Entry Dva: The Sublime Heroes of Atlantis

[Hobert Roward]

Please do not bother reading/critiquing for now (help others instead!), as I'm currently pushing through on my "Hegemony" project first. If I pick this idea up again later, I'll edit this message to indicate the project is alive and request feedback from there. But hey, if you're bored, feel free to take a look! Thanks!

Here was the second idea that I came up with when handling vegetables at a Fresh Market today when shopping with my girlfriend. I'm still kinda iffy on completing this one, but if someone finds minable materials, feel free to pilfer them.

Time: 1 2-hour long game session. I want it to last as long as a good game of Settlers of Catan.

Ingredients: GLASS ANCIENT EMOTION

Quick Blurb: A fantasy rpg that plays out like a cooperative board game. All the players play against the board and each other, no GM.

Here's how it works: 5-7 players (no less) sit down at a table. They choose an avatar-hero to represent them, from a list of approximately 10-15 pregenerated characters, representing all the typical D&D-like archetypes: Theives, wizards, fighters, assassins, etc. However, all races are human.

The background of the game is that before Atlantis fell, it flourished. And before it flourished, in ancient, ancient times (cheap, I know), a group of heroes tamed its mighty cities, towers, mountains and monsters. Out of that group, one of them would emerge forth to be the High Lord of Atlantis... but which one? And at what cost?

Basically, the game plays out like a combination RPG in dramatic scenes, and a diablo-style hack-and-slash levelling festival.

Gameplay usually begins within 3-5 minutes.

Every character takes the Hero Sheet for the hero that is representing them. Then they take a number of glass beads to use to keep track of emotional connections between the characters.

And that's where I'm at. I've got ideas here and there for where to go next, but I'm major roadblocking here. Here's a couple of ideas:

1) Each scene involves 3 of the other players. Two or more of the leftover players form the audience. The group moves to a new piece on the Atlantis board, and a challenge card is overturned. The challenge is read, and roleplaying begins. The challenge has three "resolutions", each which corresponds to a human emotion. Each character has an outward agenda that they're trying to fulfill, and the player has an inside agenda as well. In character, they assess the threat and debate over how to best approach it. Secretly, they bet on which outcome they want to "win" (even their own). The audience does two things:

* As they see the scene unfold, each Audience can put an emotion bead with one of the players for doing a "good job" of acting in character and pursuading the others. This equals five regular emotion beads for purposes of levelling up and the like.
* After three to five minutes (timer?) and arguments wind down, all of the players secretly bet on one of the options, and bet how many beads to spend. When the hand is opened, the option with the most points wins. The players in that round get an equal number of points back to what they bid on. The audience gets double the amount they bid on the winner.
* The action continues, with the scene resolved through cooperation, with the exception of veto power for the winning player to keep things consistent.
* After the resolution is complete, each Audience can again award a bead to the person who they think best roleplayed out the resolution.
* Sometimes the scene calls for one or two NPCs. In this situation, the NPCs participate, but only for a few lines, they are not to upstage the other players.

During the scenes, the players always address each other by name. Every time a character addresses someone fresh, they must use that character's name.

After that, there is a brief pause while the losing player in the above contest provides a brief narration of "Things to come": "Little did the friends know that eventually Eliza would betray them at the Mountains of Kazir!". That player then moves to the next open spot on the Atlantis map and chooses the next three players that will be in the scene, however at least one person from the Audience must be in the next scene.

Later, the heroes would have to fight things or overcome challenges, each challenge with an Emotional Base, which they would have to expend resources on to overcome. Later, if all four players has "X amount of beads" in certain places on their Hero Sheet, they would in fact "win" as a team, and the person with the most beads placed in other areas on the Hero Sheet would rule Atlantis and be the "Winner". However, if they didn't meet that mark, then the team would be defeated in some way, and not be the true heroes that united Atlantis.

I like the idea of keeping a global timer, and every 20 minutes or so the difficulty of certain tasks becomes harder.

2) Backing up a bit and rewriting, the other idea I had was to make a playmat with emotional connections between the players, perhaps using a chessboard or overturned Tarot cards and stackign the glass beads on it. These connections would lend power to the other players... dunno where i was going with this, though.

Hmmm. Kind of froo-froo high-concept acting game, and I really need strong ties in there to roleplaying so that it can't just turn into a board game "with roleplaying sprinkled lightly in, but entirely optional".

Well, I'll be off to bed in a bit, but I'll try to think a little more about this one. Again, though, not positive on this one. I like what I'm seeing here, and want to do more with it, but I'll probably end up working on my MMTRPG first...

[TonyLB]

Will the glass beads be all the same color (or color irrelevant)? Or will they be, like, red beads for barbarian fury, blue beads for wisdom and depth, green beads for the manly struggle with nature, etc.?

Are these, like, mighty-thewed men of R.E. Howard? Or something else? The whole "hew a country out of the wilderness" thing makes me wonder how archetypes like thief are going to play out.

[Hobert Roward]