Creating a Game (Part 6) - Who are we dealing with?

They had always protected us from dangers we could never fully understand. Lingering on the edge of villages in fields, they spent millennia sheltering us from the dangers of the nightmarish unknown. But for decades their time seemed to have passed, and the fae of the farmlands and the wilderness had retreated to their dreamlands, leaving the protectors barren. The creatures of the eldritch blackness seemed to have retreated from the world, and while many of the protectors had fallen to the nightmares, just as many in modern nights are falling to neglect and the ravages of time.

Now a new threat looms. It appears on the surface as investor greed, capitalist pride, corporate hubris, and simple human desire. The spread of humanity has absorbed the farmlands and threatens the wilderness. The portals that brought the fey into the world are being eaten away one by one. Soon there will be no way for the fae to come into the world and no-one to empower the protectors if they are ever needed again. The protectors must use what little energy they have left to protect the last sacred places from the advancing hordes of humanity. The choices they make now will determine the future of the protectors, but if they make no choices at all their time will surely come to an end.

As the turning of an age threatens the end of humanity’s protectors, they must save humanity from itself…and in the deepest shadows, the nightmares of the past have begun to reawaken.   

Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse were very eye-opening games to me back in the day. Boh of them are a part of the World of Darkness line, and both use te Stryteller system that I've mentioned earlier in this series.

I remember proposing these games to my friends back in high school, back when they first came out. The responses invariably focused on how narrow the game must be. "What if I want to play some kind of undead other than a vampire?", "I don't want to play unless I can be a dwarf.", "Can I wear of suit of power armour in the game?"

I was more interested in the way that the games seriously narrowed one constraint in exchange for opening up a whole lot more in other areas. Vampire was about more than just the "Transylvanian count portrayed by Bela Lugosi", it tried to encompass all of the mythore about vampires under one umbrella. You could play as someone like one of the "Lost Boys", a machiavellian blod wizard, a wild predator, an ugly monster in the shadows, most of the vampiric stereotypes were there, and if you wanted to play the "transylvanian count" that was an option too. It draw things in from popular culture, and played against a backdrop similar to the real world. No more requirement of developing a setting from scracth that you needed to get everyone accustomed to, or piles of books detailing a setting that you had to get right because one of your players might bring up page 78 of the sixth book which says something to contradict your description. The deliberate idea of printed book descriptions being generated by ureliable narrators was intriguing too. D&D might have done this during games, and every one was basically expected to homebrew things, by the DM was the law, and the only time you'd be able to argue wih "him" was when the book contradicted the ruling.

Werewolf didn't take the path of detailing all the were-creatures arund the world (not initially anyway), instead if overlayed cultural perspectives on it's various werewolf groups. There were noble Russian wolves who ruled the culture, a variety of wolf types derives from the myth-lore of Native Americans, scrounging mangy dog shifters, Germanic wolves ofthe Black Forest and Nordic regions, nomadic Romani wolves... No, it wasn't perfect, and some of those culual overlays now look a bit like racist stereotypes, but the attempt to expand the cultural context of gaming beyond "pseudo-dark ages Europe" or "modern/near-future America" was appreciated. 

Elements of the Werewolf template are actually a better fit for where I'm aiming here. In that game a chaater is defined by their cultural lineage (13 options), the phase of the moon they were born under (5 options; new, crescent, half, gibbous, full), and their birth origins 3 options; human, wolf, or hybrid). The mix and match of these gives 195 variants before you even start customising your character, and each of these choices helps define your place in the overall culture of werewolves, along with the mystical powers you have easier access to.

For these purpoes I'm thinking...    

Age – each has four possible abilities (choose two)

(1)    Young - Hours or Days (allies, athletics, favours, technology)

(2)    Moderate – Weeks or Months (allies, crafts, strength, technology)

(3)    Old – Years (animal ken, awareness, strength, toughness)

(4)    Ancient – Decades (animal ken, awareness, herbalism, mending)

(5)    Primordial – Centuries (herbalism, history, knowledge, survival)

(6)    Primordial – You have always been here (history, occult, ritual, survival) 

Stuffing – again, each has four possible abilities (choose two... I'm still working out appropriate abilities here)

(1)    Plastic Bags (appraisal, scavenge, technology, ??)

(2)    Newspapers (history, knowledge, ??, ??)

(3)    Rags (mending, stealth, ??, ??)

(4)    Cotton (stealth, herbalism, ??, ??)

(5)    Wood Chips (strength, survival, ??, ??)

(6)    Straw (herbalism, toughness, ??, ??)

To make things inteesting here, and for characters to make more sense, I'm thinking that the number for the stuffing choice should alwys be higher than the number fo the age choice. It doesn't really make sense to have a scarecrow stuffed with plastic bags that is centuries old. 

Season – four possible abilities (choose one) and an edge

Spring – Growth and Healing (athletics, herbalism, medicine, mending) (edges ??)

Summer – Leadership and Maturity (allies, etiquette, negotiation, strength) (edges ??)

Autumn – Decay and Wisdom (knowledge, occult, ritual, toughness) (edges ??)

Winter – Spirituality and Death (hunting, intimidation, savagery, survival) (edges ??)

Edges are mystical powers associated with the seasonal enegies that are infusing the scarecrow. More about them later...

Then we get a more customisable set of options...

Features – Choose two features, each provides three possible abilities (choose one) and an edge (Again, I'm still working out specific abilities associated with the features, and am fine tuning the edges.)

Mask – Disguise, Intimidation, or x (Masquerade Edge ??)

Hat – Appraisal, x or Scavenge (Edge ??)

Mouth – Etiquette, Negotiation or Persuasion (Charisma Edge ??)

Scythe – Intimidation, Melee, or Savagery (Harvesting Edge??)

Battered Clothes – Stealth, Survival, or Toughness (Edge ??)

Fine Clothes – Etiquette, Persiasion, or Ritual (Noblity Edge ??)

Charm – Luck, Occult, or Ritual (Magic Edge ??)

Eyes – Appraisal, Awareness or Hunting (Perception Edge ??)

Nest – Animal Ken, Herbalism, or Savagery (Animal Edge ??) 

Between the six ages, the six stuffngs, the four seasons, and the choic of two options from the 9 features, there are 10,368 basic variants among the characters, and that's before specific abilities and edges are chosen from those options.

Bonuses – Choose another edge from your season (or an adjacent season on the cycle), choose any one ability (it may not be a duplicate of one you already possess).

The system of making wide sweeping choices that cross reference one another to get an idea of the character, then making specific choice to fine tune the outcome has been something relatively successful in FUBAR games over the past few years. Characters end up with a maximum of 8 possible abilities (they may have less, but if so, there will be abilities they are more adept with), they also end up with 4 levels of mystical edges (these may be 4 basic levels in four different edges, or they may have doubled up in one or more edge to gain a more potent variant of the power).

The aim is still to minimise the moving parts as the session oscillates between story and game.

Story mode

1. What is happening?
2. Where are they happening?
3. Who or what is reponsible?
4. Can anything be done about it? Does anything need to be done about it?
5. Do we need to shift to game mode?

Game mode

1. What is a character trying to do in a task?
2. What abilities or edges might function as core traits to give an advantage to the attempt?
3. Is thee a cost associaed ith them (time or mystical power)?
4. Are there any external fators that might impact on the attempt? (more about that in the next post...)
5. What is the Oracle doing about it?
6. Are actions complete and can we shift back to story mode?

Everything is basically procedural, and everything (whether debating someone, casting a spell, fighting, or anything else) follows the same pattern of play.

Players never need to keep track of more than 4 categories of things a a time.

1. Their character's innate abilities/edges
2. The trait cards that are modifying their charactes innate abilities/edges
3. The story at the moment
4. The tokens and trait cards that reflect how the story is progressing at a grander level. (They dont even really need to worry about this one too much....the Oracle focuses on this, but they don't have a dedicated character to worry about.) 

Anything else is basically a memory aid so that players don't have to concetrate as hard during the game.

If anyone reading has any ideas for how I can fill in some of those gaps, drop me a message. It'd be nice to know there are folks out there reading this stiff.