Oh god, not another game idea: Hardboiled Heist Panic System Game
You may or may not be wondering how progress on my adventuring bureaucracy capsule game is going. Unfortunately, it is not going. That damned Santa killed my blog, and my RPG projects. Apparently, I have to prep to run Gradient Descent this upcoming Saturday also. Oops.
Oh look, a new game idea!
Back in 2024, I went on a binge of about seven or height of the Parker novellas, written by Donald Westlake under the pseudonym Richard Stark. These wonderful little guilty pleasures follow the morally bankrupt criminal Parker's numerous adventures to live the Good Life through spectacularly violent heists, dispatching his opposition with extreme prejudice1.
These stories should not work. The plots seem as morally bankrupt as Parker himself; karma never catches up to him, and no good deed goes unpunished. It is rare for anyone but Parker to survive more than one of these stories, and Parker himself is utterly devoid of charisma, almost robotic in his drive to complete his missions. But god damnit, Westlake just has the sauce, the sort of sauce I needed to emulate in an RPG. And so I did!
Last year, I ran a GURPS game that directly adapted the sixth book, The Score (minus Parker, of course). It was heavily rooted in Blorb Principles, as I ripped every concrete detail of the heist from the book and filled in what I could with extra prep and the lower tiers of Blorb truths. Blades in the Dark wrote the rulebook on how to run a heist, a book which I completely ignored to follow the spirit of Donald Westlake's Parker. We spent a total of 6 hours between two sessions just preparing for the heist, as I sat back and just let my players go at it planning out every aspect of this heist, laboring over the map, peering at everyone's skillsets, scouting the town, devising a perfect plan of attack.
Also orthogonal to conventional wisdom of the heist game is the lack of complications. There were three major complications: a witness that ended up where he shouldn't be (everyone had masks on, so it was as simple as nabbing him from the street), and an NPC who went rogue but was quickly shot down with an impressive shot from our lookout. One of my players almost killed another NPC for trying to take a Stockholm Syndrome-ridden hostage home with him, but after an absolutely embarrassing failed grapple roll he decided to give it up and let him get away with it. I don't even think any of my players took an injury. They planned well, and so I let them win.
We loved it, and I've been chasing more.
The System
GURPS worked well enough, as it always does, but there are a few bits and bobs that I think could make this shit sing.
The answer is Mothership. These days if the answer isn't Mythic Bastionland, it's Mothership. It's just that good for LINK Onion play. While of course the elegant, gets-right-the-fuck-out-of-your-way d100 skill system and simple character creation would do wonders, what I am really looking at is that panic system itself.
Parker characters are unreliable. They're prone to sudden betrayals, unexpected love affairs, bouts of random violence, scores to settle. Human psychology is the only thing Parker himself is unable to plan for, and while he is often the unmoved mover of these stories, there are a handful of stories where Parker himself loses control, finds himself on the backfoot and makes clumsy mistakes. A modified panic system, thinking of calling it "Nerves", could introduce that fallible human element that players may not always want to introduce themselves.
One thing I may change is the distinct classes that Mothership provides. I think in order for this to work, the characters will have to be a bit more versatile than your average heist story, capable of fitting more than just "the explosives guy" or "the lockpick". If there are archetypes/classes, I think it would be decoupled entirely from skills, and solely define how your character deals with their Nerves. Would separate panic tables be too much work?
What I need to add
The problem with making an onion game for such a niche focus is that not many Parker Heist adventures exist, if any. Some guidance will have to be included for how a referee can create heist locations. There must be Spark tables, stock NPCs, and "random encounter" complication tables a-plenty. I think taking a phased approach to the heist would be necessary as well. The heists should have discrete Planning/Scouting, Execution, and Fallout phases, with the identity of each hinging on how much time is expected to be spent on each phase; one heist may involve wrangling together a ton of conflicting NPC personalities, another may deal with chasing down a thief who ran off with the fruits of your effort. I am a weakling who sucks ass at legwork, but there's no better time than the present2 to work on that weakness.
Another thing I'd like to add is a contacts/rivalries mechanic. I'm not exactly sure how I'd like it to pop up in play, but it feels essential enough to the Parker story DNA to earn a place on the character sheet. These should be everchanging as enemies are dispatched, friends are turned into enemies, etc. This combined with the Panic/Nerves rules will also allow me to formalize the PvP process, which feels inevitable in a game of backstabbing heisters with a more individualistic focus3.
This game will be meant for one-shots and mini-campaigns, but I like the idea of their being a "Shore Leave" type of mechanic as a nod to the exorbitant months-long vacations Parker takes between novellas. A concept I had was to make these vacations a trade-off rather than a linear advancement; give yourself diegetic advancements like gear or allies, but lose a few points in one of your skills as you get out of practice sipping rum-and-cokes in the Bahamas.
Conclusions
I can already see the inevitable scope keep coming up on me, but my intent is to keep this small. Make the necessary modifications to the core chassis first, then I can spark-table away. My design goals should keep this same fan-out philosophy, right now I am designing this for my own enjoyment, then if I'm still having fun and making something I think is neat, I can design for my friends, and maybe if I'm really feeling like it, I can design for a finished product to get an audience of like, 20-30 more people. No timers, no SMART goals, one of my many half-resolutions this year is to stop running my hobbies like a goddamned business. If this design bug bites again, and bites enough, hopefully you might hear a bit more about this project. Bye bye for now!
EDIT: Linked to Dododecahedron’s wonderful OSR Onion post to clarify wtf an Onion Game is. Also special shoutout to RealBagel’s Delta Green onion game blueprint for inspiration.
Sadly, prejudice in a literal sense as well. The series started in the '60s, after all. I am privileged in my ability to simply shake my head at the dreadful treatment of women and minorities in these books and keep reading. I obviously would rather these themes not be in my game (or at least more heavily criticized if they come up), unsure if I should put in some guidance or just trust players to be adults, but that's a much-much-much later me's problem.↩
or like 3 months from now when my work finally slows↩
This is probably a reason for, or just a lovely side-effect of, the crew-based approach of Blades in the Dark, but I haven't listened to any of its wisdoms yet for this idea and I'm not gonna start now.↩