Inside the game you are not friends, you are not romantically significant, you are not socializing; you are just playing your role. Aren't you? Come and watch those little poor RPG gamers trying to create fun with their egos working against them. You have probably experienced it from inside. Now, show the hidden agendas and see the social troubles working up and front.
This was an entry of the GameChef'08 contest.
This is a game that explores in a funny and enjoyful way the disfunctional behaviors that may be produced in a group of role-players which approach a social activity with a broken social attitude.
Three to six players will create characters representing a group of role-players with very different social and creative agendas. The characters will try to play and enjoy a role-playing game together. However, incompatible agendas will produce a mix of satisfaction and frustration. When the tension increases, the little egos at work may become an explosive cocktail.
The game contains rules to create the group and their agendas, to simulate how their play affects them, and especially rules to play and enjoy the social uncontrolled situation and how it breaks.
Each player will be responsible to create and play the role of one character or protagonist. The character will be a role-playing "Gamer". This gamer will be defined by her agendas: likes, dislikes and priorities when playing a role-game.
The gamer-characters will meet to create fictional characters of an imaginary role-playing game. From now own, that in-game characters will be called "Pawns" to distinguish them from the "Gamer" characters. The gamers will try to play several sessions, to create an in-game campaign, enjoying it and getting satisfaction. However, they will also get frustration when things are not going as they like.
This will last until the gamers decide to end the campaign or the social situation breaks completely. It may happen in only one actual-play session of the real players, or along more than one.
This is the plain text file with the original submission to GameChef. The file has little text layout.
After the contest I did some formatting to transform it in a PDF file. Moreover, I got the opportunity to add some missed rules (at least a positioning mechanism was lost) and to add some rules that should be tested before being added to the final game.
You may download the last Playtesting version. It is a PDF file.
For the moment I'm not including the art pieces I used as constraints in the game text. I'm trying to contact Tony Dowler (the artist) to be sure I have his permission to use them in the playtesting document.
Last modfied: June 13 2008 00:16
