Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Today's Challenge CN:Ascend Themes Part III

Today's themes and the ideas generated by them.

Game Night
  • First a definition. Game - Wild animals hunted for food. That was my second thought after the image of my semi regular Friday night WoD game popped into my head. So, night as defined by the hunted. A world in which the hunters rule by day, but as evening descends the table turns, and the hunted become the hunters.
  • Mechanics: this requires a duality. Two characters are played, one for the daytime, and one for the evening. The two characters would seem to oppose each other, so maybe a third force is the real protagonist, and the game is a struggle of overcoming the natural order to oppose it.
  • Perhaps the character is a spirit, with both a day hunter,s body, and a game night body. There are limited number of these spirits, and if one of their bodies dies, the spirit is sundered, and the remaining body becomes normal. The spirit doesn't know it is split, but this explains the ferocity of both factions, and why one group has supremacy in the day, and the other the night. The spirits are the difference makers.
I think I can
  • First, a confession. I have done a great deal of thinking about Ascend's “colors” before the guidelines were released. By colors I mean a group of divisions, based in flavor, that have mechanical consequences. Like Magic: The Gathering,s color wheel. Each color has a flavor, the flavor gives definition to what the color can and cannot do. D&D 4E has a division of flavor, Arcane, Divine, Martial, and Primal, but these have almost no mechanical impact. Yes the Arcane power source tends toward the Control role, Divine, Leader, Martial, Striker. Which gives a little of the what this color can do part, but with the exception of Martial and Controller, there is no definition by what something cannot do. Which is more important to what makes Magic's colors work.
  • Ascend's color wheel, as it stands now, is a six spoke affair, 2 groups of three, 3 groups of 2. The Thought cycle is governed by Thought before action, made up of the Theorists (single unifying theory), the Deists (enlightenment through diversity of belief) and the Ghosts (thought without action). By adding a comma to this theme, I Think, I Can, a theme for this last faction emerges.
  • The Ghosts are antagonists, not Player characters. They have taken one of the fundamental dichotomies of Ascend to the extreme. Instead of Thought before Action, they have shed there bodies and become pure thought. They will things to happen.
  • Mechanics: Ghosts as antagonists presents a special kind of challenge. Accumulated Successes from Resistance empower Ghosts, as the Resistance represents a fundamental belief in the reality being created by the Ghost. Only by not having a character's thoughts reinforce the reality created by the ghost's thoughts, can a character overcome the Ghost.
  • Interesting, the theme for Ghost's dichotomy has formed from this as well. It is
since there is no thought, just action.
Pond
  • Mechanics: Dice Pool. No really honestly. Pond = Pool. Simple and clean.
  • Pond , as in the Big Fish in a small Pond. Pond = Community. But there can still be several distinct places in the Pond. A Pond on a Galactic scale can be a cluster of stars, those near enough to affect and influence each other. A Pond is everywhere that can be easily traveled to. I think of Points of Light, but more like cluster of Lights. In between the points in the cluster, travel is safe, outside the cluster it is difficult and dark.
  • Pond – Surface – Ripples – Cast Stones: Stones thrown are the plot hooks, the bangs! Cast Stones into a community creates ripples, evidence of the stone after the stone has already dropped. Character actions creates ripples as they are cast stones as well. Characters ride the ripples from community to community within the pond. Cast stones = dice.
  • Mechanics: Dice Pool = Pond. A single cast stone = a die. A single die roll creates a ripple. Ripple = change in the Dice Pool/Pond. Perhaps if there are no successes, a die can be rolled, and that subtracted from each die rolled, “rippling” through them. This represents a crisis of faith maybe, a last ditch attempt to succeed. What is the consequence of casting a stone....

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