[The Tower of Ice] Gameplay?

[Jason Petrasko]

Well I've got a possibly neat game concept and now I'm stuck somewhat on the 'envision gameplay' part. Here it is:


It is late in the year when the galant King of the north lands invites his most noble lords to the Tower of Ice.  A darkness has seiged his lands, a dark magic with a penchant for death. Now a mythical assassin has appeared, taking out lords one by one across the realm. It has quickly become apparent that one of the noble lords has made a deal with the darkness and is a Warlock. The galant king has gathered his noble lords into the Tower of Ice to discover who is the traitor.

The Tower of Ice itself is a large spire on a small individual piece of land. This land is surrounded by a large chasm on all sides expect for a small bridge that spans the chasm. The bridge is retractable from the mainland side, making the Tower a closed trap when it's retracted. Why was this done? The Tower of Ice was once a prison for the worse kind of criminals in the land. It is now rumored to by haunted by their ghosts.

After retracting the bridge it becomes known the assasin (under the control of the traitor/warlock) is also in someone's entourage.


The setup:

The Galant King is the GM.
The Noble lords are the players.
The Assassin controlled by game mechanics perhaps?
None of the players/GM knows who the traitor is,
the mechanics will determine that.
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What I'd like to see during gameplay is:

Intrigue + Mystery + Action (In that order)
Flashback-Tales of the Lords.
Exploration of the Tower and it's ghosts.
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I've not even touched upon the idea of mechanics yet, figuring perhaps that something like this has been done already? The most interesting mechanical aspect to me is: how to include the Assassin?

I guess what I need is a more specific design perhaps. I'm having some problem fitting the assassin into the game design. Maybe I should make it the center of the mechanics?

The actual play I envision is somewhat like Hero, where the assasin and the emperor are back-telling the story. These back-told tales changing the nature of the present story.

[Jason Petrasko]

Ok, so I've worked a little more to refine the idea of gameplay. Here is what I have so far:

1.) Everything centers around tales told by the players. Convincing stories that proclaim their innocence or blame another lord.
2.) Tha gallant king's goal is to uncover the truth. To do this he disputes tales told, increasing the chance they are false. He also controls the castles resident ghosts. Don't have an idea on how he uses these yet.

I took inspiration from the four playing card suits here. The noble lords allocate dice into the four suits: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades. Hearts is charm, eloquence, love, and influence in the courts. Diamonds is money, power, and pull in the merchant arena. Clubs are the strength of warriors and militia. Spades is the loyalty of workers and peasants. The noble lord is defined this way and builds an entourage from the dice. Like, I have 5 dice in Clubs so I need to assign 5 dice to warriors in my entourage.
 
3.) The assassin is the center of the mechanic. The rolling uses a dicepool looking for success where a specific result is the assassin. You roll once after a story is told to give it a strength (likelihood it's true). A specific die result counts as an assassin. The assassin represents the assassin appearing (not revealing) and killing that many dice in your own entourage. You can choose to shift the assassin results to another lord, but suffer the effect of looking like the traitor.
4.) Each lord has a set of a few traits (<4). They use these traits to cancel out the assassin result if the trait is present in the story told. These are things like: Justice, Integrity, Honor, etc.

Well that is what I have got so far. I still need to figure the role of the ghosts. I'm pretty sure I want to keep them.