Demiurgent Business 2018-06-13
In this post:
- Instead of sketching out all of play, I try to design the players, characters, and scenario.
There are four players, and for this sketch of play, each will only have one role.
I was thinking I'd get to the sketch this week, but that looks unlikely, so I'll just set the stage for now.
Hiro is the Spotlight, Dowd is the Stage-fright, Manny is Chaos, and Wonko is Order. Counter-clockwise from Hiro, the players sit: Manny, Dowd, Wonko
Hiro and Dowd are controlling the confidence and self-doubt, respectively, of Iarat Harshleaf, an Elf Rock-Star. Wonko and Manny are controlling the skepticism and interest in the supernatural, respectively, of Sammy L., the campaign's Demiurge. In addition, Wonko is responsible for playing side characters from the conspiracy and supernatural world, while Manny plays side characters from the mundane world.
Furthermore, Manny, Dowd and Wonko are also playing as:
- Byra Moor, a Dragon Survivalist. Manny altered/replaced Byra's "cook a decent meal from anything" class ability based on her "iron stomach" racial ability, to get a "lethal chef" ability instead. I have no idea how to implement this, that's future me's job.
- Andrea Hyde, an Orc Ninja. Andrea is in the theatre program, and uses her stealth in service of her role as stagehand.
- Rocky "Lawrence" Hill, a Ghost Shaman. It says on the brainstorming document that Undead characters have to swap a class feature, but I don't have a good picture yet of what kind of stuff Ghosts and Shamans do.
But these characters are not the focus, and therefore are not subject to the conflict resolution mechanics.
Sammy L. is the campaign's Demiurge, and I don't have a good sense of how he was designed. Possibly, it's something along the lines of Durance. Like, there are six facts about the Demiurge, and six about the Conspiracy (or maybe different counts). Point is, there's some ideal set of attributes for the Demiurge and the Conspiracy, and some of them fail to hold. My current challenge is identifying those attributes.
I was thinking of stuff like "can't see without their glasses" or something.
The goal I should have in putting this stuff together is to determine what "false assessments" would lend themselves to complicating player success, rather than opposing it.
Notes:
- Race and class names should have no spaces or punctuation, and use dashes to separate words.
Next week, I think I'd like to take a break. I'll have to think about what I choose to do instead.