Hey. What does the system do?

Your cats have 5 main stats Cute, Kung Fu, Cheesburger, Smarts and one other based on your class. So Ninjas have Ninja Skills (possibly to be renamed Ninjing) and Pastafarians have Noodleyness. These stats go from 1-6.

You also have Fail, Ouchies, XP and Level. More on these in a sec.

To do a task you pick a stat and roll between 1 and 3 d6. 1 for Hard tasks and 3 for Simple. To succeed you need to roll a 6. Kittens are not noted for there competence. If you do roll a 6 you raise the stat you are using to it's starting level. If you roll multiple 6's you can raise multiple stats.

If you fail to roll a 6 you can spend Fail points to raise one (or more it can be useful) of your dice to 6 (you can't raise them to less than 6). This is known as pwning the test. Bascially karma, luck or his noodley goodness conspired to turn your failure into a success. You can raise the skill (or skills if you raise more than one to 6) by one point.

If you can't or won't spend Fail points then the total of the dice that are less than your stat is added to your Fail points. Then you lower that stat by one.

That's the basic system. There is more for fighting Aliens and such like.

Simon Proctor
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I cans be a noodly lolcat! Lets me playing now!

I'll go eat a cheesburger now :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Pastafarians may be able to move small objects by calling on is noodly appendages and cloud mens minds. They might be able to build energy swords. But the aren't Jedi, oh no, not at all.

Cheeseburger is so named because the favourite food of LOL cats is Cheeseburgers, and cookies and catnip power pellets.

It's all coming together quite well. Got 3000 words written so far. On that note what kind of word count am I looking for if I'm going for a book about the size of Solipsist?

Simon Proctor
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Solipsist is 83 pages discounting character sheets, adverts and the like, and is just short of 17,000 words.

I demand that your game has invisible bikes and ceiling cats, otherwise it is the fail

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

If difficulty moderates how many dice you roll and the target for this roll is always 6, how do your stats and skills affect the roll to make it harder or easier to achieve?

Ash

Invisible bikes are in there, Ceiling Cat is obviously a Ninja.

It's important to understand that LOL Cats are inherently crap, they fail at most things but due to lcuk (and his noodley appendages) sometimes their failures end up being successes. To use the vernacular they pwn the roll.

Your stats define which things you are more likely for earn Fail doing. Once you have Fail you can then spend it on later tests to pwn your roll.

And once in a while you succeed.

Simon Proctor
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Is it the total number of dice less than 6 that are added to your fail, the total values of all the dice added, or the difference between the rolls and your stats?

If it is the total value it means you get a lot less when your stats are low, so there is a law of diminishing returns in effect, the more you spend Fail the less likely you are to get more. I guess the occasional 6 fixes that?

I'm slightly concerned that easy tasks get 3 dice. That means I can go and do something easy to refresh my stats (though not regain fail). Is that deliberate? Actually the pattern will be

1. Fail a lot and run out of 'Fail'
2. Go do easy things and restore my stats
3. The fail again to get more 'Fail'

Which is a very odd pattern, but quite fun

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Ok first point, this is very much a first draft needs playtest version so is subject to change. THe way I envisage it is a bit like the Keystone cops and other classic slapstick lots of manic energy, stupid stuff happening and occasional bursts of competency.

The current idea is every dice that is less than your skill level is added to tour fail. So if you tried a Ninja Stealth sneak up on a Tortoise man with a Ninja Skill of 4 and rolled 2,5 you would (assuming you didn't pwn the roll) gain 2 Fail as the 5 is over you skill. If you rolled 3,3 you would gain 6 Fail.

Make sense?

Note that if you pwn a skill roll you gain a small bonus to your skill as well. You don't have to get 6's.

Simon Proctor
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I was just browsing around icanhascheezburgr.com so I thought I'd drop in and ask how this project is coming along?

Ash

it is currently suffering from a severe case of Scimons. I ran a couple of playtests at Conpulsion that seemed to go well and let me get my head around the game.

And the smut, still need to think about the smut.... unfourtunately I then fell under the sway of computer games and general procrastination. Plus I got a new job so my sitting around in the office slacking off time has disolved.

I do have some solid ideas i just need to get the written down and get a first draft written for people to have a look at.

Simon Proctor
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Shame on you simon! This is the big one! If you can't get this into print, every other project is doomed FOREVER.

Turn off the computer game and get writing!

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I know, I know. It doesn't help that I've had a number of other ideas since I started. I've written up my 24 minute game into a natty little thing I'd like to try out with people and I've written a one off horror game that again I want to try out.

Plus I've got a really neat idea for a sci-fi story telling game.... sigh. On the other hand I didn't bring a book into work today in order to try and get some stuff done and my Tuesday session wrapped up yesterday so I can now go to GUGs and write and snatch people for playtesting.

Sort of thing. I'm perking up which is good.

Simon Proctor
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Lets put it this way, I had to fight with people, and beg, and whine, to get playtesting of Solipsist. You had people offering to playtest ICGXP even when you weren't asking, you've struck gold

So hard as it may be, put down all those other games and ideas and work on this one, you know it makes sense

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

...or suffer the wrath of Ceiling Cat!

Incidentally, have you thought of contacting the guys responsible for Cheezburgr and asking if it'd be ok to make it official? They already have a LOLcats translation of the bible, I bet they'd be interested in sponsoring the game, maybe even providing some art for it?

Ash

I was planning on getting in touch with them when I had a bit more work done. Thing is it's not quite canon (as I'm pulling in other memes and random aliens and whatever) and the major religion (or possibly a side cult) involves the flying spaghetti monster.

I do have further ideas half written for Win and having things that are Made of Win. Sekkrit Bases (and Super Sekkrit Bases and so on). Explaining what an invisible item is and how it works (it's a psi power if you want to be finiky).

I also had an idea for Laugh dice, that you can give to other players if the make you laugh....

Simon Proctor
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You mentioned the possibility of laugh dice at Conpulsion and I remember having some misgivings. I think the problem is that such mechanisms can lead to people trying to get laughs solely for mechanical reward, instead of just for the purposes of having fun, which is not what this game is about. People don't need a reward for being funny in a game where the laughs are alreayd coming thick and fast.

Reward mechanisms like this also lead to status and popularity problems, with some players inevitably feeling put out that they didn't get as many dice as someone else, which either leads to accusations of favouritism, or more commonly a simmering unstated resentment. You get the same thing with systems that let the GM give out nebulous "roleplaying XP"

Win sounds interesting though, tell us more

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Laugh dice are still a nebulous idea I want to playtest. Win is a bit more specific. The idea of Win is you get it as you become competent and learn how not to break stuff. All things LOL-Cats can use are divided into two groups, Stuff and Items.

Stuff breaks, a lot, failing when using Stuff breaks it (possibly big stuff you have to fail a few times...) and any stuff you had at the end of an adventure is assumed to have been lost or broken before the next one.

That spaceship you guys stole? It crashed.

You get Win as you get competent, each time you get a Class you get a point of Win. Each time a stat reaches 6 (or 7,8,9+) you get a point of Win. Starting characters will have at least one point of win and probably more.

Each bit of Stuff has a Win cost, if you spend the Win cost on Stuff you have it becomes an Item.

Items are a bit like things in Amber you've spent points on. Failing while using them won't destroy them, you can't lose them for too long. If you do lose them you either get it back, get a copy or get the Win back. Items are part of your character.

Win can also be spent on shared things, like Sekkrit Bases. More on this later.

Simon Proctor
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That can work. I have done something very similar for Eekamouse in Atlantis, where you can have any number of items on an adventure, but unless you spend Wishes to keep them then they go away between adventures.

There is something similar again (which I was stealing from) in Donjon.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I don't think there's a problem with laugh points prompting players to go all out for laughs just to get the dice. It's no different from fan mail in Primetime Adventures, and because it's the players who decide whether to give them out or not, they can be the arbitrary judge of whether the player is being funny or not. If a player is trying too hard or is plain not funny, then the other players won't give out the dice.

As rolling more dice is generally always a good thing the idea will be everyone gets giving a Laugh Dice at the beginning of each session. You can give your laugh dice to another player when they make you laugh. They can then choose to add it to a later dice roll.

All Laugh Dice are removed at the end of a session. You don't get to keep them but get a new one to give away each session.

I think the only rule about giving them out is you can't give them to someone just as they are making a test. So if somone is just about to try and take down the big bad guy all the other players can't suddenly claim he's made them laugh.

I think I'm going to put them in as an optional rule, if the GM thinks they can help make the game fun and that PC's won't game the system then go with it. Ultimately though a extra few dice aren't going to really over balance things I think.

Simon Proctor
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I'm not sure you should shy away from letting people pool their dice before a big roll, because that kind of mechanical teamwork really makes people feel good, and ICHXP hs a pretty feel good game.

I've got that rule in Solipsist, giving your Infestation to others to pool resources, and people really like that. You get the same effect in Sorcerer with the ability to pass bonus dice to other people to help them on rolls (and Donjon, and Eeks :), and it all works fine.

Especially with only one laugh dice per player, I don't see that as a source of abuse at all.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

But characters can pool dice to make attempts (well each added character adds a dice and they can all spend fail). I just want Laugh Dice to be viewed as a prixe you get from other players for making them happy. I don't want the game effect to be too over the top so they start being viewed as a game effect and less as a little back slap.

Simon Proctor
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If they have a game effect then they are not just a back slap. If you want them to be just a back slap, why do they have a game effect? If their only purpose is to be a way for me to tell you that you made me laugh, then put something in the rules encouraging players to tell each other that think what you just did was funny and cool.

The more I design games the more I realize that you can't just throw in a mechanic that you don't actually want people to use as something mechanical, they always will.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I second David - if they're a mechanic, they shouldn't be a friporous one. Again, see fanmail – it's a way to reward creative gameplay and humour, but it's a fully integrated mechanic in it's own right.

Yup. I think you're right. Either I put it in and except that people will game the mechanic or I leave it out.

I just don't know which.... hmmm.

Simon Proctor
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Well if you are just trying to encourage laughter and cameraderie I don't think you need another rule for it, the playtest I was in was laughter all the way through, the whole thing is inherantly humerous and feel good.

Did the other playtests go the same way?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

The second playtest on Sunday was... very very smutty. Less out and out laughter more willy jokes. And me be very embarassed about the adventure I'd slapped together and the fact I was running it for two young ladies.

With dirty, dirty minds.

Simon Proctor
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I am sure that can only have appealed to your dirty dirty heart Simon :P

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Yeah. If I was 10 years younger and single I'd have been loving it. As it was the bit where they stole the inflateable cow from the sex shop was a bit weird. And this was all before they got to the alien space ship with the rather phalic design.

Then it just got really rude.

Simon Proctor
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