The Scottish Game

[Simon W]

A thread about my Tales from The Wood rpg made me stop and think for a bit. Having read the comments from Rob and his gamers, I suddenly realised that perhaps my style of play or the type of games I like is very much at a tangent to other rpgers. However, if that is so, then this must have rubbed off a bit on the groups I game with, or one group in particular (or we have grown to this style together). I cannot therefore be alone, in wanting to try different things even if they sound weird, boring or plain dumb.

Let me give you an example - The Scottish Game.

I was interested in running a 'normal' game, where characters had no powers, there would be little, if any fighting, everyone was a human, but they all had ties to one another and interesting quirks or similar that would enable me to run the game without much pre-work.

I came up with a small island off the coast of Scotland, gave an overview to the players about what I wanted and the sort of thing I was going for (the British tv series' of Hamish Macbeth, Ballykissangel, Monarch of the Glen - they may not mean much to you yanks, but they are essentially about close-knit communities in sleepy out of the way places that are a law unto themselves and where everyone knows everyone elses business,. Added to this I wanted to chuck in a little Twin Peaks-style weirdness, but only as much or as little as the players would naturally take up through play).

I decided to go diceless/freeform. I also decided that we would create characters, the island and just about everything else by group discussion, so the players discussed their character concepts and, adjusted or tweaked them with input from everyone else, to help create ties and a sense of community.

There was an aging ex-rock star, (kinda like Fish, from Marillion) who had a couple of major hits in the late 70's early 80's, but now lived in the de-commissioned lighthouse, wanting to get away from it all and live a quiet life.

There was the dotty old post-mistress, who opened all the mail when the mail boat arrived, so that she could keep abreast of who was doing what to whom.

There was the farmers wife, whose husband went missing a few years ago, amidst rumours and speculation of other women, debts, his past catching up with him and so on. Nobody knows the truth, even the wife (or the postmistres, although she spread most of the rumours).

Lastly, there was the local laird's gamekeeper, who was a bit gun-happy and knew the location of an eagle-nest and suspected just about anyone of being a egg-thief. (At this point, local laird actually became the island owner, to whom all the other characters had to pay their rent, except the rock star, who bought the lighthouse outright from whoever you buy lighthouses from!)

The basic plot that I had decided on was two-fold initially. The first was that there were rumours that there had been an oil survey recently and oil had been found just off the coast. This would mean an oil rig was to be built soon, with all the disruption to community life, danger to wildlife and so on that it would entail.

Second, I had a sub-plot going that the annual football (soccer) match between the pc's island and a nearby rival island was going to take place soon and there were rumours that the other island had brough in an ex-professional player from Celtic (a big scottish football club) to play for them. The match is an event of huge prestige and winning means everything to the islanders.

After character creation, I just let the thing go - feeding some info through the post-mistress about the oil rig, in a letter to the laird, who had received an offer from the oil company to buy the island. She also opened a letter about upgrading the post office to a computerised office and that a man would be visiting her in a week to install the new equipment and show her how to use it. (She of course having the quirk of "understands technology about as much as an ant does")

I also had two guys turn up off the mail boat and ask the gamekeeper (who was fishing at the time, just off the harbour wall) where the ex-rock star hangs out. They tell him they are from "Rock Megastars" magazine and they want to get an exclusive interview with him.

I threw in lots of stuff, for the players to pick up on and deal with in whatever order they liked. The idea was that it would become ever more complicated and hopefully they would seek ever more desparate solutions.

Anyhow, this is getting long so I'll cut it off. To round up, there was little plot, just things I threw into the melting pot. I know these players well, so they are very comfortable with this style of play and they helped to take the game far beyond my original ideas.

I think a few oil surveyors are going to end up in a 'Wicker Man' very shortly!

Simon W

[Simon W]

[Praetorian]