1KM1KT Free RPG Community

Well, I think I'm doing okay.

My current plan is to through together enough of a draft to inflict it on my gaming group tomorrow evening for playtest. That would be easy enough if not for the fact that I'm using the cards limitation... but I think I can manage. The cards will probably be printed on paper, however. Which may make them, technically "papers" instead of cards. But I digress.

The game as it currently stands will be one of competitive storytelling, as the gentlemen drink their wine and tell of exciting insect-hunts of their career in far-flung places.

There will be scoring, and the rules will say that players should bring wine and that the winner gets to keep any that's unopened Stories will be scored by uninvolved players for coolness of the insect, coping with problems and addressing an aspect of Enlightened thought in some way.

There's no GM, but when someone tells their story one player will be their Accuser (I may drop this in favour of another term - I have three ingredients without it) and another was their companion on that expedition. The accuser acts as GM/source of difficulty and the companion acts as referee and judge of who "has the facts right" (i.e. which of the storyteller or accuser's suggested narrations really happened).

Cards will be used to limit the story. When a story begins, other players may play cards for the insect, an attribute of the insect, and the aspect of Enlightened thought that is relevant. The companion and accuser are the people who play the insect and theme cards, respectively. I like the extra layer of iron chef style here...

Let me also say to the organisers, your ingredients have forced me to come up with a game far more odd than I could have imagined last Friday. Kudos.

Mike,

I have to say this sounds great. Keep it up.

Simon W

Well, I threw together enough of a draft to play the game and did so. We had my regular group, minus a couple of players and with one guest (who wasn't much of a gamer).

I was surprised by how well it went.

Play revealed a few little issues but overall pretty much worked out how I envisioned. Some of the ways that our tales of insect hunting engaged with the required themes in Enlightenment thought were... how shall I say it... bizarre? twisted? In any case, we all had a good laugh and one person went so far as to say he would play it again.

I really liked the fact that the absurd setup encouraged people to build up some really funny stories. The ability of the Skeptic (previously Accuser) in each story to challenge the Storyteller with accusations of lying and inserting difficulties to overcome worked very well indeed.

So, I'll polish the text and clear up the problems we encountered tonight and I think the judges will find The Gentleman's Entomology Club to be a very tasty dish, with some chitinous bits here and there.

We did hear of one expedition to the Himalayas in which our intrepid entomologist had French-style sauteed farmer stag beetles... apparently very nice indeed.