[Changes] Matthew SB's thread of noodling
Matthew Sullivan-Barrett:
Thanks, Nathan, that's totes my thinking as well. Except for the "wining": I'm still in the "write bad games" phase of design, so this is mostly just trying for a personal best!
Now, no more from me til I've got design decisions to discuss.
Matthew Sullivan-Barrett:
Oh, man. So I’m scribbling down notes for this game, and I jot down that it seems to be kind of a mash-up of IaWA, ApocWorld and Contenders. Then it strikes me that just Contenders reskinned would be a pretty cool, if different focussed, rock game. So cool that it maybe had already been done. A quick google search leads me to Umlaut: Game of Metal. It is apparently built on the framework of Contenders: SO COOL, Rich Stokes! If I had known that a few months ago when I saw it cruising Cubicle 7’s store I would have totally picked it up in a flash. As it is I’m fired up to purchase it as soon as GC is done!
I probably wouldn’t have started down this design path if I’d known more about Umlaut, but I’m going to stick it out now that I do. I’ve got some unbaked batter mixing, and I want to see how it turns out. I’m holding off reading anything more on Umlaut until after GC, because I want to see where my design takes me now.
Some half-baked features of the game I’m designing:
-The band is created first, starting with their most recent album cover.
-The band can be any genre, though I’ve got 70’s glam in mind. As long as there are big personalities and room for idealism, it’s all good. Key feature is the band is fractured and on their final tour before they blow apart.
-The band was formed with the dream of changing the world in some way. That dream has not been realized but is still something they fight for, even if their means are not in agreement.
-Each player creates a band member, starting picking a broad trope: Dreamer, Artiste, Hedonist, Poser, …
-Build problematic relationships to 2-3 other band members
-Build in a drive, independent of the band, that puts the character at odds with at least one other character
-Each character gets a spotlight scene. After the scene, a track for the album is added and named based on the preceding scene. Some individual resource is accumulated in association with the track.
-After a full round of scenes, the band as a whole has a performance on their tour. Resolution here builds band resource pool.
-Repeat til end-game when either the band falls apart on stage, or they achieve some variation of their dream and go their separate ways with dignity.
Things get less and less baked the further down that list I go... Any further and it is just not gelled enough to talk about.
One major feature I want to weave throughout is that of Change: Characters change, the band’s dream changes, maybe they even change the world in some fashion. And through it all the game text itself is marked up and changed.
Matthew Sullivan-Barrett:
Ok, so my extra lines were lost in copy-paste, so appologies for the wall-of-text...
jackson_tegu:
For the record, i'm hella glad that you're moving ahead.
You know, like i should be doing instead of posting in threads.
*oops*
But the game looks intriguing. I like games about bands.
And games about problematic relationships with your collaborators!
Matthew Sullivan-Barrett:
Thanks, Jackson. No more work for me today, though. I'm booked all evening.
My band perspective is entirely from the outside, so I suspect my use of the band as a volatile vehicle may be over simplified to peeps in real bands themselves. ...We shall see what comes of it!
Thanks for the support, man.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page