Designing game based on fairy tales

[Green]

I'm designing a game that is centered around fairy tales (literally).  It takes place in a realm known as The Land, and I'm thinking about making it a 2d6 system.  I've got an outline for character creation, although I don't have anything written out yet.  If anyone's interested, please let me know.

[Tyrant]

I'd certainly like to hear more.. especially if it's based on the PC stories we read to our kids or the hardcore stuff that we've effectively banished.. like the original Grimms stuff

[Green]

It's based not just on the Grimms, but also on Perrault and Anderson.  Not to mention countless folk tales from around the globe.  I even have the setting divided according to those lines.  There are the North, South, East, and West.  Due to the variety I wish to enable in this game, I won't tie these settings down with too much detail.  Instead, I'll focus on the atmospheric and thematic elements as they will be reflected in the setting.

Thematically, I'm going to focus on the things many fairy tales focus on: destiny, choice, maturation, transformation.  There are also: imagination, magic, horror, morality, beauty.

Since the focus is on character and story, I'll have a very simple rules system.  

Bonus:  Where else can you play a gingerbread man?  "Not my gumdrop buttons!"

Reference materials:
Tales by the Brothers Grimm
Tales by Charles Perrault
Tales by Hans Christian Anderson
Shrek
The 10th Kingdom
Journey to the West by Wu Cheng-en, transl. by Anthony C. Yu
various folk tales from around the world

[Tyrant]

I can't wait to see something tangible (Not pushing)

As another side efect this would be a great way to introduce the youngin's to RPGs especially if you left out the nasty bits.

I see another possible tie in as well.. perhaps Modern Myth as well..

But that's another subject

[Walt Freitag]

Sounds cool to me. Any ideas for game mechanics that cause all important actions to happen in threes? Success and failure in fairy tales always seem to be inconclusive until the third try.

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

Green,

Have you read the game Puppetland by any chance? It may give you some ideas for mechanics to develop mood and such.

Mike

[Matt Machell]

Fairy Tales are a problematic source of inspiration. On one hand you have the trashy shite which gets peddled about these days, which has had all the resonance and metaphor sucked out of it. On the other you have the tales which the Brothers grimm based there stories on, dark and nasty morality tales. The problem is making sure the audience is aware which one you mean.

If you were doing a game based on those older tales, then I'm really interested.



Matt

[Sidhain]

I agree, a Faerie Tale game based on the as close to the "ahem" original versions as possible, not the toned down versions.

[Walt Freitag]

Unless people are referring to the really recent Disneyfied and PC-ified versions, I disagree that the intermediate versions like Grimm's are all that fundamentally different from the folk tale originals. Okay, so the part about the wicked stepsister cutting off part of her foot to fit in Cinderella's slipper gets edited out, and the wicked stepsisters get banished from the kingdom at the end instead of executed in some horrible way. Red Riding Hood gets into bed with the wolf, and Grandma doesn't get miraculously restored from the wolf's stomach. But does that make the tales all that different? The same main characters still get rewarded and punished; the sexual imagery is there whether it's explicitly reinforced or not. The blood'n'gore should be a matter of individual group flavor, it doesn't have to be codified into the system.

- Walt

[Green]

wfreitag> I'm not sure about trying things in 3s, although that would be a cool mechanic to work on.

mike> I've glanced at Puppetland, but I don't have any current familiarity with it.

As far as which fairy tales I'm using, check out the resources I listed before.  I don't plan to limit myself to only one tradition (I prefer to give the Narrator some credit and a great deal of freedom), but I plan to incorporate African, Asian, Native American, and Middle Eastern tales as well.

For game mechanics (unique or not), I'm putting magic on a color spectrum.  An affinity with each color is a separate ability.

Rather than do a bunch of lists, I'll make magic relatively simple and freeform.  Given someone's familiarity with particular kinds of magic and how "magical" they are, that limits what he or she can do with that magic.

I appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad you haven't gone overboard with inputing ideas.  The game is still in the inception phase, and as much as I value others' opinions, I still want my own voice to shine through and to achieve the goals I set for myself in creating this game.