The Next Prospectus

[subplotkudzu]

Here's what I sent out to my players last month - it was a new configuration of my player group (since 4 players had dropped out, 4 had returns and 4 peeled off to continue the Emirikol game).

If you're getting this, it's because I think you're interested and available for a monthly role-playing game starting in August and running for about 6-9 months. (If you're not, please let me know - 6 players is a little high for me in any event, so I won't feel insulted...).

Before I start crafting a prospectus, I'd like to ask a few questions about what you’d like to play so I can narrow the field a little. Please rank these in your order of interest, but don't tell me you have no preferences: that does me no good.

1) What genre would you like to play in:
a) Action Hero/Pulp
b) Horror
c) Fantasy
d) Super Hero
e) Science Fiction

2) How heavy should the genre elements/wacky stuff be?
a) Barely noticeable. For example, a pulp game of reporters and PIs working against mobsters and corrupt government.
b) Present, but not potent. For example, the Catholic interdiction unit hunting serial killers who are possessed by Deadly Sins. (the problem isn't the spirit, it's the serial killing....)
c) Noticeable and effective. For example, Italian dandies and sellswords in a world with healing, divination and risky monster summoning magic.
d) Present and Powerful: a team of supers, each the hero of their own city, who together can hold off alien invasions.
e) Omnipresent and powerful: for example, your warp drive runs on handwavium, producing pure narrativium radiation, with a med lab that can heal nearly anything and a ships gun that can shoot through planets.

3) What time period/setting
a) Invented world (not set on Earth & Earth doesn't exist)
b) Earth Historical/Distant Past (ice age through 1500's)
c) Earth Historical/near past (1500-2000)
d) Earth Present/near future (2000-2100; now or close enough to now that culture & tech are comprehensible)
e) Earth Future/far future (? tech as magic, culture drastically changed)

4) What's the mood:
a) Highly optimistic and fun loving
b) the good end happily, the bad, unhappily - that is the purpose of fiction.
c) things generally work out, but not without some effort.
d) things generally don't work out - it takes a lot of effort for a tie, extreme sacrifices for a win.
e) dystopian cynicism: basically, you're fucked. Try to scratch out whatever you can.

5) What sort of challenges do you want to face?
a) all mystery/puzzle with no combat
b) mostly mystery/puzzle with little combat
c) an equal balance of puzzles and combat
d) little by way of mysteries with significant combat
e) fight! fight! fight!

The results were interesting.
1) The concensus was strongly for a fantasy setting, with Science Fiction being the next choice for most players. evynrude  and ashacat  were for even more optimistic.

5) Everyone but everyone wanted an equal mix of puzzles and combat. Before people ask, to my mind most role playing (other than general in character banter) falls under puzzles - politics, mysteries and diplomacy are all about piecing toghether the mysteries and puzzles of what make other people tick and how you can work with them or against them. I don't want to put a scaling vote on in haracter chatter, as the players will either get into it personally or not.

More to come.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That would be a very difficult format to me. The answers to one question may condition the answers to another. For example, I might like best a supers campaign with a near future setting, but next best a fantasy campaign in an invented world.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

My original thought had been asking everyone for just one response to each question, so yours would have been Supers Near Future and that would be that. The idea was to get some feedback on players for what they wanted to see. The Evynrude responses by ranking them, and I realized that would give me both that result and an interesting snapshot of some of their likes and dislikes.

This was an attempt on my part to both get to know the player group a little more (as one of the players has just returned after 8 years and another two are people I've only run in one campaign) and to get them to think a little more about the process I use for creating campaigns. I doubt I will use this again because a) I've already gathered the information I need and b) the tendency of this sort of ranking to push to the common middle of gaming, what with balanced challenge invented world fantasy being D&D, rather than anything more exotic that I'd like to run.