Baxil's Game Thread
Darla Shockley:
Why is the game fun for the innocent player? Is this a sort of GM role (shared with the eliminated players), or something else? He doesn't really sound like a protagonist.
Baxil:
Quote from: Jason Pitre on September 11, 2010, 08:41:48 PM
Glad that this worked out well for you in terms of design. In order to face those past transgressions, would they come from the desert or must the character journey out into the desert to discover them?
The city surrounding each character is a creation of their own mind. The difficulty of leaving it is that you can't escape your own mind. So it's outward journey as metaphor for the inner journey; the transgressions manifest in the city itself, growing more real as your character's sanity slips.
Quote from: Darla Shockley on September 11, 2010, 10:20:11 PM
Why is the game fun for the innocent player? Is this a sort of GM role (shared with the eliminated players), or something else? He doesn't really sound like a protagonist.
Pretty much. The Innocent's player's job is inverted: they roleplay their own adversary, trying to convinvce themselves that their punishment is deserved.
...
And I've actually got a pretty good framework for the game already. With one major problem. The game that fell out of my head onto the page is a strategy game with some roleplaying elements (gameplay is sort of a Liar's Dice/Puerto Rico amalgam - declaring and/or secretly choosing actions in a turn-based sequence, and rolling dice to resolve some challenges, with roleplaying breaking ties).
I playtested it last night with some friends and it's a fun system, but it isn't a roleplaying game, and I don't think it's competition-legal. :( So I'm going to set my work aside and start from scratch on the same theme, tackling it from the narrative core and moving from there to the mechanics, instead of the other way around.
Baxil:
Having scrapped my original mechanics and rebuilt the system from the core concepts, I'm a lot happier with the result so far. It has turned out to be a "journey" more in the sense of the slide toward a final destination ... but it's definitely about characters going somewhere. Still nailing down the conflict resolution (it'll be pretty simple stuff - d20 to roll under your skill, with extra complications if you roll over your relevant Edge).
In terms of the themes it explores, this seems closest to Sorceror (i.e. a tragic story about mages and sin) - although this seems like it would play out differently enough to be interesting. And characters' power is all their own ... which in a way is an even worse adversary to face.
Any thoughts?
---------
EXILE (draft; working title)
Premise
A typical roleplaying game is about growing into heroism: taking a character of little capability and discovering how they adapt to power. EXILE upends that trope and shakes the box.
Your characters start out as powerful heroes - mages who have pushed the rules a little too far, and find themselves exiled into an urban hell of their own design surrounded by featureless wasteland. They must adapt to their decreasing control as the self-created world around them eats away at their health, confidence and sanity.
Will they be able to come to terms with their own transgressions in time to find a happy ending? They can't escape - so they'd better darn well try.
Setup
Gather 3-7 players (it probably works best with a standard roleplaying group of size 4-6). Choose one player to be the "Innocent". This is a role similar to that of the GM in a normal game; the Innocent adjucates rules, describes settings, and by default will play the roles of all characters except for the Mages (PCs).
You will need one character sheet for each Mage; a bunch of d20s; and blank paper (preferably index cards) for the NPCs you encounter. It can also help to have at least one person taking notes on important plot points as they develop.
Note that EXILE, by design, does feature some troupe-style play - each of the players has the opportunity to influence and describe events in a GM-like fashion, and can volunteer to roleplay specific NPCs.
Depending on the roleplaying experience (and comfort zone) of the players, this can range anywhere on the spectrum from traditional gaming (high GM control; players restricted to PCs) to round-table gaming (no GM whatsoever; fully democratic NPC control). It's also possible (with some modification) to play without a designated Innocent, and have every character run a Mage, but we don't recommend it unless your group has prior experience with both these rules and a GM-less setup.
Setting
TK
Themes
The basic dilemma of EXILE is that anything is possible - except escape. The characters are creating the world around them; they are, in some literal sense, walking gods. Balanced against this, though, is the Sin that got them banished to the Shadowlands - and the unresolved guilt/resentment that relentlessly wears them down by externally manifesting their inner struggle.
Another of the characters' struggles is to figure out the line between reality and illusion. In a world where they appear to be both creating and animating everything that occurs around them, to what extent should they treat their surroundings as real?
And what the game ultimately boils down to is purpose. Faced with no apparent future beyond a slow degeneration into insanity, how will your characters make those last moments count?
It's important to note that EXILE does NOT have to be played as an experiment in relentless futility - and in fact will be a lot more fun if you don't. Yes, the game's guaranteed to end in character death, but simply by existing and chasing their goals, characters are affirming the value of life. And in the defiant actions of a person facing their doom, you might find some meaning yourself.
Characters
EXILE characters are created from three major building blocks.
Whether Mages or supporting cast, the foundation of any character is their Drives. EXILE is fundamentally a narrative game. Every role - even the simplest, throwaway NPC - is defined in terms of the drives that guide the interaction between characters.
PCs and major NPCs will also possess Traits - numeric ratings of the skills and abilities that let them affect the world. These are the statistics that influence success during dice rolls. The catch is: Every time you use a Trait successfully, the world around you adapts a little more to your expertise, making failure more likely.
Player characters - and only PCs, since everyone else is a manifestation that their minds create - also have four statistics called Edges. These statistics measure how "close to the edge" a PC is: when any of them reaches 0, that character has fallen too far out of mental balance to effectively influence the Shadowlands any more. They can be thought of roughly like hit points - though as your character accumulates damage, the chance of unintended effects on the game world rises sharply. Every time a Trait roll fails, one of your Edges degenerates.
Baxil:
This is gonna be down to the wire for me ...
I've got Codename: Exile, now named-for-reals Egregore, almost all done. I need to run over to join my gaming group for some last-minute feedback, and playtesting for the Scene rules.
Link to the almost-complete version, complete with flavor stories and full setting details: http://www.tomorrowlands.org/gaming/egregore_v09_lo.pdf
Baxil:
... And, fighting both the deadline and the sunrise, here's the final GC2010 version, in all its completified glory.
http://www.tomorrowlands.org/gaming/egregore_gc2010.pdf
Egregore is a game about mages exiled from reality into a world of their own making, trying to discover the secrets of a deserted city before their own phantoms and emotions drive them over the edge.
Any further edits will be posted under a different URL; this one is my official entry, not modified after the competition dates. (Modulo that whole "when does the 19th end" thing. If this is a foul, I'll accept my disqualification with good graces. It's my first GC competition, so I'm still figuring out the ropes as I go.)
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