Snowy Mountain Syndrome

[Jason Petrasko]

Ingredients: Doctor, Lantern, Coyote, Mimic
Theme: Last Chance

So right, like I totally took the title from a short story in the Haruhi franchise. I doubt Tanigawa will sue though.

Snowy Mountain Syndrome

Its late in 1811 when your wagon train is forced to head up the mountain sides somewhere in the Oregon country's cascade mountains to avoid a particularly nasty storm, or at least that is what your scout and mountain man has told you. Now you try in a vain and futile way to take the load of furs and group of settlers through these mountain woods. The goal: to reach Fort Astoria where the Pacific Fur Company's ship Tonquin is waiting for you, payment on delivery. That's when the storm turns north and the snow traps you there in dense woods of evergreens with only the howls of the coyote to pierce the harrowing sound of the wind. After the first day, you find the smoldering remains of one of your folk, only no one is missing.

Under flickering lantern light the doctor asks his strange companion, the native turned white man, why he has tears in his eyes. His answer frightens you all: "One of us is the Coyote Spirit. One of us is a murdering trickster god, trying to do anything to return to the world in human form. We can't let it." Its the impossible words of a mad man, or so you all thought that second day. However, now its the fifth day and stranger things keep happening. Surely this is your last chance to escape this madness and return to the world of the sane, if only the snow wasn't so deep and your feet weren't so cold...

Ok, so I think I have a solid idea, now its a matter of like just making the game work. Its going to be a pre-established mystery, so its only playable once unless you want to create an alternate ending. The character that has been killed and replaced will be predetermined, along with a few other elements of the mystery.

More to come as I progress.

[jackson_tegu]

DRIPPING

WITH

TERROR.

[BlazmoIntoWowee]

Sounds like a fantastic seed.  Could be amazingly atmospheric.

[UserClone]

I LOVE these kinds of games, and the setting you've chosen is FANTASTIC. I think this is probably my favorite combination of Coyote and Mimic so far, but be careful not to just leave Doctor and Lantern as weakly represented as they currently are (or else use one or two of your random threads to shore up the missing ingredient(s)). I like what I'm reading. Get to work! :)

[mcdaldno]

I agree that Coyote and Mimic are spot on here, but Doctor and Lantern run the risk of being "just colour" in this scenario.

1.) What were your four random threads? Did any of them have mechanical or structural ideas that you could steal for this awesome scenario?

2.) Why is the Coyote Spirit a pre-determined character in a pre-determined mystery? There are a number of games that randomize who the betrayer is, and they function really well - Battlestar Galactica (the board game), Shadows over Camelot (the board game), The Mountain Witch (well, it has "Dark Fates"), etc. Having that be randomly generated could allow players to create some awesome mysteries themselves.

[Jason Petrasko]

Jackson, clearly yes. The mere thought of the game has already broke your brain. Not that anyone was surprised! :D

Blazmo, thanks! I spent a few hours reading about historic Oregon and the atmospheric setup just kind of fell into place!

UserClone, if you saw my random threads, you would have died inside. I personally threw up for an hour and then spent the next cursing the Forge. Then I erased those bastard links forever and decided to press on without them. I never did personally get much constructive feedback on the Forge...

mcdaldno, see above for the answer to #1. I like the ideas of #2, but isn't this all about Last Chance? Walton comes out and says: Design your game like its meant to be played only once. That sure sounds like an established mystery and the depth it can offer is warranted. I dunno, I've been fighting with this since I started narrowing down my ideas.

Now, to offer a further glimpse into Snowy Mountain Syndrome such that the fears about Doctor and Lantern may be pushed aside!

-----

As you play Snowy Mountain Syndrome, you must abide by a few rules when creating your fiction. These are called the game's precepts:

• Scenes always take place in the absence of light. During the day the group is trying and failing to escape their wooded, snowy mountain prison. This isn't a game about their failure.
• During each scene, one character will hold the lantern. This player of this character has special fictional abilities in that scene and responsibilities. The lantern bearer cast light upon the mysteries of the situation, and they are the driving force leading each scene.
• On day six, when you start play, the doctor has also gone missing. He is the oldest and most respected of the group at large. Players may make their characters take a moment  to recall something meaningful they shared with the doctor at some point. When they do so, they can let another character recover their wits.

-----

[UserClone]

Lovely! Both key words give you special powers within the fiction, so that wraps up that concern neatly!

[jackson_tegu]

Hey there Jason.

I wanted to be a conflicting voice to what mcdaldno said above - i think it's totally choice to hand people a scenario & then they'll play it. If, later, you want to revise it and add a "this is how you make your own scenario" thing, cool, but totally not necessary for a game chef entry, or a game. And, as you point out - the point in this situation is for people to play it once.

Also, the fact that the Forge threads were disappointing to you, or showed an example of humans treating one another poorly... i mean, THAT's what that thread is about. So if you want to incorporate "terrible communication", "talking down to a hopeful new arrival", or "academic posturing in a niche field of interest" into your game, well, you can count those threads as being really relevant to your game. As i like to say, Let's get meta.

Also, if you want to go ahead with the four ingredients and you feel that they're serving you, thumbs up.

[UserClone]

I definitely agree that one single scenario is the way to go with this year's theme. You certainly can only play it once meaningfully.

[Jason Petrasko]

I'm actually going to turn that on its head a bit, because I do like some randomness. So imagine there is a page of slips/tokens to pull out and cut up with numbers from one to twenty. Then you take the events in random order each game, and since different end events are in the shuffle, you reach a random end of the provided ones. :D

[Jason Petrasko]

Struggling a bit to define the 12 character roles available for play, so far I have this but some are uncertain: The Mountain Man, The Aging Pioneer, The Brash Gunman, The Understanding Native, The Struggling  Merchant, The Wealthy Wife, The Curious Daughter, The Retired Sheriff, The Thoughtful Boy, The Eccentric Banker, The Quiet Stranger, and The Odd Foreigner.

[BlazmoIntoWowee]

That doesn't sound too much like struggling; sounds like fruitful creativity to me.

[Jason Petrasko]

The struggle is more time related, since my ideas for the game keep expanding. I need to prune this tree soon before I miss the deadline entirely. I'm looking at scaling back the character definitions already (the character details) and possibly the twenty scene cues somewhat. Its hard to gauge how much one can just done in a week and all that.

[Jason Petrasko]

woooo

draft text is almost written, though its rough!

now I just need History worksheets, Character definitions, and Scene cues!

current pdf for your reading pleasure: http://wishray.com/sms/sms%20draft%20one.pdf

I'm pretty damn excited, its shaped up into quite a game. Though, keeping it under 3k words will be serious work.

[DevP]

Word count: it pains me to say it because the prose is really nice. But: for a GC draft, you may well replace some prose with a less verbose version if you're way over. (Maybe have a GC and Verbose edition both available, as per the Judge's whim.) In any case, the prose works for me. I'm impressed that, in this short time, you have a text that is looking to be legible by non-gamers.

I'm excited to see the individual characters and presumably some tables that will be rolled on to generate scenes. The game works with a smaller number of players, correct? Perhaps only having a few character roles ready for the GC edition is a worthwhile limitation.