Post-emetic relief
The problem with also being a publisher is work in progress often skips public scrutiny. The scrutinising isn't so essential as the act of putting it out there and cementing part of its reality, which I do less than ever resulting in a cutting room floor three feet deep. First foot goes down here.
I had this idea while talking to friend who has the same habit of spiralling off topic and into footnotes. The main spurs were something like:
- Games almost always use the aesthetics of the extreme rather than be extreme¹.
- Players in adventure games often care less about their own (character) selves safety than they do their possessions.
- I went to see a clown last weekend. They held the audience in terror for an hour and broke it in 2 seconds once the show ended and they thanked everyone for coming.
- A random NPC henchman frequently becomes the thing the party puts all their hope and love into.
- Everything I write is secretly horror.
- Adventure games are still unexplained and unexplored media. Until some genius commentator comes along we just have to keep exploring and make their lives harder.
- Games can do catharsis. They might be the best at catharsis, or more accurately have the most potential for it out of almost anything.
- The only reason back stories are bad and should not be used is because they are not real. Things that happen in the game are real. "Play to find out" indeed.
- You can put the rules to games in the front of adventure modules and remove the core rules/adventure module disconnect, allowing anyone to pick up anything without worrying.
- Children of Men gets more painful to watch every year.
There were other things I'm sure, but I don't want to think too much on it. The game appeared fully formed the moment we stopped talking. It's sensible not to ignore these kinds of things so I got to work.
The game is simple. A two player game, a GM and a player. The player is the guardian of a child who they are getting from danger to safety (or "safety") and whose only paraphernalia is an inventory of dice representing either BULLETS, FOOD, or MEDICINE³ which they hand to or are handed by the GM. The GM is running a branching adventure, almost a point-crawl but close to a fighting fantasy book, which importantly requires minimal improvisation on their part. Important because the adventure is a crushing exercise in loss and the GM can't be to blame, only the player. The child has secret, GM kept, stats based on hunger, sickness and shame (for when the guardian behaves like a D&D PC), which the player needs to maintain. The events of the adventure will give and take away resources, the child will react differently depending on their stats². The dice mechanics are all behind the scene and are a very simple "1s are bad" affair.
The meat is the pre-written adventure(s). It must take one sitting, it must end, and it must be genuinely threatening. The guardian loses if the child dies or leaves (in the night, from shame). The guardian cannot die, but they can become less able to look after the child, which has obvious ramifications. They can still lose the adventure even if they stagger to the end but have compromised too much of their direction or humanity.
The GM role is what I'm most interested in here. I can't run Call of Cthulhu very well because I have too much fun. I am emotionally right there beside the players waving my arms in the air while getting eaten by the old gods. It's difficult and not very fun to make a psychic barrier between us. So make a game where that is baked into the system, where doing anything else would either break the game entirely or make YOU to blame for the terrible things that happen. Maintain a circle of altered reality which is safe, temporary, and purgative.
No it isn't fun. That feeling you get right after vomiting? It's that.
¹Extreme is being used very lazily here. I'm thinking in terms of sad, terrifying, pitiable, threatening art that is used as a medium for full blooded, heaving catharsis. If it can't make you cry in one direction or the other, it doesn't count.
²You find a skinny dog sleeping next to a rotting corpse. The dog and the child take immediate liking to one another: the child, because of high shame, is desperate to save it, to save anything in this flesh eating purgatory. Do you? Dogs eat, dogs make noise, food is low, you are hungry and the child won't be far behind. And it is another thing the world (GM) can take away from you.
³They start with 2 BULLETS, FOOD and MEDICINE. One for each of them.