[Consipiracy of Shadows] Introduction Help

[Keith Senkowski]

We are in the editing stage of our game and I was looking to get some outside opinions/comments on our Introduction.  I think that it is a terribly important part of the game as it is the first thing people will see and is often the part mined for things like press releases and the back cover of the book.  I have posted it below and would like to get a few first impressions from people to see if in the writing the setting/message/idea of the game is well presented.  Please excuse any spelling/gramatical errors.  There is a reason I write and do not edit.  Thanks in advance.

Keith

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On it's surface, the continent of Polian on the world called Erd looks much like our world in during the Middle Ages.  Peasants work from dawn until dusk in their fields, taking only a short rest once a week to worship their god.  Men and women born to noble families rule the land.  People live and die, much in the same way as they did in Europe during our medieval past.  However, something about the world just doesn't seem right.

In Polian strange things occur with an alarming frequency which cannot be explained.  Towns suddenly become infested with rats; only to have them all disappear days later.  Certain places always seem to smell like lilacs, even thought that plant is foreign to the region.  When night falls the land and even the very air seems to warp into some sort of parody of the daytime.  Sometimes people suddenly begin to act completely different than they way they would normally act.  Other times people simply disappear, never to be heard of again.  

Some may say such events are simply coincidence that strange things happen everywhere.  They believe that there is nothing sinister about the oddness of the world.  They would be wrong.  There is something going on beneath the nose of society.  Powerful groups conspire in the shadows with unconscionable demons from another world.

Nowhere is anyone truly safe from these demons and their mortal allies.  In every village, towns and city, the conspiracy has found a home.  It is not readily apparent, but it is there, hiding in the shadows, coming out only at night, working to further its dark designs.  

During the day, these bastions of civilization seem full of life and even cheerful.  It is easy to scoff at notions of a demons walking amongst us plotting our downfall and accept the word preached form the pulpits of the church when one is bombarded with the sights, sounds, and smells found inside of a city's confines.  However, cities are not safe from their schemes and that is at no time more apparent when night falls.

Once the sun sets on the land, the buildings seem to loom massively over the people, like angry giants.  Gloomy half-lit streets and ever winding alleys seem to imply a sinister animation to the cities themselves.  Age and ruin permeate everything.  Dust seems to choke the very air, walls seem to have decayed with the coming of night, and iron fences seem to be stiffer with rust.  In the deep, dark parts of the night mankind's great achievements seem to become warped and twisted in a manner suitable to the demons.

The wild lands of the world are no more comforting than the great cities.  The landscape is beautiful and seductive by day, dominated by soaring ice caped peaks, dense, rambling woods, and unfathomable lakes with still, glass like surfaces.  These wonders all change in the impenetrable darkness of the night.  When the moon rises the wilderness is a bleak and forbidding wasteland.  Wise folk know that when night falls the beauty and comfort of the land turns dark and sinister.

Those that live in the small hamlets know of this hungering dark.  There, in these small beacons of light floating the wasteland of the deep night, the old stories never became myths.  The rural folk know that they are not alone.  Strange things happen out there that those who are ignorant scoff at as superstition.  Many a superstition has come back to haunt the fool who laughs in ignorance.

Despite this hope is not lost.  Not all men and women have turned a blind eye to the storm on the horizon.  This grand Conspiracy of Shadows does not work unopposed. A small number of men and women have learned the truth and largely unseen and unheard they seek to thwart the machinations of the conspiracy.  They are the Varskamen.  

In Conspiracy of Shadows, the players assume the rolls of a cell of Varskamen. They are the last wall before the coming storm.  Men and women both, they seek to thwart this conspiracy and end its destructive path that hurtles mankind ever increasingly towards oblivion.  They take on many forms and come from all walks of life.  Some are soldiers and priests from the privileged classes while others are common folk who have nothing to lose.  

Today, the Varskamen and the unnamed conspiracy of mortals and demons fight each other in a secret war in the back alleys of the world.  Men and women secretly battle the forces of darkness against terrible odds.  Their only solace comes in the knowledge that with every action they take, they force this conspiracy to take one step back from their unfathomable goal.

[Mike Holmes]

I was looking to get some outside opinions/comments on our Introduction.

Could you be more specific?

The only thing that comes to mind generally is that it needs to be punched up a bit. It's pretty cliche in many parts. I think that it gets the focus of the game alright, but just not in a grabby enough way to get me enthused. Avoid the temptation to put in more purple prose, or cliches, but find some way to make it grab the reader.

A bigger bang to start off would be good, as would more info on the Varksmen - we have to want to be these people.

Mike

[Keith Senkowski]

Mike
Actually, your comments were the kind I was looking for.  I want first impressions and what the intro says to the reader.  I'm glad that at least the focus comes through.  The early stages of the writing seemed to have no focus (which we fixed).  Could you clarify a few things for me though?

What do you mean by punched up?

What parts do you see as cliche and how so?  My editor says I have the tendency to use them and plenty of purple prose, but I swear I am blind to my own writing.

The Varskamen have their own chapter that details them more indepth, but I think understand what you mean.  Something that makes them stand out of the Intro since they are the protagonists.

Thanks
Keith

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Keith,

I think I can re-phrase what Mike is saying ...

CONFLICT. Conflict, conflict, conflict. Not a mood, not a "feel," but an actual problem.

Since it's clearly a setting-driven kind of game, state exactly what problem people face in the setting. Remember Star Wars? The big rolly-on-screen text beginning? It told you about the revolution against the Empire. It didn't wait until you'd seen Luke putz around in the desert for half an hour.

PLAYER RELEVANCE. Here we get into GNS territory. What about the conflict? So what? We came to play, not to talk.

Does it let me show how wicked-smart I am with the parameters for weaponry mechanics? Does it challenge me openly with "can you live?" (A rather good recent and very Gamist independent game, Lazer, has as its tag-line "Prepare to die ...")

Does it let me really dive into some aspect of the setting in such a way that I don't have to do anything else? Can I "escape" into this world? Am I fascinated by what you, the game authors, will tell me happened in it, or is going to happen? Will play be very much like reading an even better sourcebook than what's already there?

Does it raise my interest in "Hey, I can work with this" fashion? Do I get to choose sides about the conflict, during play itself? Can I see a way to put my personal stamp onto the conflict, whether taking it on its own terms or re-defining it in some way? (Check out all threads on Dust Devils in this very forum to see an author discover how to introduce his game in this fashion.)

So introduce the conflict and make it clear which one of these is going to net the player the most fun, in your view. That's my advice. Others may differ.

Best,
Ron

[Keith Senkowski]

Ron

I just finished reading through the Dust Devil discussions and I think I get it.  I lost my core idea int the writing of it.  I was trying evoke a mood, not introduce the premise.  The one post in particular were the writer broke down his premise from a large, over broad idea to a short, concise single idea is I think an exercise that all would be designers should go through.  I'm going to go back and approach it with that concise idea in mind, which, by the way, is "The Truth Can Kill You".  Thanks for the help.  This forum has been a great resource and I wish I had found it sooner.

Keith