Starting ideas on a game about LA, dreams and material success.

[sirogit]

I have the basic starting ground for a game, based mostly on idle imagining and the song "Californication.", but I'm having some trouble moving past that in a satisfactory manner.

Premise: its the mid 90's, PCs are moving from out-ofstate to LA, with nothing but the shirts on their backs and dreams of being a star in the entertainment industry. Every character has both a Dream, a grandoise selfless accomplishment for the world, Desire, a strong yearning for incredible material success, and the belief that they have a chance of attaining them both simultanously. Game play resolves the question: What are the results of such a belief?

I imagine gameplay to revolve towards one of four basic outcomes for the characters(Rather resmblant to the outcomes in Sorcerer*)

- Dream and Desire are lost, the character moves out of california and gets a day job.
- Desire is kept but Dream is lost, the character attains all of the material success but is no longer the same idealistic person.
- Dream is kept but Desire is lost, the character finds a place where he gives more hope to the world even though he goes on struggling and unnoticed.
- Dream and Desire is kept, and they become the posterchild of hollywood success stories.

Here are my concerns for the game:

- I don't want this to be one of those "parlor narration games", like some of my more recent designs. I don't even want it to be as structured as MLWM, but it seems like a possible direction if the game is entirely about balancing Dream and Desire. What else should be there?

- I want there to be a strong incentive to have lots of Drugs & Sex in there. Drugs & Sex which may be strongly hostile or beneficial to either goals.

- I'm not sure on the format for pc-interaction. Originally I was thinking loosely connected stories that are about the same things, but now I'm considering that all of the PCs could work together in whatever entertainment feild they're in, and therefore could move the crux of the situation to being about how the characters differing ambitions interact with each other.

- How to represent Desire and Dream, the obvious answer is a scale, but perhaps it isn't nessecary. Should I mechanicly represent how fuffilled they are? How important they are to the character? Neither? Both?

- What games have been made with similar ideas that would have usefull elements to borrow?

- I like the idea of characters with serious problems that grow within their career, like drug addiction, alcoholism, unrequited love, closeted homosexuality, STDs, pedophilia, depression, delusions, self-destructive urges, racism... Possibly make that a more central part of the game, and give it the possibility of winning over Desires and Dreams. Speaking of which, doesn't Dust Devils have a similar concept?

* This is by accident, but it is things like these that make me wonder if this'd do better as a Sorc one sheet. It might have already been done.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I see you're off to a decent start here, and you have some good questions about your own game.  Many of which I think can be answered if you answer two of my questions:

-What do the characters do in the game?

-What do the players do in the game? IE: how do the players play the characters in your game?

Peace,

-Troy

[Josh Roby]

Me, protective: why LA?  Are you going to put some real Los Angeles content into the game that actually affects play, or could this game just as easily be some kids going to Nashville to earn their names?

[sirogit]

Joshua: My decision to limit the game to LA is partly a semi-random constraint that just popped to mind, and partly because the game jibes more with the typical fictioial portrayals of LA and the sort of portrayal you might receive second hand, which is mostly what I'm going for. Probably even exaggerated from that.

I'd think a Nashvile/Tennesse is abit lacking in having the same history of entertainers with serious problems, unless all the players portrayed Johnny Cash, an idea which would be great for a roleplaying game except its not what I immediately set out for.

Troy: Really nice suggestion, I'll get back on that when I have more time.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Really interesting idea.  I think the easiest way to play up "Sex & Drugs" and all the myriad personal problemes is with "MORE".  That is, if you're rolling dice, Sex & Drugs popping up in the scene gives you more dice to throw or cards to draw.  That's the standard way to make sure these things have an impact, but it works well.

As for Desire and Dream, a thought might be to have a sliding scale with Desire and Dream on one side, Disillusionment and Cynicism on the other. During the game the scale can slide back and forth.

How will conflicts be resolved? (dice, cards, etc)

-Andy