Into the Weird Blue Yonder (Working Title): Overview
So I have been thinking about a game that might be worth writing down and actually getting ready to sell if people are interested.
Here is my idea: A game that is specifically geared towards a certain kind of setting where mundane people venture out into the weird outside world and are changed by it, corrupted by it, turned into something else. Awareness broadens into such a state that even what was once comfortably normal becomes strange as new vistas open onto an incomprehensibly vast and strange universe. I tend to think of it as a little Studio Ghibli, a little Lovecraftian horror, a little The Hobbit, a little Earthsea, and a little Guillermo Del Toro.
This was also inspired by Steven Lumpkin's West Marches series. I do hope he gets do that again or something similar.
This might sound pretty much like a lot of the implied setting of games or it might sound like inane gibberish. DCC has a very similar implied setting. It is similar to a lot of setting, but I really wanted to base a game around it such that the tools really help cement the key themes of the setting. Here are these key themes:
The "Real" World is Mundane: Everything the player characters get by default is very mundane. Magic is even mundane, involving little tricks that town wise women and trade mages use to help with ordinary tasks. A regular craftsman is probably more reliable if you need to fix a table. The gods give a few helpful arts. Clerics can help with a fever or accelerate the healing of a broken leg or bless harvests such that there is a slightly better chance that the harvest is bountiful. Hard working farmers are as if not more important. Elves and Dwarves have long forgotten their heritages as great civilizations. Even men have mostly forgotten those days when they boldly struck out into the great wild world with great kings in shining crowns. They hide behind walled towns, blindly shutting their ears and eyes against all that they do not understand.
The Outside World is Weird and it Corrupts: The world outside is covered in the ruins of those civilizations past, revealing glimmers of the glory and wonder that once was. The world outside is dominated by the constantly warring cosmic powers of the greater universe. They have mostly been content to ignore the civilization which huddles in its tiny corner of the world, but that outside world keeps what comes to it. When adventurers go out into that world, it will corrupt them, mutating them, giving them forbidden insight, and entrapping them in their endlessly spiraling machinations. There is power in this weirdness, but is a trap. There is freedom in knowing the world as it is, but it is the freedom from the tyranny of the banal, exchanging it for the oppressive tyranny of cosmic dread.
All the truly powerful spells, weapons, arts, and abilities must be found in the outside world, but each one changes the bearer. Elves begin short and stunted and grow tall and alien as their Weirdness increases. Dwarves begin as content with their stations in life as craftsmen and have a growing desire to endlessly acquire treasure and to dig infinite caverns into the dark below, hearing more and more the call of the rock, and feeling the desire to continue the works and wars of their ancestors. Humans will shudder as their safe world unravels. Some will take strength in the knowledge of their ancestor's valor and glory. Others will discover just how much darkness man has had to forget and wish they could forget as well.
Putting it is game terms: the really cool abilities are not really Player Facing. The cool stuff has to be discovered. Even the awesome spells must be found. All of it comes with the cost of embroiling the player characters deeper into the Weird.
The Mundane World Reveals its Strangeness: Using some variation of Throne of Salt's Insight system (http://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2018/07/alternate-progression-methods.html) player character will realize that even their normal world is haunted by the shadows of the strange even built on the strange. Old hexes will hold new secrets. The Weird will start to invade and chase the player characters into places they once deemed safe. The mundane will reject the strange, including the player characters.
I wanted to write more but I will save it for another night and another post. I don't like my title, though. I wanted something with "weird" or "wild" or something that gives the impression of travel or exploration. "Into the Weird" was a little too much like "Into the Odd." Suggestions are welcome.
Here is my idea: A game that is specifically geared towards a certain kind of setting where mundane people venture out into the weird outside world and are changed by it, corrupted by it, turned into something else. Awareness broadens into such a state that even what was once comfortably normal becomes strange as new vistas open onto an incomprehensibly vast and strange universe. I tend to think of it as a little Studio Ghibli, a little Lovecraftian horror, a little The Hobbit, a little Earthsea, and a little Guillermo Del Toro.
This was also inspired by Steven Lumpkin's West Marches series. I do hope he gets do that again or something similar.
From Howl's Moving Castle
This might sound pretty much like a lot of the implied setting of games or it might sound like inane gibberish. DCC has a very similar implied setting. It is similar to a lot of setting, but I really wanted to base a game around it such that the tools really help cement the key themes of the setting. Here are these key themes:
The "Real" World is Mundane: Everything the player characters get by default is very mundane. Magic is even mundane, involving little tricks that town wise women and trade mages use to help with ordinary tasks. A regular craftsman is probably more reliable if you need to fix a table. The gods give a few helpful arts. Clerics can help with a fever or accelerate the healing of a broken leg or bless harvests such that there is a slightly better chance that the harvest is bountiful. Hard working farmers are as if not more important. Elves and Dwarves have long forgotten their heritages as great civilizations. Even men have mostly forgotten those days when they boldly struck out into the great wild world with great kings in shining crowns. They hide behind walled towns, blindly shutting their ears and eyes against all that they do not understand.
The Outside World is Weird and it Corrupts: The world outside is covered in the ruins of those civilizations past, revealing glimmers of the glory and wonder that once was. The world outside is dominated by the constantly warring cosmic powers of the greater universe. They have mostly been content to ignore the civilization which huddles in its tiny corner of the world, but that outside world keeps what comes to it. When adventurers go out into that world, it will corrupt them, mutating them, giving them forbidden insight, and entrapping them in their endlessly spiraling machinations. There is power in this weirdness, but is a trap. There is freedom in knowing the world as it is, but it is the freedom from the tyranny of the banal, exchanging it for the oppressive tyranny of cosmic dread.
All the truly powerful spells, weapons, arts, and abilities must be found in the outside world, but each one changes the bearer. Elves begin short and stunted and grow tall and alien as their Weirdness increases. Dwarves begin as content with their stations in life as craftsmen and have a growing desire to endlessly acquire treasure and to dig infinite caverns into the dark below, hearing more and more the call of the rock, and feeling the desire to continue the works and wars of their ancestors. Humans will shudder as their safe world unravels. Some will take strength in the knowledge of their ancestor's valor and glory. Others will discover just how much darkness man has had to forget and wish they could forget as well.
Putting it is game terms: the really cool abilities are not really Player Facing. The cool stuff has to be discovered. Even the awesome spells must be found. All of it comes with the cost of embroiling the player characters deeper into the Weird.
The Mundane World Reveals its Strangeness: Using some variation of Throne of Salt's Insight system (http://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2018/07/alternate-progression-methods.html) player character will realize that even their normal world is haunted by the shadows of the strange even built on the strange. Old hexes will hold new secrets. The Weird will start to invade and chase the player characters into places they once deemed safe. The mundane will reject the strange, including the player characters.
I wanted to write more but I will save it for another night and another post. I don't like my title, though. I wanted something with "weird" or "wild" or something that gives the impression of travel or exploration. "Into the Weird" was a little too much like "Into the Odd." Suggestions are welcome.
I have a backburner project with a similar sentiment: civilization normalizes things, and you gotta go outside if for weird shit, but as you build an outpost and eventually a town, civilization pushes back the weird.
ReplyDeleteIt uses Whitehack's slot system with some rules on how to fill your slots in play.
I feel like a lot of people have the sense of this sort of setting. I think it is a trend which is also running through Knave with spells. People seem to like the idea of spells as loot because magic seems to be the first step into the weird and that is something that ought to be found and discovered rather than handed to you.
DeleteI am intrigued by the idea of players creating an outpost. I wonder if players will go for it or rather get swept up in the strangeness. I had hardly considered that they might push back for civilization. I will have to see what players do once I start testing some of this stuff.
Yeah the initial setup has a small outpost exist, which gets basic supply deliveries. If they send back things to civilization (for museums or whatever) then they start getting better supplies, hangers on, similar stuff.
DeleteI was going for this idea that the civilized world fetishizes the weird stuff but is unwilling to check it out themselves. So the PCs do this as a job.