Magical Basketball

I've been dicking around making an RPG about basketball players with vague superpowers a la Eyeshield 21, Blitzball, etc. Most of the mechanics revolve around balling with traits, skills, techniques and attributes solely dedicated to winning games. I'm not a huge fan of social only rolls but am still mulling around ideas.

What I'd like to know from Veeky Forums was what something like this would need to get the average fa/tg/uy into it. What would you want to see in a supernatural basket ball RPG to make you go "Yeah, I'll give that a try"?

For reference, the game is built around dice pools with rolls generally tied to attribute + skill rolls. Techniques require stamina to activate, as does sprinting.

OP have you played Pyre?
Assuming you aren't set on making your own setting you could use that game's world as your base.

Obligatory Barkley Gaiden post

I've checked out some videos on it. It seems interesting and I applaud someone trying new stuff, but the gameplay did not seem entertaining enough to pick it up when I've already got a big backlog.

While I don't have a setting per se, I was gravitating towards the kind of world NBA street inhabits or your typical Street Fighter game has. Modern life is mostly unchanged but if you check out some street legends playing, you're going to see invisible shots, poisonous passing, and steals that pilfer stamina as well as the ball.

Tactics Ballre never

Any other feedback on the idea or is it too niche?

EVERYBODY GET UP

My stomach hurts from watching this

CHAOS DUNK IN PROGRESS

Frogs play dirty.

Would including a break down of the basic roles be helpful?

I think so. Not everyone on Veeky Forums is gonna know a lot about basketball, so it helps explaining out the basic setup before adding on all the sick fighting game moves.

COME ON AND SLAM!

AND WELCOME TO THE JAM

Alright, so there's three basic "classes"

Bigs - The 7 foot, muscled enforcers of a team. They get the jump ball, throw down dunks, go one-on-one with the opposing team's big in the paint as the rest of the team supports them. Strong, slow, but an anchor on defense and offense.

Guards - They make it rain threes and twos. They move the ball and themselves quick up and down the court. If they get locked down, they use agility and awareness to break away or pass the ball to someone who can make a play.

Wings - They are the middle ground that serve a more utility role. They supplement defense, set screens, these are the guys that have to be able to fill any gap for as long as the team needs them. They can get shots, typically inside, defend hard, help with double teams, and really work as support. And as a result they find themselves racking up points because they're all over the place.

Each of these classes has roles to fill and a solid team needs each to consistently win.

Techniques would function much like spells, inflicting status effects or boosting stats at the cost of stamina. Things like:

Venom Pass inflicting poison on any defenders that get a hand on a hand on the ball while passing.

Spin Ball resulting in any missed shot to immediately favor team mates when trying to rebound.

Posterize which boosts Dunking by a 1d10 extra dice.

Smog which lets you mark two targets as a defender.

And a bunch of other things that probably won't survive playtesting.

I was torn between having Traits act like feats or having them slottable like equipment and letting players pick and choose as they purchase them.

Traits are more along the lines of boosts to stamina recovery, accuracy in specific situations, adding status effects or buffs after certain actions. They would be more about what separates your player from other players of the same type.

Would "Plays" be possible as a kind of combo between players? Like players can share abilities by setting picks or making passes into layups. But maybe keep it limited to the last two players who had the ball can share skill effects if they're shooting a three point shot and turn it into an assisted dunk

I was thinking about setting that up with having players set up actions and holding off for the one with the slowest reflexes (Agility + Wits) to pull the trigger. I got caught up trying to sort out if it would be a canned combo like a Gamebreaker or if it would just be any actions that could be reserved.

But how's movement? Being sports based I'd assume you need some careful tracking of it no, like a wargame? Or maybe Blood Bowl style grid movement?

I went with grid style movement, allowing diagonals, with a set of 1 square = 1 meter. That rounds out to a 28x15 grid for typical league games.

I originally wanted to tie player movement just to their Agility + Athleticism but they would be able to run up court in a single movement after leveling up enough. Then I tried out tying it to class with Bigs being slowers, then Wings, then Guards, with 3, 4, 5 squares per move action but wasn't sure how that would play out.

Street and less structured games would play out anywhere with a hoop, which would allow for a lot more flavor added to a matchup.

The first thing that comes to mind is Kuroko.

That, Slam Dunk, Eyeshield 21, and even Prince of Tennis were inspirations.

Good times.

I assume then if someone is running down and passes by the opponent they initiate a dribble check? An opposed roll of dex+dribble?

A defender can Lock Down an adjacent target and set a mark on them with a roll of On-Ball Defense + Athleticism. The number of successes automatically add to the defender's chance at stopping the ball handler from taking a shot or passing the ball. The actual passes are intercepted with an Awareness roll on D. If the passing roll is higher, it goes through. If the Awareness is higher, it's picked off. If they tie, it's a loose ball around the defender.

This is supposed to keep you moving and staying one step ahead of the defense or risk being swallowed up by defenders.

In game, you have different skills to handle shots at different ranges. If you are marked, you have to use the lower of your Inside/Mid/Long Range Shot or Contested Shot skill.

Back in the day (mid 1990s) my gaming club made a homebrew set of basketball rules patterned largely after GWs Blood Bowl. It was called BasketBrawl

One last bump.

I don't have anything to add except please put this up somewhere when you get it done. I grew up watching some neckbeards at my FLGS playing some kind of baseball RPG and it was fascinating. Genre needs more sports rpgs.

It's not superpowers but the NBA2k games actually had a good idea with the skill badges. Certain players would have things like the ability to "heat up" faster than others and get a temporary stat boost, or expend less energy when on offense, or debuff opposing players when they're covering them.

I've lifted a lot of traits from the vidya. I have not quite hammered out how to translate the prereqs for tabletop. Additional bookkeeping slows things down, but just saying "Be level XX and have a rank 6 of Long Range Shot" isn't as much fun.

The badges built up over the course of games as you did certain actions in 2k. Maybe I'll try Win X number of games with the tier N trait to get N+1.

...

>Genre needs more sports rpgs.
It's weird, combat isn't any slower than baseball and sports nerds can tolerate a lot of math and stats, but the overlap isn't as big as one would think.