Saturday, July 17, 2010

Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot

On ye old Hulu, under the animation section, I found an old favorite, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.

It makes a nice change of pace in many ways and it showcases some interesting rationals for some role playing options as well as mechanic options in a game.

In terms of role playing characters, the naive character makes a good source. In many instances, this character may have innate abilities that make him the equal of his more experienced comrades, but his experience with life is at a low point. It can be challenging for an old hand to play a naive character but it can also be fun.

These types of characters should approach everything with a fresh eye and with an air of optimism that may contrast with the rest of the party members.

The second type of character, is the character with a secret. In this case, the Big Guy is supposed to be an A.I. but is instead an exo-skeleton for a human pilot. This lends the character not an air of secrecy but a secret identity. This is old hat in games like Mutants and Masterminds and Champions but not quite so common in the sword swinging field although Zorro does come to mind as well as the old Scarlet Pimpernel.

The trick to pulling this off is as the quote from one of the episodes, "It's time like this that I wish the Big Guy's sSecret wasn't such a secret." If there is no effort or repercussions from failing to keep the secret then the secret is worthless. If the player has to work every minute of ever session to keep the secret, then the GM is trying to hard.

In terms of game mechanics, Big Guy and Rusty is a solid example of M.D.C. in action. For those who don't play Rifts or any of the high end games, that would be Mega Damage Capacity. In Big Guy and Rusty, the bad guys are always shrugging off the attacks of the normals of the setting and it isn't until Big Guy and Rusty come into the scene that we see anything getting done.

Now that might just be my love of big damage talking but on the other hand, it's a quick way of showcasing how the characters are not part of the normal setting and stand far apart from it.

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