Space Madness or Ressurection
anansi:
My musings got dark. Here's what I've got in my google doc so far. Not sure if this is the direction I'm heading, but this is the way I'm starting. We'll see what happens!
Questions for you lovely forum readers if you care to feed me feedback:
1. Is it too dark to be fun?
2. What do you think about my "what this game is about" section? Do you think, based on the ideas I'm talking about, I've made the right summaries and picked out the correct key points of the game? (you know how sometimes you think a piece is about something, but it's actually about something completely different that you didn't see? Yea that, want to make sure I'm on point).
Intro:
The earth is dying. Overpopulation, natural disasters, pollution, wars, disease... one of these have overwhelmed us. Destroyed us to the brink of extinction. Our last hope is The Lantern, a spacecraft on a mission to save us all. This mission is to travel through the black of space and bring back our only salvation. But the dark is far worse than we could ever have imagined, and the things that lie dormant in our minds are easily as dangerous as the things out there trying to kill us all.
What this game is about:
Exploring identity by accepting our weaknesses and finding the courage to become something new.
Making difficult moral decisions under pressure.
Dealing with loss.
Telling a story in the space madness genre.
(I’m not sure this is true, but I’m working off these assumptions to start with)
How it will accomplish this:
Weaknesses will be represented by diseases or mental conditions players have when they start play. Everyone has one. As the game progresses, you can either choose to give into your weakness, thereby strengthening the madness, or make a sacrifice or difficult decision and lessen the madness. Madness will have side effects which are pre-determined on a scale, including seeing ghosts, seeing other characters, seeing horrific things.
Difficult decisions under pressure will be some kind of timing mechanism. Maybe playing in real time, maybe some kind of time economy, or turn economy, a la Burning Empires.
Loss could be dealt with two ways. 1) When you start the game, you have a bunch of things important to your character that you’ll have to give up in order to accomplish things 2) something to do with fear and denial, and confronting the truth even when you’re being tempted by madness
The subtext:
Space madness is a fictional disorder, a trope used by movies, tv shows, and novels ever since our first paranoia about travel in rocket ships began. Psychologists have analyzed astronauts and found them disappointingly stable, so there is actually no factual basis that there is a disorder with symptoms similar to space madness.
This game, beneath the surface, is about that dichotomy. Our desire to believe that there is awfulness out there, in isolation, in the black, when in fact there is nothing to be afraid of. The truth is there isn’t anything out there that will drive us to madness. It’s the classic fear of the unknown, eating at us. We can overcome it if we want to, or we can succumb to the stories our culture wants us to believe.
(is there more subtext here? maybe something to do with status quo, or accepting cultural norms for identities? something to do with the stigma attached to madness, or morality?)
anansi:
Excellent episode On the Media http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/dec/16/space-madness-real-and-imagined/ via Robert Bohl
Space Madness on Television Tropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceMadness
David Bowie's Space Oddity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSYbRiYwTY
Inspirations.
Jonathan Walton:
Yes, please. That sounds fantastic.
jackson_tegu:
Sorry for a short, incomplete reply:
Quote
1. Is it too dark to be fun?
I can read that sentence, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
How can something be too dark to be fun?
: )
gtroc:
Quote from: anansi on April 10, 2012, 08:00:01 AM
1. Is it too dark to be fun?
That is dependent on the crowd you are attempting to reach. I mean, Call of Cthulu is too dark for me. Mostly this is because there is no real hope in the game. If I have the chance to achieve my goals, even if it a slim chance, I feel a lot better. however that could be part of the problem...I guess you just need to set the expectations properly for the players.
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