Into The Sunset: First Public Draft

[Bryant]

I just posted a PDF of the first public draft of Into The Sunset.

The Premise of the game: you take on the roles of the main characters in a romantic comedy, generating story by resolving (perceived) conflicts between their goals. The focus is on family-oriented comedies -- young spunky teenager seeks happiness, while his parents learn to appreciate him for what he is rather than what they want him to be. Happy ending ensues.

It's designed for settings which last one or two evenings; the players are telling movie-like stories. The first stage of the game is joint generation of the initial situation (including characters). Characters are any of the classic romantic family comedy roles. The important and only definers of the character are Drivers -- what they want -- and Roadblocks -- how they believe their Drivers conflict.

I'd be particularly interested in comments on how my central mechanic supports the goals. One of the big challenges was figuring out how to balance the fact that some characters will have central roles (i.e., protagonists) while some characters take on supporting roles. I think I managed to do this by giving protagonists more control over the flow of the game, but I could easily be wrong.

More on that: at first glance, it's a GM-less game. I think on close inspection, though, it should be fairly obvious that the participants in the game take positions along an arc leading from the traditional player role to the traditional GM role. Or maybe not -- if I failed in that, please let me know.

Formatting is light; I do intend to add art to this at some point. Right now it's ten pages plus a title page.

Here she is.

[MoonHunter]

It is very interesting. It has a premise that is different from most of the things we see in the gaming.  I think it meets most of its stated objectives.

With all that said, there are some things you can improve.  

1) Increase the conception factor by listing more example drivers and blockers.  Unless a player is intimate with the genre, they will need some help in creating genre appropriate character elements.   I know people think of it as limiting the creativeness of the players, but I think of it as character seeding.    

2) Find a way to generate some form of GM story control.  There needs to some mechanism for moderation.  If the entire troupe of players is on the same page, then you won't need one.  However, even in the most cohesive of groups, there needs to be a final word.  

3) Expand the game to a wider variety of romantic comedies.  The family genre, a sub genre, is really too limited to give the game the appeal it could achieve.  There should be an example section for the types of genres the system can support (and it could easily support all romantic comedy genres).  This dovetails with #1.  

I would like to see several movies detailed or used as examples so I could see how the movies and the games mix.  So show me a write up of the characters in a "Big Fat Greek Wedding", though you might want to call it, My Big Ethnic wedding to avoid copyright issues.

[Bryant]

It is very interesting. It has a premise that is different from most of the things we see in the gaming.  I think it meets most of its stated objectives.

Thank you!

1) Increase the conception factor by listing more example drivers and blockers.  Unless a player is intimate with the genre, they will need some help in creating genre appropriate character elements.   I know people think of it as limiting the creativeness of the players, but I think of it as character seeding.    

Agreed. It needs to be fleshed out with examples all the way through. Embarassingly, I can't use Big Fat Greek Wedding as an example cause I never saw it. I thought about punting to the other big indie hits but neither Blair Witch or Clerks really fit the genre... I'll probably use a John Hughes movie, or make up my own.

But either way I definitely need examples.

2) Find a way to generate some form of GM story control.  There needs to some mechanism for moderation.  If the entire troupe of players is on the same page, then you won't need one.  However, even in the most cohesive of groups, there needs to be a final word.

Is this true? I tried to write the game such that there is no point at which two players can argue endlessly over a decision. If you have the Plot Twist baton, you have the Plot Twist baton. If someone doesn't go with the flow, they're actively breaking the rules, just like someone who refuses to roll a d20 to hit in D&D. ("Sorry, I just like the d30 better.")

The weakness in this is the player veto ability for the Plot Twist setups; I need to refine that. And I could be missing something. Can you give me an example of a problem scenario?

3) Expand the game to a wider variety of romantic comedies.  The family genre, a sub genre, is really too limited to give the game the appeal it could achieve.  There should be an example section for the types of genres the system can support (and it could easily support all romantic comedy genres).  This dovetails with #1.  

I will contemplate this. There are a lot of romantic comedies that do have antagonists -- but maybe that's not the worst thing in the world as long as nobody's playing them. I felt a little awkward saying "romantic family comedies." On the other hand, I don't want to lose my focus.

Thanks for the comments!

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Bryant,

My impressions at a glance:


First point:  "It has no campaign value at all..."

Are you sure about that?  If you present the movie in 'acts', with mini goals to be required/achieved before leading into the next act then one could argue this might qualify as a short term campaign.   There is general progression in most movies, well the ones with plots anyhow.  ;)

Second point:  You may want to consider re-editing what you have and start with the paragraph that opens "The genesis of the game..".  You can retain the other three paragraphs, but reading them up front is sort of a downer going into the document.

Another thing to consider presenting, at least in part, earlier in the document is the first few paragraphs of the section entitled "The Goal" since it draws the reader into the action of the game premise.

Overall:  There's a lot of good ideas presented in your document.  But somewhere, and this may just be me, I think you need to provide a basic outline and summary of what the actual modus operandi of play is.  The way you've presented the text requires just about every word to be read, which isn't a bad thing.  But as we all know there are gamers out there who just want to take a quick glance and jump into play.  During play they will need these quick reference sections, and if they aren't in the game book then they'll have no excuse to pick it up and read the rules on the sly.  Sure they should have already done it but we know a lot of gamers who don't and use the 'can I look at the reference chart again' bit to read the rules.

Hope that didn't sound too ornery!  ;)


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[szilard]

First point:  "It has no campaign value at all..."

Are you sure about that?  If you present the movie in 'acts', with mini goals to be required/achieved before leading into the next act then one could argue this might qualify as a short term campaign.   There is general progression in most movies, well the ones with plots anyhow.  ;)

It might be worthwhile to present this as a game which will be over in one session so that it could be used as a party game or somesuch. Insofar as the subject matter is significantly more mainstream (in some sense) than most rpgs, it could have nice appeal. To that end, I'd write it with a tone that appeals to a more mainstream audience. As it is, you wrote the game addressing it to a general rpg-gamer audience, and you seemed to feel you needed to explain how this is different from 'standard' rpgs. I wouldn't do that. If you must, have a little sidebar or something explaining that. Also, if you want to allow for expanded multi-session play, I'd suggest putting guidelines to that in a separate section toward the end.

Stuart