[Like moths...] (not) random ramblings.

Ok, so Arthur asked me to put this thread up to, if I may quote, "see how much we suck" ;)

Few things about the background: we were supposed to pitch two games, both closer to board games concept than a classic RPG. Time and random encounters during this week stopped us at the first. Ending and publishing a game with both of us travelling in opposite directions is quite an experience, especially with the gruesome "connection lost" messages using mobile online access.

But we made it.

The high concept was to try and find something different form the popular gamechefs story-focused games, with easy set-up ("I'm lazy..."), quite cheerful ("Me bash skulls! With tentacles!") and with heavy dice usage ("Real men roll dice, 83% scientists agree on that fact.").
So we started to bash ideas against each other trying to find the most innovative usage of every ingredient (don't have the links on this PC, will add them later).
Decried to use: Law Sharks ("I want to bite things. Ditch the law.") and One-Shot Mechanic ("Not much of combat campaign potential if you can't heal, eh?") from the random pool and Lamp ("*zaaaaap* "Stupid moth...hey, what if...") along with Doctor ("Something original... Moreau! YES!"). We were especially proud about the Moreau thing, thought its *sooooo* unique ("reality showed that it was not...").
We wanted a convention/party game we decided to throw out the standard character sheet and focus on handouts (dice) as statistics, but since I am addicted to FATE it had to have some kind of aspects - hence strengths/weakness mechanic.
To go along with the theme, Arthur proposed that sadistic ending ("Hey, its meant to be played once. Who will want to play another game if they always die in the end?") and the short, fast paced game-play ("If we are playing during apocalypse, we will not have time to have deep script-like scenarios and long, nostalgic descriptions...").

The mechanics is based on HOPE principle ("I think it should work... Probably... I hope...") but I ran some tests and it looks promising. It is supposed to be fast, deadly and simple enough to explain during those 15 minutes we have, till that asteroid strikes our planet.

How we see it "finished"? Hmm though question: in a standard poker sized box, with some small d6/d10s along with strengths and weakness illustrated cards ("We some graphics! What do you mean we don't have time?! You still have 10 more minutes! A game is not real without at least ONE image! Really...? You took a public domain light-bulb pic and make it into a b/w photo? Smooth... Geez").

So that's for now, if you have some questions/remarks feel free to post them and we will try to find or make-up answers :)

Simon 'quad' Gosek along with ("creation quotes from...") Arthur 'sir Artus' Cnotalski.