[Absolute Apocalypse Academy] Change of the title and the new direction

Over a month has passed since I took a break from Absolute Destiny Apocalypse, and it’s a good moment for me to re-examine the game, consider its further development and continue playtesting. In short, a lot of things is going to change.

First of all, I’m changing the title to Absolute Apocalypse Academy, thus trading the obvious Utena reference for a nice alliteration. An overall de-utenization of the project will follow – it never was a faithful emulation of the show anyway, and a general dueling school drama game should appeal to a broader audience.

Revolutionary Girl Utena remains the main inspiration, and it will still be possible to play Utena using the system. However, it will be more flexible and adaptable, so doing Tenjho Tenge or, say, Jedi academy will not be out of question. Now, the game will fully adhere to the Nixon’s Principle, heh.

So, the roses go out – or more specifically, they become only one among many possible aesthetic motifs. During the creation of the Academy the group will decide about the win condition for the duels. Striking the rose, a scarf or something is still a possibility, but the duels could just as well be fought to the first blood, or till one of the duelists is disarmed, pushed out of the arena, knocked from a tightrope or just about whatever else.

As for the Academy itself, I want to encourage the creation of settings that include some strong dramatic themes, like we did in our Berlin 1939 playtest. Also, I plan to include a number of pre-made Academies along with their cast, so that the game could be played out of the box, without the prep session.

Now, all the characters, including players’ spotlight Duelists, will be created in a round robin manner. Since the rose motif becomes optional, I’m getting rid of the rose titles. Instead, I think I’ll have twenty two broader, Tarot-based archetypes that will be used both for the Duelists and for their supporting cast (well, it’s possible that the line will become more fluid). I’m not yet sure if I’ll keep the Enneagram of Personalities correlations.

The relationships map will change, consequently. I had an idea about using Major Arcana to represent the relations. Instead of drawing the map, every player would have the cards representing the characters his Duelist is strongly linked with. Upright cards would indicate love, reversed cards would indicate hate, and in order to indicate tensions the player would rotate the card 90 degrees. Possibly, some a Tarot spread could be used to determine the current relations for every session. However, I’m not yet sure how to implement this idea, and I’ll have to compare it with the current method in playtesting anyway before I’m certain I want to make something like this a part of the game.

However, I’m not completely throwing the old archetypes out the window – I think I’ll base one of the pre-made Academies on the existing rose titles.

There will be no central GM, most probably. As it turned out in the playtesting, including the GM in this game was redundant. Instead, the GM’s functions will rotate from scene to scene, I think.

I’m considering streamlining the whole scene types structure. It’s possible I’ll get rid of the scene types altogether, and instead a general focus will be defined in the request for every scene. I’m thinking about some changes of the stakes setting procedure, too, and I’m discussing it here. Also, in the next version I’m incorporating the “duels queue” idea that I’ve mentioned here before, as it neatly streamlines the currently overcomplicated challenge rules.

The old Passion rules are broken. I’m writing them from scratch, incorporating the “signed fanmail” idea that I’ve been writing about in the conclusions from the last playtest.

I’m dropping the dice in favor of drawing cards. The cards on the Second’s hand will have a function other than just reminding about the suit ability now. I’ve been considering something like this from the very beginning and some Game Chef reviewers were suggesting it too – in the end, I think it should work better that way.

The dueling system is pretty solid, I think, so it won’t change much. Mostly, I’ll include some clarifications and various minor rule changes. I’m thinking about some optional handicap rules that would help to level the playing field for players of varying skill. Dunno about the techniques yet – they still hadn’t got enough playtesting to say how balanced they are.

I want to streamline Revelations, as currently these rules are too complex. The only thing determined by the Revelations will be newly discovered aspects of the Revolution, without messing with the characters themselves. The whole Tree of Life structure will become kind of a board for the long term play, and it will be possible to move to the same Sephirot many times, to add multiple connected facts. Also, it’s possible that Revelations will not be triggered by the duels themselves, but instead by changing the situation on the relationship map somehow – but it’s still just a loose thought.

Finally, I think I’ll add more support for alternative modes of play. After the change of Passion mechanics, the basic rules will work well for 3-4 players, but I want to provide some options for playing in groups of 2 or 5+ players. Some better structure for Tournament Mode will also be needed, as the dueling system makes a fun game in itself.

So, this generally sums up the direction in which I want to move with the game. Soon, I’ll get down to writing down the specific rules, and I’ll either update the pdf or post the list of rule changes on the blog and wait with creating the new version of the pdf till they are playtested enough. It’s a perspective of many months anyway.