07 June 2021

New Hope City PI - Thoughts

So now I have run two cases, what are my thoughts on 5150 New Hope City PI?

It is very procedural, and you are left with a very bare bones structure to try and weave into a coherent story.

I'm not sure it worked that well in the moment, although the resulting tidying up did seem to make some sense (I'll leave you to make that decision). Overall it seemed to work better in retrospect.

I can't fault the people and location charts and intend to use these for future games if necessary (although they will be in rotation with other tools I want to try out).

What I particularly liked was the fact ot gave me the same types often often to weave them together. Given the actual amount of possibilities I don't know if this is just coincidence or the sheer volume I rolled. Either way it did tie it up quite nicely.

Another decision I've reached is to change the underlying game system. I was going to change to The Department of Fabricant Management but the character creation process was too finicky. Instead I am going to mix it with Mini Six, which is a lighter version of the Open D6 System which is famous as the West End Games Star Wars RPG.

The mixing is replacing the totalling of the dice (which I consider clunky) with DFMs/The GoalSystem 1-3 No Goal, 4-5 1 Goal, and 6 2 Goals. It is much quicker than addition and so less taxing on my brain!

The second investigation system I am going to use is Mythic, the classic GM emulator. Mythic has a reputation for producing sprawling games so I'll see how it handles an investigation. I am not going to try and force a conclusion, maybe this is a case that Mayhem PD don't get to solve.

For this game I am going pure Mythic too, I don't intend to use any other tables (other than naming resources). I'll see how that goes and maybe add some tables in for the second run through (I always intend to run two games so that I can say I've tried them properly).

4 comments:

  1. You might want to take a look at Mythic Magazine issue #6 when it comes out for the public (if you haven't already that is, it is already out for Patreon backers) - it has a very nifty mystery adventure engine!

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  2. Oh, and a follow-up - I'm a big 5150 fan but also I love D6/Mini Six so I like where are you headed! Success counting is a good way to speed up counting for solo play - are you using the GoalSystem's TN1-5 difficulty chart, D6 Legends chart? something else? (And also are you building characters with the Mini Six rules or another home-brew?)

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  3. Hi Shawn, I didn't get notified you'd made a comment so hopefully you get this!

    I'm intending to downgrade the MiniSix abilities dice a little so that they are more in line with GoalSystem's scale and use that.

    The Department has some neat ideas with doing too well and it will good to use everything 'as is' from that.

    We'll see how that goes!

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    Replies
    1. Yep! I'm not super-familiar with The Department but I'll review it, thanks for sharing notes.

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