Mini-Games within your Game

[TPKthulhu]

During my last game of CoC I had this idea that the investigators would be pressed for time before getting to the town full of eldritch awfulness. I made them each write down their own list of items that they would want (except for stupid stuff like flame throwers and snacks for the road) up to 20. They had 3 minutes of real world time to do this.

Then I gave them five mintues of real world time to make a master list of 20 items from their 4 individual lists. Once that was done I said they could only have 15 of the 20 items and made them take turn rolling D20s to find out what they could actually bring (this represented items not found, items that were found but broken, items that could not be found, or items that were found, but would have drawn too much attention to take).

At the end of the game I had the comments portion and all my players LOVED this part of the game! The problem is now they want me to come up with more of what they are calling "mini-games". I don't want to do the exact same thing twice, but I'm not sure what else I can incorporate.

Any thoughts? Have you ever done this in your games?

[Moondog]

Can't say I've done anything quite like that, but I tend to throw in little 'mini-games' in the stuff I run.

For example, in my D&D game (3.5 all da wayyyy yeah), at about the 3/4 mark to the end, the PC's must pass the test of the God of Strength and War. As Gods are Gods and can therefore do Godly things, they will all be given the opportunity to write up an 17th level character (they'll be about 10th or so by the time they get there) who they will 'become' for a brief, RTS-inspired wargame kind of affair.

you know, the 'ok so now you're a bad-ass. There's a big army out to stomp you and your families into the ground. What are you gonna do about it?' kind of thing. They can go out and acquire and army or attempt to single-handedly (rather easy for a 17th level caster) beat the opposing army. It's not really something they can fail (unless they do something monumentally stupid), but I figure giving them the reigns of a hilariously high-powered character they can build however they want for a 'minigame' will be a fun thing.

[clockworkjoe]

Russian roulette ala The Deer Hunter - take turns rolling a d6 - first to roll a 1 loses. I did this in Rifts recently.

[tkwickham]

Back in the 3.5 era of D&D I was part of an all-Rogue game set (usually) in a pretty open-ended sandbox city. Frequently the GM would temp us away from the main plot by offering chances to 'grind' XP in the gladiatorial arena, GP by doing what rogues do, or to dedicate our time to the Thieves guild & train for a new bonus feat.

Meanwhile the main plot was still 'progressing' weither we were active or not - leading to some suddenly and surprising turns of events. Though it pissed us off at the time, I've come to appreciate the inherent choice of the party - personal glory vs duty to (story).

[Ryphus]

My current group tends to love getting into bar fights, and I think it's my fault cause I try to change things up every time they pick a fight with bar patrons.  One time we played the Inn-Fighting the card game, one time the bar had a bar keep who didn't mind fighting at all, but the rules were you could only use a chair or a mug for weapons.  Anyone who broke a rule would get shot with the largest cross bow any of them had ever seen.  The damage was a d20 roll.  The chairds did d10 plus strength and the mugs like d6 plus dex something like that.  Last man standing got a mug that would always refill with ale or whatever non magical drink they wanted.  Ever Ready mug I believe? 

[Palladiumaniac]

I came up with a Call of Cthulhu scenario that took place at a gaming conention...the investigators were all game nerds.

In fact, little did they know they were hapless victims in "Bring the nerdiest dork to the party" contest perpetrated by cos-play/furry/Larp sex cultists.

The nerdiest nerd was going to be ritual sacrificed in a blood orgy.  I had a whole list of randomized nerd traits. 

Oh and yeah...there was roleplaying roleplay within the game.