Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2010-12-05 04:26 pm
subplotkudzu) wrote2010-12-05 04:26 pm
Entry tags:
Game Prospectus 2012 (yes, 2012)
I just sent out the prospectus to my play group for 2012. For those of you who want to play along at home, players have 20 points to split between the following 10 campaigns. If you give something a 0 it means that you would rather not play next year than play in this campaign. Scoring of 1+ plus means you are willing to ‘buy into’ the campaign concept; more points indicating greater interest. Each campaign has some color text, followed by a description of how I expect the campaign to run in terms of structure, feel and amount of initiative I expect the players to show in shaping the direction of the campaign.
The game engine will be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as it has a great set of mechanics for a powerful titular character being aided by less powerful but with equal amount of spotlight time companions. I expect the non-heir PCs to be lesser Sparks, sentient clanks, constructs, con men, soldiers or heaven knows what else. As with all melodrama, pathos, romance and hatred will all be amped up to 10, but the humor meter goes up to 11.
02) The Zorcerer’s Apprentices
The land of Zo is ruled over by the beneficent but mysterious Zorcerer, who is never seen to leave the castle of his emerald fortress. This year he has selected a group of citizens from across the four realms to make a grand tour of Zo in his name and report their findings. The citizens so selected were apparently chosen at random, with each laboring under a curse or burden that would apparently make the assigned task more difficult. But the Zorcerer works in mysterious ways, and one can only suspect that there is more here than meets the eye.
This is a fairy tale game using the Zorcerer of Zo setting and mechanics. The tone is upbeat, and darkness will be leavened either with humor or with the ultimate victory of all that is moral and just. Play will be semi-episodic, with each session being the apprentices' entry into a new community facing a problem that they will resolve, and in so doing learn more about themselves and their own curses. I'm aiming for the resolution of all of the apprentices' personal problems by campaign's end.
The ZoZ rules are very narrative and relatively easy (even if they might a little difficult to grasp by those used to a more realistic simulation). Characters can be anything in the Fairy Tale style – lonely princesses, neglected stepchildren with animal friends, talking animals (anthropomorphic or not), clockwork men, noble brigands, plucky tailors, lucky seventh sons, and so on. The only campaign rule is the inclusion of a curse or other background detail that must be overcome.
03) At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Magic is the ability to rewrite the world to your will. Unfortunately, on the grand scheme you have to compete with the will of everyone else, and everyone else has been convinced that there is no wild magic left. The Technocracy holds sway, and whatever good they did for humanity is now outweighed by the oppressive rigidity they now embrace. By their calculations their control becomes absolute in a decade and the world is reduced to pure soulless clockwork precision. Can you representatives of scattered old and new magical traditions forge a new paradigm for humanity before it’s too late?
This is a Mage: the Ascension game where I'm presenting the default conflict front and center. We're dispensing with all the time of your PCs being lowly apprentices, and all the time of being on the run from the Technocracy, and opening things with the decision to band together and strike back. The method of striking back is up to you, but if this is selected I will be working up some detailed information on each magical tradition, what their operating rules are, things their elders think might work, and just for balance, what the world would look like if this tradition were in the Technocracy's shoes right now.
The base game engine for this is Storyteller (familiar to anyone who has played Vampire: the Masquerade and various other systems), where I'll be using a lot of default successes and minimal rolling. The characters should be flexible, powerful and all committed to working together (albeit with a little friction: possibly we could have one character who is on the knife's edge of either redemption or betrayal, but not one who will stymie the group's actions through obstructionism because that gets boring real quick). The plan should be audacious - there is no room for incrementalism! - and I'll pace the story to see it completed by year's end.
04) Mech and Matrimony
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Mecha must be in want of a wife. Welcome to the world of Chancery, a colony world of the Earth Parliament. With the crash of hyperspace, Chancery developed into a cluster of powerful nation states that maintained their mecha (i.e. giant robots) and colonies under their gentle dominion. The greatest of the nation states is Albion, whose island home shields it from its continental rivals. Troynavant, most commonly known as "the Town", is Albion's political, industrial and financial center, which makes it the center of the world. There young women of eligible age strive to find husbands with suitable fortunes (and Mecha) to marry, while honing their skills in honor duels with other families and the occasional small colonial war.
This game's goal is getting married. Heroines hope for love, but must consider their status and limited options, or risk spinsterhood, penury or positions as a governess. The trick is finding a good husband and getting access to his family's giant robot (clearing the way for your younger sister or brother's wife to claim your family's). Mech & Matrimony has three themes: first is Obligation. Mech pilots hold the honor of their family line and are bound by a web of social restrictions, even in combat: if you reduce a sneering provocateur to smoking patch on the ground then you cost your family its mech, and therefore everything. Second is Sacrifice: pilots are expected to sacrifice things, perhaps even true love, for their family's fortune and honor. Finally, Suitors have Secrets. Our Heroines don't have past scandals (to be properly Austinian their disadvantage is that they are poor, and must avoid scandal). Few of their suitors, however, will be all that they appear to be. Discerning those with pride in the best sense from those who are the worst of libertines is the game's mystery aspect.
I am building a unique set of rules for this campaign, similar to those I built for Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw, with the added aspects of Scandal Points and sacrificing character aspects to avoid truly negative repercussions. There will be no rules for non-Mech combat, as that is something proper women just will not do. There will be rules for cutting remarks, gossip and other social combat. And, of course, for giant robot battles (which are intended on a certain level to give the players a stress outlet from all of the chafing social restrictions under which their characters suffer - though even Mech combat has firm social rules).
05) I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In
Christmas Eve, 2012 astronomers spotted a trio of comets moving past the orbit of Saturn…which then executes a turn under their own power. They weren't comets. Now in the face of incoming alien ships we follow a scattered handful of humanity coming to grips with man's lack of uniqueness, and possible extinction.
A classic alien invasion tale in the line of War of the Worlds, V, Footfall and Independence Day (though hopefully not as goofy as Mars Attacks - I'm not aiming for anything that silly), where we track the alien's appearance, the initial attacks and hopefully the development of a successful human resistance. Simultaneously we watch how individual humans handle their personal relationships in the face of this worldwide threat. The PCs can be anyone from anywhere on the planet, as long as we can work out some relationship web as to how all of them are, or can be, connected to each other.
I don't know what I'll be using for a game system for this yet, but Basic Role Playing, the engine for Call of Cthulhu, is a good bet. There's also a chance we'll have primary and secondary characters to give us a broad enough character population for the right sense of community, melodrama and worldwide scope.
06) Gaslamp Intrigue
"In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all out war, Mad Science rules the World…with mixed success." Raised by foster parents the true heir of a noble line struggles to evade the authorities long enough to clear the family name. The child of current emperor seeks to undermine his tyrannical rule. A secret Spark amongst the decadent nobility, identity hidden behind a metal mask, tries to forge a conspiracy of barons and dukes. Hearing voices of madness or the divine, a young spark is reforming the Knights Hospitaller, whose continent wide reputation for medicine and mercy makes them the enemy of tyrants everywhere. All of these Sparks, and more, struggle to understand the mysteries, decisions, mistakes and powers of their ancestors. Perhaps they can do so - or at least use their comrades' expertise and naiveté to their own advantage….
The second Girl Genius option, where the player characters are all young Sparks (or their equals) exerting their influence over their parents machinations. In other words the PCs are analogs to Agatha, Gilgamesh, Othar and Tarvek. Again the PCs are NOT actually Agatha and crew, and again if chosen I'll be polling the players as to campaign location. All the characters will be equivalent in power level, with their own henchmen and constructs, castles and power bases, pursuing their own goals and agendas. Some of the opposition in the game will come from other Player Characters due to confusion and outside manipulation, as well as real incompatible goals, but the PCs will, at least sporadically, be unified against some external threats. Like mom and dad.
The game engine will be Amber Diceless Roleplaying, modified for the powers in Girl Genius, with character created with a point auction. If you haven't played Amber before it really is diceless, but it works very well and is, in general, dirt simple in its mechanics.
07) IMTU Laertes
The Interstellar Merchant Trader - Unguilded Laertes is a space ship on the imperial rim, recently cut loose as part of an acrimonious settlement from the larger guild trader Odysseus. Laertes owner(s) have an open future in front of them and a handful of enemies behind them. They'll have to recruit a crew, pick a path to success - free trading, mercenary company, criminal enterprise, xenoarcheology, what have you - and forge a future on the jump lanes of the Terran Imperium.
This is pretty much a straight up Traveller game. Traveller is one of the oldest RPGs, heavily influenced by Niven's Known Space, Pournelle's CoDominion, Asmiov's Foundation and Anderson's Polesotechnic League. (Similar elements found their way into Babylon 5, Firefly and the smuggling exploits of Han Solo.) The core elements of the setting are an interstellar human empire physically linked by hyperspace Jump Drives, suffering a lack of instantaneous communication (so communication is only as fast as the fastest ship, giving it an age of sail feel), socially bound together by mandated terms of service for off world careers (so the general social norms of the empire are inculcated into anyone making serious use of the space lanes), and worried about the presence of functioning psionic powers amongst the population. I'm keeping all of that, but this is not set in the Classic Traveller Imperium. Your characters have all recently mustered out of one of these services after between 4 and 24 years of service and, armed with the skills learned in the service and a variety of mustering out benefits, have to start their post service lives.
The game mechanics will be close to Classic Traveller with some refinements culled from the last three decades of game design. If this is selected I'll be doing a decent amount of e-mailing with the player group to determine character types, the Laertes goals and what sort of prep-work I'll need to do: while they might take place in the same universe a mercenary company will run into very different challenges than a group of profiteering xeno-archaeologists, who would get to know different people than some Firefly-style free traders. We'll also develop a character relationship web to make sure that everyone has a feel for the other characters, since parts of the campaign will just be the group of PCs with few other people to talk to.
08) Dream Park: At the Core
Dream Park is the most advanced gaming site in the world, the best place for members of the International Fantasy Game Society (IFGS) to earn experience for their characters and themselves, because the intensity of play inside Dream Park is second to none. IFGS is the role playing organization of the future, supporting Live Action play with a massive special effects budget and a game master directing a single group through a puzzle adventure with the aid of complex computers and holograms, combining the best elements of LARPing, tabletop play and MMORPGs. You have been lucky enough to land a part in the first Dream Park game of the European game designer Theodore Bogucki, who betting a lot on his big break into the lucrative North American market. The game, "At the Core" is a three and a half day adventure in Gaming Area A, and if successful will net millions in movie rights, book tie ins and future runs. Everyone brings expectations into the park - they are looking to find love, save relationships, buttress their self worth, escape from their daily grind, or, for those experienced enough to be professional gamers, actual fame and fortune. Or espionage. Or vengeance.
This offering won't make sense unless you've read Dream Park by Niven & Barnes. So go read it. It's worth your time. To capture the feel of the book, the player characters are all Gamers, members of the IFGS who are attending a game in Dream Park. Those Gamers will be role-playing their Characters in a classic fantasy RPG adventure. That's right: it's a game within a game. The adventure, "At the Core" will be a classic old school gaming scenario where the Characters will have to figure out the societal, magical and diplomatic mysteries of a strange culture in a deadline/crisis situation. During the game the Gamers will have an opportunity to pursue personal goals, usually romantic or personal, but in the three Dream Park novels one of the players is actually engaged in corporate espionage of some sort, so the threat of that will be in the background.
The game mechanic for the Adventure will be a modified version of the Pacesetter system (if you're familiar with CHILL you know it) where I'll have a sheet of several hundred pre-rolled numbers so that the players don't have to touch the dice (to capture the feel of a MMORPG). The mechanic for the Gamers will be stripped down version of FUDGE for physical actions but generally diceless. I'm hoping to see a lot of personal sub plots and character plumbing between the Gamers. Each game session will likely represent one day in the park, so this is actually a 5 session campaign. If it works I'll have a second Dream Park scenario set up for a follow up, and if it doesn't work the group can vote on what to do for the rest of the year.
09) Blood, Love and Rhetoric
In the dark shadows of the world monsters lurk. You're one of them. At some point in the past you were selected by one of the Kindred, the secret vampire cabal that manipulates human politics, society and art and embraced, made one of them, made a monster. Now you are engaged in the outward struggles for status amongst the Kindred and the internal struggle to hold on to your humanity. Your emotions are more powerful, your rages terrifying, and the cursed beast inside you is concerned with nothing more than feeding and survival. You dance on the precipice in a beautiful, terrifying world. "Monsters we are, lest monsters we become."
This is a classic Vampire campaign, with the characters being vampires struggling to maintain their humanity. I'm aiming for the intent of the original rulebook, where the horror is personal rather than external, even as there are external threats. Unlike the Mage campaign above, the characters are going to start as relatively low ranking members of their clans, but the campaign will play out against a broader streak of 20th century politics, starting shortly after WWI and ending at the millennium. Obviously this means some significant time passage between sessions, so the play will be semi-episodic if only because of the arc of the campaign is so long. Major political upheavals are in store for the PCs' home city, and the depth to which you engage with them is up to individual characters and the coterie as a whole. I expect chunks of each session to be spotlight time on individual PCs pursuing their own agendas rather than constant teamwork.
The base game engine for this is Storyteller, and again I'll be using a lot of default successes and minimal rolling. The characters will be powerful compared to normal humans, growing more powerful as the game progresses, but still not the major players in Kindred society - for those familiar with the rules Generation is capped at 10 - so a certain degree of teamwork will be required for large victories.
10) 2012: Old Gods and Aliens
Super-human powers started appearing on 1/1/2000, and society is just beginning to catch up with the impact of those changes. Alas, it might not have time, as the end of the world is approaching: the ancient forces powering many of the worlds super-humans are pursuing their own agenda, extraterrestrial empires are launching incursions into the solar system, and the psychics are dreaming in Mayan as the calendar ticks down to zero. Can a band of the world's most powerful super-heroes separate the true threats from the menaces of the week, thread together the clues and save humanity, and perhaps the universe?
This is a year's worth of classic high-power super-team adventures along the line of the Avengers and the Justice League, with some team members only being members of the team (and hence have lots of romantic/personal growth sub plots) while others have adventures in their own books (and therefore carry in the baggage of personal rogues galleries and mysteries to the team). If you want characters can easily be "You With Powers" or you can build a character from scratch. The characters in general should have a magical or skill basis, but techno-heroes are not entirely beyond the realms of the possible.
Game system is either going to be Villains and Vigilantes or some unholy amalgamation of V&V and the Mayfair Exponential Game System (that powered the original DC Heroes game and is good for handling characters of ungodly high power levels). Jason, Kristen and Karen already have characters in this setting from a couple of one shots in 2010.
01) Gaslamp Melodrama
"In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all out war, Mad Science rules the World…with mixed success." Raised by foster parents the true heir of a noble line struggles to evade the authorities long enough to clear the family name of the charges of High Atrocities and Misdemeanors and thus reclaim title, lands and honor. Along the way the heir has recruited, constructed or rescued a small band of friends to assist in this fool's errand. Some of them may have parallel agendas, but all will forge bonds of friendship that only the most advance death ray could shatter. Unfortunately, the enemy has a bunch of death rays….
The game engine will be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as it has a great set of mechanics for a powerful titular character being aided by less powerful but with equal amount of spotlight time companions. I expect the non-heir PCs to be lesser Sparks, sentient clanks, constructs, con men, soldiers or heaven knows what else. As with all melodrama, pathos, romance and hatred will all be amped up to 10, but the humor meter goes up to 11.
02) The Zorcerer’s Apprentices
The land of Zo is ruled over by the beneficent but mysterious Zorcerer, who is never seen to leave the castle of his emerald fortress. This year he has selected a group of citizens from across the four realms to make a grand tour of Zo in his name and report their findings. The citizens so selected were apparently chosen at random, with each laboring under a curse or burden that would apparently make the assigned task more difficult. But the Zorcerer works in mysterious ways, and one can only suspect that there is more here than meets the eye.
This is a fairy tale game using the Zorcerer of Zo setting and mechanics. The tone is upbeat, and darkness will be leavened either with humor or with the ultimate victory of all that is moral and just. Play will be semi-episodic, with each session being the apprentices' entry into a new community facing a problem that they will resolve, and in so doing learn more about themselves and their own curses. I'm aiming for the resolution of all of the apprentices' personal problems by campaign's end.
The ZoZ rules are very narrative and relatively easy (even if they might a little difficult to grasp by those used to a more realistic simulation). Characters can be anything in the Fairy Tale style – lonely princesses, neglected stepchildren with animal friends, talking animals (anthropomorphic or not), clockwork men, noble brigands, plucky tailors, lucky seventh sons, and so on. The only campaign rule is the inclusion of a curse or other background detail that must be overcome.
03) At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Magic is the ability to rewrite the world to your will. Unfortunately, on the grand scheme you have to compete with the will of everyone else, and everyone else has been convinced that there is no wild magic left. The Technocracy holds sway, and whatever good they did for humanity is now outweighed by the oppressive rigidity they now embrace. By their calculations their control becomes absolute in a decade and the world is reduced to pure soulless clockwork precision. Can you representatives of scattered old and new magical traditions forge a new paradigm for humanity before it’s too late?
This is a Mage: the Ascension game where I'm presenting the default conflict front and center. We're dispensing with all the time of your PCs being lowly apprentices, and all the time of being on the run from the Technocracy, and opening things with the decision to band together and strike back. The method of striking back is up to you, but if this is selected I will be working up some detailed information on each magical tradition, what their operating rules are, things their elders think might work, and just for balance, what the world would look like if this tradition were in the Technocracy's shoes right now.
The base game engine for this is Storyteller (familiar to anyone who has played Vampire: the Masquerade and various other systems), where I'll be using a lot of default successes and minimal rolling. The characters should be flexible, powerful and all committed to working together (albeit with a little friction: possibly we could have one character who is on the knife's edge of either redemption or betrayal, but not one who will stymie the group's actions through obstructionism because that gets boring real quick). The plan should be audacious - there is no room for incrementalism! - and I'll pace the story to see it completed by year's end.
04) Mech and Matrimony
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Mecha must be in want of a wife. Welcome to the world of Chancery, a colony world of the Earth Parliament. With the crash of hyperspace, Chancery developed into a cluster of powerful nation states that maintained their mecha (i.e. giant robots) and colonies under their gentle dominion. The greatest of the nation states is Albion, whose island home shields it from its continental rivals. Troynavant, most commonly known as "the Town", is Albion's political, industrial and financial center, which makes it the center of the world. There young women of eligible age strive to find husbands with suitable fortunes (and Mecha) to marry, while honing their skills in honor duels with other families and the occasional small colonial war.
This game's goal is getting married. Heroines hope for love, but must consider their status and limited options, or risk spinsterhood, penury or positions as a governess. The trick is finding a good husband and getting access to his family's giant robot (clearing the way for your younger sister or brother's wife to claim your family's). Mech & Matrimony has three themes: first is Obligation. Mech pilots hold the honor of their family line and are bound by a web of social restrictions, even in combat: if you reduce a sneering provocateur to smoking patch on the ground then you cost your family its mech, and therefore everything. Second is Sacrifice: pilots are expected to sacrifice things, perhaps even true love, for their family's fortune and honor. Finally, Suitors have Secrets. Our Heroines don't have past scandals (to be properly Austinian their disadvantage is that they are poor, and must avoid scandal). Few of their suitors, however, will be all that they appear to be. Discerning those with pride in the best sense from those who are the worst of libertines is the game's mystery aspect.
I am building a unique set of rules for this campaign, similar to those I built for Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw, with the added aspects of Scandal Points and sacrificing character aspects to avoid truly negative repercussions. There will be no rules for non-Mech combat, as that is something proper women just will not do. There will be rules for cutting remarks, gossip and other social combat. And, of course, for giant robot battles (which are intended on a certain level to give the players a stress outlet from all of the chafing social restrictions under which their characters suffer - though even Mech combat has firm social rules).
05) I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In
Christmas Eve, 2012 astronomers spotted a trio of comets moving past the orbit of Saturn…which then executes a turn under their own power. They weren't comets. Now in the face of incoming alien ships we follow a scattered handful of humanity coming to grips with man's lack of uniqueness, and possible extinction.
A classic alien invasion tale in the line of War of the Worlds, V, Footfall and Independence Day (though hopefully not as goofy as Mars Attacks - I'm not aiming for anything that silly), where we track the alien's appearance, the initial attacks and hopefully the development of a successful human resistance. Simultaneously we watch how individual humans handle their personal relationships in the face of this worldwide threat. The PCs can be anyone from anywhere on the planet, as long as we can work out some relationship web as to how all of them are, or can be, connected to each other.
I don't know what I'll be using for a game system for this yet, but Basic Role Playing, the engine for Call of Cthulhu, is a good bet. There's also a chance we'll have primary and secondary characters to give us a broad enough character population for the right sense of community, melodrama and worldwide scope.
06) Gaslamp Intrigue
"In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all out war, Mad Science rules the World…with mixed success." Raised by foster parents the true heir of a noble line struggles to evade the authorities long enough to clear the family name. The child of current emperor seeks to undermine his tyrannical rule. A secret Spark amongst the decadent nobility, identity hidden behind a metal mask, tries to forge a conspiracy of barons and dukes. Hearing voices of madness or the divine, a young spark is reforming the Knights Hospitaller, whose continent wide reputation for medicine and mercy makes them the enemy of tyrants everywhere. All of these Sparks, and more, struggle to understand the mysteries, decisions, mistakes and powers of their ancestors. Perhaps they can do so - or at least use their comrades' expertise and naiveté to their own advantage….
The second Girl Genius option, where the player characters are all young Sparks (or their equals) exerting their influence over their parents machinations. In other words the PCs are analogs to Agatha, Gilgamesh, Othar and Tarvek. Again the PCs are NOT actually Agatha and crew, and again if chosen I'll be polling the players as to campaign location. All the characters will be equivalent in power level, with their own henchmen and constructs, castles and power bases, pursuing their own goals and agendas. Some of the opposition in the game will come from other Player Characters due to confusion and outside manipulation, as well as real incompatible goals, but the PCs will, at least sporadically, be unified against some external threats. Like mom and dad.
The game engine will be Amber Diceless Roleplaying, modified for the powers in Girl Genius, with character created with a point auction. If you haven't played Amber before it really is diceless, but it works very well and is, in general, dirt simple in its mechanics.
07) IMTU Laertes
The Interstellar Merchant Trader - Unguilded Laertes is a space ship on the imperial rim, recently cut loose as part of an acrimonious settlement from the larger guild trader Odysseus. Laertes owner(s) have an open future in front of them and a handful of enemies behind them. They'll have to recruit a crew, pick a path to success - free trading, mercenary company, criminal enterprise, xenoarcheology, what have you - and forge a future on the jump lanes of the Terran Imperium.
This is pretty much a straight up Traveller game. Traveller is one of the oldest RPGs, heavily influenced by Niven's Known Space, Pournelle's CoDominion, Asmiov's Foundation and Anderson's Polesotechnic League. (Similar elements found their way into Babylon 5, Firefly and the smuggling exploits of Han Solo.) The core elements of the setting are an interstellar human empire physically linked by hyperspace Jump Drives, suffering a lack of instantaneous communication (so communication is only as fast as the fastest ship, giving it an age of sail feel), socially bound together by mandated terms of service for off world careers (so the general social norms of the empire are inculcated into anyone making serious use of the space lanes), and worried about the presence of functioning psionic powers amongst the population. I'm keeping all of that, but this is not set in the Classic Traveller Imperium. Your characters have all recently mustered out of one of these services after between 4 and 24 years of service and, armed with the skills learned in the service and a variety of mustering out benefits, have to start their post service lives.
The game mechanics will be close to Classic Traveller with some refinements culled from the last three decades of game design. If this is selected I'll be doing a decent amount of e-mailing with the player group to determine character types, the Laertes goals and what sort of prep-work I'll need to do: while they might take place in the same universe a mercenary company will run into very different challenges than a group of profiteering xeno-archaeologists, who would get to know different people than some Firefly-style free traders. We'll also develop a character relationship web to make sure that everyone has a feel for the other characters, since parts of the campaign will just be the group of PCs with few other people to talk to.
08) Dream Park: At the Core
Dream Park is the most advanced gaming site in the world, the best place for members of the International Fantasy Game Society (IFGS) to earn experience for their characters and themselves, because the intensity of play inside Dream Park is second to none. IFGS is the role playing organization of the future, supporting Live Action play with a massive special effects budget and a game master directing a single group through a puzzle adventure with the aid of complex computers and holograms, combining the best elements of LARPing, tabletop play and MMORPGs. You have been lucky enough to land a part in the first Dream Park game of the European game designer Theodore Bogucki, who betting a lot on his big break into the lucrative North American market. The game, "At the Core" is a three and a half day adventure in Gaming Area A, and if successful will net millions in movie rights, book tie ins and future runs. Everyone brings expectations into the park - they are looking to find love, save relationships, buttress their self worth, escape from their daily grind, or, for those experienced enough to be professional gamers, actual fame and fortune. Or espionage. Or vengeance.
This offering won't make sense unless you've read Dream Park by Niven & Barnes. So go read it. It's worth your time. To capture the feel of the book, the player characters are all Gamers, members of the IFGS who are attending a game in Dream Park. Those Gamers will be role-playing their Characters in a classic fantasy RPG adventure. That's right: it's a game within a game. The adventure, "At the Core" will be a classic old school gaming scenario where the Characters will have to figure out the societal, magical and diplomatic mysteries of a strange culture in a deadline/crisis situation. During the game the Gamers will have an opportunity to pursue personal goals, usually romantic or personal, but in the three Dream Park novels one of the players is actually engaged in corporate espionage of some sort, so the threat of that will be in the background.
The game mechanic for the Adventure will be a modified version of the Pacesetter system (if you're familiar with CHILL you know it) where I'll have a sheet of several hundred pre-rolled numbers so that the players don't have to touch the dice (to capture the feel of a MMORPG). The mechanic for the Gamers will be stripped down version of FUDGE for physical actions but generally diceless. I'm hoping to see a lot of personal sub plots and character plumbing between the Gamers. Each game session will likely represent one day in the park, so this is actually a 5 session campaign. If it works I'll have a second Dream Park scenario set up for a follow up, and if it doesn't work the group can vote on what to do for the rest of the year.
09) Blood, Love and Rhetoric
In the dark shadows of the world monsters lurk. You're one of them. At some point in the past you were selected by one of the Kindred, the secret vampire cabal that manipulates human politics, society and art and embraced, made one of them, made a monster. Now you are engaged in the outward struggles for status amongst the Kindred and the internal struggle to hold on to your humanity. Your emotions are more powerful, your rages terrifying, and the cursed beast inside you is concerned with nothing more than feeding and survival. You dance on the precipice in a beautiful, terrifying world. "Monsters we are, lest monsters we become."
This is a classic Vampire campaign, with the characters being vampires struggling to maintain their humanity. I'm aiming for the intent of the original rulebook, where the horror is personal rather than external, even as there are external threats. Unlike the Mage campaign above, the characters are going to start as relatively low ranking members of their clans, but the campaign will play out against a broader streak of 20th century politics, starting shortly after WWI and ending at the millennium. Obviously this means some significant time passage between sessions, so the play will be semi-episodic if only because of the arc of the campaign is so long. Major political upheavals are in store for the PCs' home city, and the depth to which you engage with them is up to individual characters and the coterie as a whole. I expect chunks of each session to be spotlight time on individual PCs pursuing their own agendas rather than constant teamwork.
The base game engine for this is Storyteller, and again I'll be using a lot of default successes and minimal rolling. The characters will be powerful compared to normal humans, growing more powerful as the game progresses, but still not the major players in Kindred society - for those familiar with the rules Generation is capped at 10 - so a certain degree of teamwork will be required for large victories.
10) 2012: Old Gods and Aliens
Super-human powers started appearing on 1/1/2000, and society is just beginning to catch up with the impact of those changes. Alas, it might not have time, as the end of the world is approaching: the ancient forces powering many of the worlds super-humans are pursuing their own agenda, extraterrestrial empires are launching incursions into the solar system, and the psychics are dreaming in Mayan as the calendar ticks down to zero. Can a band of the world's most powerful super-heroes separate the true threats from the menaces of the week, thread together the clues and save humanity, and perhaps the universe?
This is a year's worth of classic high-power super-team adventures along the line of the Avengers and the Justice League, with some team members only being members of the team (and hence have lots of romantic/personal growth sub plots) while others have adventures in their own books (and therefore carry in the baggage of personal rogues galleries and mysteries to the team). If you want characters can easily be "You With Powers" or you can build a character from scratch. The characters in general should have a magical or skill basis, but techno-heroes are not entirely beyond the realms of the possible.
Game system is either going to be Villains and Vigilantes or some unholy amalgamation of V&V and the Mayfair Exponential Game System (that powered the original DC Heroes game and is good for handling characters of ungodly high power levels). Jason, Kristen and Karen already have characters in this setting from a couple of one shots in 2010.
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02) The Zorcerer’s Apprentices: 1 point
03) At Play in the Fields of the Lord: 4 points
04) Mech and Matrimony: 2 points
05) I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In: 2 points
06) Gaslamp Intrigue: 1 point
07) IMTU Laertes: 2 points
08) Dream Park: At the Core: 1 point
09) Blood, Love and Rhetoric: 0 points
10) 2012: Old Gods and Aliens: 6 points
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But 2012 is indeed appealing to me. I like supers, I had really good luck with my own campaign about worldclass supers, and I like the idea that there's a seasonal story arc and not just episodes. And secondarily, I think classic M:tA is a brilliant game and setting and would love to be able to play in it. So both of those would have gotten above average scores; it was only "how far above average" that was uncertain when I started.
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02) The Zorcerer’s Apprentices: 1 point
03) At Play in the Fields of the Lord: 1 points
04) Mech and Matrimony: 4 points
05) I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In: 1 points
06) Gaslamp Intrigue: 3 point
07) IMTU Laertes: 1 points
08) Dream Park: At the Core: 3 point
09) Blood, Love and Rhetoric: 2 points
10) 2012: Old Gods and Aliens: 1 points
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One can dream.
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There's nothing I'd give a 0 to, but would favor M&M and the gaslamp fantasy options.
Were it out, I'd be tempted to look at Nobilis 3 to see if there's anything to mine for the high powered gaslamp fantasy option. (although Jenna -- formerly "Rebecca Borgstrom" -- has been posting versions of the Amberites on hitherby dragons here).