This game is an instrument for black metal samurai

I'm ready to start playtesting my newest game, Gathering of the Tunnelmasters, or GotTM, pronounced "got 'em!". (I say "start"; I've been playing through aspects of it for 3 years or more. This is the first time I've assembled every aspect of the game.) Like any functional role-playing game, it does not provide an experience in a box. It is an instrument with which a group of skilled players, black metal samurai, can make their music. 

Games as instruments 

You can sell somebody an instrument, but you can't sell them its music. They do that on their own. 

Some instruments are easier to learn and use than others. Some instruments are very obviously difficult to use. Some instruments have a limited range of expression. Some instruments have a vast range of expression.

Zombie Cinema is a gem of a game, which is fantastically easy to learn and use, and will nearly always make something decent, but which respects the players' skill and allows for a wide range of expression. It's like a piano in that regard. S/Lay w/Me is more like the human throat, which are fantastically open to expression, barely constrained, but which is fueled entirely by its singer's skill, and fantastically fail at making music if the singer can't sing. Champions and Ars Magica are like organs, deep, constrained, inherently complex, flexible.

(What's the kazoo of gaming? I don't know, and luckily I haven't played it.)

Authorities in play, and my history

Every game is going to distribute who says what, somehow. (It might, as an intentional choice, leave that open.) The distribution of authorities in a game is its most fundamental attribute, so fundamental it is rarely noticed.

Aside. How often do games make a big deal of the fact that, in this game, one guy is the GM, and they speak for most of the stuff in the fiction? -- But how odd that is, given the infinite number of different ways we could distribute authorities!

Most of my games have distributed authorities in a non-standard way, and used the distribution of authorities as the majority of their rules, with very few constraints or resolution procedures. (Thinking here of the untitled vampire game and Rage, plus the ad hoc unnamed games for coworkers and friends.) The fewer constraints and structures you put on a game, the closer it gets to that human throat, which, sure, can sing so beautifully, but also fail so badly.

(Don't accuse me of thinking that an unconstrained game is a better game, with a higher skill ceiling, by the way. I think that constraints can be, and often are, very fruitful. Skilled play can revolve around those constraints. Think of Champions here, the way a skilled player will weave an interesting character through every part of their sheet, and bring their powers to life with myriad special effects.)

I've been playing and writing my fantasy heartbreaker for the past few years. It started as simply D&D with better fantasy and resolution. But I got bored with neutral refereeing. I want to push for my victory as hard as the other players do. Tunnels & Trolls brought that instinct to the fore; I was directly competing with my players, trying to outsmart them, punish them for their mistakes, impress them with my skill as a tactician. Tunnels & Trolls is already a better game than D&D; in hindsight, it's an obvious starting point for a heartbreaker.

The game

In its current form, I've made the game as hostile as possible to play groups I consider unsuitable for it. I have deliberately left out nearly all rules and guidance for scenario creation, task adjudication, and outcome authorities. Anyone can say anything. Thus if an unskilled play group, who approach the game in the wrong spirit, and do not know what they should not say, tries to play the game, it will immediately collapse in their hands. This game is a bagpipe. Good thing it's free.

Maybe this is cruel and unnecessary. In that case, I would still omit scenario creation rules and advice, out of respect to the original Tunnels & Trolls. But I would give the following rules for writing loadouts, task adjudication, and outcome authorities:

• Remember that you are here to challenge and to be challenged. If you simply negate the challenge, you're not playing.
• Remember that you can always call Bullshit!, or at least threaten it.
• If someone has the first word, what they say goes as long as no one disagrees. If someone has the last word, after everyone involved has spoken their piece, they say what goes. 
• The player who declares a task is responsible for giving an initial estimate of task difficulty. 
• The active Tunnel Master has the last word on task difficulty, and adds bonus or penalty dice from the Dude's loadout and scores.
• In general, a score of 0 gives 1 penalty die, and a score of n or higher gives n−1 bonus dice.
• The player who declares a task says what happens on success, and has the first word on any formal consequences of success. (When I am the active Tunnel Master, I always suggest very generous positive results from success, because I want to show the other players that I can still beat them with one hand tied behind my back.)
• The active Tunnel Master says what happens on a failure, and has the last word on any formal consequences of failure.
• Anyone can say the (very general) consequences of the big roll in combat.

Of course I might find the specific authorities in play here need to be tweaked based on testing; we'll see.

Credits and inspirations

• Tunnels & Trolls, for telling me to dig my own dungeon, and put myself into it, the group combat roll, saving throws (re-imagined here as fully general task resolution).
• Coup de Main for starting me down the task resolution rabbit hole; the system here is a drastically simplified child of my own Tasks essay, which is itself Coup-like.
• Sorcerer, for the concept of descriptors.
• Champions, for the specific language around stunts in their relation to the big roll.
• Warhammer 40,000, for the concept of "my dudes".