11.05.09

Types and Breaks

Posted in Gameplay at 10:37 pm by Christian

Just a quick little thought that’s been on my mind.  I’ve been going over Jonathan Walton’s gamma draft of Geiger Counter on Google Wave, and the character creation part stuck with me for a while.  I think there’s an opportunity in that game and in ones similar to it to make neat characters with just a very simple technique.

See, Geiger Counter asks you to make characters according to archetypes.  That fits with the horror movie inspiration.  I think that what sets good characters apart from bad characters, in horror flicks and other B-movies, is that there’s something about them that breaks the archetype.  So you have enough of a template to immediately recognize the character and know what their part is (which is good for horror movies), but you also get treated to at least some variation from the cliche.

In a game sense, you could quickly make up a character’s personality (or role, or whatever) by picking Type and Break.  So you’d have Type: Librarian, Break: Boxing Aficionado.  Or Type: Hardened Cop, Break: Crossdresser (sound familiar?).  Or Type: Prissy Princess, Break: Grease Monkey.

I think gender and other role reversals provided easy breaks here in the past. Type: Asskicker, Break: Female was popular there for a while (see James Cameron’s work), until it became its own type (Female Asskicker).  And then you’ve got to find a new break.

What do you think?  Have any favorite type/break combos, new or from movies?

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