Introducing unWritten

[alejandro]

Hi everybody,

I'm designing a game. I guess everyone here is. Anyway, I haven't been on this forum much, and honestly, I'm not the forum type. Following along here will be tough, but I respect the things that come out of the Forge, So, here I am.

I've been designing my game for about 4 or 5 years now. Originally it was me trying to 'fix' what was wrong with all of the RPG's out there... Well, after a while I discovered that those games didn't need to be fixed, but what I was actually looking for was a game that better fit my tastes. My game went from stage to stage, starting out as a % based D&D hack to a fudge rendition of my attempt. The fudge version was probably the most satisfying, though it wasn't yet complete. I'd been working on it for about 2 years in that format, slowly whittling away the parts I didn't like and adding in the parts that I did. Until about a month or two ago I discovered Otherkind, by Vincent Baker. Hot Damn, that is a good system, the setting is pretty vanilla, but the core mechanic was golden! So I took my whole game, reworked it around that mechanic (with VB's permission) and now I have an incredible rendition of the game I've been trying to create all along...

The game still needs playtesting, and there's a lot that needs to be tweaked. For example when my gaming group gets together and we have an incredible time, how much of that is in the text and how much of that is our play style and friendship? I'm not sure. If it is our play style, can that even be written down in a way that others will grok?

So here I am, I'm going to start a different thread that is the power 19 for my game, unWritten. Please ask me anything, tear it apart, or send me jelly beans.

[alejandro]

One more thing, I have a blog at www.unWrittenContinuum.com for and about my game... Thanks

[Christian Liberg]

Heya.

I stumbled over the fact that you are creating something revolving around hero's journey, can you tell some more about how you use the hero's journey?

Chris

[alejandro]

Hey Chris,

No problem.

Are you familiar with "the writers journey" by christopher vogler? Well he took the hero's journey and reworked so that it has 3 act and something like 12 sections to it (campbell's original work had 4 acts and 17 sections.) What I did was rework it, from vogler's book, so that it has 3 acts and 9 sections, which I call chapters. I removed certain things that I fealt didn't support an RPG with multiple heroes, but its still faithful to the original hero's journey by campbell. Each chapter has a set of "requirements" that indicate the type of conflicts to push depending on the phase of the game your in.

What I just wrote sounds a lot more convoluted then the way it actually works. So far its worked rather well, though I've only playtested it once and a friend of mine (joshua bishoproby) playtested it a couple of nights ago, but he still hasn't gotten back to me yet other then to say it went really well.

alex

[Christian Liberg]

i would love to see, how you do that in techniques, or rather i would love to see your system supporting this.

Im in the process of creating a similar technique, to ensure that the game follows ( somewhat) the hero's journey the monomyth.

I have divided things like this.

Sections ( your Acts )
Chapters ( Your Sections )
Scenes

It was my intention to create a table of places and elements to include in each of these chapters, so that players knew what to put inside any given chapter. But im kinda at a loss to what to put there at the moment.

Im really eager to understand how your requirements idea work?

Chris

[alejandro]

So I have acts and chapters as well. Each chapters "requirements" are more like suggestions (hence the quotes) so for chapter 1 your asked to create conflicts that showcase the PC's strengths and in chapter 3 your asked to introduce a threshhold guardian and a "key." The threshhold guardian can be any type of challenge that represents that introduces the transition from the ordinary world to the special world. The key is anything that will facilitate that transition.

I made this very flexible because I want the players to be able to get a "when harry met sally" or "star wars" type of story out of it.

Is that what your looking for? I'm typing this on my phone right now so I'm not being as prolific as I can be

[Christian Liberg]

Very nice.

what i am looking for at the moment is some sort of spark of geniality to make me move along, so that i can the sucker done so to speak.

Is the an example or a narrative (with meta text ) on how this has transpired?

Chris

[Monkeys]

None of this answers the most important question: is the rulebook going to be called "Unwritten Rules"?

[alejandro]

Monkey: The game is called unWritten, my blog is called www.unWrittenContinuum.com

Chris: you can find a link to the playtest versions of my game on my blog.

The hero's journey is an integral part of the game, its actually something that I think is the most interesting portion of the game. The way I've engineered it is for it to add to game play structure without dominating the game, the way that most hero's journey haters feel that it dominates movies and doesn't all people to write... which is something I don't agree with.

I'm in the process of playtesting my game, if anyone wants to take a crack at it and give me some feedback I'd be very grateful. That said, I'm in the process of making some changes to it based on the latest feedback I've gotten.

thanks alex