[Game Chef 2011] Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dwarves
Vulpinoid:
I've had an idea for Game Chef...lets see if the ingredients allow me to run with it.
ADGBoss:
I honestly hope they do, because this is one of the best titles I have ever heard :) fingers crossed the ingredients play out.
Vulpinoid:
OK, instead of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dwarves", my mental patterns in waiting for the ingredients have altered.
I'm now thinking of all the characters who die in Shakespeare, then running a series of modules based on the Verona Police Department tracking down and putting their own interpretation on events to discover what really happened (the play we al know is just the public spin on events, investigation may lead to someone else being the culprit).
JeffR:
Does that mean we get to play Dogberry?
Vulpinoid:
Elizabethan Game Mechanisms
One of the other game design threads mentions the idea of using the four humours, as found in medical and scientific belief of the Shakespearean era. (I've had a quick look through the other threads, but can't find it...otherwise I would have provided a link).
With this in mind, I've been looking at a few concepts for getting a game mechanisms with an Elizabethan/Jacobean vibe.
Apparently a game of the era was one-and-thirty, a precursor to our modern game of 21. In this game you add up cards in your hand from a single suit and aim to get as close to 31 as possible (but not over), you could have cards from multiple suits in your hand but only one suit counts.
If I combine the ideas of the four humours with the four suits of cards, these become the archetypal actions of the game. The degree of success of failure with these actions could be determined through a played out hand of one-and-thirty (with the closest to 31 proving successful in the round).
If you lose a hand of one-and-thirty, you lose a coin (from a starting pool of 4) or fold over the corner of a note (I'm tending toward this second option)...each of these could be used as a way of losing a hit point or character trait.
I'm thinking that this game will not be very combat oriented, and will be more about relationships...friendships, enmities, betrayal, shifting loyalties, unexpected twists.
Thought: Maybe when you choose to harm someone, the damage you do to them is based on the strength of your relationship to them. If there is conflict with someone you don't care about, you can only damage their traits or cause them an inconvenience. If you know the person and they mean something to you (either as a friend or enemy), then you can seriously harm them or cause lasting trait damage. If it is a personal nemesis or a true love, your actions can be lethal.
But now I'm looking for ways to pull these Elizabethan/Jacobean mechanisms back into the storytelling techniques.
Storytelling and Scene Framing
The general structure of the game will follow the structural form of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", where the narrative exists parallel to an existing play, involving the lesser characters and their exploits when they are "offscreen" with respect to the established play. The players will know the events that occur when their characters appear in the established scenes of the story, but they are free to meander and change the context of the known scenes, in fact they are expected to do so to gain the highest possible advantage from the set piece.
I'm thinking of using maps of Verona and other cities relevant to each play as play aids for a session...linking characters to specific locations and applying automatic relationship connections between certain characters as defined by the plays in which they are found.
Still a lot of work to do...
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