#silverball strike

[val-makes-games]

Silverball Strike, the pinball TTRPG!

Overall idea, character "Stats" and Making A Shot

Alright, first post on this blog. I could make a lengthy introduction, but really, I just want to get my thoughts about my current game, Silverball Strike out there.

So, let's first talk about the basic idea and concept: You play as characters living in a world where pinball is a big deal. You're all pinball players taking part in tournaments. You play against each other. Being good lets you influence fate itself. Yes, this is a PvP TTRPG.

I'll probably make more posts going into the lore of the world and mechanics that aren't explicitly about pinball... once I've thought of them. For now, let's focus on your characters' "stats" and the first of two possible actions you can take when it's your turn to play pinball: Making A Shot.

Every character starts a pinball match with the following "stats":

3 balls

0 warnings

High Tilt Tolerance (HTT) of 6

Low Tilt Tolerance (LTT) of 5

Control of 1

At the beginning of each match, each player rolls a D6 and adds the result to their Control. Whoever has the highest Control gets the first turn. In case of a tie, all players involved in the tie roll again and just compare their die results without adding to their Control. Keep doing that until there is no more tie.

When it's your turn, choose to either Take A Shot or Nudge (unless it's your very first turn or you lost a ball last turn, then you have to Take A Shot). Again, today, I'll just talk about Taking A Shot:

When Taking a Shot, you simply reveal cards from a 52 card deck (I'm still debating whether everyone draws from the same deck, or each player has their own) and then choose cards from the revealed ones to take. You have to take at least one, and can't take more than your current Control. You also lose 1 point of Control for each card you take. If you would reach 0 Control, instead lose a ball.

Each numbered card (2-10) you take gets added to your Pile. Each face card (Jack, Queen, King, and Ace!) gets placed in their own pile. Face cards have special effects that I'll talk about in a later post.

Aaaaaand... that's how you Take A Shot in Silverball Strike. Next post is probably gonna be about Nudging.

[val-makes-games]

Silverball Strike, the pinball TTRPG!

Addendum, and also Nudging

You know, I was so excited yesterday to just get something out, that I actually completely forgot something I told myself I wanted to do when writing these posts: Not just explain the rules and mechanics, but also the reasoning behind those mechanics. So let's get that out of the way for the "Making A Shot" mechanic first.

Pinball is very much about controlling the chaos. The ball is darting around the table, colliding with all sorts of obstacles, a lot of which are explicitly designed to have the ball ricochet right back at high speed. Lots of people starting out with pinball will just wildly press the flipper buttons to keep the ball from draining, but more experienced pinball players will make aimed shots and use techniques to get the ball under control. This is what I wanted to emulate with the Control mechanic and the cards. Drawing cards from a deck is inherently random, but of course, the more cards you draw at once, the higher your chance of getting the one you want. So having a higher Control value means drawing more cards, which emulates having more control over the ball. But the more cards you take at once, the more shots you're trying to make in quick succession, meaning you're losing control over the ball more quickly.

So, that's how you lose control. But how do you gain it. Well, that's where Nudging comes into play.

In pinball, nudging the machine to influence the way the ball will roll is a key technique that every player has to learn to use to be competitive (I admit, I myself struggle with it still). But if you could just shuffle the machine around willy-nilly, the game would lose most of its skill aspect. That's why pinball machines have mechanisms in place to keep players from overdoing it with the nudging: Do it to much or too heavily, and you get a warning. Get three warnings, and you'll "Tilt", which means the game will turn off your flippers, guaranteeing that your ball will drain. And you won't even get the end of ball bonus you usually get when your ball normally drains.

So, how does that work in Silverball Strike? Well, before I explain that, let me quickly say that, while I initially had my own idea for it, I eventually had a "Eureka" moment where I realized that the ideal way to do this would be to just steal someone else's idea.

Push by @capacle is a neat little rules-lite system which is - as the title might suggest - all about pushing your luck. Which, of course, is what nudging is all about. So, let me just quickly borrow and modify Push's core mechanic (hope it's okay Cezar!) for the Nudging mechanic:

As said in my last post everyone has a Low Tilt Tolerance (LTT) of 5 and a High Tilt Tolerance (HTT) of 6. I'm still thinking about how those could be modified during a campaign, or maybe even character creation.

If you decide to use the Nudge action on your turn, you roll 1d6. If the result is at least equal to your LTT, while not exceeding your HTT (or in other words, going with the starting values stated above, if it's a 5 or a 6), you gain 2 points of Control! If your result is lower than your LTT, you get a choice: You can either gain 1 Control AND 1 Warning, or you can roll again. If you roll again, you have to add your new result to your old result. If the total is still lower than your LTT, you get to make the same choice again, and if you decide to roll again, you add the new result to the sum of the previous results, and so on. So if, on your first roll, you roll a 1 and roll again, and then on your second you roll a 2, you now have a total of 3. If you now decide to roll again, you have to add the new result to that 3.

But beware! If your total ever exceeds your HTT (so, assuming base stats, it becomes 7 or higher), you will JUST get a Warning, while gaining no Control, and your turn ends.

So, what's up with these Warnings? Well, they don't do anything for the first two... but once you get your third one, you immediately lose a ball, as well as all face cards lying in front of you. But also, of course, your Warnings will be reset to 0.

And... that's Nudging. Feel free to ask questions, btw. I'm gonna open the Ask Box as soon as I publish this post.

[val-makes-games]

Silverball Strike, the pinball TTRPG! What Face Cards Do

Alright, so in my first post, I explained that, when you Take A Shot, you reveal a number of cards and take anywhere between one and all of them, and if they're number cards (2-10), you add them to a score pile. But what about the face cards (Jack, Queen, King, and Ace)? Well, those give you special effects.

In pinball, you of course mainly play to gain points and get a high score. But sometimes, there are special shots you want to make, not just to gain points, but to get certain perks, like extra balls and multiball modes. that's what face cards represent in Silverball Strike.

Jacks are for the multiball mode. I'm honestly still trying to figure out how to properly portray that in this game. Multiballs are weird, because they make a game more chaotic because you have to deal with multiple balls rolling over the field, smashing into one another etc, but it also makes the game a little safer, because now you have (usually) two extra balls you can lose without a real penalty. Also, multiballs often come with a jackpot mode to make a lot of points. Right now, my idea is this: Once you have at least two Jacks, you can turn them facedown to indicate you're now in multiball mode. While in Multiball mode, if you don't take all the cards you revealed, you keep the ones you didn't take open, and once you reveal new ones, you put them on top of the ones still there. Keep doing that to build your jackpots. If you take a pile of those cards, it will only cost you 1 point of control per pile. If you go below 1 Control, you lose one of your Jacks instead of losing a ball. However, once you lost all your Jacks, you have to shuffle all the revealed cards back into the deck, losing the chance for jackpots.

Queens are thankfully much more simple. They represent your point multiplier. If you lose a ball (if you haven't tilted), you take as many cards from your score pile as you want, add their values together, then multiply that with the number of Queens you have plus 1.

Kings are even simpler. They're extra balls. You can only have one King active at a time. If you go below 1 Control, instead of losing a ball, you just lose your King (if you're in Multiball Mode, you lose Jacks before you lose a King).

Aces are Skill Shots. If you have any face-up Aces after losing a ball, you gain a certain amount of points (unsure how many yet, probably 10 or 11) times the number of Aces you have, then flip all those Aces face-down. If you gain an Ace while you have face-down Aces, you flip all the Aces face-up. If you lose a ball and your Aces are face-down, you lose the Aces.

Aaaaand... that's what face cards do. Unsure what I'll do next, since there are things I'm still brainstorming. We'll see!