Miscellaneous Debris

Okay, so we have a Skirmish Game, Extra Terrae Crepusculum, or ETC for short. Nevermind the mechanics of that for now. (One of the reasons I am typing this now is it's killing me that we are so close to releasing our penultimate beta, and we need to do just a couple more things. I have to do something while I wait for the last bits of layout to fall in place.)

The question is how to turn it into an RPG. Note that the Skirmish Game does furnish simple stats for individual characters as well as grunts, and combined withoutr miniature line, the Skirmish Game furnishes us with a distinct NPC for every miniature n the Cunrch-Waffle line.

The Twilight World:

- features characters from all over different worlds (Elves, Orcs, Ogres, yes, but also African Warriors, American Indians, and even Polynesians).

- is of uncertain nature. Most characters arrive by means of a long journey wherein they become lost. What most notice is that the sun doesn't quite set and they become lost while travelling to whatever destination they had in mind. So, where are they? Nobody really knows. Could be an alternative universe. Could be the land of the dea. Could be the real world, could be an illusion, or a dream. No-one knows.

- The world experiences a lot of scarcity. There are not enough resources to allow all to live comfortably.

- There are magical means of changing the world, going home, ending the illusion, or perhaps opening the Twlight World the sunlight and extending its resources.

- There is conflict over what to use the magic for. In the Skirmish Game this furnishes simple explanations for what they are fighting about. In the RPG, the plotline can be more nuanced.

The prospect of an RPG version of ETC opens 3 directions for game development:

1) Mechanics for rolling up characters from scratch and developing them. This is the least intersting, and I'm not worried about it at present.

2) The prospects for World Building. How do you set up an ETC campaign., and the prospects for running an ETC campaign and generating a plot worth resolving.

3) A system for developing personalities for the characters. What are their loyalties, attachments, phobias, pet peeves, etc. How complicated we want to make this is up in the air. So, is the question of whether or not we want to tie this to definite stat consequences (such as bonuses for fighting a hated enemy or penalties for facing a fear, losing a friend, etc.)

Premise 1, World as Will and Representation. The world is unstable and its nature inddeterminate. It's not just that the characters don't KNOW the nature of the world, it's nature is in some sense at stake in the plot.

Premise 2, Eternal Return. There is no established setting. Each ETC Campaign sees the creation of the Twilight World anew. It is different each time and its resolution changes from campaign to campaign.

Premise 3, Fog of War, Hell! Fog of Peace! Characters begin in a narrow portion of the new ETC setting. They arrive confused and disoriented. They know little about the setting beyond their immediate perceptions, and dreamlike, do not think to see mountains that may or may not be there. NPCs do not really think to tell them what's over the next hill, because that hasn't been created yet and until the story decides to tak ethem that direction, no-one thinks about it anyway.

Premise 4, Everything is Allowed. Virtually anything can arrive in the Twilight World. For now it is a fantasy setting, so guns and lazers, etc. are out. But the variety of fantasy creatures and characters will be as broad as we can make it.

So, here is what I am thinking (and again this is just brainstorming).

GMing is shared. Each player controls some portion of the world and a selection of NPCs. Who runs the game at any given moment depends on what the characters are doing at any given time. Toward this end, we need 2 things:

1) A system for modular map building. Not too big a deal here, but perhaps we specify a small pallet of items that can be dropped into a map grid. Characters begin at the intersection of 3 or 4 grids and go where they please. Depending on where they go, a different GM takes over.

2) We need a system for designing plots that take characters through different sections of the world and into the territories of different GMs.

E.g. the fate of the world wil be determined by different magical McGuffins. Each of the McGuffins is under the control of a different player who will need to GM the games that head into his section. Alternatively, the fate of teh world rests in the hands of NPCs that must be persuaded to help and each of the players runs a different key NPC.

The hard part of this is enabling the seeding of one phase of the plot while in another. If one guy is GMing, we need a means of hinting at the next point which doesn't cause conflict between the GMs or spoil the surprise for the current GM (such as by telling him what the real hint needs to be) or the other players (such as by having the next GM take over for a minute and say something that MIGHT be important, but we're not sure right ...wink).

It might be a question of developing a cache of possible plotlines which accomplish this and letting individual groups address it as they please.

That's as far as I've thought of it for the moment, at least what merits putting to pape/

Heh...

The Penultimate Beta

Brimshack wrote:...GMing is shared. Each player controls some portion of the world and a selection of NPCs. Who runs the game at any given moment depends on what the characters are doing at any given time. Toward this end, we need 2 things:

1) A system for modular map building. Not too big a deal here, but perhaps we specify a small pallet of items that can be dropped into a map grid. Characters begin at the intersection of 3 or 4 grids and go where they please. Depending on where they go, a different GM takes over.

2) We need a system for designing plots that take characters through different sections of the world and into the territories of different GMs.

...

Have you looked at the Cidri world concept in The Fantasy Trip? It might have some of what your looking for, just not the plot thread generation and interconnection aspects. This plot thread idea of yours sounds very interesting and applicable to almost any system.

Thank you Xanther, we'll have a look at the Cidri concept.

We've used the idea for dividing up a plot like that in some of our D&D campaigns lately. It just occured to me it would work even better with a kind of goofy dream-world concept. So, I may give that a shot.