So, my current project, a way off being playable, has a working title of Enlightenment and Entropy. It's a game about people and cities. Its setting is a decaying, enlightenment era, fantasy city of spires and squallor, where the protagonists emotions impact reality. Think Rats & Gargoyles meets Morecock via China Mieville.
The character sheet is a map of the city. You assign your four stats to neighbourhoods, and their fate is linked to together. Your characters also have emotional traits, some negative, some positive. So do city areas. Players are pushing for one of the cosmic forces to reach its trigger point, and thereby define the setting's future.
Currently scene framing will be handled by taking turns to choose one of the following types of scenes (there's a definite Contenders/Burning Empires influence here). Each type influences the situation in a slightly different way.
Vignettes - A piece of colour about the city, based on two regions. When it's over one of those region goes up, one down, impacting characters tied to them.
Antagonist Scene - Define an antagonist in a cut scene. Give them a trait based on it and modify their value up or down.
Strife Scene - Conflict of some kind, you have to bid a trait and choose a region to base it in. "I'll have a Spire scene about my pain". If you win a conflict you can move a trait, and increment a region. If you lose, you lose the trait and decrement the region.
So what's the question here? Well, it's two parts, firstly antagonist scenes are the least defined. I'm wondering whether to tie them in elsewhere more as well and would appreciate any suggestions. Secondly, I'd be interested in opinions on the current three types, and whether anything seems absent in this scheme.
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Nice idea Matt. Are the
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Tue, 23/01/2007 - 23:50.
Nice idea Matt. Are the characters big political leaders pushing their agenda or ordinary blokes on the street? The reason I ask this is I think, from the little you have posted, that it ties in to your question about antagonists. If the antagonists are 'figures' in society then you could tie their personal conflict directly to your mechanics for city regions.
Vignettes seem good, they wil allow you to form the city as you go. Strife again comes back to the question of who your characters are. If they are average joes then their individual struggle is less likely to impact on a region. If they are more important then there is obviously going to be affect.
Suggestion: Could the players control a movement, one of the groups pushing for their way with these cosmic forces, and an individual character within that movement. This would give both points of view from the 'ground' rather than the city view. Even better idea, what if each player controlled a movement and also an individual in another player's movement. Could provide for some interesting table politics.
Hope I got the right end of the stick.
Cheers
Iain
Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG
http://www.contestedground.co.uk
Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'
http://www.iainmcallister.co.uk
I should probably post more detail
Submitted by Matt on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 00:41.
Whatever happens character actions will have impact the city, that's the core of the game: how do people affect the city and the city affect the people.
Their actions, no matter how small, send ripples through the city. So you might be playing a petty sneak thief, but if your Entropy stat is tied to the Spire, you'd better not get corrupted...
-Matt
Realms Publishing
This is fascinating. It
Submitted by Graham W on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 12:05.
This is fascinating. It reminds me slightly of Mark Valliantos' Game Chef entry Capital of the Eternal Century.
How does it all fit together? How do the Antagonists relate to the Conflicts? What are the cosmic forces: do I need to frame my Conflicts around them in some way? There's all these nice elements, but I'm not quite seeing how they fit together.
And these neighbourhoods: do we actually have a map of them in front of us? Because I'd like that.
Graham
I'll second Iain's request
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 12:14.
I'll second Iain's request for more information about what the players do!
It sounds very interesting though - I'm all for using maps in games.
Could you tie an antagonist to a neighbourhood too, representing strife in that area or acting as a figure-head/avatar to the area?
Lots of queries, so I'll
Submitted by Matt on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 12:26.
Lots of queries, so I'll post some more detail tonight. A few things I can answer without my notes:
And these neighbourhoods: do we actually have a map of them in front of us? Because I'd like that.
Yep, the regions on the map are right in front of you and are your character sheet.
The cosmic forces are the Enlightenment and Entropy of the title. Broadly speaking negative and positive emotional energy made manifest via the cities convoluted geomancy. They're also two of the stats, so each gets tied to a region, some regions will cross with other PCs thus creating a dynamic of different regions changing having different impacts on each PC.
Antagonists will be who you are in conflict with during strife (though it may be PCs too). so maybe I need to define the antagonist scenes more in terms of what kind of antagonism they provide and to whom...
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Just to note
Submitted by Matt on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 22:46.
I've uploaded some very hasty notes as a PDF so people have more of an idea of what I'm envisioning.
-Matt
Realms Publishing