Let's Be Productive: The Wishlist

[Jonathan Walton]

So last year (man, that was a whole YEAR ago?), we had this thread that is now marked in my browser Favorites as "Promises," because it consisted of people requested specific games to be written by specific people.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5848

Here are some examples:

I want R. Sean Borgstrom to write a game about the Trojan War. I want to feel the wrath of Achilles in my bones. I want my heart to break at the beauty of Helen.

I want Shreyas Sampat to write a game based on Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities." I really, really, really do. The book is a novel but not a story (falling into the category of "poetic narrative" that came up in the recent thread on microfiction).

I want Jonathan to finish Fingers on the Firmament. I want to see the faces of the stars.

I want Jonathan Walton to do a game about a secret society that designs myths and injects them into various cultures in an attempt to change societies by changing the way people think.

That thread has influenced me to write Argonauts (something like the Trojan War game), Humble Mythologies (which Shreyas thinks is something like the "Invisible Cities" game), and I still owe Shreyas Fingers on the Firmament and Walt his meme-based game.

So let's continue on this track.  To keep things productive, like the title says, it would be best if the people you wanted to write them actually frequent the Forge, but that's not 100% necessary, since this is a wishlist of dream games.  You might just have to end up writing them yourself (like my Trojan War game).  Feel free to re-request games from before or alter previous suggestions if you REALLY want to see something happen.  Basically, I'm hoping this will be a motivational thread where we can all get excited about making games that other people REALLY want to play.

I'll start:

-- I want Eero to write a game in which players create fictional memories of their shared adventures together.  The players would pretend to be old friends who had grown up together (even if they are complete strangers), play themselves in the past, basically, and create fictional shared acquaintances and siblings that you never had.  Then you reminisce about the good and bad times, the highs and the lows, that the group "remembers."  It would be very casual and unstructured, but other players could denouce certain things based on plausibility or other concerns ("No, dude, that's not the way it happened!  It was definitely your mother who caught us drinking beer on the subway!").

-- Since I've already done something that's almost an Invisible Cities game, I want Shreyas to write a game in which the "characters" are not individuals, but the spiritual representations of entire peoples, places, or worlds.  Imagine an animistic version of Aria Worlds or a version of Exalted where you could play the Unconquered Sun and everyone who is connected to him/it at the some time.  You would be able to zoom in levels of scale, to tell stories about individual encounters between "limbs" of the meta-characters or zoom out to narrate the conflicts of nations and peoples.  "Who are you playing?" "Oh, I'm the religious movement known as The Children of Autumn.  One of my head priests is being seduced into heresy, but I'm making great headway among mountain peoples to the East."  The game wouldn't be about conflict so much as viewing cultural interactions as conversations and negotiations between these animistic zeitgeists, who would change each other and then world over time.

I'll probably come up with more, but those are the first two that immediately sprang to mind.  WISH AWAY!

[hardcoremoose]

I've been thinking about this one for a while...

I want to see Luke Crane write a new game.  Doesn't matter what it's about, as long as it perfectly represents his vision of what an rpg is and how one should be played.  Burning Wheel is great, but I don't think it's the greatest thing we'll ever see Luke design.

- Scott

[Paganini]

I want Chris Edwards (hopefully with help from yours truly :) to write a true cyperpunk game. Not this chromed up sim stuff. I want Burning Chrome the RPG.

[Rich Forest]

I want Scott to do the definitive, revised, full version of Wyrd. And I want it yesterday, dammit.

Rich

[Argetlamh]

I want my self to get off my ass and finally write that Judge Dee game I've always wanted to write.

-Dan Vince

[coxcomb]

I want Vincent Baker to update and expand Otherkind. Barring that, another highly-themed narratvist fantasy game that reignites my love of the genre.

[Ben Lehman]

Barring *ahem* Sorcerer 2nd edition for the moment.

I want a game set in Heaven, the early Christian conception thereof, and I want it to be written by Shreyas, and I want to cry at the beauty while playing it.  I want bonus dice for crying at the beauty.

I want a system for ordinary people, ordinary lives, ordinary dramas, keyed towards psychological explorations of the characters and, through them, their players.  I want to collaborate on it with Vincent Baker and Ron Edwards.  Well, mainly I just want to give them to disorganized pile of notes that sits on my hard drive and let it rip.

I want Gods of War, by Jake Norwood.

yrs--
--Ben

[John Harper]

I want Two Clicks -- the game by Vincent Baker about how much it sucks to be some poor fucker humping his shit through the jungles of Vietnam, searching for an enemy he does not want to find.

I want Gridiron, by Jonathan Walton. The sports RPG about rookies in the NFL. What are you willing to do for your career? How much can you take? Are you a winner? At what cost?

I want Sticks and Stones, by Jared Sorensen. I'm not even gonna decsribe this one. Jared can hit this out of the park with the title alone.

I want to see Clinton's game about superheroes. I know he's got one in him.

I really, really want a WWII game from Ron. I can't quite express why. But I don't think I'm the only one.

Jake Norwood, meet Steven Brust. Steve, meet Jake. Done and done. Who's that over there? Glen Cook? Don't mind if I do.

Matt Snyder, your mission is The Golden Compass.

Finally, I want Paul Czege to stop designing games. He's making the rest of us look bad.

[Ben Lehman]

Oh, and...

I want an Asian fantasy / history game that isn't reheated D&D and SamuraiNinjaKewl.  And, of course, Mr. Walton writes it.

yrs--
--Ben

[Matt Snyder]

The Golden Compass, huh? So, do I take that as a nifty title or should I be cribbing notes from Phillip Pullman?

My list:

Ramshead Publshing's black powder era RPG -- Sharpe's Rifles, Aubrey and Maturin, and all that bit.

Adept Press makes a Gene Wolfe inspired science fiction game.

Wicked Dead Publishing unveils a game that makes Hellboy look positively boring.

Anyone makes a wholly compelling narrative Supers game. (You know, one whereI don't have to ignore all that Heortling stuff.)

[Shreyas Sampat]

Ben, please see the Design forum. I'm not familiar with this conception of Heaven, so I will need your help making a game out o it.

Jonathan, that's such a hot idea that I'm putting it on my "me" wishlist. I can see all kinds of interesting ramifications of this zooming in and out approach. Children of Autumn is a great title; if something doesn't strike me then that will be its title.

I think both of you will be pleased to hear that I'm taking a writing class entitled Landscape and Setting in the fall, which has a great reputation for being topical and excellent. I hope I'll be able to take something from that class and apply it to both of these designs, because at one level or another they are both about places that we love.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Why, I just read all Multiverser books (except the novel, which I'll take with me to the north for Easter). I wish for M.J. Young to write a sister game for it with simpler, narrativist rules and more emphasis on the shameless christianity and the idea of playing yourself in a multitude of situations. Just as indifferent to the character's fate, just as intelligent with world design, but with rules I could play with. I'll give a name: "Pilgrim's journey". I hunger to play the doomed agnostic, who spits at the very idea of the alliance (and is therefore quite anarchic).

I, also, want a full version of Wyrd. It derailed my own narrativist-gamist viking game completely, and it's a wrongdoing against nature to let us be without one.

Also, I wish for a new Middle-Earth game from Luke Crane, based on the Burning Wheel rules. It's a crime of copyright laws that the game isn't situated in Middle-Earth.

I'd wish for Refreshing Rain from Shreyas Sampat, except that'd be stupid, being that it already exists and if it didn't, I couldn't imagine it.

Finally, I wish for Jonathan and Chris Lehrich to cooperate on Lévi-Strauss in Amazonia, where a lone anthropologist played by a GM-like player is confronted by indigenous people (played by the rest). The conflict is over popularized forms of anthropologic theory, rules are approached like in MLwM and the question is over the fate of the white scientist, and to a lesser extent the tribe.

For the closing, I wish for all those games I have a hard time imagining. Most of the time I can design the rest myself.

-- I want Eero to write a game in which players create fictional memories of their shared adventures together.  The players would pretend to be old friends who had grown up together (even if they are complete strangers), play themselves in the past, basically, and create fictional shared acquaintances and siblings that you never had.  Then you reminisce about the good and bad times, the highs and the lows, that the group "remembers."  It would be very casual and unstructured, but other players could denouce certain things based on plausibility or other concerns ("No, dude, that's not the way it happened!  It was definitely your mother who caught us drinking beer on the subway!").

Perhaps with a goal-based design, like a real reminiscense frequently devolves to? I'll remember this one.

[Jonathan Walton]

Ben, please see the Design forum. I'm not familiar with this conception of Heaven, so I will need your help making a game out o it.

How about I tweak this request a bit:

Ben, Shreyas, and I need to co-write a game that runs from the creation of the angels through the war in Heaven, culminating in the Fall of Satan/Lucifer/Iblis's rebel faction.  And yes, there should be lots of crying involved.  Lots of crying at the beauty and the harshness of God's Love and Will.  Additionally, Heaven should be, if we can manage this, non-anthropomorphic, since human beings haven't been created yet.  You know how, traditionally, angels are often depicted as giant amalgamations of eyes, wings, and animal parts?  That's the direction to go.  Steal from Milton, steal from Dante, steal from L'Engel, steal from the Bible, steal from the Qur'an.  Oh, it would be glorious!  Imagine millions upon millions (pre-Fall population of Heaven: 399,920,004) of tiny sprite-like balls of faith and feathers swarming towards each other in intricate arcs and patterns, only to be harshly crushed like so many insects!  The glorious tragedy!  So delicious!

Hmm... I'll have to ponder Gridiron and my nameless Asian history/fantasy game now... I wonder if I could write a game about the Cultural Revolution and still get my visa renewed...  Probably better to write about China before 1949 or after 1989, just to be on the safe side.  

You know, I did ponder writing a game about Chinese rock music for a while, just because you could play it with a great soundtrack running in the background.  Maybe I could make a wildly anachronistic game about Chinese rock stars during the Warring States period, or something.  I could call it Rock of Ages ;)  The Qin Emperor, in a effort to pacify the nations he has conquered, has issued a edict outlawing rock 'n' roll.  Now, the rocker heroes of Zhao and Chu have raised the devil sign of rebellion, strapped their amps to their horses, slung a eight-string over their shoulders, and are staging the biggest rock show that All Under Heaven has ever seen... in the heart of the Imperial Palace at Xi'an.  Do you RAWK or give up the axe?  You RAWK, of course!

I'll have to start watching pro-football, I guess.  More of a college guy myself, but I do root for the Titans or Panthers whenever it looks like they're actually going to make it.  Been pretty disappointing so far...

[Mike Holmes]

I, also, want a full version of Wyrd. It derailed my own narrativist-gamist viking game completely, and it's a wrongdoing against nature to let us be without one.

Amen!

I want Robin Laws to write a fantasy game about a world designed from the ground up to be played.

Mike

[clehrich]

Finally, I wish for Jonathan and Chris Lehrich to cooperate on Lévi-Strauss in Amazonia, where a lone anthropologist played by a GM-like player is confronted by indigenous people (played by the rest). The conflict is over popularized forms of anthropologic theory, rules are approached like in MLwM and the question is over the fate of the white scientist, and to a lesser extent the tribe.

Eero, you're a sick little monkey.  Already bits and pieces of that game are beginning to hatch in my mind.  Urgh!