IAWA Oracles as Campaign Settings

[Khuxan]

It occured to me that an IAWA game could create a campaign setting by having each player contribute a suite for an oracle. As long as basic rules (genre, tone, mood, etc.) were agreed upon, each player could have an impact - but the adventures that arose would be very different from what any had planned.

Has anyone used this, or thought about using this, in their own IAWA games?

[lumpley]

Sounds very cool!

-Vincent

[David Artman]

If you mean suit, then I agree that that could be cool... but I'd also be willing to scrap a set of Oracles that made for too much of a kitchen sink feeling to the game. The suits, as I read them, seem to be written to make a campaign in and of themselves, in isolation--though all are, of course, in the Hyborian-esque Age that is the game's main source.

However, perhaps I am overly influenced by one-shot convention play, which seems to benefit from a tighter, more-integrated setting and situation....

[Ry]

When we started I printed up what I thought of as the "best" oracle elements and put them in shiny colored Magic card protectors. 

As the game went on we've been adding cards that came out of play, and I've been getting players to periodically add to the oracles.  Once we all got used to the style of oracles and saw a few that worked really well for us, and a few that didn't work so well, we started phasing out the original ones so that the game was tightly centered on the stuff we created. 

There's a couple of things I do to try to make it easier for them to write oracle elements, but that's my own theory that is a story in itself, not anything from In A Wicked Age itself.

[Khuxan]

There's a couple of things I do to try to make it easier for them to write oracle elements, but that's my own theory that is a story in itself, not anything from In A Wicked Age itself.

Hi Ryan,

Are you referring to TRAPs? Because I love that system, and don't use it often enough. In fact, I left you a message on EnWorld about them.

Cheers,

Bill.

[Ry]

Actually, not exactly.  TRAPs are really for games where I set 'em up and the players knock 'em down. 

My method for In A Wicked Age just takes out the "regular stuff" from the Oracles, so for example the War oracle is all _heavily_ War-themed.  There's another oracle called "All Too Human" that we use for the "regular stuff."   Each oracle is printed out and each one has a different color card protector.

Basically what that does is it channels the players into thinking about the themes, and not writing oracles for their own sake (or at least, writing oracles for their own sake in proportion to oracles built around the 4 themes we decided on).