Renaming HiBRiD: Rationale and Resultant

I never really set out to design a roleplaying engine.

Originally, I just wanted some thing that worked. I kept looking at and playing other games here and there, seeing what was slick, what worked, and what didn't.

In the end, once I decided to abandon all other systems and just hack all of my notes together, I referred to HiBRiD as "a hybridized homebrew system" when describng it to others because I wanted to get across the point that it was an amalgam, or hybridization, of all of the systems I had tried, each of which seemed to do one or two things right but also seemed to bog down play in some other way that went against what I was trying to achieve.

When I came up with the concept of Ite', I inadvertently unified the patchwork of rules and I realized it wasn't really a hybridized amalgam any more so much as a unified system that was highly modifiable and patchable depending on how much detail each gaming group wished to infuse into the game. I knew anyone using it could use it either "as is" or bolt it on to any other system they were using. I also knew it would be a long time until I finished what I had started and continued to see in my mind's eye. Finally, I realized it needed a working title until I completed it.

So with these ideas in my mind, I settled on the name of HiBRiD, developed from the acronym of highly bastardized rpg in development, as a temporary name to  to reflect theses various facts.

That was in 1992. Since then, much has changed in my life as well as in the gaming industry in general. Paper systems have become less prevalent. A written, word-salad-diatribe called "Hybrid" was vomited out by some lame French asshole who called it an RPG, and in the process made it annoyingly difficult to use the name in any sort of commercial venture. But most importantly, I realized that the Ite' mechanic has evolved to really become the standard driving force behind the engine itself. What started off as a simple luck point system has flowered into a methodology for determining the level of heroism in a game. What once was used to protect players from intra-party conflict has evolved into a system for co-operative play.

Which leads me to the point of this post. Ite' is the real driving mechanic of the engine, the real crux of the system. It has ceased to become a "gimmick" and become the defacto standard mechanism for anyone attempting to play any role playing game with the style I imagined. It has become the hook for which players introduced to the game seem to remember the game.

So with this rationale in mind, I have decided to rename the HiBRiD gaming engine to reflect these developments.The new name for the engine will be called: 

The Ite' Gaming Engine.

 

A Macho Modification: A Proposal

I was thinking of how to reward what I truly consider HiBRiD action. At conventions, I usually plant either myself or my second unit director within the players to demostrate how to push rules to the maximum effect during the first action scene. While writing game rules, however, I lack a cohort, so I must resort to less effective tactics. Also, during play, I award bonuses to task rolls or eliminate penalties for actions exceptionally "HiBRiD", and while it works in play, once again on the page, the description falls flat and seems to get missed.

To this end, I have decided to award experience points for HiBRiD actions. First, here are the rules for actions from the Principle Photography chapter:

<BEGIN EXCERPT>

Time

Time is normally only tracked during action scene. When the director announces the beginning of an action scene, she will begin keeping track of time in roughly ten-second increments called action rounds.

Action

For purposes of simplicity, all character actions can be classified into one of three types:

Throwaway Actions

Throwaway actions are actions requiring little if any concentration to perform and require no task roll to complete. Your character may perform one throwaway action in addition to an involved or standard action without having it affect the task roll. If your character performs two or more throwaway actions, each additional throwaway action is transformed into a standard action, akin to rubbing your stomach and tapping your head at the same time.

Examples of common throwaway actions include carelessly tossing something aside, yelling something to someone without turning your attention away from a task, or moving less than ten meters in an action round on land.

Standard Actions

Standard actions require a significant amount of attention to perform and require a task roll to complete. Your character may perform as many standard actions as you wish during an action round, however, the more actions your character attempts, the more difficult the task rolls will be to complete. To determine how much the difficulty of your tasks will be affected, the director will total the number of actions, multiply the total by two, and add the result to all task rolls your character makes during that round.

Examples of some common standard actions include attacking a single opponent, making an area attack, treading water, exploring an area, hanging from a limb or cliff, or moving any distance between ten meters and your character's movement distance on land.

Involved Actions

Involved actions require enough concentration and attention to perform so as to preclude your character from performing any other actions other than a single throwaway action, and may or may not require a task roll to complete. If your character attempts to perform any other standard or involved actions, all actions will fail, regardless of the task roll result.

Examples of common involved actions using or girding activated aspects, swimming, actively climbing, or making a called shot.

<END EXCERPT>

Just in the simple design, I seem to have already build in a mechanism for rewarding heroic activity. By quickly totaling the number of standard tasks, the director can simply multiply the difficulty rating penalty by ten and award that number of experience points to the character.

The director has the option of not awarding this bonus, awarding it at the end of the round, at the end of the action scene, or during the next post-production session. The director can also choose to award it regardless of success/failure to reinforce any and all risky behavior, or only for successful actions only to reinforce characters evaluating risk more carefully.

All in all, a very simple and flexible mechanic to once again allow groups to create the game they want with minimal mechanics.

What do you all think?