A concept I can't manage to make fit into GURPS

[BabylonHoruv]

So I am looking to play out a pen and paper campaign in which the PC's are bacteria and the setting is a body, haven't decided yet if it should be animal or human, but it doesn't really matter unless things get very wide in scope.  I want the PC's to be benign bacteria, so that they are not part of the body but they are also not being actively hunted by the immune system.

One thought I had was to link abilities to chromosomes, so they could be exchanged through bacterial sex.

I am thinking something closer to "A wind in the door" by Madelaine L'Engle than osmosis Jones.

(obviously this is not very fleshed out yet, any and all ideas appreciated)

[Richter]

Good concept.

What (if any) is the goal?  (Kill host organism / Spread to other hosts / survive / multiply (maximize numbers) / preserve or bcome symbiotic with the host organism?)
What (also) is the intended scope?  Would it focus on each character as their own bacteria (Pen+Paper fLow?) , or track the exponential growth as they divide and mutate (begining growth of a new exponential line with each mutaiton?)

[BabylonHoruv]

Focus would be on each character as their own bacteria.  Your basic pen and paper RPG sort of thing.

As far as the goal, I was planning on letting that evolve, but I figure'd it would start out with some sort of personal challenge, dealing with a new sort of bacteria perhaps, or an intestinal worm or something, and move up in scale.  Whether the PC's are friendly or hostile to the body I'd let them figure out, but I would want to put the body in some sort of danger and they could go on to either try to save the body or get the hell out.  That'd be a fairly long term thing though.  I was planning on making the body's immune system as fairly obnoxious power hungry cop types, but meanwhile they are keeping the body alive that the PC's also live in and on.  PC's would not be disease bacteria, they'd be symbiotic ones.  I was thinking E-Coli, which we need to digest our food, but which can also be very bad if they go wrong.

[Doktor Howl]

UM.

DIBS ON TETANUS!

[Jasper]

I'm kind of freaked out at the idea of sentient bacteria, but it sounds like a good game.

Perhaps, since the setting would lack any recognizable parts of our lives, it would do better as a more structured type of system, such as a party game?

[BabylonHoruv]

I'm kind of freaked out at the idea of sentient bacteria, but it sounds like a good game.

Perhaps, since the setting would lack any recognizable parts of our lives, it would do better as a more structured type of system, such as a party game?

That would be an interesting take on it, but not really the direction I wanted to go.  I was figuring I'd do a lot of anthropomorphizing, of the PC bacteria, of NPC agents of the body and bacteria, with some things (viruses most likely, some bacteria, maybe some pats of the body, probably worms and so forth) as monsters without anthropomorphic traits.

[Jasper]

I'd give it a try, it sounds interesting.

[BabylonHoruv]

I'm still trying to work out the rules.  I figure a point system like GURPS, with points being spent for various genetic traits.  These could be traded around in some way.  I'm not sure how I'd structure posessions, I think bacteria carry something, possibly just stored energy.

[Telarus]

What you want is something simple, almost Risus like.

Players should be able to Name their own traits, and then throw them against opponent dice/environment dice.

If you want to go crunchy, I'd actually really recommend Reign, the One Roll Engine game that has "Companies" that can represent theives' guilds, mercenary companies, humongous demons... as well as the lymph system, the lungs/gut energy core, the heart/kidneys highway system, large multi-cellular parasite invaders, virus infections, etc, etc.

[BabylonHoruv]

I have a kind of crunchy group.  One Roll Engine looks like a good possibility.  I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to adapt it to six sided dice and still have it work well.

[Telarus]

http://www.nemesis-system.com/

They may have some stuff about d6 conversions...