"You romanticize your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao, but their ideas of freedom are just oppression now..."
--Bloody Revolutions, Crass
Step 1: The Theme:
Create a game that is Based On, or Inspired By, a Historical Period
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The Chinese Cultural Revolution. But not entirely historical, but a bit more melodramatic and cinematic. Influences here are not scholarly but popular: Wild Swans (book), The Last Emperor (movie) etc... etc...
Step 2: The Ingredients:
Accuser.
Invincible.
Companion.
Hmmm... The players are a cadre of sorts, in some town or village at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
Accuser: Can be the other players
Invincible: Players are invincible until...
Companion: The player's vulnerability: A loved one or an artifact counter to the ethos of the Communist Party (inspiration: the violin from the movie "The Red Violin". The Companion is what puts you at risk, loss of it means you are exposed, you will lose your loved one or object, and surrender to the tides of the cultural revolution, perhaps even partaking in the destruction of your companion.
*There is no character sheet.
Correct. There is no character sheet. The game begins with each player making a mediocre self-criticism before their peers and announcing some minor crimes against the People (I, Major Wu, have not given fully of my heart to the people... I have failed to work until my hands bleed, and I have cursed my superiors and failed to heed the wisdom of Chairman Mao"). All players begin with a self criticism as means of introduction and play goes round robin with people either framing a scene or continuing their self-criticism.
*The system makes use of designer-created cards: Not Tarot or Trump Cards.
Correct. There are two things: a deck of equal cards composed of images of the I-Ching and revolutionary propaganda images of China. The evenness of the deck is split by an additional card (see color resolution below). The image on the cards is used for task resolution in an open-ended way. One, the I-Ching symbolizes the past and tradition and the player's own historical ties and the newer portion of their deck represents a new dystopian or utopian future. The deck symbolizes the players own discontinuity.
*All playable characters are fixed- No character generation.
There is no character generation. Players announce their roles and then run with it. They have no stats, only a position in society and whatever traits they exhibit during their self-criticism (which may be deceptive), that appear through description, or through play resolution.
*Resolution system must use colors.
Yes. The additional card is a single red card which has very strong connotations in Chinese culture - here it means "luck" and is the wild card allowing it to trump other cards. I still haven't worked this out.
That's a sketch of what I have in mind. However, much to my chagrin, all my books on Chinese history and the I-Ching are stowed away, so I'll see what I can do. A friend has a bunch of postcards which I may try and scan in, but unless I can pull the deck together early on, I may not go through with this.
Game play:
Round Robin.
Begin with declarations.
After the first round, players can
1) accuse others of crimes (trying to suss out the other's Companion or weakness
2) Frame a scene in their past hinting at their motivations or suggesting of fecklessness on the part of others
3) Continue their self-criticisms before the party rally.
I imagine game play ends when one person cracks and betrays their Companion, where the rest descend upon them like hyenas.
Those are my rough ideas bouncing around.
"The truth of revolution brother... is Year Zero"