You people are like a disease, you know that? I never wanted to be a game designer, and now here I am designing games in my sleep. Literally.

Last night I had a dream about a Narrativist high fantasy RPG with a Premise something like "What do you do when you have more responsibilities than you can fulfill?" Now the idea won't leave me alone, and I may have to write the damn thing just to get it out of my head.

(Unfortunately, while I dreamed of a System and Setting, the Setting was fragmentary and the System was nonsensical. Dreams are bad that way.)

There you go: Write some kind of Narrativist game with concrete Character & Situation. Allow for rules of shifting Setting (or even System)!

You even have your Premise nailed down. And it's a good one! I'd say work on this further in this thread. Just air your thoughts and we can all help you hammer it out.

(And you're not alone with rpg-related dreams, from a recent one, though yours is more inspirational: I stumble across a shelf filled with old pulp novels. Further down the shelf, there's a bunch of crappy old roleplaying games. I picked up a beaten boxed set, a game called "Lann," and opened it up. There was a quasi-D&D character sheet (already pencilled in), and some players/dm's guides and stuff. They were blue, and the box was purple (I think).)

Okay. A little more thought about this idea before I sign off and go get breakfast.

The obvious way to address this Premise would be in a superhero game (where themes such as "There is so much evil and suffering in the world, and I could stop any of it, but I can't stop all of it" are fairly common). I don't want to do it that way, partly because the dream used a fantasy Setting, partly because I've never really "gotten" the superhero genre (having been comic-deprived as a child), and partly because I'm a stubborn bastard.

The Setting will be a fairly small but wealthy nation, with a few lukewarm allies and several significant enemies. The government of this nation will be at least vaguely related to Plato's Republic (note to self: must re-read Plato's Republic). PCs will be young members of the ruling class, having been selected in infancy for superior genetic aptitudes (not that such language is used in-game) by magical means, then trained and tested throughout childhood and adolescence to determine their fitness to rule. Thus, they start off with a lot of advantages compared to the average game-world individual, but have correspondingly greater responsibilities.

I have some serious thinking to do about System. One thing that is immediately clear is that character advancement is a central issue. The characters need to grow rapidly in effectiveness, though the challenges they face will grow slightly faster. The only way that occurs to me to mechanize the constantly escalating challenges is to steal Donjon's system of facts-as-currency, and I need to decide whether to abandon Vanilla Narrativism before I can settle on that approach.

This is going to be a pretty punishing game to play. By definition, the characters will face problems with no good solution; identifying emotionally with your character will tend to lead to a sense of escalating panic. Selling that to a player group will probably not be easy.

How about an Advantage/Disadvantage system, only instead of "+3 character points for bad vision", Disadvantages are (suitably renamed) all responsibilities, duties, and obligations.

to Family
to Government
to "the people"
to "the church"
to a faction
to friends
to lovers
to fellows in the graduating class
to a position / office

Each of these would grant the character "abilities" such as contacts, resources, appropriate skill packages, whatever. And also "duty points" or some such thing which could function similiarly to Orkworld Trouble.

Building an "adventure" would involve coming up with the major "villain" (nieghboring power trying to preassure the government into granting trade concessions...etc) the resolution of which should be such that each PC has something to contribute. Then scan down the character sheet to see all of the "Trouble" sources the character has, and start heaping them on.

You may even want to concider a very formulated turn structure ala En Guard where each turn represents a week's time and players have to outline their character's activities during each week of the month.

The King could really use your support and expertise of water bourne trade at the summit meeting, unfortuneately one of the locks has just burst, a village is flooded, and canal traffic is backed up for miles. Time to don your "Minister of Canals" hat and try to sort out the mess in time for the summit.

That kind of what you're going for?

Valamir wrote: How about an Advantage/Disadvantage system, only instead of "+3 character points for bad vision", Disadvantages are (suitably renamed) all responsibilities, duties, and obligations.

Valamir wrote: And also "duty points" or some such thing which could function similiarly to Orkworld Trouble.

I can't help but picture this as a Greek-era low-powered Supers game with the problems your PCs face being fit for legendary heroes, like Hercules or Achilles. Problem is, the PCs only have a tiny hint of a demigod's power.

Or do you picture a more political environment?

Seth L. Blumberg wrote: You people are like a disease, you know that? I never wanted to be a game designer, and now here I am designing games in my sleep. Literally.

Last night I had a dream about a Narrativist high fantasy RPG with a Premise something like "What do you do when you have more responsibilities than you can fulfill?" Now the idea won't leave me alone, and I may have to write the damn thing just to get it out of my head.

This is going to be a pretty punishing game to play. By definition, the characters will face problems with no good solution; identifying emotionally with your character will tend to lead to a sense of escalating panic. Selling that to a player group will probably not be easy.

Zak wrote: I can't help but picture this as a Greek-era low-powered Supers game....

Paganini wrote: It sounds to me that the system you want is the Self System by Mike and JB.

Seth, sorry I wasn't very clear. By low-powered, I mean Bruce Lee/Kasparov ability. So yeah, Odysseus rather than Achilles. Only their problems are fit for the legendary heroes. The PCs then have to cope with their uphill battle.

Paganini, that tease, wrote:
It sounds to me that the system you want is the Self System by Mike and JB. We're doing a playtest of it in PBEM right now. It would be perfect for the premise you describe. Changing characters and dealing with problems is a big part of the game.

Zak wrote: Only their problems are fit for the legendary heroes. The PCs then have to cope with their uphill battle.

Seth L. Blumberg wrote: I see the PCs as a cross between sages, troubleshooters and knights errant. They're all brilliant, charismatic, intuitive, healthy, fast, strong, tough, handsome, skilled in every craft, knowledgeable on every subject, deadly with any weapon, gifted sorcerors--they have every possible advantage...and it's not enough. Their nation needs them, and it'll eat them alive, the poor dears--or else they'll hold something back, fail to give their utmost, and thus betray everyone and everything they care about.

(Speaking of "having every possible advantage," I'm thinking of calling the attribute scores or whatever "Advantages" as a play on words. Every PC has every Advantage, and they start at a notch above human average and go up.)

I'm sure the dream was partly inspired by having just finished reading Nobilis, so I'm not surprised the premise reminds you of it. One could certainly attack the same themes using Nobilis.

One could certainly attack the same themes using Nobilis.