Interested in All Outta Bubblegum?

After playing in a game of "All Outta Bubblegum" here on Gamer's Plane, I love it so much that I forced it on a bunch of people at my weekly Game Night a week ago. I loved that so much that I'm thinking of running a game of it here.

The cycle is complete.

Anyone interested?

To refresh your memory, "All Outta Bubblegum" is a reference to the 80s science fiction movie "They Live" (in particular this part), which is so full of one liners and catch phrases that have been reused again and again in the intervening years (like the "Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum," which was referenced in Duke Nukem 3D years later).

It's a simple system which uses a d10 and forces players to choose between being able to perform mundane actions or being able to perform superhuman feats of badassery.

This is the game, in its entirety:
All Outta Bubblegum - the RPG
This game is copyright 2001, Michael "Epoch" Sullivan and Jeffery Grant.

Characters in All Outta Bubblegum have one stat -- Bubblegum. It's technically a number which varies from 0 through 8, though the designers highly, highly recommend that you don't do anything so banal as write down a number, and, instead, pass out actual sticks of bubblegum to the players. This will also help when you play All Outta Bubblegum drunk, which is, let's be blunt, proobably the only time you'd even consider playing this game.
Bubblegum always starts out at 8.

Resolution
Any action which does not fall under the broad category of "kicking ass" is resolved by rolling a d10. If the number rolled is equal to or less than the amount of bubblegum the character has left, then the character succeeds in his task.
Any action which falls under the broad umbrella of "kicking ass" is also resolved by rolling a d10. However, in this case, you wish to roll greater than the amount of bubblegum that you have left.

Losing Bubblegum
Whenever you fail a non-combat roll, you lose a stick of Bubblegum. You may also sacrifice a stick of Bubblegum before the roll to ensure success. Bubblegum also rates your damage. If someone else succeeds in a roll of asskicking against you, you lose one stick of bubblegum.

Zero Bubblegum
When you lose your last stick of bubblegum, you are officially all outta bubblegum. You may no longer attempt any kind of non-asskicking activity. Simple devices like, say, the handles of doors confound you (eerily enough, you have no problem field-stripping a .50 caliber machinegun to clear a jam in 15 seconds flat). However, you automatically succeed in any asskicking-related activity. you are a nearly unstoppable ball of bubblegum-less fury. When someone else succeeds in an asskicking roll against you, they roll a d10. If they roll a 10, you are knocked out. If they roll a 1 through 9, they've only succeeded in making you, if possible, even more angry.

However, bear in mind that it's relatively easy to trap a zero-bubblegum person in a situation he's totally incapable of dealing with.

I'm having great fun with the system (my first time)! I'd love another game if you're running one :-) Any thoughts on running it in a genre? Western (All Outta Chewin' Tobacco)? Space (All Outta Freeze-Dried Crap)? :-D

Fantasy (all outta dried-salted-meat); Cyberpunk (all outta hyper-stims); Kaiju (all outta tic tacs) - I'd be keen.

Sounds like a more robust system to overlay a PbF roleplay thing I used to participate in called "Gun Fight for No Reason" which was a 2p competitive RP about a gun fight, for no reason. Players took turns posting, richly describing their actions, and after each pair of posts a 'neural' judge posted a score sheet (awarding bonus points here and there as they felt for details, and granting a full 10 points to the 'most badass' of the two posts, as judged by them). There was some ending criteria (I can't remember what it was, it may have been a points threshold), after which the judge reflecting on the whole battle and declared a 'winner' (who didn't need to be the player with the most points). The 'winner' made one final post, describing how they finished off their opponent and the judge gave them bonus points based on the finale. Points were tallied, and the winner was declared! Winning player stayed 'on deck', losing player became the judge and the next player in line stepped up and a new battle was struck...

That was pretty soundly off topic.. sorry, but now that I've written it out I wonder if I could make a generic "Badass Combat" 'competative RPG' system that properly structures that...

All this is to say, I'd be interested in being outta' Bubblegum! (although, I'm partial towards non-Modern scenarios)

It sounds both funny and interesting! Depending on how my play time sorts itself out, I could be interested! I'm amused by the idea of being outta bubblegum and being confounded by a door handle.

Just read through the game -- it seems pretty amusing -- and has a definitely flavor of Paranoia that has me thinking about cracking that open again. I'd play Paranoia here in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I think it definitely scratches the same itch for absurdity that Paranoia does, for me.

OK, I've opened the game: Train Busters.

Though games can easily go in weird directions (and probably will), out of respect for Jabes and Candi, I've set the game in 1878.

Steampunk 1878 or straight up historical 1878?

Oh, it's probably going to vary from history pretty quickly. I can't seem to run this system without it becoming absurd. So your character can start as either realistic or steampunk ("Wild Wild West" style, perhaps?), but don't expect it to remain straight historical.

Yah, I was thinking about being some sort of tinkerer-sorta thing a-la wild-wild west. Have to make sure there's sufficient mundane and badassery involved in the concept though. Presumably the technology working well would be badassery and spectacular failures would be... well, spectacular.

Oh, it depends on the character. I would say that using extravagant advanced technology for simple effects would be mundane for such a character. For example, a tinkerer needs to open a window. He can open the window in the standard way (mundane), or he can send his little clank helpers to scurry across the cabin with a cacophony of clattering and clicking of clockwork gears and they together would wind down the window, which for him would still be mundane, if he'd established that he had a troop of little clockwork helpers. In that case, he has an existing tool - the clanks - and his action is just to give them a command, which is pretty mundane, even if it feels extraordinary to other people. For opening a window to be badass, I'd think you'd have to do something extraordinary for the character, which for him might be even more Rube Goldberg antics, perhaps (at this point in composing the message, I wrote a long example involving your clanks creating something badass that would then open the window, but I realized that you get the idea without my describing something that you might like to use yourself).

Just keep this in mind when playing "All Outta Bubblegum:" Go Big or Go Home. The kickass stuff works best if it's completely, outrageously over-the-top. Mundane failures will often set up such things.

As I mentioned, I ran a game in which the players were trying to get something from Home Depot (a big tool and home improvement chain store that typically is in a large warehouse with giant shelves). One character was trying to make a house, and she quickly realized that she wasn't going to make it out of the building. So she started to make her house inside Home Depot. She tried to find and start up a saw to cut some wood and failed the mundane roll. I told her that she'd found a giant concrete saw but still succeeded in starting it...at which point it tore out of her grasp and proceeded to rip around the store for the rest of the session. Another player - who failed every mundane roll from the get-go - had been using vinyl kickboard strips as whips to combat various opponents (long story). He then used a kickass roll to lasso the concrete saw as it ripped past, jump atop it, and "surf" around on it for the rest of the game.

Sounds like an interesting game, but the door example raises a question in my mind...

Let's say you're All Outta Bubblegum, and approach the door in question. Couldn't one, say, whip out one's semi-automatic, fire several dozen rounds at the door in question until its clip is empty, then proceed to go all-out Van Damme on the door until it crumbles beneath the assault? Or am I oversimplifying the idea?

Sure. A valid part of the entertainment is the players' trying to come up with Rube Goldberg-like kickass ways to do simple tasks.

The game really requires a goal for each character, as well as an overall story arc, so that it is bounded. When playing atop a table, it's easy: you just end after 90 minutes or so. It's going to be a bit more arbitrary here with PbP, so I'll rely on a story ending.

Well, @spaceseeker19, I'd definitely be interested in playing a game of All Outta Bubblegum. Have you started a game yet? If so, and it's not full, I'm ready! :-)

BeefGriller, we started it already, and are pretty far along. All slots were filled pretty much immediately, though two of the players have been pretty inactive. It plays quickly, though, so I might run another game if there's still interest afterward. Feel free to read the game thread.