Story Nexus Projects: What will YOU create?

StoryNexus
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“Echoing Mirage”
The setting is completely fantasy. Because of an accident involving time-travel magic, the timeline has been shattered. You are trying to put it back together, by repairing chains of cause and effect. To do this, you move through “gaps” in time, crossing from one place to another and sorting out conflicting timelines. However, messing with the timeline in ways that cause problems (such as giving someone something you got from him in the first place) causes you to accumulate Paradoxes, which can lock storylets, add bad cards to your hand, or even eject you from the timeline completely (putting you in a state where all of your cards deal with fixing the paradoxes, which means undoing your progress).

“The Tale of Narra”
You play as a character in a story, who has become aware of the story. You are trying to survive the events of the story (or other stories you cross into) while holding your audience’s interest. If you die, go insane, or are otherwise removed from the story, you get kicked back into your “original” story and have to find your way into another telling of that story (losing what is essentially a Route quality). On the other hand, if you lose the attention of your audience, the story itself dies and you have to “rebuild” it by inspiring someone to create a similar story.

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I reckon I might start with something simple - a short story or novella - probably a bit investigative, a bit noir, maybe with some decadence and yellow signs, just because I think its a good framework for story games. Mostly I’m looking forward to settling down in the bath with the documentation and thrashing it all out, then making something that doesn’t work properly, then making something that does work properly. I might even just look at all the artwork and make a short game that uses all of it, just as an exercise. I can see myself losing weeks here …

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Pondering:

I’ve a Superhero one that I’ve been wanting to try out.

A “Hell-based” Bureacracy Nightmare

and probably a few others that will morph as I go along.

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Random moment of sentimentality: It’s great to see all these ideas bursting to see daylight. I really look forward to playing everyone’s games!

Mike - I think it’s worth pointing out that CalicoJack is well into developing a superhero SN of his own. I’m absolutely not saying you shouldn’t make a superhero game but if it were me, I’d want to make sure there wasn’t significant cross-over in styles and subjects.

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Let’s see here…

[ul][li]open-world - check[/li][li]magical post-apocalypse - check[/li][li]survival horror - check[/li][li]action & exploration - check[/li][li]inevitable corruption by dark powers - check[/li][li]originated in D&D - check[/li][/ul]I’m sure whatever we come up with will be entirely different, but still. My potential game is set in the immediate aftermath of the final conflict of Good and Evil, and would be about survivors finding meaning in the ruined world as it is being slowly put back together by the new gods. Though those are some ambitious plans, and I think I’d start with a much shorter story.

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Heh, okay maybe I’m deserving of a bit of foot-in-mouith. City of Phire, though, places an emphasis on rediscovering the mysteries of lost civilisations and in morally grey choices, so there is at least that difference. In the world CoP is set in, there are no moral absolutes, even amongst the gods and demons.

Anyway, good look with your story, Magician. I look forward to playing it. :)

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Oh, did I mention the, ahem, alignments got removed from the world as the result of said final conflict? :D
Good luck to you, too. This’ll be interesting.

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Hahaha, okay XD What a co-ink-ee-dink.

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[quote=Lily Fox]
Mike - I think it’s worth pointing out that CalicoJack is well into developing a superhero SN of his own. I’m absolutely not saying you shouldn’t make a superhero game but if it were me, I’d want to make sure there wasn’t significant cross-over in styles and subjects.[/quote]

Yeah, that’s the first one I played on, and I think there’s enough difference in style to make it a very different beast. Calico seems to be building a dark/gritty American style, where mine’s going to be four-colour British style. With extra 'u’s :)

I’m hoping Calico will be as harsh with mine as I’ve tried to be with his. Good to have ideas to bounce off.

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New ideas, I love 'em. All of 'em. But especially superhero ones, because they amuse me. (So do magic ones.) Though, I’d love a story where you’re not the superhero - you’re the one that has to clean up after their messes. Not quite as flashy, but everyone always skips over the behind-the-scenes stuff and I think I’d like to see that. Or I’ve just been reading too much Avenger’s fanfic and admiring Pepper and Coulson too much. Could be either.

Actually, I’ve put my last idea on hold because it was scary and eating me. Now I’ve got this…the-world-ended-but-humans-didn’t and super-advanced-technology-but-not-for-the-peasants thing. It nibbles me. Sneakily. I still don’t understand game mechanics though; maybe I’ll get it once I have something to play with. Hopefully.

All of this certainly gets your creativity spinning though, doesn’t it?

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Uh, I believe his name is ‘Agent’.

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[quote=Lily Fox](Aside: Don’t you just hate it when you hit the Back button by accident, hit Forward and your post in progress has disappeared? Take two.)

Alice - That sounds like an intriguing and darkly exciting setting. I hope you make something of it. In regards to shifting locations, I have some ideas how it could be implemented.

1 - Apparently-identical ‘moving rooms’ Sometimes cards with secretly different move-to-area effects. In this case each room or wing of the mansion would be a different Area.

2 - Assume the mansion is one big Area and give each room their own Sometimes card. Every time a player draws and plays a room card, they are assumed to have moved to it from the previous one they visited/played. I think this would be the preferred style for a SN story.

3 - Area transition could be a challenge tied to an ability. Say that each wing of the house is an Area with Sometimes cards for each room or event in that wing. Players can, uh, play a transition card (either randomly drawn from a Sometimes deck or Pinned depending on how often you want them to be able to attempt it) which has a branch for each wing. If the ‘transition’ ability check succeeds, they move to the new area. If not, they don’t, obviously.

Hope that makes sense and is of some use. I have got to learn to stop writing forum posts in the early hours of the morning.[/quote]

Thanks for the ideas!

I’ll have to think on it some more to decide how I want to do it, but right now I"m leaning toward a combination of the first and third ideas. Most of the rooms would have an identical-looking Sometimes card (something simple like “Try your luck?” with a picture of a door), with some of them being tied to an ability. I think, for the story, each room really needs to be it’s own area, with it’s own Always and Sometimes cards. I already know I want a “level-up” equatable to Fallen London’s “A Person of Some Importance” that will be achieved much later, with parts of the mansion being accessible only for those with that achievement. I had the idea for a few places (like the player’s bedroom) being accessible anytime through the use of a special key. In other words, it wouldn’t matter what door the key was used on, the person could always return to their bedroom with it. This would only be for a couple of rooms like the bedroom, the library, and maybe the dining room.

Thanks again for the help. You’ve got my mind buzzing with ideas~

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I think I might be the only one plugging worlds like this, so here it goes:

Low-powered games can be fun, too. Sometimes even more fun than high-powered games! For the same reason a big CG budget doesn’t make a great film, a lot of whizz-bang plot elements don’t make a great story. Stories are all about making people feel – something. You don’t need magic to do that! Just a tidy narrative, sweetly written and performed.

(Not to say anybody’s game won’t be lovely and clever and moving and great! I just think more modest narratives should have a word in edgewise!)
edited by levineg85 on 8/9/2012

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May I suggest Damage Control (Marvel) Damage Control (comics) - Wikipedia or New Universe: New Universe - Wikipedia

There’s also low level supers like Temps(book), Meta-4 (Grant Morrison I think?) and Wild Cards.

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Lily - True, true. But Archive of Our Own thinks differently and I seem to be infected by them.

Sounds cool, RageBox Alice. Can’t wait to try and play - you seem to have it pretty worked out.

And yeah, I like low-powered games as well. I just tend not to create them 'cause I’m hoping something may come along like that in real life, but I’m pretty sure magic and aliens, etc. aren’t coming along in real life. I’d love to be proven wrong though… But thank you for saying that because it gave me a very nice idea for what I’m currently writing. Reminded me that people want stories about people and not just something that sounds cool. Hmm, that’s something I’ll have to try reading every day - stories are meant to make people feel something.

The Root Of All Evil - Thank you. Damage Control is hilarious, and New Universe seemed amusingly dysfunctional. The others I’m not so interested in, but it’s nice to see people who aren’t ridiculously overpowered.

Edit: Something else that would be cool? A world without superheroes, but with super villains. The silly kind, who create giant lobsters that try to take over the city. And a bunch of ‘concerned citizens’ are the characters, which really just means surviving and adapting - ‘Yeah, lobsters in the street, but if I don’t get to my job on time I’m gonna be fired. So…how to get through giant lobsters? Maybe I can look up lobsters on my phone,’ and ‘Okay, so that part of the city’s still covered in old radioactive slime from the slime monsters and police are paying people to clean it up. Not much fun, but I liked the coffee shop there,’ and ‘If I hit this robot over the head with my suitcase enough times, it should break, right? Well, it seems to be working for dude over there anyway.’ Basically, humans are amazingly adaptive and I’d love to see a world where people adapt enough that there all like ‘what to do if your house is in the path of a super villain attack’ plans just like there are ‘what to do if your house is on fire’ plans.
edited by crownoflaurel on 8/10/2012

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[quote=crownoflaurel]
Edit: Something else that would be cool? A world without superheroes, but with super villains. The silly kind, who create giant lobsters that try to take over the city. [/quote]
The real problem with this, or so I’ve found, is that the characters just seem to re-create the 60s Batman then. And if you give them big flashy optic blasts, they’re less likely to arm themselves with baseball bats and shotguns.

That’s one of the reasons for setting it in the UK - eliminates gun control and has a background of mindless bureaucracy. (“You have filled in your BR-14 form, ‘Unleashing a Deadly Swarm of Lobsters in a Public Place’, haven’t you sir?”)

I do like the suitcase defence though - and it may appear :)
edited by The Root Of All Evil on 8/10/2012

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[quote=Mike Grace][quote=crownoflaurel]
Edit: Something else that would be cool? A world without superheroes, but with super villains. The silly kind, who create giant lobsters that try to take over the city. [/quote]
The real problem with this, or so I’ve found, is that the characters just seem to re-create the 60s Batman then. And if you give them big flashy optic blasts, they’re less likely to arm themselves with baseball bats and shotguns.

That’s one of the reasons for setting it in the UK - eliminates gun control and has a background of mindless bureaucracy. (“You have filled in your BR-14 form, ‘Unleashing a Deadly Swarm of Lobsters in a Public Place’, haven’t you sir?”)

I do like the suitcase defence though - and it may appear :)
edited by The Root Of All Evil on 8/10/2012[/quote]

Well, personally I’d be setting something like that in Canada. Then the other countries can wonder how we survived it, as we’re so sweet and nice and peaceful. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking much of Batman; he’s got loads of money and lots of time to train. Most people don’t have that - they’d be maybe taking a few self defense class on the weekend, if they could afford it, and possibly start tucking something from home that’s metal and heavy in their backpack. I can’t see anyone going out and spending lots of money on things; I wouldn’t. And in regards to the game, I’d make a mention of those products that cost money failing.

But I’m glad you liked some of it - feel free to take the suitcase defense. This idea isn’t really solid for me. I like the BR-14 form. It reminds me of a joke I heard about the London police: ‘Stop, or I’ll say ‘stop’ again.’

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[quote=crownoflaurel]
Well, personally I’d be setting something like that in Canada.[/quote]
I would, but I don’t know anything about Canada. :)

[quote]
But I’m glad you liked some of it - feel free to take the suitcase defense. This idea isn’t really solid for me. I like the BR-14 form. It reminds me of a joke I heard about the London police: ‘Stop, or I’ll say ‘stop’ again.’[/quote]
It’s sort of hard to give my idea away without giving my idea away, if you get my drift, but I hope you’ll give it a playtest and report back. Just as soon as I get these tools…drools impatiently

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I don’t know as much as I’d like about Canada; just moved here a few years ago. But it is significantly underrepresented in 'really awesome magic/superhero/sci-fi stories and games, so there’d be a lot to explore.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t worry much about that - if anyone wants my ideas, they’re welcome to them, but I don’t like mentioning something before I’ve got it all fleshed out. And I will definitely give it a play test when it’s out and my customary 17 point report, so long as you take a look at mine when it comes out. Deal?

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Chrysanthemum (working title)
I’m working on a theme of social upheavals, on changing notions of violence and honor, magic and humanity, and how people (and specifically characters) react as old roles no longer fit into society. On the other hand, it’s also a fun excuse to play with swords and mysticism, peasants and tax collectors, broken towers and burnt ravens, and a whole host of other nifty things I want to share with people.

It’s going to be somewhat Japanese-flavored (reading about the history and evolution of the samurai is what got me started on some of the ideas) and have a focus on martial prowess, otherworldly skills, or political connections, depending on the player’s interests and inclinations. And in keeping with the theme I want to play with, as characters move forward, the way these work in the world is going to change as they continue. Ideally, I’d like a full three-act structure for the entire thing, but I think the first third is going to be plenty to keep me busy setting up for now. (I’ve got a convenient vacation to let me fill a notebook with ideas and outlines while I wait for access to the actual tools. grins)