[Mage Blade] Let's Play a Game...

[Lance D. Allen]

So, I'm doing a little exercise here that I would like you Forgeites to help me out with. This is not actually the start to a game. It's a streamlined version of the process you'd undergo to start a game of Mage Blade, though. We will be staying conceptual, without dipping deeply into the mechanics. My goals with this are to get an idea of the types of concepts that will come from this process, what questions and concerns will arise during the process, and to get an idea of how well it produces compelling characters and situations.

This process will have 3 phases. Phase 1 will consist of making suggestions for, and then selecting, an Endgame Goal. Phase 2 will be character conceptualization. Phase 3 will be selecting Foundational Goals.

What is an Endgame Goal, you ask? Think about it like watching a movie. You generally know what's going to happen by the end pretty early on, but you watch to see *how* it happens, and what happens to lead up to it. Endgame is like that. For instance, it doesn't take you long to find out that the Deathstar is bad news, so it's got to go. Destroying the Deathstar could totally be an Endgame Goal. Or even defeating the Empire, if you wanted to think longer term. The idea here is a broad-strokes statement of something you'd like to see happen in the fiction. Don't get too detailed or specific. If it takes more than a simple sentence with, at most one "and" or one "with", then you'll probably want to rethink it. You also don't want to prescript any details. "Defeat Sauron" would be a good Endgame Goal. "Defeat Sauron by destroying the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom" would not. Also, to be clear, the Endgame Goal is an overarching campaign goal, applicable to all player characters.

Now, to do this, you'll need some sort of context, some idea of the setting. I'm not going to try to overwhelm you with setting, so I'm going to accept that some of the suggestions here may not fit into the actual game. That's perfectly fine. All you really need to know is that it's pretty traditional in setting. Elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, all of that. Ancient wars, mysterious treasures and plenty of opportunity for adventure.

There is absolutely no limit on how many people may participate. I'd like as many people as are interested to make suggestions, ask questions or make comments. What I'm not looking for is suggestions on other ways to do this. If you don't like it, feel free to let me know why, but the process will go on as I've planned. Afterward, I will re-read everything, and open it up for more general discussion.

So, Phase 1: Endgame Goal. What have you got? I'll chime in with clarifications and my own thoughts once we get rolling.

[7VII7]

I presume we're supposed to just post our suggestions to this thread? If I'm wrong just ignore me, if not then I'm taking a crack at this, let's see, start with a couple of pretty basic ones then;

collect/protect/destroy the keys to an ancient superweapon and/or to the prison of a locked up god/eldritch abomination,

defeat an evil overlord,

discover why exactly there was an ancient war,

prevent the same events that lead to the ancient war from happening again,

cause / prevent an ancient prophecy,

all of the above,

[Lance D. Allen]

7s,

My original intent was to wait a bit before replying, allow a few more responses, but I think that I was perhaps less than clear. What you've given me are several excellent templates. Almost none of these is ready to be an Endgame Goal. They need a little bit more heart and investment to work. Some of them have un-made decisions inherent in them, namely the first. So choose one of these, and finish it. Imbue it with life. Make it interesting and intriguing.

I'm just the GM of this little exercise, your humble servant. I'll give my opinions and guidance, but the suggestions must come from you.

[DWeird]

Lets give this a go, then!

"Eat the sun."

[Ron Edwards]

How about: "Marry my sister." Or if that's too funky-N, "Marry my girlfriend."

[Lance D. Allen]

DWeird,

I have to confess, I'm boggling at your suggestion. What do you mean? Do you mean like, literally eating the sun, shoving it down your gullet and swallowing? Or is there some inside joke or slang that I'm not getting.

Ron,

We'll step away from incestuous yearnings. Marrying your girlfriend is doable, but I see it requiring one of two assumptions: That everyone ends up with a girlfriend to marry, or that the group is cool with the campaign revolving around your character's girlfriend. It took me some thinking to even figure how this might work as an Endgame for a fantasy adventure story, but I'm seeing Krull and other such wedding prophecy stuff, so I think it's quite doable. Is this what you had in mind?

[DWeird]

When it comes to fantasy, I'm a firm believer in "make the most ludicrous statement possible, then try to justify it somehow."

So, uhh...

The sun went rampant and is destroying the world with scorching rays and an armada of light, and must be stopped. However, since eliminating it altogether would just mean endless and very very cold night, its powers must be taken from it, and the only way to do it is to carve it to little pieces and consume them.

It all makes perfect sense.

[Lance D. Allen]

...huh.

While such would be largely implausible in the setting I'm writing for the game, I didn't provide that setting, so it is completely irrelevant. With a little thought, that idea could definitely work as a fantasy adventure goal.

However, with your expanded explanation, I wonder if "Eat the Sun" as an Endgame Goal restricts the how of the real goal, which is to stop the sun from destroying the world. What think you?

I'm hoping to get a couple other good suggestions, so we'll have a good spread of choices before we select one and move on to phase 2.

[Bret Gillan]

Become the leader of the largest (and only) orc empire to ever exist.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lance,

Your responses to my suggestions seem weak to me. I suggest a second look, so that you can either (i) say how they don't work for Mage Blade in some way that makes sense, or (ii) see how they might work for Mage Blade after all. I am not posting to argue with you. It seems much better to me to help with the game by pushing the point back for further thought.

For my first suggestion, no "incestuous yearnings" were involved. I didn't say a word about the Endgame goal being my character's personal and emotional goal. "Marry my sister" may be the last thing he'd want. It may also be the only thing that saves his tribe / puts down the angry spirit / fulfills the prophecy / or whatever, so wanting or not, it may be what he has to strive to do.

Regarding the girlfriend, I don't see your point of view at all. She could be the corpse-eating Queen of Night or something like that. Or even if not, then the fact that she's affianced to another, powerful person might be all that's needed.

Are you really telling me you can't imagine how a romantic entanglement could be the hinge-point of a setting-shaking climax? If not, then OK and I won't argue with you ... but that might be something you'd like to specify in your explanation of Endgame goals. I can't think of most people I play with not posing similar stuff to the two I described.

Best, Ron

[Lance D. Allen]

Weak? Apparently I liked Krull better than you did, then.

They can absolutely work. A game centered around you marrying your sister would tweak me personally. Lines and veils, yadda.

Also, at no point in the game play, from Endgame Goal creation to actually achieving Endgame are goals required to be in-character motivations. They are things you want to see happen in the story or to your character, completely without regard to what the fictional (and at this point completely non-existent) character may desire. Bilbo wanted to stay comfy in his Hobbit Hole. Tolkien had other ideas.

It took me a moment to think of how a "marry someone" goal could be the center of a campaign. It wasn't my initial expectation. Once I got over the "WTF?" reflex, I began to see possibilities.

The issue I mentioned I may have failed to articulate well. Your Goal can be read one of two ways... Either more than one person gets to marry a girlfriend (assuming they actually succeed at the goal) or only one person does, and either way, this is the central theme of the entire campaign. In the former case, it seems maybe a little contrived, but completely doable. In the latter case, it's important to be sure that the group is okay with someone being the "main character". A variant on the latter case might leave WHO marries "their girlfriend" completely open, letting it be established in play, so that by the commencement of Endgame, it's clear who has to marry their girlfriend, and what sorts of obstacles still remain to be overcome to achieve that.

Really, what I was trying to tease out is what sorts of stories you were seeing as possible with the goals you suggested. I see some possibilities, you probably see completely different ones.

I'm also hoping DWierd chimes in further. His idea was completely incomprehensible to me at first, but now I see some possibilities, and I'd like to know more about what he thinks.

Bret,

You sure do like your orcs. With this one, might you see the players all taking on orcish characters, and possibly vying for leadership at the end? Or maybe not even orcish characters, for that matter. Do you maybe see a leader emerging in play, and the rest of the players falling into supporting roles?

These types of questions would likely not even be asked at the table, where we'd actually be sitting down to play, FYI. In this case, because we're NOT actually going to go beyond characters and initial situations, I'm asking some more probing questions to explore a bit the sorts of stories people would use such a system to create and play.

[DWeird]

Well, regarding "destroy the deathstar" restricts the how of the real goal, which is to stop the empire from destroying planets. Maybe a diplomatic solution was in order? Assassinating and taking over the Emperor's throne? Moving the parts of the universe threatened by the apparatus to a pocket dimension? Stuff like that.

That said, I can see why you'd have issues with the Endgame goal as I proposed it - there doesn't seem to be any inherent force that would drive the group towards it ('A "death"star? I guess we better get on it!' vs. '...why are we planning on eating the sun again?'), and that is something that has to be determined separetelly.

But maybe that's a good thing? It may restrict the "how" to a very narrow reason, but the "why" is left open to explore. There is this powerful image of a sun being sliced up and then consumed at the end of the game, but how exactly that happens isn't known yet. Maybe you have to tame a spacefaring wyrm to do the carving and eating for you? Maybe you do a ritual that brings the sun down to earth, scorching half the world but bringing it within the heroes' reach? Maybe whoever eats the sun doesn't do it to stop it from rampaging, but to bring about that neverending night that's been mentioned?


It's kind of difficult to disassociate the Endgame goal from general expectations of the setting and the gameplan. You change the Endgame - you change, even if in broad strokes, what happens in the game.

Makes any sense?

[Lance D. Allen]

DWeird,

Your point is good. To go back to the Deathstar -vs- stop the Empire from blowing up planets example, it is definitely a matter of what you want to happen in the end. In this case, it sounds like you are invested in the specific ending of stellar consumption moreso than the idea of saving the world.

Which is perfectly legitimate.

So we've got:

- Marriage to sister/girlfriend
- Eating the Sun
- Rule an Orcish Empire

Gonna see what else might come up, but if nothing does, we've got enough to go forward with.

[MacLeod]

I hope this fits your criteria for what you want, if not... feel free to ignore me. =)

Investigating a group's connection to an ancient being known only as Leviathan.

[Lance D. Allen]

Michael,

Almost. Investigation is a process. Finding something is a goal.

So how about "Find out what Leviathan is, and what <group>'s connection to it is."?