Entry: The Glasslands, withdrawn

[Mathias Jack]

My first submission is The 13 Glass Skulls of the Ancients! but let's see what you people think of this one:

**********

The nuclear wars scourged the planet clean of everything. In their wake, the land had been blasted flat - the rocks, dirt, and sand melted to glass.

Welcome to the Glasslands

What humanity survived, did so beneath the glass, underground. Now four hundred years later, it is safe to leave the depths, but the returning humanity is not the same as what you and I might recognize.

Physically, most of humanity is still, well, humanoid. But without sunlight and residule effects of radiation have caused humans to lose hair and body mass. Shorter and thinner, only the size and shape of the head has remained the same. The darkest skin gets is a listless grey, most skin tones remain a slightly off white. Eyes have enlarged, and are luminious. And those are the clones, called Dollies. A few minority of humanity, Breeders, give birth to offspring we would not give a second glance at.

But the greatest change to humanity, Dollies and Breeders alike, is internal. It varies from individual to individual, some have nothing, yet many have some type of mental power. Those that do are called Actors. They fall into four rough divisions named Teams:
Glass
Emotions and thoughts - The invisibles of the mind, seen in the soul. These savants are intellectuals and emo-paths who can store memories and ideas in glass, or heal the wounds of the spirit. The most powerful, when above ground, raise legions of ghost-memories from the wounded land to strike out at the psyches of their enemies.
Steel
Electro-magnetic - The intricacies of metal, dance of the electron. Technomancers who are the only reason humanity have any technology to speak of, building computers to vehicles to warstriders. The most powerful build cyborg parts to heal humans, and give birth to machinces with sentience.
Meat
Bio-kinetic - The fire of life, the machinery of flesh. Doctors, entertainers and physical perfections alter the body to fit the need, in others and themselves. The most powerful can make the air poisonious from the bacteria usually harmless floating by, or blind by altering the lice that live in your eye lashes.
Light
Tele-kinetic - The forces of the univerce, the bonds that bind. Workers and brutes, the manual laborers lifting tons as a time, as well as the ones who pack the most punch, or freeze with a field of force. The most powerful become architects of invisible castles and artists giving gentle caressing massages.

To live under the glass for 400 years, strict and dire changes had to be made to society. Everyone now lives under the Law, dictated by the Commitee of Ancients, enforced by the Teams of Actors. One of the harshest laws, due to dwindling supplies and meager resources, even with fungi farms, no one over thirty is allowed to live - unless an applicant can plead his or her case to the Commitee of Ancients. This is the final test of many lives, only a few will, and can be allowed, to pass this.

Why does humanity needs a population of Dollies and Breeders, if they are to die by thirty? One is to fight against the Muties. Muties are what remains of life above the glass - a deadly organic mixture of plants and animals. If they aren't off killing and eating each other, then more than likely they are trying to kill and eat you. Some have only the reactions of a plant, some the intelligence of a dog, others are even Actors - but they are all predators.

The other reason is the splittering of the Commitee of Ancients. Now differing Commitees rule diverse bunkers, where the Law varies depending on admendments and decries. The bunkers wage wars for resources and revenge against each other, and some worry that ancient destruction will once more reign down.

The natural time limit of the game is the life span ending at thirty years old. I am thinking four players, one from each Team. I am thinking 4 sessions of two hours each: 1st session - chargen and background, introduction of the Commitee of Ancients, mission against muties; 2nd session - mission deployment against another bunker; 3rd session - mission deployment against one's fellow bunker members escaping at 30; 4th session - character's thirtieth birthday and Pleas made to the Commitee of Ancients to live. Essentially, the end of the game is to occur with the death of the character, or the winning of the character's plea, based on how they acted and lived through the three levels of missions giving deeper and more conflicting issues for the characters to grapple with.

Anyone catcht that I actually used all 8 ingredients?

**********

Okay, bed now. But I am still not certain which to do:
the Glasslands
or
The 13 Glass Skulls of the Ancients!

[Doug Ruff]

Do this one - post-nuclear-apocalyptic Logan's Run for the win!

More seriously: I love the use of glass, and there's something wondefuly horrific about being able to raise legions from the vitrified face of the planet. Pleading for your life at the end of the game is cool as well.

If you want to use all 8 ingredients, go for it. But I think you will have a stronger game by focussing on the elements above, and using them to drive your game somewhere harsh.

Whatever you choose, good luck!

[Mathias Jack]

Okay, a day for distance to gain clarity and a tighter focus on this game.

Drop the Dollies. The population has dwindled, and every life, while precious, is also a great drain on resources. They are humans through and through, except for…you’ll see.

Drop the Actor and the three Teams of Steel, Meat and Light. Drop the extra ingredients. They are simply gone for a tight for focus on Glass.

Even with the small populations of bunkers spread through out the Glasslands, only a few are born with mental powers. Maybe it was the radiation within the melted land, maybe the radiation on the genes of humankind, maybe a combination of the two. Whatever it was or is, humankind, once coming back above the glass, a few special individuals found out that they had a special relationship with the Glasslands.

Any other human who works with the land surface of glass has it shatter in into sharp bits under any type of stress. These can sometimes make excellent tools and weapons. Sometimes certain artisans can salvage surface glass that is reflective or clear for mirrors or windows. Unfortunately, in most cases, the surface glass simply is too brittle, and crumbles to a gritty sand-dust.

In the hands of those special few, a glass-worker, the surface glass becomes a tool and focus of humankind’s unlimited mental powers.

As a tool, a glass-worker can glass-sculpt. This is shaping and sculpting the surface glass into any shape desired, of different pliability and density, from liquid to solid to even a gas that scars the lungs of any unlucky enough to breath it. Given enough surface glass, force fields of glass can be sculpted for protection and destructive violence against a glass-worker’s enemies.

But glass-sculpting is nothing compared to glass-wielding, when the surface glass is used as a focus. With the ability to glass-wield, a glass-worker can place thoughts and emotions into bits of glass. Focusing through a bit of surface glass allows a glass-worker to interact with the thoughts and emotions of another sentient being. With practice, a glass-worker can project saved bits of thoughts and emotions into another, submerging them into a memory or mindscape. Greater power allows a glass-worker to manipulate anothers thought and emotions. The most powerful of the glass-workers can raise legions of ghost-memories from the wounded land to strike out at the psyches of their enemies.

Glass-working comes with a price though. While the glass-workers are the elite keeping humanity alive against the Melted (the new name for Muties) as well as the infighting amongst the bunkers, their power accumulates in an untimely death. As they increase in power and duration of use, the glass-workers under go a transformation. At first, when glass-working, the glass-worker becomes milky opaque. As the glass-worker gains in talent, he or she starts to reflect light, at first like an antique burnished mirror towards a cleaner and purer reflection. The strongest glass-workers turn translucent, faded away to invisibility. Each transformation causes the glass-worker’s body to harden and become brittle, more fragile.

Finally, the glass-worker has no choice but to face death in dignity. The glass-worker can decide to fade away forever, or transfer his or her entire conscious over to glass. Those glass-workers who manage to do this become a part of the Committee, the ruling body of humanity stretching back to the Ancients. But the transfer is not an easy task. Glass-workers must not only have the skill to make the transfer, but to face the Committee and make an appeal of his or her worthiness. Finally, they must face any issues resulting from past actions and situations. If the glass-worker resolves these issues, they may then live forever, helping guide humanity to a brighter future.

At worst, a glass-worker will go mad from attempting the transfer, running rampant. These mad reflections need to be hunted down before they tear through innocents living throughout the bunker communities. When this happens, it is usually the greatest threat a glass-worker will face.

I am still working with the idea of 4 sessions of 2 hours. The first session as character creation and face off against the external threat of the Melted. The second session moves to the challenge of an internal threat of bunker infighting against humans. The third session escalates to facing off versus a rampant glass-worker. The forth session climaxes as the character glass-workers attempt to join the Ancient Committee.

I need to ferment some more over the mechanics for the basic play and interchange, as well as some way to not only to escalate each session but to provide some way for the earlier actions to affect the interplay of the last session. So far I am grasping for straws but at least there is something there to grow from – we’ll see where this goes.

[Mathias Jack]

So I’ve decided to go with the Glasslands over my other idea The 13 Glass Skulls of the Ancients! While 13 Skulls seemed to have gathered better responses from fellow contenders, I believe there is better potential here in this game. It will be easier to use some the mechanical ideas I developed for the other game here with the Glasslands.

One of the main ideas I am pulling is that each character takes responsibility for one of the main attributes that are then shared between the four characters. I am considering a noun plus verb matrix for the system. The noun is the emotion being used, while the verb, or how the noun is being expressed or used, is the attribute. The four attributes in generic terms are:

Power
This is the generic hole for what the attribute “Power” can be. The character is the personification of Power, be it physical strength or mental intelligence or emotional will. The player hangs the character archetype over how the character represents Power.

Durability
The character is the personification of Durability, be it physical endurance or mental patience or emotional composure. The character archetype is centered upon this concept in one form or another.

Efficiency
The character personifies Efficiency, be it physical speed or mental wit or emotional mood swings from panic to calm.

Quality
Personification of Quality, be it physical accuracy or mental memory to emotional charisma.

Mechanically, what it means in game play is that the player has “control” over an attribute. If another player wants his or her character to express an attribute in play, they must “borrow” its use from that player – the owner player has a say in how the attribute is expressed in narrative.

Each character is also dominated or motivated by specific emotions. These are tied t the character’s background and goals. The use of emotions are the only anything is done mechanically. Even though an accomplishment might be achieved physically, it is mechanically achieved by an emotion being expressed via one of the four attributes.

Maybe I should use another word than attribute, has too many connotations in rpgs. I’ll just leave emotion as emotion – they are replabcing standard skills or attributes in more mainstream mechanics.

I also do not feeling I am expressing myself correctly in this plays out in my head. What I am trying to create a sense of is that in the world of the Glasslands, emotions for a glass-worker take on a real presence more so than the physical.

I also see the game’s play, not as character development, but as a chance for the character to be constantly building their memory glass for the transference of his or her consciousness in the last session. That is ultimately what the player is working towards with her or his character.

New terms:
Rad-glass – shards of the glass from the surface that was radiated and melted in the Ancient’s wars
Cut-glass – rad-glass that is glass-sculpted by glass-workers into swords
Memory glass – the piece of rad-glass that a glass-worker sculpts into a representative of his or her self and the final resting place of her or his consciousness

[Mathias Jack]

Any suggestions on what to call my attributes: Power, Durability, Efficiency and Quality?

The idea stems from a business slogan -
"You can choose two of the three: Cheap, Quick or Quantity"
In other words, you can get it cheap and quick but not many. Or you can get it quick and a lot but not cheap. Or you can get a lot and cheap but not quickly.
I like the interchange that these create.

I know several years that I read a rpg trying to use this idea, I just didn't quite agree with how the game accomplished it. I think the three aspects the game used was Quicker, Better, or Cheaper.

Maybe I need to drop the attributes down to three, which also means only three characters. I am just not sure how to break down the attributes to what three and how to describe the three since I don't think the original three (Cheap, Quick or Quantity) would translate well to a game.

What I am attempting to create is a system where players must cooperate together in game play to accomplish anything. I want to create a space for a lot of "pull" as well as "push." I' leaning towards GMless now, with characters using glass beads to pay and exchange as narrative resources. So the game looks to be played only with three people. For symmetry, I just might go with a 3sessionX3hours choice.

Well, I need to move on to getting something done - I'll let the mechanics simmer while I hammer out the setting, which is all done in my head. Then I can go onto formatting and art. By then, I think my head will be wrapped around how to accomplish mechanically what I want during game play.

[Mathias Jack]

Bittersweet mixture here...

I hurdled my obstacle of the mechanics finally. My three aspects are:
Power
The strength and energy of one's emotions, which provides both force and defense.
Precision
The control, accuracy, and manipulation of one's emotions.
Connection
The ability to achieve empathy with others and one's self.

With that, each individual character represents each individual aspect. The individual character is the personification of the aspect either physically, mentally, or socially.

EXAMPLE: Gorth represents Power. She can represent it, as suggestions, physically with strength or hardiness, mentally with intelligence, or socially with force of will. Her teammate, Rasd, represents Precision, has already chosen to personify the aspect physically with dexterity.

Besides representing the aspect, the player of the character has say over the aspect in regards to play.

Each character also has a series of emotions based on ties to the setting. Childhood memories, current relationships, syntamental attachments to things. The only way anything is accomplished is by channeling emotions through the focus of glass, via the 3 aspects.

This is greatly simplified, without going into the actual "mechanics" of how the mechanics work.

BUT...this is where the bad news comes in. Due to starting a new job this, as well as having some 12-14 hour days this week, I will not have the chance to type this all up for the contest.

I am officially withdrawing from Iron Chef 2006.

The great part of this is that I feel I have two solid game ideas that I am going to finish and post as pdfs. I also want to adapt "Our Steel, King's Law" to a pirate setting, and I have Joshua BishopRuby's permission to do so.

There are some amazing entries this year. I wish I had time to comment and add suggestions to them all. But at this time, I am going to bed since I have to be up in a few hours.

Good luck everyone!