Inspired by programs like Medium, Millenium, Wonderfalls and even My Name is Earl I've developed a game where the players are chosen Messengers, receiving Messages from an enigmatic source.

The Messengers have gifts such as postcognition, premenition, the ability to see ghosts and so on. Using these gifts they gather information about the Message to work out what needs to be done. Each piece of information leads them to another clue which gives them a plus modifier when they next use their gift.

The game does not centre entirely around gathering information but rather what they do with it. Their gift might show them the identity of a killer but how do the Messengers make sure that person gets arrested? Similarly if they know a plane is fated to crash how can they stop it?

Messengers allows a great variety of adventures given that the Message will motivate them to take interest in other people. It might require them to stop a couple breaking up, help someone achieve their goal in life or find a lost puppy. Each has just as much challenge as stopping a serial killer or preventing an accident.

As a reward for carrying out the Messages the player characters receive karma which they can use to affect their dice rolls but also improve their characters lives or to increase their stats.

As far as I'm aware there aren't to many games that cover this specific genre and I'm hoping it ignites peoples imagination.

You can download a rough first draft from the following link

http://www.mediafire.com/?9mwqm4zjmlc

I'd appreciate anyones thoughts on this.

Thanks

It's a good choice for a theme - there are a lot of TV shows dealing with it, but no(?) games.

I'd make some elements of the setting a bit more explicit: other than the 'magic plot element',

* the characters are usually ordinary people - they're not athletes, detectives or millionaires, and

* the setting is the real world - no other 'magic' exists.

Also (and this could be important to specify before play), the characters can't solve the problem with violence. Although they can try such things as knocking a guard out in order to gain entrance to a particular place (but with the same likelihood of success as an ordinary person), they aren't allowed to kill anyone - even the bad guy. Nor can they beat information out of suspects etc.

PS this genre would be a good one for saying that characters are based on the player.

PPS it might be a good idea to add flaws as well as abilities.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll be adding a flaw system, resulting in a minus modifier in certain circumstances.

I want the game to allow people to play in a variety of setups. You can run a game with just ordinary people but I don't want to limit people if they want to play police officers.

I've taken some steps to address this by including Status which can be purchased during character creation (or brought with karma points). Status determines how important the Messenger is and gives them a plus modifier when making a personality check but also makes it harder for the Messenger to go unnoticed.

So if a player wants to be a police officer they can but they need to buy the appropriate level of status. I think this will help as well to reflect Messengers improving their life with karma.

As outlined in the draft the only supernatural things in the setting are the Messeges and ghosts. I will be adding an optional miracle system allowing Messengers to use their gifts and mediums in special ways by spending karma (for example using Postcognition to temporarily inhabit the body of someone in the past or using Electronic medium to turn machines on or off) but these just represent the Source reaching out and helping the Messengers and are not overt displays of magic.

I'm glad you brought up the point about killing. When I have described the idea to people they have said about killing people to carry out the Message (I don't know what that says about them). I've decided that there will be a penalty to the karma a Messenger receives if they directly kill someone. There will also be a smaller penalty if they violence except in self defense.

The Source wants justice which usually means a person must answer for their crimes (although if the murderer gets runs over while running away from the Messengers that is a type of justice as well).

Quote from: highstakes;268177I'm glad you brought up the point about killing. When I have described the idea to people they have said about killing people to carry out the Message (I don't know what that says about them).

Well, in the 'default' role-playing campaign, violence is the only way to solve the problem.

By the way, a couple of shows you didn't mention:

Seeing Things

Early Edition

I've never heard of 'Seeing Things' but it does sound a good match for 'Messengers' with each vision revealing more and more about a crime.

'Early Edition' is another great fit for the game. The central character would have ranks in Premenition and the Object medium. Obviously his friends would be his contacts.

A similar show from about the same time would be 'Strange Luck' with the central character having weird luck that leads him into adventures. That would be easy to do with ranks in Fate.

I'm quite pleased with the system for gifts and mediums as I think it'll allow players to come up with a wide range of different characters.

Did you have chance to look over the adventure?  I'm planning on including some more highlighting a variety of different tones.