Peter's Game Thread
PeterBB:
I reserve the right to throw out everything and start completely fresh, if this doesn't pan out. That said, here are my thoughts so far:
This year's ingredients have gotten me thinking about culture clashes, colonialism, code-switching, and that sort of thing. In the average RPG, your "diplomacy" skill is equally powerful no matter who you are talking to, with maybe a situational modifier of some sort. I'm thinking it would be cool to have a game where the mechanics support cultural differences and the "fish out of water" situation.
Basic thoughts:
-I don't want to directly pull from a real-world scenario without having a hell of a lot longer than a week to research, so I'm going to turn to the ingredients for the setting. I'm thinking big 18th or 19th-century city on the edge of the desert. The city aristocrats look down on the desert people, but need them in a lot of ways for survival. There's also probably a huge underclass of people living in the city caught in the middle. General aesthetic is stereotypical Persian.
-My general preference in fiction is for short-form narratives over long-form. Especially for something like this, it seems like interconnected short stories are a relatively under-explored and very useful medium.
-If that's the case, it might be interesting for the mechanics to change based on the framework of the new short story. If you're playing a high court drama, the rules are different than when you're out traveling in the desert. This could be a good way to enforce meaningful cultural differences.
-Another thought is that you could have separate GM-like roles for the two cultures. Susan GMs the desert stories, and Bob GMs the upper-class stories. Maybe a good way to encourage meaningful cultural differences? Or maybe just a pain.
-The resolution mechanics are probably going to borrow a lot from otherkind and/or AW. I like the whole exception-based-design thing we've been talking about in the AW forums. Not sure how it'll turn out exactly yet, but you're going to have a lot fewer options when dealing with others than when dealing with your own culture.
Vulpinoid:
Quote from: PeterBB on September 12, 2010, 04:16:27 PM
I reserve the right to throw out everything and start completely fresh, if this doesn't pan out.
That's a part of the whole contest...I know a lot of people who have ended up submitting something other than their first ideas.
Still, those first ideas you've got seem to have some promise.
PeterBB:
Ok, so what I'm currently not liking is the setting. I've always been a fan of speculative fiction, because it allows you to deal with serious issues and interesting psychological/sociological questions in such a clear way without all the baggage of the real world. You can talk about the human fear of the unknown all you want, but if you read Isaac Asimov's Nightfall you'll see it in a totally different light.
My setting is way too real-world at the moment, which I feel would drag the game down into either a) nothing but depressing and self-aware social commentary or b) purely light-hearted stuff that wouldn't touch any of the social issues with a 10-foot-pole.
So, I need something a bit further out there. Current thoughts involve a seemingly unending cliff-face with a civilization carved into the side of the rock.
PeterBB:
Ooh, or a generation ship! That's a pretty common SF trope that you don't see often in RPGs. I like that a lot.
PeterBB:
I've got a lot more thoughts on my Praxis thread. Big concern right now is making the cultural aspect meaningful and trying to avoid caricature. Obvious way to do this is to stop thinking in terms of monolithic "cultures" and start thinking in terms of... what? Ways of life? Who is in charge? Elements of culture you may or may not have picked up in your life?
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