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Here's my concept. It grabbed me almost straight away and it seems to be growing in strength.

Three Dooms

3 sessions of 3 hours.

Ancient
Committee
Emotion

The game is set in an ancient town at the dawn of civilization, such as Catal Huyuk, or earliest Jericho or Ur. Maybe 5000 people tops.

Requires 4+ players.

The town faces three dreadful dooms - perhaps monsters, enemy armies, famine, hostile gods, etc.

Players each make up two characters, one is a member of the committee that makes community decisions, the other a (prospective) hero who will help defeat the dooms.

Each session deals with one doom, and they progressively get tougher to destroy.

Character generation will be a quick beginning to the first session. Heroes will be chiefly defined by the emotions that they can use to win conflicts. At the moment I plan to pair emotional opposites, and have each hero take one primary and one secondary emotion. The secondary must be the opposite to another hero's primary. So one hero might be best at 'Rage", another at 'Love', another at 'Schadenfreude'... whatever seems cool.

Committee members are essentially defined by their role in the town, such as chief, priest, trader, champion and so on.

Each attempt to prevent a doom begins with the committee meeting. As the committee members discuss the doom, they will suggest things they have heard about it. These become aspects of the doom that the heroes must overcome. There may be some committee type/voting system to regulate these aspects.

One player (most likely the one who suggested original idea for the doom) then takes a GM role for the others. The other players' all have their heroes set out to defeat the doom. I want to aim for a mythic style of overcoming the aspects of the doom via the heroes' emotional drives here. Not sure how yet.

Once the doom is defeated (or the heroes retreat), glory is scored. The player who GMed gets 1. The player whose hero overcame the most aspects of the doom gets 2. The player whose hero overcame the next most aspects gets 1. (*Note: scoring may change) Glory is a resource that may be used to give some advantage subsequently, like rerolling failures or something.

Possibly the doom will always have the same emotional drives as the GM's hero character (to go against the heroes with opposed ones). Or maybe not. The GM will have some structure to work within about building challenge, such as so many points to spend for each doom (rising each session) which are allocated between the aspects. Thus, certain aspects of each doom might be easier or harder to defeat (e.g. it is easy to assuage the anger of the rain spirits but harder make up for the lost crop). The GM will also be able to draw on their glory to make things hard for the heroes.

At the end of the third session, the player with the most glory wins.

Everything else is too vague to bother typing at this stage.

Nice... committee is hard to use without seeming bureaucratic but this idea gives it an urgency & primordial feel

Thanks, that was what I was aiming for, pretty much.

I also like the idea of the committee coming up with the aspects of the doom, knowing that they will either have to GM the thing or else fight it.

It's stupid, but I can't resist the urge to call the GM role in this game "DM" for "Doom Master".

Or maybe it should be "DOOOOM Master" even...

I agree that having the committee define the doom is cool.

I'm having trouble seeing how resolution might work. Can you give an example?

Jason: that's exactly how the committee stage is intended to happen.

Mattijs: Nope, can't tell you how resolution works yet, I'm still hammering it out. The basic idea will be that heroes have two emotions that define how they deal with problems. So if your hero has Rage and Joy, then he'll have to use those when dealing with aspects of the dooms. Everything else is pretty much still in the air.

Ok, here's the plan for mechanics for the conflicts between heroes and doom aspects (or heroes and other heroes):

Hero character generation:
All heroes are rated in two emotions (a primary and secondary) and grit (will/hit points).

Everyone picks their own main emotion and then selects the secondary to be an opposite to another hero's main one. No duplicates are allowed. Emotion opposite pairs are noted down for reference (these can vary from game to game: 'hate' might have the opposite 'love' in one game and 'peaceful' in another, for example).

Players get 10 points to place in the three stats. Primary emotion and grit have minimum 3, secondary emotion minimum 1. Primary emotion must be at least double secondary.

Lastly, heroes pick a specialty. This is a description of something they are good at.

Conflicts
A hero is designated the attacker, based on the situation. Aspects never attack, they only defend. If heroes are fighting, the DM determines who is attacking based on the context.

Conflicts are fought using emotions to drive events in the game.

The attacker chooses which emotion they will use to win, and describes their attempt.
e.g.
"I use rage and attack the servants of the wind spirit with my spear"
"I use calm to try and convince the commanders of the invading army that trade with us will be better than war"

The defender selects which emotion they respond to this attempt with and descibes it. (Note that doom aspects have only one emotion, so are a bit more of a pushover. Their emotions must come from the list, too, so someone will always have an advantage). If the defender chooses the emotion that is opposite to the attacker's, then the attacker gains a free reroll.

Each side rolls a dice pool equal to emotion rating. Winner is determined as in Sorcerer - highest unmatched die wins. There is only success or failure, no degrees or anything.

Rerolls are allowed for opposed emotion (if any), or use of specialties. Specialty use involves narrating how the specialty could save the situation, and rerolling to see if that works. Doom aspects will use the aspect description as a speciality.

Other Bits That Aren't Worked Out Fully Yet
- Heroes need to take turns at aspects. If one hero has attacked an aspect, they must let someone who hasn't done so yet go first, if there is any such hero.

- At the end of each Doom, players get glory. DM gets 1. Player whose hero defeated the most aspects gets 2. Next most aspects gets 1. Glory points give rerolls each conflict.

- Heroes may steal kills from each other. Between rounds of conflict against an aspect, another hero may challenge to take over. The heroes have a round of conflict and the winner continues against the aspect.

- Losing a round of conflict means you are injured. The effects of this depend on which doom you are facing. Also, if you were fighting an aspect, you may not continue - another hero must take over.
-- Doom 1: Injury means you lose a grit. On grit zero, no effect. You also gain a new specialty that would not have helped you in that conflict.
-- Doom 2: Injury means you lose a grit. If grit is zero, you lose a point from your emotions. You also gain a new specialty that would not have helped you in that conflict.
-- Doom 3: Injury means you lose a grit. If grit is zero, you die. You immediately do as many injuries to whatever you are in conflict with as you have points in the emotion you are using (so you may defeat that aspect/hero as you go down).

- Aspects are generated with one emotion and grit by the DM at the conclusion of the committee meeting. The DM has a certain point pool available to divide between the aspects, which increases each doom.

- Helping. Every hero has a token that they may give to another player (including DM) to give them a reroll. If the player uses the reroll, they keep the token. They may give the token back to the owner to return the favour and a reroll. If you are still holding any tokens at the end of a doom/session, this will reduce your chances of gaining glory (probably meaning you lose out in ties).

That's the gist of things, I hope to sit down over the next couple of evenings to finish a full draft.

Okay, I have now got the character generation drafted. Here it is for those of you reading:

Character Generation

Character generation should take about 20 minutes.

Begin by deciding where the town is and giving it a name.

Areas in which early civilizations are known to have grown are (starting earliest) Sumeria, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Crete and Mesoamerica. You can, of course, have your town be anywhere you like.

As no languages from these days survive, names should be rendered in translation. That is, all names ought to be meaningful words or phrases.

It is also a good idea to quickly decide what level of fantasy elements are allowed in the game. By default, I assume that the world is as the ancients believed: monsters, spirits, magicians and gods will be common in the game.

Councilors

The councilors are defined by three factors only:
- Name
- Role in the town
- Predominant emotion or attitude

Some Example Councilor Roles
The king, chief or matriarch
The queen, chieftain's woman or matriarch's man
The priest of the Bull, Death, or Sky God
The priestess of the Grain, Fertility, or Forest Goddess
The richest person
The most feared magician
The champion or warlord
The wisest person
A senior tradesman (such as brickmaker, potter, bronzesmith, or stonecarver)
The senior hunter
The senior herdsman
The senior gardener


Heroes

The town's heroes are defined by:
- Name
- Driving emotion (description and numerical strength)
- Supporting emotion (description and numerical strength)
- Grit (a numerical strength)
- Specialties (simple descriptions)

Heroes are able to win in conflicts in which they can bring their emotions to bear. Specialties give the ability to re-roll a failure in conflict if the specialty applies. Grit is a measure of how many defeats they can sustain before they begin to lose heart or, eventually, die.

Each player should select their name, driving emotion and one starting specialty first.

No duplicate emotions are allowed in the group. You may choose similar emotions, but not identical ones.

Then each player picks their supporting emotion to be the opposite of another hero's driving emotion. Make sure that each driving emotion only has one opposite, and note down all the pairs: this is important! You can define the opposites however you like and they can (and should) vary in different games of Three Dooms. The chosen pairs of opposed emotions will define the tone of the game. Emotions can also be defined fairly broadly – the key is that they are deep, driving forces that motivate our heroes.

Once you have defined your emotions and starting specialty, you allocate points amongst the two emotions and grit. You have TEN points to allocate. You may allocate them as desired within the following restrictions:
1. Driving emotion must be at least 2.
2. Driving emotion must be at least double supporting emotion.
3. Supporting emotion must be at least 0.
4. Grit must be at least 3.

When deciding how to allocate these numbers, bear in mind the following:
- Neglecting supporting emotion may cause trouble if you need to defend against the emotion opposed to your driving emotion.
- Neglecting grit will mean you win more conflicts but suffer much more if you happen to lose any.

Some Example Emotion Pairs
Angry – Calm
Tolerant – Xenophobic
Joyful – Depressive
Hate – Love
Optimistic – Pessimistic
Gregarious – Misanthropic
Schadenfreude – Empathy
Intuition – Rationality
Violent – Peaceful
Spiritual – Cynical
Disgust – Acceptance
Shame – Pride
Fear – Confidence
Kindness – Meanness
Hope – Despair
Courage – Cowardice
Pity – Cruelty
Pleasure - Pain

Huzzah! Finished and submitted, with almost 3 more hours spare before I have to stop working on it.