Heckles and Distraction

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The more I think about how failure works in Nobody Poops on TV, the less I think "Heckles" really covers what I want to accomplish.

The short version is, failure is hard to come by. You only fail by:

  • Not having enough Talents
  • Having low Technique, and
  • Being distracted during your performance.
By "being distracted", I'm referring to your real, human needs, as a real, human being. Plenty of games use survival mechanics: Free League Publishing's Mutant: Year Zero is a fun example.

Each day, you must eat food (obviously), called "grub" in the game. If you don't eat 1 ration's worth of grub, you gain the "starving" condition. While starving, you can't recover damage, and you gain 1 extra point of damage per day.

You also need 1 ration's worth of water, or you are dehydrated. Without water, you cannot recover from any kind of trauma ("trauma" is a reduction to one of your attribute scores), and you take 1 point of damage AND 1 point of fatigue per day.

Simple and to the point! You're either starving, or you're not. You're either dehydrated, or you're not. You become starving if you don't eat at least once a day, and you're dehydrated if you don't drink at least once per day.

I want to add complexity to Nobody Poops on TV, but the basic gameplay shouldn't be the hard part--complexity will come in character creation, to allow people to make any kind of character they want.

So, what can I learn from this? Well, I need a simple survival system, one where you either are or aren't afflicted by your needs. You're Hungry or you're not. You're Sleepy or you're not.

But you can still be very Hungry.

The System

Here's how it works:

Hunger: If you don't get 3 square meals a day, you're Hungry (this includes drinking water). While you're Hungry, you gain at least 1 "Distraction Die", which replaces one of the d8s in your dice pool. Because you're distracted. You're not being Heckled anymore--you just can't concentrate and that is where the audience's boos and jeers come from.

Now, just because you have a Distraction Die doesn't mean you have to use it. If you use enough Talents and your Technique is of an appropriate value, you can simply opt to ignore the Distractions. You're a professional, after all, and the show must go on. But once you have more Distraction Dice than you have Talent dice, well, you have to start paying attention.

Dying from Hunger: If you don't eat at least 3 times on the second day, you gain another Distraction Die, and so on and so on. Each day without satisfying your Hunger gains you another Distraction Die. The average person can live for a week without eating and drinking--once you go a week without eating/drinking, you die on the air. So, there's a maximum score of 7 Hunger.

Satisfying Hunger: Eating at least 3 meals satisfies all Hunger for that day. If you're Hungry from a previous day, you'll need to eat extra to catch up. Just one extra meal per day should cover it--so, 4 meals instead of 3 for 1 day of missed Hunger, all the way up to 10 meals for a week. This can be represented as multiple courses of a single meal, if you wish.

Sleep: If you don't get 8 hours of sleep per day, you're Sleepy (you can spread this out over multiple naps in a day if you wish). While you're Sleepy, you gain at least 1 Distraction Die.

Dying from Sleepiness: If you don't get 8 hours of sleep on the second day, you gain a Distraction Die, and another one for each additional day, just like Hunger. You have a maximum score of 7 Sleepiness, as the average person can go about a week without sleep.

Satisfying Sleepiness: Sleepiness is solved by, surprisingly, sleeping! Getting 8 hours of sleep (non-consecutively is fine) is enough. But like Hunger, you need to play catch-up if there's multiple days missed. On the second day, you'll need 9 hours, on the third you need 10, and so on. 1 extra hour is enough, just like 1 extra meal is all you need to satisfy your Hunger.

Toilet: Same rules apply as for Hungry and Sleepy. 4 toilet breaks a day, or take a Distraction Die.

Dying from Lack of Toilet: If you go a week without using the toilet, you die. Same rules apply as for Hungry and Sleepy.

Satisfying Toilet: Go to the toilet 4 times a day!


A quick-and-dirty mockup of how I imagine these needs will be tracked on the character sheet.

Distractions, and How they Affect Failure: Each failed roll affects the show's Ratings (how, you ask? TBD!). Once the Ratings reach a certain point, you're at risk of Cancellation, and go on Hiatus. Your progress towards Cancellation/Hiatus is represented by Cancellation Tokens.

Critical Failures: If all of your Talent dice have been replaced with Distraction Dice, you automatically fail at your task. Distraction Dice have an automatic value of 0, so no amount of Talent is going to help you reach your target number.

The exact nature of that failure is up to the GM, but some classic The Sims-inspired failures may include:
  • Falling asleep on the spot
  • Your stomach growling loud enough to be picked up on all the mics
  • Wetting yourself


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