What to Game Next (part 1 of ?)
I'm starting to think about what I want to see the tantaene group to play next. Or what I'm willing to run for them. Some of the meta stuff I'm thinking I wrote on 20x20, so please go and read that first.
My first game concept is the Argonauts meet Sinbad but have to carry their own town around. Its kind of rough.
When Alexander had arrived at the river Hyphasis, and was anxious to push his conquests still further his army was at the point of mutiny before wise Coenus who in boldness convinced the Great Alexander the necessity of returning, and the king was obliged to follow the advice of his general. Forced to turn south, Alexander conquered his way down the Indus to the Indian Ocean. He sent much of his army to Carmania with his general Craterus, and commissioned a fleet to explore the Persian Gulf shore under his admiral Nearchus, while he led the rest of his forces back to Persia by the southern route through the Gedrosia. Or so the history books tell us. Yet Alexander was a proud man, perhaps divinely inspired and he would not turn away so easily from the East A secret order went out and a mostly all-volunteer expeditionary force was pulled together and given the order to travel East until they met Alexander once more, or they returned to Macedonia and could lay down their arms.
Genre: Fantastic voyage in the spirit of the Argonauts or Sinbad (expeditionary quest) with a dollop of Odysseus perhaps (cursed wanderers). This fantastic voyage shall be a meld of Greek perceptions of the East, actual historic imaginings and the mythic imagination of the people who live there.
Style: Play will center on the expeditionary force, the community, and the fantastic places they find themselves. One way this will express itself is through players having multiple characters and focus on protagonists shifting.
Mode: The Romantic (as Northrop Frye defines it): Characters will be superior in degree to others and to their environment, that is the mode is that of Romance, where the actions are marvelous, but the hero is human. "The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability."
Who are the characters? The characters will be members of this expeditionary force. The cool thing is that Alexander's army always had lots of other folks (poets and wives and courtesans and architects and philosophers, oh my!) so this allows more than soldiers. Everyone will have a main hero, one or two secondary characters and there will be a shared pool of others. (adapting the Ars Magica model here).
What do they do? Visit a new place. Decide if they stay to do something, conquer or leave quickly. And the do it. Because they are heroes (and thus have destinies) this will not always be the best choice for them. But it will be clear.
Still lots to be answered here before its a real gae, but this serves as a real framework that allows me to gauge interest.
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jeregenest) wrote,
