Entry: Fantasy Crossfire

[Maastrictian]

So here is a first draft of my entry, the poorly named Fantasy Crossfire. I'd love it if people could take a look and comment. Some specific questions I have are at the bottom.

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Fantasy Crossfire is a game of world creation, drawing from but played in real time and focused strongly on the opinions of the characters.

The game is played in ten sessions of one hour each. Each session represents a single chance for a debate about some topic and the topics varry each session, though they are all set in the same world. For game set in the modern day each session might be an episode of a "Meet The Press" style television show, where each character is a political commentator. Characters could be participants in a traveling series of debates, sponsored by gentlemen’s clubs all over England in a steampunk game. They might even be priests of pagan religions arguing about how to deal with the rise of the Dark Lord in a high fantasy setting. What is important is that the setting is one where the conflicts will be settled with words rather than deeds. The hour of time is the length of the debate itself, while the ten sessions are the length of the debate circut or television season that is the venue for the debates.

But the players in the course of their debate create the setting itself, after the game’s leader, known as the Moderator, has established a base concept. At the beginning of every session, and during the session as time passes, a player is selected by the moderator to establish a fact. This is a single sentence that defines something about the world. Facts must make a reference to an established fact, but they also must establish new knowledge. While debate is central to the game, facts are absolutes that cannot be argued with or challenged except by a majority vote of all participants. Indeed, each character is assumed to have always known the fact, even before it was established. During the course of debates, characters may not directly contradict established facts, but they can, and are encouraged to, establish their own interpretation of the facts.

One of the moderator’s main jobs is to keep track of the established facts. But it is not the moderator’s job to stop players from contradicting fact. That job falls to the players themselves, and conflict arises in the game when players disagree about what facts are true or not. Rather than interrupt the in character flow of discussion, players use certain key phrases, inspired by , to create and settle challenges about facts.

Key Phrases

* [Character Name] must be mistaken about [fact]. -- Initiate a challenge.
* I apologize, I was mistaken. -- The challenged player admits his error and backs down. He may continue to speak.
* Moderator, what is the truth? -- The challenged player asks the moderator for a ruling.
* The truth is [fact]. -- The moderator reads the established fact from his notes. The challenged player continues to speak.
* I stand by my words, who stands with me? -- The challenged player asks the other players their opinion about the statement he has made. If a majority does not support him, the challenged player must be silent for two minutes.
* I stand by [character name]'s words. -- A player agrees with the challenged player.
* I do not stand by [character name]'s words. -- A player agrees with the challenging player.

Essentially, a player may be challenged by any other player when he is stating a fact or stating an opinion. He may respond in three ways, by admitting error and correcting himself, by asking the moderator for a ruling, or by polling the group for an opinion. When polling the group the player takes some risk on himself, he will be forced to be silent for two minutes if he looses the vote, but he also has a chance to overturn an existing fact. Actually, this is the only way to overturn an existing fact. An egg timer should be used to measure the time that the player must spend out of the debate.

The moderator's job is to keep debate moving at a good clip, and to encourage in character conversation while discouraging out of character conversation. Players can be punished by the moderator, as needed, though it shouldn't be! Punishment consists of handing a player a two minute egg timer. They must be silent until it has run out.

The moderator must also break debate periodically to establish a new fact. Each player should be given a chance to establish a fact at least once a session, and these chances should be given fairly over the course of the game. The moderator should encourage each player to establish a fact that fits the theme of a the debate being held in a given session.

Finally, and most importantly, the moderator must establish the core idea of the world, and create interesting roles for the players to inhabit in the first session and interesting topic to theme the sessions around. A good world concept will be a paragraph or less and will establish an archetypal feel for the world so that all the players have an idea of what kind of world they are going to be building. World concepts might include cyberpunk, steampunk, high fantasy, the modern day, or gilded age Europe. World concepts should never be taken directly from the real world or some established fantasy world. The point is to create a world after all! Good roles will suggest prejudices that the characters might have. Roles should come naturally into conflict, providing fodder for debates.

With luck the world that the players create will be more interesting and alive than anything they could have come up with on their own. The players might even want to continue with the world as part of a more conventional RPG!

Ingredients:

Time -- the 10 of 1 format works quite well for a series of debates.
Emotion -- the debate format should naturally make the players emotional: angry, excited, and engaged.
Committee -- the round table debate format is just a committee by another name.
Glass -- glass is represented by the penalty egg timers. This is the weakest connection, but I do feel like not being allowed to speak is the most natural punishment that there can be for this game.

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To Do:

The game really needs some predefined scenarios, with world concept, themes for debates, and roles. Its not obvious how the moderator should put those togeather.

Questions:

How can either glass or ancient be more integral to the game?
What is a better name than "Fantasy Crossfire"? For that matter, what *isn't* a better name?
Does the establishing a fact process have enough structure? Lexicon really benefits from alphabetization.


--Chris

[Graham Walmsley]