Inception RPG (Part 2)

In preparing for a role playing game based on the movie Inception I’m thinking of the following issues.

• Character Creation
• Rules System(s)
• Mission/Session Structure
• Campaign Structure

Character Creation

One implementation of an Inception style RPG (L.u.c.i.d.) uses archetypes to define the characters (the Architect, the Chemist, The Counterfeiter, and so on) which seems to copy very closely the team from the movie. I’d rather have a set of skills that are needed to run an extraction, and as long as the characters have all these skills then the team can succeed. If a player wants to define their character as an architect, they can still do that.

Another part of character creation will be defining how the shared dream state is actually achieved. The movie is thankfully pretty vague there, so we can fiddle with the science involved to come up with something we all like. Initially I’m thinking that the target needs to sleep for at least two hours, and within about five meters of the rest of the extraction team. Whether the dreamers are connected by intravenous drugs, sonic waves, airborne particles, or a custom made virus, the bottom line is that they dream together, but the team still needs to get access to the target, at a time when they are most vulnerable. This is probably the most difficult part of the real world phase of the job.

Creating a character who can be a useful part of an extraction team will be a task for each player. Since I’m designing this game for a small set of players, I can tailor the game design pretty closely to the group I’ll actually run this for. I’ll allow the players to come up with concepts for their characters, and then work with them to add on skills and experiences that provide the team as a whole with everything they need to operate in the shadowy world of extractors.

Another aspect of character creation is world creation. By defining who their character is, each player will also be filling in details of the game’s setting. Again, the movie is rather vague about when the events are actually happening (Boeing 747s exist, but nobody uses a mobile phone) or how long the ability to share dreams has been around. If we want to play in the 1970s, we can. If we want to play in the 2030s, we’ll have to figure out what the world is like then. For now, I’ll assume we’ll be playing in the present.

What the world is like should give us some ideas about what the team usually get up to, who hires them, how much they get paid, what they spend their money on and do in their spare time, and who their enemies and competitors are. This is something to come back to when I deal with the campaign structure, but for now I’ll hope that each player brings some kind of complication that affects their character, and gives the team some extra problems to deal with.

Rules System

Night’s Black Agents seems to satisfy all of my needs, and my prospective players already play in a campaign. There are some options that allow the group to tweak the feel of the campaign, which I think works really well for Inception. In describing the real world, we can use the grittier Dust options. But for the first layer of the dream world, we can add the benefits of the default rules. As the characters go even deeper into the dream world, we can use the Burn and Stakes rules to make the experience more intense.

Session Structure

Since I know the group I’ll be running this for, I know that they will occasionally not show up. I want to be able to go ahead with a session even if a few players can’t make it on the night. I also want new players to be able to drop in and try it out. I need to lay the groundwork for this at the start, so that all the players are happy with the system going forward.

Firstly, I want it to be clear that any character can organise a mission. There is no skill or role that is needed to put together a team. If one of the usual team isn’t available, then they can just hire someone else, as long as they have the skills needed. Over the course of a campaign, they will have built up a roster of names who can be called on for missions.

Second, as in a West Marches style campaign, I want each session to be a complete episode of the story. At the end of any given session, the immediate plot points have been tied up, so it’s not important to have the same players along for the next session. If we think of each session as an episode in a TV show then that might help.

Campaign Structure

Just because each session wraps up its own plot threads doesn’t mean there can’t be an overall campaign structure as well. I can introduce government plots, corporate wars, organised crime syndicates and so on. The players can have their own ongoing stories, which complicate storylines as time goes on. I’ll wait and see what the players come up with in our first session before planning anything more in this area. I could even let the first few sessions pass by before I introduce anything big, or reveal that someone they worked for (or stole from) is a bigger player than they thought.