OBLITERATI: the Unspeakable Horror of the Literary Life

[Marshall Burns]

Exposition
All the players take on the roles of made-up famous novelists.  Let's assume that all these novelists have been well-acquainted for about 10 years, and also that, when it comes to their art, they are talented, popular, and critically acclaimed.

Conflict
None of these novelists have finished a book in quite some time.  Why not?  Due to the unspeakable horror of the literary life, they have become too distracted.

Escalation
Since these novelists are talented, popular, and critically acclaimed, readers everywhere are champing at the bit for them to come out with a new book—but there's not enough buzz to go around, and whoever gets a book out first will steal the others' thunder and get all the glory.  Enter all manner of passive aggression, undercutting, sabotage, backstabbing, aggressive aggression, intrigue, and shaky alliances.

Climax
Who can cut through the distraction, survive the warfare, and keep the others down long enough to get their book finished first?

Denouement
What happens to the successful author after the book is published?
What about everyone else?  What happens to them now that their hopes are dashed?


Characters
I'm thinking characters will be randomly generated.  You get 11 characteristics:  7 unpleasant ones, 3 pleasant ones, and one little quirk thats neither pleasant nor unpleasant in itself.  The first two categories are a random (rolled from tables) pairing of an adverb ("appallingly" "slightly" "usually" "unexpectedly" "sometimes") and adjective (neg: "caustic" "avaricious" "dull" "wanton"; pos: "endearing" "loyal" "jocund").  The last is just something like "has a wooden leg" "not foreign, but speaks w/foreign accent" "raises chinchillas."  We'll say these Characteristics are your tools for getting things done.  Unpleasant is worth 1 die, pleasant is worth 2 dice, and the Quirk is worth 3 dice.  Anytime you can bring a characteristic into a conflict, you add its dice to your effectiveness.

But the real fun is Imbalance.  These are numerical; 0 to 10 we'll say.  These are states that your character is in, either due to the unspeakable horror of the literary life or due to the other characters' machinations, that are distracting you from your writing; ex. "confused" "horny" "enraged" "despondent."  If any of these are above zero, you can't work --UNLESS one or more is at 10, in which case you draw inspiration from the adversity.  So, every turn you get 1 point of Inspiration for each Imbalance at 10, or 10 points of Inspiration for being, um, balanced.
Best part?  Imbalance is also your resource for inflicting it on other people.  So, for example, you can use your "Enraged!" as fuel for taking someone else down.

Game starts at a big party that all the characters have attended, and this is where they all learn about each other's projects.  (I think a "free & clear" sort of IIEE thing would work best for this).  After that, the players take turns 'round the table for their character's personal life -- which can be spent venting Imbalance or visiting other people to give them Imbalance (which is essentially both, because you must spend Imbalance to inflict it).  After every one gets a Personal Life turn, let's say there's another party, which everyone is impelled to attend.

First one to 100 (or set a number) Inspiration wins.

I dunno, I thought it was a cool idea.  But I'm not sure how to make it work yet.
-Marshall

[Murrquan]

Try playing it and seeing how it goes! I want to see it done with postmodernist college professor characters. ^.^

[brainwipe]

You could have events such as 'Press Conference', 'Gala Dinner', 'Award Ceremony' that could be twisted to meet the needs of each author.

I'd play it but then I'd say it was a niche.

[Marshall Burns]

Murrquan,
It'll probably be a while before I get to try playing it.  Me & my group are currently occupied with my Super Action Now! project (see Playtesting), and after a couple more sessions of that we're going to do some Witch Trails.  Plus I've got forty million other ideas that I wanna try out

Rob,
I like the events, definitely have to use that.
Can you clarify what you mean by "I'd say it was a niche"?  I'm not sure what you mean.

-Marshall

[brainwipe]

What I mean is that it's going to be of interest to a small group of people who are likely to be fanatical about it, rather than generally appealing to a large number.

I also had a thought about the Editor. Having published some scientific stuff, there is always an interesting relationship between author and editor. Mostly, it's friendly and fun but it could be a source of much angst. You could have an Editor as a villain or a guide and helper. From a publishing point of view, the Editor is important!

[Jason Morningstar]

This sounds great. 

I'd think you would want to find a way to mechanically represent the people around each author - spouses, family members, mistresses, muses, agents, fans, and so forth, in a direct way. 

It looks ready to try, though - give it a whirl and see what you learn.

[Marshall Burns]

What I mean is that it's going to be of interest to a small group of people who are likely to be fanatical about it, rather than generally appealing to a large number.

Oh, okay, that.  Yeah, that's not something I'm concerned about.

The Editor is a great idea, and gives me another idea that might be interesting:  suppose that all the authors had the same editor?  Talk about awkward and complicated!  Plus, it's a great role for the GM, and provides a source of outside pressure to get the damn book done.  I like it a lot.


Jason,
Yeah, mechanics for the relationships would probably be very helpful to play.  So much so that I think I'd rather have at least a sketchy way of doing so before I try playing it.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey, here's the question I always ask - why do you need a GM?  Reading your pitch, there's nothing about a GM and I assumed there wasn't one.  It worked fine that way in my head.

One thought, and I think this would be really fun - what if they indeed had the same editor, and the guy playing the editor exerts a certain power over the authors, but is really just a different character playing by entirely different rules, with different goals.  He wants the authors to focus, to be productive, to make him some money.  Expanding on this, you could allow players to choose their role - author or editor (or agent, or whatever categories are fun), as long as you have one of each.

[Marshall Burns]

To tell the truth, there wasn't a GM until the Editor idea came up.  But I figured that whoever played the Editor would also be a good person to act as referee, since he/she wouldn't have a vested interest in who got their book done first.

But now I've also decided that the authors should be able to suck up to the editor and increase the chances of their book actually being Published first, even if they didn't Finish it first.

I've decided want this game to be all about conflict of interest and cross-incentives--so much so that it's questionable whether the win conditions can actually ever be met.  So out the GM goes, it's every damn player for themself.