SpongeBob and the Gargoyle

Little Game Chef 2010 used the following:

THEME
The theme is comedy.

INGREDIENTS
In your game, include three of the following ingredients.

● Bond.
● Holiday.
● Starfish.
● Recall.

LENGTH
Please keep it short, as the judges will stop reading when they get bored.

I’m not very good with comedy, but I decided to give it a go. With limited time, I managed to turn out my game, SpongeBob and the Gargoyle in a couple of hours (so technically this is a 24-hour game too). I wanted to take a humorous kid’s show and tack on a dark element hoping the players would end up making a dark comedy or an absurd comedy. My idea was that one of the players would end up being a gargoyle (on vacation) who happened to kill someone. Patrick Star (a starfish) saw the murder. The gargoyle makes him promise to stay quiet or else. I wanted to game to work towards making Patrick’s player spill the beans. The game has two point mechanics: a player who looses rolls gains bond points, which bond the gargoyle to the player. Recall points are earned on successes and are used to make Patrick talk. Points are earned via narration. The mechanic that I’m using forces the players to narrate something to gain dices to roll. In a way, it’s derived from games like Breaking the Ice, which is a fine game. Where BtI succeeds and I think this game fails is that BtI uses traits and well-defined characters to constrain the players and move them towards the end. SPatG doesn’t do this.

I wasn’t satisfied with the basic mechanics of the game, but I liked the use of SpongeBob, and I didn’t have anymore time to devote to the game. So, I submitted it.

I think if I were to expand this, I’d add in gargoyle skills that the players could buy using points. And add in some type of skills/traits that represent what the characters have done with Patrick in the past. These could be used mechanically to solve the problems at hand. Points awarded based on successes and failure of the traits/skills.

Here’s what the judges said:

Sponge Bob and the Gargoyle

Graham: This is rather sweet. Earning points isn’t working for me: I’d just mechanically remember things I did with Patrick to get points.

I like the different ways to win. I like rolling d6s, which give hindering players Recall points and helping players Bond points.

The central idea is good. The mechanics aren’t together, though: I thoroughly encourage you to steal from other roleplaying games that do similar things.

Eero: The fiction doesn’t breathe a lot as the game is so tight. I like the basic idea that whoever has the most guilt points is currently the gargoyle and has to play opposite to his character description. There’s not much else here game-wise, though.

I agree with everything they said.

Check it out: SpongeBob and the Gargoyle