Inspired by games like Trine, Magica and several “choose your adventure”-books I suggest a premise for a game. I’m looking for a few players who will take up arms with me as one of the “archetypes” of the fantasy genre. As such, please leave the realism at the door. The characters should be based on stereotypes or “tropes” that are easily recognised and played with. Together we will go on an adventure through a fantasy world where nothing is decided beforehand. We will develop the world around us as we explore and experience it and all of its dangerous inhabitants.
This will not be as easy as it sounds though, to play you must: Accept that your character can and will fail, and use this as a tool to create a more interesting story. Be able to produce around two paragraphs of text per post (This means both “no one-liners” and “no wall of text”). Be able to push the story forward with every post. Accept what is happening to the world, situation and your character.
Rules in the game:
To avoid having one player doing 90% of the posts (or only 10%) we’ll use a posting order. The only time this will really matter is right at the start of the game because the player who goes first doesn’t have anything to react to. Once we’re rolling it should run smoothly. The posting order is an important part of the balance of the game, as well as a system to make sure that everyone is keeping up with the story. Please keep this in mind.
This is meant to balance the gameplay and make sure that everyone has something to write. How does this work? Every time you intend to interact with the world (Try to kill someone, open a door, jump into a hole, force a merchant to give to the enchanted sword…) you leave the result open ended (As in “I try to hit the guy with my sword” “I send a fireball toward the bandit” “I sneak up behind the guard the try to steal the keys”) The next writer then starts her post by deciding the outcome of the action and write how it plays out. This means that you take limited control of another player’s character, and in turn allow someone else to control yours.
In this game we’re supposed to push the story forward with every post, that means that we can’t just stand around waiting for something to happen. At the same time, failure is an important part of the game that should be encouraged. However, as the resolver of actions, pay attention to the flow of the game. Don’t hold your friend back just because she didn’t figure out exactly what you wanted her to do.
If at first you don’t succeed, try something else. If you missed with your attack, don’t just attack again, try to find another way. We’re supposed to be on the move almost all the time here, so if you find yourself in the same situation two posts in a row, try to find another way of getting out of it.
This game is not supposed to be a big project. Neither is it supposed to be your “main game” here on the guild but rather an amusing side-quest. Short post, low realism, sudden changes and archetypes are all deliberately put into the game because I don’t want this to become a time-consuming chore. I just want to play around and have fun, and I hope that’s what you want as well.
Name: (Keep race in mind) Title/Nickname: (If any) Age: (Same as always) Gender: (Yeah, you know) Race: (If not human, please put in a new category where you describe the race) Profession: (What you do for money) Trope/Archetype: (Please link trope on http://tvtropes.org/) Very important Equipment: (Only one “special” item each. Try not to carry too much. Lack of equipment and/or finding equipment can be good for the story) Background: (Keep this short) Pros: (two or three things that you’re good at, or that will work in your favor) Cons: (two or three things that you’re bad at, or that will work against you) Other: (anything else worth mentioning)
And it just hit me that most people might not be familiar with the concept of choose-your-own-adventure books. The idea is quite simple. After a brief introduction the reader (player, adventurer) is given a few choices as to how the adventure will continue, the choice will take the reader to a new page of the book and a short text about what happens next, followed by a few new choices. For you convenience I have tracked down a somewhat known duo known on youtube as Simon and Lewis from Yogscast, as they play one of these adventures: House of hell
I'm guessing that once the OOC exists any posts that would go here would go there instead, so I'll move it over there. Still not used to this type of site, since a system like "Interest Checks" didn't even exist on the forums I was part of.