Receipt Wars!

I've been thinking about you, Blog. Just because I'm not posting doesn't mean you're not in my mind!
I've also been going through old stuff, through my Google docs and my black book, looking at some of my old thoughts, and feeling like I need to come back to some of them. And one of my favorites was Receipt Wars!

I've always loved randomly generated things. I loved 1st edition D&D, at least the way that Dad ran it, because it always gave random characters that you had to almost decode to figure out what they were. I've played Rogue-like PC games where they just basically hand you a character and let you go see what you can do, and loved those as well. I've got lots of other thoughts for this along the way, including using names to generate minions for a war game.
So thinking about this, I was bored one day while working at the convenience store, and decided I'd try to amuse myself by coming up with a game. But I didn't have any dice to generate the random numbers with, and really didn't have much of anything else with me either. But, I did have a huge number of receipts, and lots of pennies if I wanted them. So, might as well use the resources that I have and see what I can get!
Randomly generated things from receipts seemed the next logical step. But what can you use from them to randomly generate things? Well, what things do each receipt have (since I wanted this to be usable outside just the convenience store I was in)? Each one has some record of the time that the purchase was made - some have two, one when it was started, one when it ended. Every one of them has a record of how much your purchases were. And how many items you purchased. Most receipts have numbers by each item to say what they are, but not all of them - fast food receipts, for instance. So that one's not usable. And, well, that's about it.
Out of all these, two of them are basically random, and one of them you can control - I'd rather they all be out of the player's control but I'll take what I can get. But they're all - except for the number of items - huge numbers, or irrationally arranged ones. So, what to do?
I don't know what to call the operation. I've called it weird things, like full sum, or digit total. But what I do is take all of the individual digits in the numbers in question and add them all together. Then keep doing that until you get a one-digit number, between 1 and 9. So, if you take a number, like $23.96. 9+6+3+2 = 20. Is that one digit? Nope, so do it again: 2+0 = 2. Is that one digit? Yes, so that's your answer. Another example: 21:36:45. 5+4+6+3+1+2 = 21. not one digit: 2+1 = 3. So the price number from this is 2, and the time number is 3.
But that doesn't make a character, or anything you can actually use. So what do we do? Assign logical titles to these numbers, in some way that you can use them to fight each other. Well, hm.
The stats that I ended up deciding on were Speed, Might, and Brain. But how to get those numbers?
Well, let's go over what each receipt has again: price, time, and number of items. Logically...
Price. Everyone's trying to keep how much money they spend down, and if you can spend less for the items that you're buying, people call that a smart purchase, or you're shopping smart. So the price number becomes Brain.
Time. You always want to get in and get out as fast as possible. Entire lanes in supermarkets are devoted to this cause. And you certainly don't want your shopping to take all day. So the faster it takes, the better. Time becomes Speed.
That leaves the number of items. Well, the more you have, the more bags you fill. The more bags you fill, the stronger you'd need to be to bring it all inside, or even out of the store! Number of items becomes Might.
But there's no stat for hardiness, for toughness, for constitution or wounds! How can you determine when your character-receipt thingie is taken out? And how do you take one out, anyway? That's where the pennies come in.
Each round, you choose one of your stats. Typically, the one that's the highest. Depending on which stat you pick, you're targeting another one of your opponent's stats, using a rock-paper-scissors type element wheel thing.
Attacking with Might: You batter your opponent senseless, reducing your target's Brain.
Attacking with Brain: You present a mystery, puzzle, or logical fallacy for your opponent to pause and ponder about, lowering your target's Speed.
Attacking with Speed: You run around really quickly, tiring out your opponent as they try to catch up, lowing your target's Might.
Once you've determined what stat you're using, and thus which one you're targeting, your opponent does the same. You know, in any order, it doesn't matter. Then, you both take six pennies and toss them on the table. Be gentle though, you know, because you don't want them to go everywhere, and you have to be able to tell yours and your opponent's apart, so be gentle, but make sure that they're random as possible. Then, count up the number of heads you get, and add that to your stat. The person who gets the highest number wins the round and gets to damage their target. But remember what number you did get, even if you lost, because if you're being targeted, you get to subtract your number from the winner's number, and that's how much your targeted stat is reduced by. If any one of your stats is reduced to zero or below, then you lose! The battle continues until there is only one receipt standing, because... There can be only one!

Basic rules:
Add all digits of the numbers until you get a number between 1-9.
Most recent timestamp = Speed
Number of items = Might
Final Price = Brain
Brain targets Speed
Speed targets Might
Might targets Brain
6 coins, count heads and add your chosen stat. Reduce loser's stat by difference of loser's and winner's totals.
First to get any to 0 loses.

No comments: