After giving it some thought and sleeping on it, I've decided to write a game about a pack of Young coyotes and their rite of passage – a ritual in which the young pups, sitting around a bonfire, tell the Old One (a quasi-GM) the story of how they lit the fire they're now sitting at. Tradition expects they go through many dangers on their quest but, being lazy and opportunistic, they did it the easy way, and now need to lie to the Old One to complete the rite and be seen as full members of the tribe.

In short, the game is about collectively coming up with a convincing lie about the daring journey of young pups.

Here's the twist: I want this game to be played around an actual campfire, and the rules will be written to support that (there will be an adjusted "home" version for those of you who don't do camping, don't worry – but that might play significantly less awesome, you've been warned).

I like this idea because it's been said here that "Game Chef is, among other things, about writing games you would not write otherwise", and I believe this fits the bill (for me, at least). It also made me think about game mechanics differently (dropping die rolls & possibly even character sheets) and explore the role of GM, taking it in new directions, to accomodate the unusual play environment.

I'm working with the 4 "non-random" ingredients: Coyote, Doctor, Lantern, Mimic.

The Lantern (or Torch, if I'm allowed to interpret it that way?) will be a prop or set of props passed around the campfire to signify who has voice and other effects.

The Doctor, interpreted as a Witch-Doctor, Healer, or Shaman figure, will be a role among the Young (possibly one of a few/many roles).

Mimicking other players will likely be an important way of transitioning narrative control form one to the other. It will also be a shape-shifting "power" within the fiction that the Young will use.

"The Lies of Passage" is a working title, might change by the time I'm done.

Comments & thoughts welcome. :)

So cool!
If i may, i think that you could just have the, uh, campfire count as the lantern, but have some other pass-around thing if you want.

I love that they're ACTUAL COYOTES! Like, no one else is doing that!
This feels hella fun! If it's the game i'm hoping you're writing, it'll be a)easily scalable to only a few or lots of coyote players, and b) easy for new, non-gamer folks to pick up, because no one likes to be excluded around a campfire!

Also, the mimicking other players thing is intriguing.

What a great idea, as we come into camping season!

I am SUPER stoked to see this game. Phenomenal idea. I too love that you play actual coyotes. Tre cool!

jackson_tegu wrote: I love that they're ACTUAL COYOTES! Like, no one else is doing that!

jackson_tegu wrote:
This feels hella fun! If it's the game i'm hoping you're writing, it'll be a)easily scalable to only a few or lots of coyote players,

jackson_tegu wrote:
b) easy for new, non-gamer folks to pick up, because no one likes to be excluded around a campfire!

I agree with Jackson that the campfire is lantern enough for me.  It holds fire within it, so there you go.

If you want to play around a campfire you are correct that dice and character sheets might not be the best idea.  In my research for my game I checked out a few Native American games, like Hubbub, that use stones with different patterns on each side for "dice."  Also, consider the use of sticks as character traits or counters.  I have three sticks, so my strength (or whatever) is at 3.  If it goes down to 2, you can throw your extra stick in the fire.  How cool!  Maybe every time the Old Coyote catches your pup in a lie you lose a stick.

Food for thought, I hope.

Another good option is to have a rope for each player, and they can tie/untie slipknots in it to act as "counters." This has the added awesome of everyone learning how to tie a slipknot.

That sounds astounding and has the side benefit of potentially dragging kids into the hobby. I also particularly appreciate the actual coyotes in the game. Will there be some incentive for the coyotes to disagree with each other for personal glory?

Are you looking at  The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen as an inspiration for this? 

Disagreeing and mocking each other will be an option, yes, though I'm trying to emphasize the pack more and the Young Coyotes vs. Old One opposition (though it's not a real opposition, and you'll see why in the text) over "intra-party" ;) conflicts.

I played The Extraordinary Adventures once and I felt it was... looking for the right word... a bit forced? Meaning: you get a topic and are asked to improvise. I like to think I'm at least passably good at improvising and yet I didn't enjoy awkwardly trying to tell a story about something so absurd as that game's prompts, a story that I didn't particularly like or relate to... Maybe it was the absurdity of it then? Not sure.

Anyway, I'm looking to create a much more co-operative game, more laid back and casual.

I'm at a solid 2000 words and getting ready for a major rewrite tomorrow (iterate, iterate...). If you're curious what's cooking, head over to Twitter's #GameChef tag or catch me at @LGarczewski.

Makes sense; my first thought when you described the game was that it sounded like jockeying for position and one-upmanship would fit in well.  I am indeed following on twitter now.

It is now 2:19 AM and I'm dead tired but very happy I made it.

Here's the game, enjoy:

https://lgarczewski.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/lies-of-passage1.pdf

That looks awesome, Lucas!  I wish I had found this yesterday as we had our fire pit going last night.  Well, sounds like a good excuse to burn more wood next weekend.  Very good show!