The Coyotes of Chicago
PeterBB:
So I think I have a pretty good framework for a game, but I need help with making it actually work. A brief introduction, since I haven't written the first section yet:
First off, did you all know that coyotes are amazingly awesome? I definitely did not know this before I started researching them. Not only did they somehow vastly expand their range over the past several centuries, they can even very successfully live in major cities. They switched from diurnal to nocturnal, just to avoid humans better. There are an estimated two thousand coyotes in the Chicagoland area. This is important to know, to understand my game. :P
The general idea is to model the "very competent action hero gets pulled into a conspiracy that is way bigger than she thought" style of fiction. Nothing like "failure" will happen here. The protagonist will succeed, but she'll be screwed anyway because things are way worse than she expected. No "you punch the guy, but he doesn't go down." Instead: "You flatten the guy with a perfect roundhouse kick. He's out cold. A second later his eyes open, showing pure white. He says, 'Good to finally meet you, Mrs. Stokes.'"
It'll be purposely ambiguous whether we're talking about government conspiracy, magical conspiracy, alien conspiracy, or whatever else. Determining what's actually going on should be part of the fun.
One player will play the protagonist, who is a coyote researcher in Chicago who starts noticing weird things and is pulled into investigating the conspiracy. Everyone else will play aspects of the conspiracy, discovering what is actually going on through the interactions of their individual roles. (The structure is pretty clearly cribbed from Dirty Secrets, with some differences.)
Here's what I have so far:
Quote
Playing Alex:
One of you will play Dr. Alex Stokes, a recently minted Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology and massive badass, who is working as a research assistant for Dr. Stanley Gehrt, the world's leading expert on urban coyotes.
Fleshing out Alex's personality and history is the first thing you will do as a group. If you already know who is playing Alex, go ahead and let that player take the lead here. If you don't know yet, just go with whatever sounds cool to people, and then decide after.
Most of your choices are just to give you a starting place, and don't have any mechanical effect. Just go with whatever seems cool, and gives you an interesting character to play. Remember that you will be investigating some creepy weirdness, so making Alex curious or brave or reckless or oblivious or something is probably a good idea.
You will make one mechanically important choice: Alex's talents. Choose one major talent and two minor ones. These are the areas in which Alex particularly excels. These can be pretty broad. “Martial arts”, “Public Speaking”, and “Parkour” are all perfectly good talents. Think a bit about how you might use these talents when investigating creepy weirdness. If one doesn't give you any inspiration, change it!
Creating Alex's character is important, because it's your first chance as a group to decide what sort of game you're playing. If Alex was raised by a secret society and has powerful fire magicks, that will lead to a very different game than one where Alex went to prep school and is especially good at data collection. I suggest aiming for something like Indiana Jones. You wouldn't quite call him “realistic”, but at least he doesn't break the laws of physics. But feel free to play with it, just so long as everyone is on board.
~~~
Gender:
Background:
Personality:
Major Talent:
Minor Talents:
~~~
Before you go on, make sure that you know who is playing Alex. If that's you, your job is to show how awesome Alex is, to react to all the weirdness the other players will be throwing at you, and to try to figure out what the heck is going on. Don't worry about doing the sensible thing. You're in a thriller movie, and you're a badass! (Even if you're a prep-school, data-collecting badass, you're still a badass.)
(Note: I'll use female pronouns to talk about Alex through the rest of the text, but of course you can pick whatever gender you want for your Alex.)
Playing the Mystery:
The rest of you, you get to be the weird, creepy world that Alex has to deal with. Each of you should take one of the mystery sheets for your special rules. Don't show anyone else your page, and don't tell them what's on it, either.
Most of the time, you can just say what you think should happen next. Your mystery sheet will tell you some things to say, and you can make up the rest. Give Alex plenty of things to react to, starting out small but getting really hard-core weird by the end. If someone else says something that inspires you, run with it! Don't feel restricted to the stuff on the sheet, say whatever you think is cool. You should always have a working theory about what is really going on, and don't be stingy about dropping clues or taking things in interesting directions. But you also have to be flexible, because at least the details your theory will probably turn out to be wrong. That's half the fun!
Of course, just because you have a lot of power in this game doesn't mean you get to be a jerk. If the other people playing the mystery don't like what you have to say, be willing to change it. The game only works if everyone is working together. Of course, don't be a jerk about that, either. Your first instinct should be to figure out how you can make whatever was narrated work. Only ask them to change it if it really ruins your enjoyment of the fiction.
All this lovey-dovey stuff goes out the window, however, when we're talking about the poor schmuck playing Alex. When it comes to her, your job is to make the world surprise her, scare her, frustrate her, and creep her out. Don't worry about making things easy on her. Alex is a badass, remember? She can take it.
To facilitate Alex's badassery, there's a special rule:
When you want to narrate something that screws with Alex or her plans, then you have to spend some of your mystery dice and roll them.
Alex is going to survive, and continue to be a problem for you. But the dice will let you make her life very complicated in the mean time.
[Insert tables and whatever for dice mechanic.]
A few words about the mystery sheets. Your sheet will have the following elements:
A motif. This is an image or idea that you should try to incorporate whenever possible. Be creative, and let yourself be drawn in whatever direction you find inspiring. Your motif will (and should!) change and expand over the course of the game. This is awesome, let it happen. And of course, you don't have to restrict yourself to your motif. Say whatever you think is cool!
A few key scenes. You don't start with any mystery dice, which you need to make Alex's life more difficult. This is how you get them. The first one is set up pretty explicitly for you, you just have to provide the cool narration! The others will require a little more interpretation. Don't worry about it until you get to the point where you want the dice, and then just go with whatever makes the most sense, based on the game so far and your current working theories. Since you can't show anyone your sheet, you're on the honor system here. Just narrate your thing, and take dice if you think you deserve it.
A motivation. This is a little bit more meta than the rest of it. This gives you a goal to shoot for, in relation to the things the other players are narrating. Don't worry about pushing this with every single thing you say, but keep it in the back of your head and do your best to bring it in when you can.
Mystery Sheet 1: Jack of the Lantern
[Flavor text about will-o'-the-wisps]
Motif: Strange lights, especially ones that lead somewhere.
Key Scene #1: One of the cameras set up to track the coyotes records an unexplained, floating light. The coyotes seem to be following it, and it leads them into an abandoned alley. [5 dice]
Key Scene #2: Alex sees a light in person, which leads her to something interesting or important. [3 dice]
Key Scene #3: The lights show signs of intelligence, purpose, or at least malice. [4 dice]
Key Scene #4: The mystery of the lights is finally explained, to whatever extent such an explanation can make sense to Alex. [3 dice]
Motivation: Interconnection. Try to tie together the things you say with things other people say. Say that your things are the causes or effects of the things other people are saying. Frame scenes where two people's things seem to be working together, or to have some sort of deep connection.
[Other possible motifs: “The Coyotes are acting weird,” “The people are acting weird,” “Everything is staring at me.” Other possible motivations: “The conspiracy is massive,” “Urgency(/the end of the wooorld!),” “Whatever is behind this is definitely not friendly.”]
Obviously, the first thing I'm looking for is general comments. Am I missing anything obvious? Will this all crash and burn? Is the idea and structure compelling at all?
Second, what are some good ideas for more motifs and key scenes? What creepy things might happen to people who study urban coyotes at night?
The final, and probably most difficult question, is what the dice mechanic should look like. My basic idea is that the mystery players can roll whenever they want to cause trouble, and spend their "hits" on various sorts of trouble for Alex. "Implant a creepy image into her mind, one hit." "Force her into a new location, three hits." Maybe this is too constricting for them, though? Maybe they spend the dice and can just do the thing they pay for, and the die roll represents something else (like how much Alex learns, or something)? Or maybe it's not dice, just tokens? Or maybe go the other way, and they roll on a random table, with maybe some ability to modify the roll? What is going to be the most useful, in terms of being interestingly unexpected, while still giving everyone sufficient room to do what they want to do?
C. Edwards:
Hey, just want to say that I really dig your concept! The Mystery Sheet idea is interesting, is that something from Dirty Secrets?
The first thing I thought of when I read your title was "Oh, maybe that's an alternate take on Werewolves Of London." I think it would be cool to have a Mystery Sheet that frames the coyotes as lycanthropes. Maybe a way to work in Mimic if you're short on ingredients.
PeterBB:
Quote from: C. Edwards on April 08, 2012, 11:22:22 PM
Hey, just want to say that I really dig your concept!
Good to hear! :)
Quote
The Mystery Sheet idea is interesting, is that something from Dirty Secrets?
No, that one's mine. It obviously is inspired by a variety of things: AW playbooks, the Dirty Secrets multiple-GM idea, and I'm sure plenty more. But I don't know of anything that does something quite like this.
Quote
The first thing I thought of when I read your title was "Oh, maybe that's an alternate take on Werewolves Of London." I think it would be cool to have a Mystery Sheet that frames the coyotes as lycanthropes. Maybe a way to work in Mimic if you're short on ingredients.
Yeah, I definitely think that should be at least a possibility. I'm considering either a "coyotes that act like people" or "people that act like coyotes" sheet.
Nathan P.:
I dunno if this came up in your research, but cool (I think, anyway) thing about coyotes in Chicago is that they're being used in a study on their urban behavior, and/or to control the rat population. A lot of them are tagged and tracked by the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Here's a news story! http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/chicago-using-gps-collared-coyotes-to-control-rodents.html
For your Mystery Sheets, some kind of relationship to pest control (giant rats, coyote's that have been "turned", etc) or the bureaucratic machinery of the city could be cool.
PeterBB:
Quote from: Nathan P. on April 09, 2012, 06:49:42 AM
I dunno if this came up in your research, but cool (I think, anyway) thing about coyotes in Chicago is that they're being used in a study on their urban behavior, and/or to control the rat population. A lot of them are tagged and tracked by the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Here's a news story! http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/chicago-using-gps-collared-coyotes-to-control-rodents.html
For your Mystery Sheets, some kind of relationship to pest control (giant rats, coyote's that have been "turned", etc) or the bureaucratic machinery of the city could be cool.
Interesting idea! Thanks! :)
On the dice mechanic: I've been further pondering what I want it to actually do for me, and I'm starting to consider making the GM/player reversal I have going even more dramatic. Why not give the Mystery players something like Apocalypse World moves? "When you want to disorient Alex and cause her to get lost, roll 2d6..."
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page