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I just read the contest rules.

30 pages!!

My working notes have just stretched to 40, and that's not including the dozen quarter page illustrations and the three half page illustrations I've been putting together.

Nor does it include the extra half dozen pages of game-play examples I wanted to use for illustrating certain points in the game mechanisms.

I guess it's time for some culling.

You! So we meet again. This time, it shall be different, oh yes. This is my page count range.

I love running conspiracy games. They offer tension and discovery like murder mysteries, but missed clues are less of a problem. I'm curious how you'll be dealing with the problem of players reading the game to discover the secrets. Of course, you haven't revealed much about your work, and probably won't. No, you'll just sit there in the shadows, cackling evilly as the whole thing unfolds, exactly like you planned it...but did you remember to remove the little wrench secreted in my waistband?

Looking forwards to seeing your game.

You know what might be a good mechanic for a conspiracy game in which the GM might worry that the players would read the game to learn "What's really going on"?

Random roll secrets. Like have a bunch of tables in the back of the book that you roll on to determine what's really going on, and the players, even if they read it, don't know if their players just learned a lie or if that's what you really rolled when setting up the campaign.

OK...a little bit of background on the game.

Unlike many cyberpunk games where the players take on the roles of the downtrodden gutter-trash who end up having their lives twisted and their sanity questioned, I'm taking it up a notch.

The players in Bunraku Nights play the roles of the manipulative puppet masters (named Bunraku after the Japanese puppeteers who hide in plain sight).

Their "weapons" are the puppets they use, the poor protagonists of your typical cyberpunk novel or movie.

Their "hit points" are degrees of intrigue and scenes that must be confronted over the course of the game.

Their "attributes" are their connections to the various forms of influence networked across the world.

The player know what's going on. They know that they are in a secretive war against the other players. They screw their pawns for any extra advantage, and if they'll get a leg-up on their opponent by framing one of their own for a crime (or even killing one of their own)...then so be it. But a wise manipulator will know not to burn out all of their henchmen in a final attack against a nemesis, because there are other potential enemies on the table.

The game is played out in scenes where a single puppet confronts an aspect of the opposing Bunraku's power structure (they may have sidekicks from their Bunraku's team roster). This aspect lays the groundwork for scene framing. The defender takes on the role of framing the scene, while the aggressor explains their actions to overcome the events they are penetrating.

The defending Bunraku may stand up one of their puppets to oppose the incoming attack, and either side may send in allies to complicate the scene. Note that these attacks may be social, political, stealthy or blatant...and if things get complicated they can always be escalated to combat.

A single player takes on the role of oracle. Which could be more like the banker in monopoly than a full GM (the person who knows the rules better, and who you defer to when there's a dispute)...or it could be a full blown GM role with a complex story and power structure of their own that must be taken out through teamwork by the other players.

The game uses strings of dominos as it's main mechanism.

...but now I think I've said too much.

I hope to have a pre-release version of the game released some time next week...some playtesting has been run and it seems to work so far.

Any chance that we could get a peek at Bunraku Nights, perhaps once the contest is over?

Yeah, no problems.

I'll post up some of my working notes shortly.

As promised...



Hopefully you can see some of the strategy I was aiming for with the domino mechanism.

I still think the domino idea has some great potential, but I think it will need to be expanded beyond the 30 page limitation.

When I take another stab at this idea, I'll probably play a bit more with the way characters are generated.

I'm even thinking of using the current bunraku generation rules as the system a GM uses when developing a story, while players will generate a single character, thus working together to foil the GM's story pyramid plot.

Lots of ideas lead to option paralysis...hence the need to rebuild something from scratch.