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TTRPG Tuesday: The Opposite of Ted Lasso

Hey, it’s been a minute, how about a TTRPG Tuesday? I’ve got updates to make before I turn in a final draft of a project, so I’m in the headspace.  Today I figured I’d return to the old “How would I gameify an IP well”, with Blue Lock!

I’ve been getting into sports anime - not surprising considering my proclivity for battle shonen and access to someone else’s CrunchyR*ll subscription, and the fact that in real life I’ve been going FULL jock over the last year or so.  Blue Lock I’ve been watching every Saturday, and when I’ve done cardio in the basement I’ll watch Haikyu! Oh, and I watched all of Pride of Orange, because hockey.  These are all fun, with highs that land especially well with someone who’s finding an escape in sports, while also relying on tropes at certain points, or a humour that still isn’t always my cup of tea, or just elongated pacing.

But I’m having a good time, and there’s certainly some lessons to be learned in how to structure conflict, interpersonal battles of will, character progression, and how to create tension through adversity.  Blue Lock in particular pushes the genre in such an unusual direction - a technologically advanced thunderdome royale… for a team sport - that it’s rife for crunchy gamey adaptation.

So! What about Blue Lock quickens my blood?

  • The rulebreaking twists: The starting elimination exercise, the whole team of forwards, the solo chamber, 3v3s working their way up, Blue Lock Man etc

  • The forming and shattering of team bonds, with semi-coop traitor and brinksmanship elements

  • Related to that, the chemical reactions and devouring as synthetic and oneupsmanship forms of learning from one another

  • I’ve had this thought a few times while watching this show: it’s not explicitly nor implicitly fascist, but if I were recruiting fascists it would make for a very useful tool.  The tension between subsuming oneself for a nationalist goal, and discarding the norms of teamwork in the pursuit of individual mastery, is messy and vital and requires very intentional design

And what kinds of mechanical things does all that suggest?

  • Weapons are skill cards: Everyone can shoot and dribble and pass to various mundane extents, but Weapon cards completely change a skill; how you use it, how it advances, how high it can go.  For example, all PCs have the Dribble skill, with a starting score of 1-3, a max of 5, and improving that score costs skill points equal to the new score amount.  But Bachira has the Footwork Acrobat weapon card, which gives +2, raises the max to 8, decreases the Skill Point cost by 1 for odd numbered ranks, and allows Bachira to use the special moves Nutmeg and Slidestep

  • At PC creation, Players start out with a Weapon of their choice but also create a pool of Weapon cards and draw two facedown.  They can peek at one of those two but not the other.  They can unlock their additional Weapons over time.

  • Devouring: Players can also, eventually, copy other players’ Weapons or perhaps parts of Weapons.  This is like the Duchy race in Dominion, of breaking Trumps in a trick taker; there are barriers to it at first but one player kicks off an arms race that pulls everyone else in

  • Gameplay alternates between solitary and group moments, via an assortment of Challenges a la the Selections.  Every PC must be comfortable striving to be the main character, even at the expense of their fellow players - while still very much needing those fellow players, except when the Challenge calls upon them to learn and grow alone

Alright, plenty more to iterate here but it got late and I need sleep.  We’ll leave a potter’s edge on this snd call it a night for now.  Til next time!

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