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all material © 2002 Tim Denee
It is based on the movies of Guy Ritchie. Everyone who is playing should have seen at least one.
You will need some paper, some pens, and a big pile of counters to represent misfortune points, (I suggest poker chips or playing cards, but anything will do).
Getting it done
We’ll get to making your characters in a moment, but first you need to know the way things work.
When players come up against a problem, they’re going to need to know how to sort it. It’s quite simple, really. They can choose whether they succeed or fail.
If they choose to succeed, good on ‘em. They can narrate what happens as they see fit, (within reason).
If they choose to fail... Well, firstly they should choose to what degree. Then, they can look at the handy chart below and see how much misfortune that’s worth. They narrate the outcome according to those guidelines, and the appropriate amount of misfortune is added to the players’ pile. Note that there may be coincidental benefits built into a failure.
If you’re in conflict with
someone, declare whether you want to succeed or fail. It works like this:
- If you choose success, the person with the highest vinegar gets to narrate
as they see fit. If you have equal vinegar, each side gets to choose what
happens to the other. This normally results in carnage.
- If you choose failure, you have to narrate a failure to a degree of misfortune
equal to your opponent’s vinegar. So if I’m fighting someone with
vinegar 15, and I choose failure, I have to narrate a failure equal to 15
misfortune. I gain the 15 misfortune as normal.
Note that the person running the game (the GM) can never choose failure, so
you’ll never have a clash of misfortune. Unless of course the players
fought each other, but that’s not going to happen, now is it?
Misfortune:
1-3: just a bit of bad luck, nothing too extreme. Calm Charlie fails
by three misfortune trying to steal a car; he opens the door and the alarm
goes off, notifying the entire neighbourhood. In a fight: a few cuts and
bruises, a hurt ego.
4-6: you’re in for some shit, but you’ll survive. Charlie
smashes the window and is busy hot-wiring the car when he realizes it’s
his brother’s car. In a fight: some blood, a black eye or two, maybe
a broken bone.
7-9: you’re walking a very thin line, my son. Charlie smashes
the window and is busy hot-wiring the car when he realizes it belongs to Mack
the Knife, a hitman with a vicious reputation. In a fight: a few broken
bones, lots of blood; you’re knocked out.
10-12: you’re fucked, mate. Charlie starts the car up, looks
behind him, and sees a corpse in the back seat. In a fight: serious internal
injuries. It’s the hospital for you, boy.
13-15: you got life insurance? Charlie breaks into a car just as
the thugs looking for him turn the corner. He tries the ignition. Nothing.
The fucking thing’s got no engine! In a fight: you’re six feet
under, my friend.
16-18: the shit has hit the fan. Charlie breaks into a car just
as the thugs looking for him turn the corner. He looks to his left and sees
the thugs’ boss, Arson Arnold, pointing a gun at his face. In a fight:
it’s a massacre. You’re ripped apart.
19-20: ground zero. This level of failure always involves death and
explosions. Charlie starts the stolen car up, and it explodes. In a
fight: they’ll be scraping you off the pavement for weeks.
Piss is an attribute which only the main characters have. Piss points are strictly one-use each. You can use more than one at a time, if you like. They either raise your vinegar by five for one confrontation, or they save you from a situation of certain death. Either way, you narrate the outcome, showing how your stupidity saved you, (in many cases, being fucking stupid may look like being fucking brave). You can use piss points to save the life of another main character; this costs you two rather than one. You cannot raise the vinegar of another main character.
Characters
To create your main characters, all you need to do is decide on a name, and then distribute 10 points between your piss and vinegar. Piss is how fucking stupid you are. Vinegar is your balls, how tough you are.
Dan
Piss 2
Vinegar 8
Reggie
Piss 6
Vinegar 4
The players decide on some bad luck that recently afflicted them all; the
‘downer’. Example: Dan and Reggie are con men who have just accidentally
sold a ming vase worth half a million pounds. They thought it was a fake.
Note that guns and weapons and stuff have no effect in Collision; sure, they look nice, but if you’ve got enough balls you won’t need ‘em. And if you haven’t got enough balls, they won’t help you.
The
Setup
Now, you’re all going to brainstorm together and come up with at least
six secondary characters. Put ‘em all on a piece of paper and connect
them up with various relationships. The more tangled the better. Here’s
some guidelines to secondary character creation:
The Name: the name can’t
just be “John Smith”; it has to allude to some sort of character
gimmick. “Bullet-tooth Tony”, “Franky Four-Fingers”, “Boris
the Blade”. You can have ordinary names, but these should be short and
sharp; “Vinny”, or “Sol”. You don’t actually have
to have a specific gimmick associated with the name; just think of something
that sounds a little weird, and link it with a normal name; “Fish-and-chips
Freddy”, “Harold the Automatic”, or “Tommy Toilet-bowl”.
Alliteration is a nice touch.
The Stereotype: all secondary characters should be an easily recognizable
stereotype; hitman, thief, drug dealer, diamond dealer, crime boss, and so
on.
Organization: if the character is the head of some sort of organization,
name that here, mention its size, and any important members, (if they sometimes
act independently, mention their vinegar and importance). It’s handy
to give most secondary characters some other weaker, associated characters,
so that when you take over one secondary character, all the players can be
a part of the action.
Note that the entire organization goes into conflicts with the vinegar
of the leader; the leader may not actually fight, but if he’s mean as
a rottweiler his boys will be too. If one of the associated characters is
acting independently, they and any goons with them have to use the associated
character’s own vinegar.
Vinegar: just like with main characters, this is how much balls the
character has.
Importance: equal to vinegar, this is how much misfortune it costs
the players to take over this character for a scene. One secondary character,
the main antagonist, is ‘untouchable’; they can’t be controlled
with any amount of misfortune.
(Secondary characters don’t have any piss)
Name: Arson Arnold
Stereotype: crime boss
Organization: a powerful criminal network in London. He has a couple of dozen
goons, and a right-hand man: Lucky Lenny (Vinegar 12, Importance 12).
Vinegar: 18
Importance: untouchable
The GM then adds a twist to your
downer, to put the characters in dire peril, and to connect them in an undesirable
way to the main antagonist amongst your secondary characters.
That ming vase belonged to Arson Arnold.
Play
The game plays more or less like any other role-playing game. The players
play the main characters, the GM plays all the secondary characters. Everyone’s
working towards creating an interesting story. Everyone has input as to how
scenes start, what happens, and so forth.
Rigging
Misfortune points can be used by players to take over secondary characters
for a scene. At the end of a scene, the players simply have to declare that
they want to take over a certain secondary character or characters, and spend
the required amount of misfortune from their pile. Any ‘associated’
secondary characters can be controlled by other players (for no extra cost).
You then declare the scene you want to start, control the secondary characters for that scene, and that’s it. At the end of that scene, you can switch back to the main characters, pay the price to continue with these characters, or pay to take over different secondary characters.
The players spend 12 misfortune to take over Lucky Lenny. One player plays Lenny, the other plays one of his goons. They want to start a scene with Lenny and his goon in a car, driving down the road towards an art gallery.
Whilst being used by the players, secondary characters can fail and gain misfortune. This misfortune goes into the pile, and can be used by the players. Player-controlled secondary characters cannot interact with the main characters. If the players get the secondary characters into a situation where they can’t avoid interacting with the main characters, then the secondary characters instantly go back to the control of the GM.
Bells and Whistles
These are little things that can be used to improve the game or add misfortune
to the pile. The GM can use any of these techniques freely; it neither costs
nor adds misfortune for the GM (seeing as the GM doesn’t have misfortune...).
Roll-Call - if you like,
start the game with a roll-call. Starting with the GM and then going round
the table, take turns to pick a character (secondary or main), describe a
very brief situation they’re in that sums up the character pretty well,
and give their name.
For example: “A shot of a pasty white tall guy in an expensive suit,
skinny as a rake, burning a lighter under some punk’s nose while a couple
of thugs hold the person still. Arson Arnold”.
For a twist, you can say that if the scene described ever actually happens
in play, 3 misfortune is added to the pile.
Freeze frame - this costs one misfortune, and must be done before chronology flipping or a voice-over can take place. You can do both a voice over and a chronology flip in the same freeze frame.
Flipping chronology - this
costs two misfortune, and allows you to start a scene in the past. You gain
misfortune as normal in this scene.
Arson Arnold has a gun pointed at Calm Charlie. Freeze frame. Flip to a
scene of Fish-and-chips Freddy sneaking into Arnold’s office and unloading
Arnold’s gun. Flip back to present. “Click”.
Voice Over - a player just
has to say a sentence or two that helps define a character (secondary or main)
in any given scene. Three misfortune is added to the pile.
“If there’s one thing everyone knows about Mack the Knife, it’s
that he hates dogs. Kills the poor little bleeders on sight”.
Flash-back - slightly different
from chronology flipping, this adds two misfortune to your pile. It can only
be used when something unexplained has just happened, and allows you to go
back and show what happened. You cannot use it to change anything concrete
about the present, and it’s not really a scene; you control what happens,
but you don’t gain any misfortune from failures.
Calm Charlie has just been blown up starting a car. His player flashes
back to a scene of Arson Arnold getting out of the car, and Mack the Knife
sneaking up and planting the bomb.
Slow-mo - if the players describe something in slow-mo, paying attention to all the little details, then two misfortune is added to the pile. This can be done twice per game.
Outline - this can be used
once for the main characters and once for the main antagonist. Describe their
entrance into a scene that outlines them perfectly, making them seem really,
well, cool. When the players use it for the main characters, they gain five
misfortune, (seven if they combine it with slow-mo). When the GM uses an Outline
for the main antagonist, the pile loses three misfortune.
Dan and Reggie sweep into an expensive art gallery, wearing flashy suits,
stylish dark glasses, and shining smiles. They sit down in the owner’s
office, feet on the desk, and take a dark blue vase out of a wooden box, carefully
handing it to him. Dan winks at the owner, “if that ain’t worth
a mint, I’m going daft”, he says.
Scene montage - this costs
one misfortune, and allows something that would logically take quite some
time to be shortened to whatever length the players desire.
Cousin Avi needs to fly from America to England. He says he’s on his
way on the phone, there’s a quick montage of him entering the plane,
flying, and landing, and then he’s there. Right then.
Black and white footage - once per game the players can declare a scene is in black and white. Such a scene can have no dialogue. Two misfortune is added to the pile. Rather than black and white, the scene could be photo chromatic opposite, grainy colours, or something else entirely.
The
Wrap-up
Generally speaking, the way these things works, it will probably end when
everyone except the main characters is dead. But you never know.
Remember, you only need the main characters to end up living happily ever after. Feel free to kill off secondary characters for some extra misfortune when they’re no longer useful.
