Inception was on the telly last night.
I was thinking has anyone tried to make an RPG out of it?

It has some nice action, cleverly tied to the fact that dying merely bumps you out if the dream state. It has some interesting mechanically rich world manipulation options and some randomness in there due to your own subconscious.

Anyone ?

Haven't read/played it, but I'm 99% confident the game you're looking for is Jared Sorensen's Lacuna.

He did say, RPG, right? and yeah I know what you did there.

Looking at this review - http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13227.phtml
it seems that it can be played in a pretty trad way.
From the review at least there are no setting stakes or narative elements.
The only meta game elements are the 2 pacing effects of Statis built as you fail rolls and Heart Rate again built as your make checks.

So whilst the advertising blurb is very Forge (even Ole Foul Ron gets an endorsement in) doesn't mean the game is weak.

Is that a fair reading or is the review misleading?

However of course now I have read a review and know of the Static and HR mechanics I reckon I can just take a BRP engine add a Static Mechanic some rules of Subconscious manifestations and a few random tables like Trains coming down main street.

I was actually thinking that this could be a game where there are more "story" type mechanics because, rather like in Amber, the PCs actually have the ability to consciously alter the world. So a PC moving houses or adding features is actually something you would want them to do. So I would see skills in manipulating the physical environment, manipulating people or 'projections' and manipulating probabilities on events.

If anyone has direct experience of Lacuna I would be interested in that although I doubt there is much value in the rules as a whole to force me to buy it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;632624Looking at this review - http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13227.phtml
it seems that it can be played in a pretty trad way.

[ ... ]

Is that a fair reading or is the review misleading?

The Sorensen game I've had experience with is InSpectres and various close cousins, like octaNe. My feeling is that these, perhaps all, Sorensen games are reasonably traditional plus pacing style mechanics, exactly as you describe. Players play one character at a time, there's a GM who sets up challenges, there  are no declarations of stakes. Players may have extra creative input into the setting, but they still primarily interact with a world described by the GM via actions their characters take.

As I recall, Jared didn't refer much to his games as "story games" and distanced himself completely from calling them "Forge games". I mean on the Forge. And while Ron praised some of his games, he made a slightly negative review of octaNe and claimed it wasn't really an RPG (and he wasn't sure how you'd play it.)

My favorite Jared Sorenson game is Sphear which is a cool, but odd RPG that mimics the awesome Phantasm movies.

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/sphear

I've run it a couple times and it always feels "trad enough" for me.

Dreamwalker Revised is now a free PDF download.

http://www.pigames.net/store/product_info.php?cPath=43_48&products_id=381

Pay particular attention to the "dream sleuthing" section. It was Inception years before Inception was ever filmed.

Pete

Stillstead Publishing made an Inception RPG

https://profiles.google.com/101853026917191912359/buzz/b3dFLeqdXSZ

but it no longer exists (stamped on by copyright lawyers, I suppose). I have a copy, it uses Jenga.

This would almost be the kind of thing you could make an LoO-clone out of..

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;633286This would almost be the kind of thing you could make an LoO-clone out of..

I was just reviewing some old posts on my blog (which I won't link to) about "pocket universes" created as a total illusion surrounding the victim. And how you could use complete, illusory realities to model parallel universes, dream travel, or specifically Amber. Of course, I was talking about doing this in D&D, rather than another game, but the point stands: any game that can model Amber or broad dimensional travel can also model bending reality or dreamscapes (and vice versa.)

At one point, I started calling this "eerie gaming" and had ideas on how to implement Carnival of Souls or Lost or faerieland as described in some folktales using either InSpectres or D&D. What sort of started me on that discussion was a supplement for JAGS called "JAGS Wonderland", which was a sort of mild modern occult horror setting based on the idea that Lewis Carroll was inspired by surreal lower levels of reality ("chessboards") that actually exist and threaten the sanity of those able to perceive or interact with them (the ability to perceive Wonderland is considered "infectious insanity".) I don't quite like JAGS, but the Wonderland supplement is pretty good, free, and a good source of ideas on how to implement the same kind of thing in Your Favorite Game.

Seems similar to Amber actually.

Quote from: Mistwell;633299Seems similar to Amber actually.

Amber was naturally one of the first things I thought of however, there is a degree of randomness in Inception that you don't get in Amber and a mechanic to generate the tendancy not to be in control and how failures stack up until they fracture the reality.
The Lacuna review on its own was very helpful in that reguard with its concepts of Static and heartrate.

I could see how it would work with a Jenga stack as well but I just don't like that idea at all as its so impractical and gamist that it does my head in.

Inception also lacks the PvP intrigue that Amber to make the best of it.

You want a mechanic set round a 'control' mechanic that lets you maintain the created reality and failures lead to random events or stuff drawn from the architects subconscious. that isn't something Amber or any diceless system does very well.

There are ways of simulating randomness in an amber-like system; remember that people might have thought "shifting through shadow" would be too random, but Amber handles that to a tee.

RPGPundit

I thought that when anyone sits down and plays an RPG (exp. if he is a DM) he is playing Inception too.

James Wallis is making an RPG ("Alas Vegas") based around a system where everyone starts as an amnesiac, and character generation happens in play where you "remember" having a skill or resource and you play through a little flashback which establishes where you got that from. It's obviously geared towards running very particular scenarios (according to the Kickstarter it's meant for running short 4-6 session campaigns) but I imagine you could gen up an Inception-type scenario in it where the PCs discover they went too deep during a dream invasion and they need to piece together their memories and drag their way out of the dream.