Hello, I made a post over in "Introductions" but GDW is the thing that made me finally post after years so I thought "Damnit, just get on with it!" and decided to put the idea out there beyond my little circle.
I've strong-armed my sister who works in art direction and general computer graphic thingamabobs into doing a bit of a NaNoWriMo in Game Design. Except, our deadline is Sept. 1st. I started work March 10th.
I've stolen the same format Mr. Tad used to try and condense things without mechanics.
Inspiration"Fantastic" Media: Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa: Valley Of The Wind, Spirited Away (Pretty much everything Miyazaki).
Video Games: Shadow Of The Colossus, Ico, & Majora's Mask
Bits of: Neil Gaiman, Tim Powers, Patrick Rothfuss
TTRPGs: Annalise, Polaris, 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars, Apocalypse World, Fate, Misspent Youth.
The PitchYou are Chosen. You are young and impressionable. You are inextricably tied to Forces that shape destiny and reality. This relationship with things you cannot understand marks you to undertake the Quest. You and those like you are to encounter the Beasts. You are the only ones who can, the only ones who meet the fantastic head on. You can sink yourself into the overwhelming ocean that is the Force that branded you and ask for power. Ask for the gifts you need to survive another encounter, to twist and bend the laws of the universe, but every time you come back, there is a little less of you and a little more of It, until maybe none of you comes back at all.
ConceptNo setting. Instead, there are a "Things That Are Always True". It's a collaborative game, where the first session is character and world creation. A brief outline of these things are:
The World - Is besieged by the Beasts and in peril.
- Is a place where the mundane is intruded upon by the Fantastic.
- Is worked and shaped by the unseen Forces.
- Cannot truly comprehend the Chosen's Quest.
The Chosen- Are the only thing that can stand between the Beasts and the World.
- Know that their quest is lifelong and inescapable.
- Are inextricably bound to the Forces of the world.
- Are sometimes welcome, sometimes hated, and sometimes tolerated by the World, but never allowed to settle down with them
Thematic GoalsI think it was Caleb that said that the goal of his game was in some ways "to rescue the dungeon crawl from DnD". I could be wrong, but whoever it was, it got me to understand what it is that I wanted my game to really focus on. The game is about rescuing the Hero's Journey from, well, the Hero's Journey.
I want to skip loot, it's not interesting. I want to mostly skip the fights with mooks, it's not interesting. I want to mostly fast forward the trudge down the road to the dragon's den. I want to get to the Dragon. In between there, the only thing that is important is whether a Scene matters enough to discover something about your character or change them. It's about whether facing things that no one understands, is willing to face, or sometimes even believes in is worth it, and whether you are willing to lose control over your identity to overcome them.
Thematically, the game is a Bildungsroman. Secretly, it's about being a teenager and growing up. This amounts to the same thing, but people are likely not to notice the latter.
Design GoalsEnforce the sense that your party, and in turn, only other Chosen like you can be relied on and trusted to understand you. Through Bond Scenes, Flashbacks, etc.
Breathe life into "Myth Creation" where it is fun to take turns crafting and inserting surreal and fantastic elements into a mundane world.
Make the game tell the same thematic story in every world people can come up with.
I've attempted so far playstests with a "Where The Wild Things Are" type of setting, a Tribal Hero's Journey a la Zelda and Shadow of the Colossus, and a Victorian Urban Fantasy with Demons & Angels with some success.
Make people care about their characters enough that they are interested in developing them from "Guy with Sword" like every Game Protagonist ever to find out why they would do this and who they would do this for.
Make players okay with not necessarily character death, but losing control of their character (mechanically the same thing) so long as the closure to the character's story is satisfying.
SystemI'm not making a system, because I'm not a masochist (mostly just cowardly) and because mechanics make my head hurt. My system is a version of Fate Accelerated Edition + Mechanics Structures The Narrative via Apocalypse World with my own bits of system thrown in to handle tapping into Forces, generating Beasts and Myths, and the Journey.
Conclusion & Personal ConvictionThis is a focused game, there is no place for someone who wants to play a Skyrim-type Sandbox. Like in Polaris, it is very likely that your character will lose control or die unrecognized and with little fanfare. Make that okay, make it that if they survive and walk into the sunset at the end of the game that their story is told. Make encounters with the Beasts about characters. Make the party not just a group that stays together, but one that wants to.
Now that I've dipped my toes in, there's no reason to not make this an actual thing. I'll be coming back and giving my thoughts on other people's ideas (if that's okay), and will try my best with mechanics (mostly on the side of LESS MATH!). From reading the thread, everyone's really thoughtful so I look forward to getting your ideas as well.
