from my LiveJournal:

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there are 99 paper swans that swim along the cool, blue skin of the pond. they dip their beaks into the water, they throw back their orange and black beaks and the sun shines. a baby laughs and splashes during its first bath.

there are 99 dry, brittle leaves that lie on the ice. the sun hides, the sky grows dark and all is quiet. a man and a woman walk together, slowly, hand in hand. their footprints remain for hours, long after they have gone home to their warm bed.

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the revenue that is generated by the idol's fame is spent just as quickly as its fame is spent.

the audience is incapable of true love. they only know the pangs of fawning praise and infatuation.

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the idoru itself is a machination. a dream. painting with light is creation. the player is the puppet-maker and puppet-master. the strings are the dice which are rolled, the tokens that are gained and lost. that said, the game is not, "what are the idoru's capabilities? -- the game is, "what are my capabilities?"

when the player wishes to create a new drama, the dice are rolled -- the number varies in accordance with the skill of the player (defined by a set of values). a young, inexperienced idol will not be able to stand up against a more worldy figure. but an experiences idoru has farther to fall...the price of fame is fame. the young will learn as they grow...their fame will also grow.

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That's it so far. My idea stems from the fact that in most RPGs, the system deals with character's ability within the game world. I decided that it would be interesting to create a system where the system defines the player's ability and the character is left more or less undefined.

Essentially, it will take the form of die rolls and the acquisition/spending of tokens (a character resource). I also need to incorporate a system where the character's fame (its Motes) can be raised over time...but it can also be reduced. One idea is to use die rolls to determine what happens (high roll wins) and the actual total to gain that many Tokens. The caveat is that a "magic number" must be reached or the total becomes the number of tokens that character loses. Once 99 tokens have been gained, the character increases its fame. Lose 99 tokens and the character loses fame.

Another idea is to have a communal pool of tokens that represents "the fan base." Dramatic actions performed by the idoru will net them tokens, which can be used to "win" player control of the drama. In this case, the ability is how many dice are rolled, the fame represents how many tokens may be acquired (a high roll may win but the idoru may only gain a few tokens due to a low fame).

There is a split between player and character that will be taken advantage of...

Do one player's abilities differ from another's in any way other than size of resource pool?

Player abilities:

- If they're just "ability to make my idoru do X" then it's really a character ability given a different name

- If they're narrative metagame "ability to narrate events by spending currency" then there's no differentiation between players (which is fine, except that there are already many systems that do this)

- So, are you looking for "ability to narrate events under X circumstances" or "ability to narrate X types of events" as player abilities that would differ between players?

Conflict could become a managed resource. More conflicts, requires more investment to initiate and maintain, could also generate more drama for higher returns but at higher risk.

Idoru fame separate from player fame, on an increase-or-crash arc, and increase gets more difficult. Player must decide how long to stay invested in an idoru before moving on to another. Should be a lot of uncertainty, hard to tell how much further potential an idoru has, like deciding whether to trade a slumping ball player. Idorus bought and sold between players, perhaps. My player skills could get more drama out of your seemingly used up idoru.

Am I clueful or clueless here?

- Walt

I'd been working on an idea where motes where gained and thenspent as if they were Champions XP.

Want a wife? It'll cost you some fans. Look at John Lennon, after all.

But then, you can do new stuff, like throw a wedding, and gain huge numbers of viewers if it goes well, and even more if you're attacked by ninjas in the never ending crack-addled soap opera of your life.

You could also throw in style dials by catering your 'output' to particular channels. I'm thinking of the pr0n documentaries where you hear someone say "now the soft-core" and catch glimpse of the cast shifting about a bit.

Not that I've seen any.

Whether players are idoru or production companies remains something to be seen. Hmm. Are the idoru producers or props? Could some be both?

If it works particularly well, you could make it "Hollywood: The Game". Actually, I'll have to do that now.

Take any A-List stars career and break it down into stages, and look at where they gained and lost fame/fans, and the little side projects, and then the move to producing, and fostering new talent.

Yeah.