Monday night Indie gaming: The Pool: Banana Republic

[J B Bell]

I was going to wait for the GM, or indeed the end of the game (coming soon!) to post aobut Monday's indie gaming on IRC, but this quote from this thread inspired me:

Hamlet immediately sprung to mind. If preservation of character is not important, and bodies strewn about are OK as long as everyone is satisifed that they said their piece and did their best, then a play which famously exterminates most of the cast is not as problematic as it might at first appear. All we have to do is a find a form of actual play that enables this competition-by-proxy to be the main form of play rather than an emergent property.

The competition of our PCs was due to the "story map" that situated us much like the players in a game of the old board game from West End Games, Junta. I played an anarchist revolutionary (surprise), and the other PCs were a monopolistic broadcaster, and, erm, someone else I forget (sorry).

The trick was setting the chronology out of sequence:  the game's storyline ends with a nuclear blast.  Then play was "wound back" to just before the explosion, and players were permitted to situate themselves relative to it. Not everyone got killed, but everyone chose to be a part of it (or did everyone get killed?  Not sure yet).

So we have total script immunity for the rest of the game, which proceeded to the beginning of events leading to the blast, and we've been merrily filling in details since.  Certainly, the fun has not been impaired in any way by the "foregone conclusion", and in several ways I'd say it's actually enhanced.

--JB

[Mike Holmes]

I missed this game, for which I'd developed a General of the Army of RDLB. I'm sorry I couldn't make it; looked like tons of fun from the transcript (viewable at the indie net games site).  

To be fair, JB, while we know that there will be a blast at some point, we don't know anything about the details leading up to it. That's the mystery. Lots of movies, books, whatnot start with such a revelation. It's finding out how you got there that's interesting. People can speculate along the way.

As opposed to the Shakespearean example in which you know all about who killed who, and how the play ends up with two dead teens.

Still, it is interesting.

Mike

[J B Bell]

Yes, it's not fully parallel, or I might've posted to the original thread.  I think the "reel back" phenomenon might work ok at multiple stages for a similar exercise.  There's also Universalis' structured play mode--I haven't seen it in action but it might be re-tooled for a more scripted experience.

--JB

[Bob McNamee]

Funny... I thought the same thing about that thread and the Banana Republic game!

Just wait till I finish my MOV at the start of tomorrow's game....

...stirring the pot....

Bob McNamee  aka Salvador Geraldo - owner BBC Uno

Hope you can at least drop in Mike- Generalismo Grenada is a great character!

PS: Universalis test coming with my wife and I. Any good hints on using it with just 2 players?

[Knight]

(viewable at the indie net games site)

Could you please tell me where this is?

[Bob McNamee]

(viewable at the indie net games site)

Could you please tell me where this is?

it is a Yahoo group
indie-netgaming

We play on-line Mondays on
MagicStar IRC
http://www.magicstar.net/

Bob McNamee

coming up is an Orx game...

[Mike Holmes]

Here's the URL:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indie-netgaming

[Knight]

Thank you.