So time has gone by. I didn't realize how many people I needed to see, how much time I needed to expend in a calm-everyday-routine with my friends and family. Without even thinking about it, three weeks went by. I guess two and half years away was too much.
But anyway, today, as I told you in my previous post, I want to talk about one of the games I’m working on.
This new game started with a feeling, or a need, in response to a lack in the games I was playing at the moment. I felt the necessity to have more avenues in the mechanics of these games for characters to change in play when interacting with the world. I wanted a game where no only items were incorporated in the character sheet (and powers-skills when leveling up), but also bonds and memories, all of them with some sort of mechanical meaning in play.
At first, I followed the ideas of Ben Milton and his game Knave. I took the OSR-style item inventory system as the core of character “power” and specificity, but expanding them to other realms, the one of bonds and memories/skills.
This was my first try, a simple character sheet, where the number of objects, bonds, and memories a character could “carry” would depend on their attributes (Objects=2+STR+CON / Bonds=2+WIS+CHA / Memories=2+INT+DEX).
I also tried to stay away from HP. I used a condition system, in which any physical, emotional and psychological harm will translate in a condition that will use space on the inventory, in the vein of Crescent Moon by Ema Acosta or Mausritter by Isaac Williams.
But then I realized that this was not a game, this was only mechanical acrobatics, or worst, a bunch of lists without a core feeling. I realized that this idea, born from a mechanical necessity, needed a heart.
So I set aside my plans for this game and I started to work on other projects, until a spark of a setting ignited in the pages of my notebook.
The idea was a world scarred by a sort of calamity, which left it strangled by the ice and a perpetual thick gray cloud. In this world, only an oval region would be open to the skies, here life will bloom, but also the remnants of the calamity will have created regions of ever-changing reality.
Then the idea became a bit more defined. These pockets of shifting reality were the domain of deities, each one of them representing a different portion of reality. Here, you as a character would be able to bond with them (using the ideas of the character sheet I already created). Magical items could be found in the domains of these deities, (maybe as gifts to lure the mortals to their domains). In this setting, memories will represent the skill the character could initially have or learn in their travels.
I was again in a rush, writing, thinking, drawing about it, but then again, everything felt flat because there was not a real heart in the setting. It felt repetitive, derivative, and these questions echoed in my mind; What story will the characters live? What challenges were the core of the game? What is the game about?
It was a long silence, and I set aside the project again.
Until something happens.
Characters arise in my mind, with a particular set of circumstances as exciting incident to their story and their motives, and at that moment I saw the path ahead much clearer than before.
I have found a reason for the characters to exist in this world, and I felt there was some beating blood on them.
I don't want to write all my path until today in one post. This is only how everything starter. This was many months back, but in the next post I will tell you how the idea evolved, how the character sheet changed — because the character sheet it was never a good place to start. The core of the game, at least for me, had to be on the characters and the particular things they would be doing in the game and the trials they would have to face. The mechanics should come later just to facilitate these ideas, the character's journey and the player's fun.
PS: don’t worry, the Octaria Pulnassea’s tome will be back, with new curiosities and creatures inspired by Chilean culture.