After the Tempest
Fredrix:
So here am I, Saturday morning about to sit down to write a Feng Shui scenario for next week's game, and I discover Game Chef. This sounds like fun, so my chums will become playtesters on the 23rd. And I'll write the first game system I've attempted since Don't Panic: the Game of Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy I wrote in my teens (scarily 30 years ago).
But what Shakepearian theme? My first thought was the On Verona Beach, being a big (big) fan of Baz Lurhman's postmodern masterpiece Romeo+Juliet, but hell ... everyone will do that surely? And anyhow the right solution for that would be simply to create a setting and characters and use Feng Shui rules - so thats out.
Then Arthur Maxwell Street, an everyday story of faerie folk, based on stories I've been kicking about in my head since my Grandfather died, long before White Wolf's Faerie - ah, yes white wolf's faerie - arse... scrap that then.
Next up, the geektastic Tempest, Forbidden Planet, and even better Return to the Forbidden Planet, Shakespear's lost Rock and Roll musical but not sci-fi, or at least not Star Trek sci-fi. And more about our discovering who we are inside...
Oh this is interesting, and Shakepearian, self discovery... finding things we don't like in ourselves, and our families, like Macbeth, Lear, Corialenus, pretty much EVERYTHING. And a system which doesn't start with creating a character...
Nathan P.:
Quote from: Fredrix on July 16, 2011, 02:09:48 AM
Oh this is interesting, and Shakepearian, self discovery... finding things we don't like in ourselves, and our families, like Macbeth, Lear, Corialenus, pretty much EVERYTHING. And a system which doesn't start with creating a character...
Dig it. Make it so!
Fredrix:
So, everything is pre-determined. This game isn't about Luck, it's about consequences. Nothing as random as dice, but still unpredictable, surprising. Been wracking my head for a mechanic, but I keep coming back to cards.
Now this is where I need help - I've spurned card based games, since a book called Hobgoblin got RPGs so very wrong. And I'm of the generation that saw Magic the gathering bankrupt our beloved publishers and "ruin" gaming. So I'm hoping there are some less prejudiced gamers out there that can tell me about card based roleplaying systems:
Any examples of good mechanics?
I cam see hoe combat can work - opposed plays from your hand (Top-trumps, if you will) but story "rolls" eg how difficult is it to pick this lock, how do they work?
My thoughts so far: each player starts with a deck of cards that represents their body, nothing more. 7 cards - four limbs, vitals, sex, and a head. Loose their vitals card or their head and they are dead. Lose any limb and they never get it back (no bionics in MY future, which is tomorrow, but that's another story).
Every "turn" starts with each player picking up a story card from the deck - this could be something their add to their personal history, or a "move" for example a punch, that they hoard for later or some moment of the "now" that moves the story on (hmmm do I even need a GM?)
I have a conceit that "combat" moves, when played, go into a combat discard pile, and that during combat turns said discard pile becomes a pool from which players can draw. Early in the session there will be few cards in this pile, keeping combat short, but later on towards the climax, the pile wouldn be enhanced by all the cards discarded previously, allowing for a climatic fight.
(I ought to say - we old school gamers: not for us politics and romance, despite my best efforts my players are at their happiest pointing a Spinal Mount at a caveman. So there will be combat.)
Fredrix:
Right, the background, the story. This is postapocalyptic, but not so far away, tomorrow, after the oil has run out (or at least is so diminished that most people have forsworn using it long ago. But Nature has betrayed us, the land (and it is THIS land, this sceptre'd Isle) is flooded. The urban communities starved and fought first. The rural parishes, both cut off from each other, and protected from hungry urban refugees, by the floods, eek out what living they can, and make their own laws.
Our players, exiles and gypsies, arrive at one such village in the rain, amid distrust and secrets.
This isn't my own idea I admit: I'm inspired by the Jon Boden album Song from the Flood Plain http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/songs-from-the-floodplain/id393371817. Its folk songs from the future.
Buy it, its great, or if you are too tight, check out this song http://www.we7.com/song/Jon-Boden/Days-Gone-By?m=0, which gives a flavour of the whole or read the lyrics here http://www.jonboden.com/lyrics.html.
I will of course check with Jon re IP before submitting.
Fredrix:
Still looking for any help anyone can offer on their experience of card based games.
My story deck in firming up, with:
Nature cards - "good" and "bad" personality traits, maybe the virtues and the sins would be appropriate for a system based on a 16th/17th century writer
History cards - skills and backgrounds
Action cards - actions (obviously)
My idea, is that you can play a history card - lets say "military training" to give a bonus to an action, but when you play it you have to justify it with a "flashback" story. Then you discard it, and it becomes just part of your varied past, UNLESS you want to retain the card, because its part of your prefered image (archetype?) for the character. You you want to retain it, you must give a nature card to another player, who can use it to force you to play a future scene in a particular way. Does that make sense?
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