Entry: Refractions

[Occultatio]

Game Title: Refractions

Time Frame: 3 sessions of 3 hours each

Ingredients: Glass, Ancient, Emotion (with a definite influence from Committee).

*****

Number of Players: 4 exactly (+1 GM)

The setting: Legends told of the Sha'ik, and how they would come again. Long ago, millenia ago, they came to our world, with the intent to rape and devastate all in their path. They were held back then with the miraculous technology which was once the birthright of our people, and they left, but they were not defeated.

Now, they have returned, and we no longer have the weaponry which our ancestors did. The screaming glass towers which once shielded us have long since shattered into dust. The magnificent castles which struck out against their raids have been pillaged and broken. We are no longer the majestic people we once were, and we cannot possibly protect ourselves.

Unless: the castles of our ancestors were beyond numerous. In those days, it is said, there was a gleaming glass fortress on every hill, rings of them surrounding every town, dozens of translucent citadels within the walls of every city. Perhaps, through their sheer multitude, one has survived. Perhaps one last castle still sits, hidden somewhere beyond the sight and knowledge of those who would defile it.

But even if we could find that last castle, would we know what to do with it? Do we still have the understanding, the strength, and the purity of heart to draw to our defense one final time that ancient power?

This is the story of that last castle, and of the four souls whose destinies were forever linked to it.

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Character Creation

A character has four primary stats -- two pairs of binary opposites. Those stats are Body and Mind, and Passion and Will. Between these stats, a player must distribute 1d4, 1d6, 1d8 and 1d10, one to each.

While the three lower dice sizes may be assigned at will, only one player may have 1d10 for each of the four categories. That is to say, each player must put their 1d10 in a different stat than the other three players. Players should come to mutual agreement on who gets what during character creation.

The stat in which you have 1d10 determines what Archetype you are. The four archetypes are the King, the Counselor, the Soldier and the Scientist, for Passion, Will, Body and Mind respectively.

Once dice are assigned, the next step in character creation is to decide your Name. A character's name should be of the format "X, the Y of Z," where X is your name, Y is an occupation, and Z is a specifier. For example, "Tobias, the Wooer of Women" or "Grignr the Slayer of Rats" or "Paleos the Thief of Darkness." Aside from fitting this format, the only constraint for your name is that it should be generally appropriate for your Archetype. What is considered appropriate is left to the GM's discretion, but keep in mind that your name is very important, in ways which will become clear later. A character's name should be the most fundamental expression of who that character is.

The final step in character creation is to assign dice to your Emotions. Each character has 12 different emotions, like the Stats in binary pairings. The Emotions are Joy, Despair, Calm, Wrath, Kindness, Cruelty, Generosity, Selfishness, and four others I haven't come up with yet. To distribute among these Emotions, each character has 3d4, 3d6, 3d8, and 3d10. The only rule for distribution is that you may not have more than one die size in a single Emotion -- beyond that, you can feel free to put all three of a size into one, and none into another.

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Gameplay

This is the section I still need to work out. I'm not entirely sure how the game is played on a specific level, except for a few scattered elements. First, the game has a board, which is simply a grid of sufficient size, with the castle's internal walls drawn onto it. Players move on their turn by rolling their Body die.

As the game progresses, players try to earn Influence points, which they get from either acting in a way which justifies their Name (even if metaphorically, perhaps), or winning Emotional Conflicts. Influence accumulates over the course of all three sessions, and can perhaps be spent (I haven't yet decided, but that makes a certain amount of sense).

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Superstructure

Despite the initial premise of alien invasion, this is a game about archetypes. This is not immediately evident to the players, but over the course of the campaign, their characters and the situations they find themselves in become more iconic and mythic.

The first session is, let's say, half an hour of character generation, and then a long puzzle, wherein the characters explore the castle, communicate with the ancient spirits which guard it, and slowly work out how to reactivate its power. The session ends with them just about to turn it on.

The second session then jumps back thousands of years, to the first invasion of the Sha'ik. The players have the same characters, but not quite. They make two changes: first, they take 1d4, 1d6, 1d8 and 1d10 (of their choice) from their Emotions, and add those values to their appropriate stats (so each stat has two dice of the same type as before). Secondly, they remove the part Z from their name, so they become simply "Tobias the Wooer" or "Grignr the Slayer" or "Paleos the Thief."

In this session, they all know how to make the castle do its thing, and the gameplay is focused on the infighting between them, as they all try and gain primary control of the castle's power. While they are all working for a common goal, each player wants to be the spearhead, and define just how the power is used. Many more Emotional Conflicts here. The session ends when the aliens are repelled.

Between the second and third sessions, the players repeat the Archetypifying of their characters: they switch a further die of each size from Emotions to Stats, and then remove part X of their name, becoming simply "The Wooer," "The Slayer," or "The Thief."

In this final session, time skips back even further, another few millinea in the past, when the castle is being built. There are almost no mechanical conflicts here, but just intense and hopefully metaphorical discussions of the Time to Come. The players know they have to build the machinery that they (as players) have discovered previously in the game, but they can decide now what those machines were actually supposed to do, as well as build elements of the castle which would be "forgotten in times to come" -- i.e., the players never actually used it previously.

At the end of the third session, the character who has gained the most Influence over the castle is the one who has the final word over its function. That player then gets to narrate exactly what happens when, back in the "present," the descendents of their archetypes manage to activate it.

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That's what I've got for now. Thoughts? Comments?

[kleenestar]

I think this is a really strong concept. I like the mythic/archetypal aspect, and I really like the way you move the sessions backward in time. The "save the world" story is not standard-epic-fantasy-boring when it's being handled this way, especially with the implied sci-fi/fantasy hybrid.

However, I wonder whether you've set the stakes high enough for inter-character conflict, considering that you're making that the focus of sessions 2 and 3. The players all do agree on the single goal of making sure the horrible aliens are repelled. How are you going to raise the stakes for them personally, so that they don't just decide to put aside their differences, or compromise with one another in the first five minutes? How are you going to shape the narrative of their conflicts with each other?

In other words, what do the characters care about besides saving the world? It had better be almost as compelling if you want the conflicts to work.

[DevP]

[DevP]

Check out kleenestar's thread for a list of emotions: