whether that's a thing in the system or a house rule from my old WoD ST).

What mechanics comprise characters?
I think the system should be reasonably light, because, let's be honest, there's not a lot of complexity to the thing the system is supposed to reflect. A character should probably be made from a Form (what kind of toy they are- Toddler Toys are big and sturdy, Action Figures have articulation and gimmicks, Fashion Toys tend to be tall and reasonably durable but not very articulated, that sort of stuff), an Archetype (what role the character fulfils in the fiction of the child's play stories, things like Hero, Bad Guy, Doctor, etc. Basically class.), and then selectable Gimmicks and Accessories. Honestly, I think everything except form and gimmick should probably be changeable between stories. Form and Gimmicks reflect the physical reality of the toy, but Archetype is more how they're used in a given story (the same T Rex toy might be the bad guy one day and the town doctor another, cuz.... kids.) and accessories by their nature are not physically connected to the toy.

This does mean that advancement is going to be weird, since you might be a completely different class from one story to the next. That said.... maybe instead of advancing specific skills, you have something like FATE's skill pyramid, and you're actually advancing your pyramid steps? And then, as an example, the Doctor archetype tells you how a set of skills gets ranked. Something like "Best- Medicine. Next- Analysis, Science" and so on.

Thinking about it some now, I'm thinking maybe you get a skill or two from Form, which are set and not changeable, three or four skills from Archetype, which change when you change your Archetype, and then another handful of skills that you can just choose.

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EDIT: Maybe you choose two forms? So, instead of "Action Figure" you'd have, like, "Figure" and "Super." And if your character is a Batman, then they take the forms "Super" and "Figure," and if they're a Barbie, they take Fashion and Figure. Then you can also have, iunno, Play Skool car toys that are Tot Vehicles and toys from the educational section are Science Figures or Science Vehicles, or whatever.

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So... system?
I haven't put a lot of thought into the exact system, yet. I'm still kind of wrapping my head around the premise. FATE could work quite well, but I'm not wedded to that system for this.

Anyway, any thoughts? Ideas? Rotten tomatoes flung at me from the crowd?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Have you done the GD Flow Sheet? That's a very useful tool.

[Prak]

I haven't yet, because when I've used it, it hasn't been particularly useful to me, but also because I'm kind of still wrapping my head around what this is

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Have you looked at Action League Now for inspiration?

[Prak]

This is literally the first time I've heard of it, but I will now.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Huh, I guess someone didn't watch Nicktoons in the late 90's.

[Prak]

...I didn't have cable in the late 90s. Hell, my parents didn't have cable until like late '06.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The categories of Toddler Toy, Action Figure, and Fashion Doll remind me of the general divisions in Puppetland (which had Finger Puppets, Hand Puppets, Shadow Puppets, and Marionettes). That's a very weird game, so I don't know if you could get much out of it, but it's worth a look.

The thing where you have a general archetype but rebuild your character between stories is something I've seen in Amazing Engine and Dream Park. Neither of those is particularly good as a whole, but maybe you could steal something from their rebuild mechanics.

All of those are in The Trove, so you can check them out for no particular expense.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

Links related.

Somebody gave up their dreams to work in advertising, made a cooler commercial than the product deserves, has hopefully since left the corporate world behind to live in the wilds of North Dakota among the bigfoots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QKK5IDSXE

It doesn't sound like you're going for schlock horror, but I'm linking this anyway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK3NYrORvdk

Was too old for the movie when it came out, but read the book when I was a kid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQVketPgcuE

[czernebog]

Another possible source of inspiration is The Stuff of Legend. The fundamental thing driving character action there is rescuing the boy (from the bogeyman in the closet), and dramatic tension also comes from characters confronting past misdeeds or dealing with feelings they've kept hidden. It might be worth mining for setting elements (such as toy "civilization"; general world-building; and generating a list of questions that your setting has to answer, like "What happens to toys that are forgotten or outgrown?").

It plays heavily into the relationship that the Child has with the toys, which Toy Story also does. It sounds like you want to take this in another direction, with a focus on the adventures that the toys are having (and not exploring the dark corners of childhood, themes of aging and loss, etc.). The relationship with the Child is a handy prop for something to motivate characters across adventures. In Toy Story, the action is driven by personal squabbles, threats to physical integrity, and a consistent need to be played with (and favored by) a Child. The Stuff of Legend is initially a quest-driven narrative, and it becomes more of a character play as the toys, their pasts, and their desires are fleshed out.

In your game, what continuity is there between play sessions? If the T-Rex figurine is the villain in one story and the starship engineer in another, what does character advancement mean for the player who has the T-Rex sheet beyond "gets better at chomping"? The character might become more capable, but do they have a personality that changes over time? Personal preferences about the roles they play? Aspirations beyond the current play session?