RPG proposal (Seattle)

[gfish]

Like several members of the local group, I have occasionally talked about running an RPG. Also like them, I have never gotten around to it. After some recent discussions I've been thinking about it again, inspired by some of the ideas we came up with for the GPS gaming concept. And I think I have the resources now to run the kind of game that I've always wanted to run.

The idea is for a richly detailed game with a strong real world/LARP emphasis set in a modern Call of Cthulhu-ish world. Why CoC? It naturally reduces player reliance on combat. (Not that there won't be any combat, I'm just a lot more interested in highly cerebral games.) I'm not sure which system I would use, but I'd certainly take a look at the new D20 CoC.

Game play would be largely research/exploration/analysis oriented, with as open of a storyline as I could make it. Plot elements would be widely scattered physically, and as closely integrated into real life as possible. Players would be playing themselves, without any special in-game knowledge or skills. You only know what you figure out from the clues, and if you want to learn how to pick locks for the game, well, it certainly might be useful.

I want to do urban fantasy/horror as if you've just been dumped into the middle of it. Real time, real space, complete immersion. You might be poking around a park looking for clues and getting attacked by badies for your efforts. But you're a lot more likely to be trying to translate a text, going to the library to do research on some historical cult, or experimenting with magic by following the instructions on a suspiciously poor translation of a text. Not a game for hack-and-slash fans.

The first game would only be for an evening, but I imagine them becoming much longer as the players learn more about the mythos and become more powerful.

If you would be interested, let me know. I'm not going to put too much effort into this unless I know I have an interested audience.

Comments

[irgth.livejournal.com]

The last time I was involved in any kind of RPG was a LARP I quit years ago. It started out with a large group, and most of the plot lines my character was involved in dealt with conflicts with other player's characters. Much fun was had, and the player's decisions were a driving force in plot development. The storytellers/GMs somehow managed to stay half a step ahead of the players, and weave chaos into story. Then there was RL drama, and the LARP group split in half. After that, it was mostly all of the player's characters pitted against the NPC threat of the week. It was like living in a bad reenactment of a Buffy episode.

So to clarify: I might be interested, but it depends greatly on how the game is run and how players interact.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I wasn't thinking of it as a very political game. I've played in some really good political LARPs, but they seem very fragile. Hard to design. The most consistently enjoyable games for me were much like Buffy eps, actually. All of the player characters against a threat, but with an emphasis on puzzling out how to handle it rather than just charging into combat.

My goal is a game firmly rooted in the exploration and discovery of a complicated new mythos. Slowly learning how the magic works, who the bad guys are, the history behind it, etc. Tomorrow you wake up and find yourself in urban fantasy. There was more than was dreamt of in your philosophy. You and your friends start to learn about this new world, and find there are grave threats to the everyday world. You are sucked into some greater conflict where, for the most part, you are hopelessly underpowered and ignorant. What do you do?

I can't really say how the players would interact, of course. The last time we gamed was a Shadowrun game about 3 years ago. If it is any indication, then we'll sit around talking about alternate plans about 90% of the time. Personally, I love that kind of game and what I'm imagining would be largely geared toward it.

The idea for running the games is for it to be as open ended as possible. There should always be multiple paths that take you to the same conclusion. As many plot elements as possible would already be seeded in the real world, so there wouldn't be a lot of running for me to do most of the time. I would probably be playing most the NPCs, and I'd have to run any combat that might happen. But for the most part it would be working out the clues and learning about the setting, both of which would be exhaustively prepared and placed ahead of time.