Breakdown: "The Pale Continent"

[Jonathan Walton]

Okay, now that exams are mostly over, it's time to look at the results of this fine, fine Iron Chef competition.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37492#37492">My submission took on the dauting task of taking 3 completely unrelated cool ideas that I had and trying to force them together, all while incorperating the required elements.  I succeeded to a certain extent, but it would have taken a good many more hours of work to really get everything to work together properly (as Mike commented in his results).

Here are the individual elements, examined individually:

1) Occidental Adventures

Isn't it about frickin' time there was a game that made Western culture look exotic?  I know the "sword & sorcery" genre plays with medieval culture a bit, but it's really more about violence and magic.  There's no equivilent of "Legend of the 5 Rings" or "Kindred of the East" that exotifies Western culture in the way that white game designers have typically exotified other parts of the world.  And turn about IS fair play.  I definitely want to work on this at some point.

"The Pale Continent" played with this idea a bit, especially with the original map design, which I love.  However, it was trying to occomplish too many things at once, so this part of its message was pretty much lost.

2) The Dice Cache/Pool Mechanics

This one came from all the playing card-based mechanics I'd been seeing in things like "Dust Devils" and "Incarnate."  Why not draw "hands" of dice and have a little "deck" of dice to refill your hand from?  I'm still not sure how easy it would be to keep your dice pool in proper order, with people rolling dice and tripping over themselves and spilling sode all over the place while the game is going on.  Still, I really like the way this concept turned out, and I'll have to use it again SOMEWHERE.  I'm just not sure what that is yet.

3) Chess-Piece-Miniature Combat

I don't know why I didn't think of this before.  I loved the old classic Nintendo version of "Battle Chess," where the Rooks turned into big rock monsters and ate the Queen.  Damn cool stuff.  And why have actual miniature when most households (not referring to the in-game ones, now) have a chess set lying around in disuse?  The complex strategy of chess then gets automatically incorperated into the game, bringing a bit of class to the world of miniatures.

Not sure how I'm going to end up using this.  I have half a mind to start working on a game about Locus Dei, the spirits of places, but have it be set in completely urban areas.  Something like Underworld meets Unknown Armies' Urbanomancy meets Werewolf's The Book of the City (soon to be released).  You could move different spirits or attributes of the city around, trying to outmanuver an invasion by Suburbia or create some urban renewal.  Maybe one piece would represent "crime" and you'd have to decide where to put it, since you couldn't just get rid of it.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

If anyone else wants to steal some of these ideas or has thoughts on how I could make better use of them, go right ahead.

Later.
Jonathan