Peer Review Thread

[Matt Cowens]

Revolution, by Chris Moore

Overview

A two player collaborative storytelling competition, this entry offers a lot of substance for its light page-count.

Collaborative Competition?

Well, sort of. You are working on the same story, but with opposing goals. One player is trying to achieve a revolution of some kind - anything from a pitchforks and flaming torches overthrow of a corrupt regime to a minor cheerleader trying to become the head of the human pyramid. The other player takes on the role of that which is facing overthrow - the nobles, the head cheerleader, the teacher...

You work through a number of scenes, developing the story and trying to push each of your agendas (change or the status quo).

Structure

Games are one-offs, single session. Two players, on opposing sides of the same story. The game starts with a framing sentence, a statement that will form the purpose of the game:

" (A) has been so ___________'ed by (B) that he/she/they can't take it anymore and plan(s) to ___________________ so that he/she/they ______________."

Once this sentence has been filled in and agreed on, there is a simple dice-off to see who starts filling in the details of scene one. Details include where the scene will take place, when, who's involved, what's there and so on. There are 6 of these elements that the players take turns to describe.

Once they're up and running, the players take turns describing what happens in the scene. Each will push their own agenda, take on roles, and work towards a satisfying story with lots of juicy conflict.

At the end of a series of scenes (as many as are needed), the players tally up all the little victories and set-backs, and decide whether the revolution was successful.

Super-quick before the bell opinion

Looks cool. I like that it's a 2 player set-up, and it looks like it could easily be adapted to accomodate more players. There is a hint that there was more to go into it (bonuses to dice pools?), but what's there looks playable and fun.

It looks like it could be a useful game for planning scripts, especially under time-pressure. It reminded me a little of Universalis, which a friend of mine introduced me to as a tool to collaboratively write a script for a 48-hour film competition. This has some of the same feel to it - a story construction game where the point is to throw interesting complications into the mix and explore where they go, try to trip up your oponent without derailing the story as a whole, and have fun with scene set-ups and story development.

I'd like to see more, but at the same time I was impressed by how complete the entry is in its 3 pages. Could be a valuable story developing technique to throw into the toolbox, and a fun game to play!

There's the bell, gotta dash! Good work Chris!