Amusing game anecdote

[thebitterguy]

At the finale of the Thrusday game, during Pre-Game BS Session, one of the players (the youngest of the bunch), mentioned a game concept he thought would be cool.

"Wouldn't it be neat", he said "if you were presented with random images, and then had to base the events in the narrative around them?"

Well, he got as far as "base" when, around the room, like falling dominoes, each and every players nodded and said "Everway". I think the GM stayed silent because he is wise.

Actually, three of the players, YHB included, simply said "Everway", while the fourth said "have you ever seen a game called Everway? No? Now you know why that's not a good idea."

Comments

[thebitterguy]

Well, considering how the entire room's reaction to what you were talking about was "Everway", we can assume your description was close to it, at least.

I wonder if there could be different ways of presenting information in game books–modular layering of sidebars, mood-setting layout/splat designs, i dunno.

Interesting. Expand on this.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Hm. Aside from pure aesthetic difference, i'm not sure where i'm getting at. I happen to be a highly visual thinker–if i was writing a game book, the manuscript would have several pages which would just be [here's a panorama shot of the city for mood]. I love knowing how things really look in a setting–I'm a sucker for highly descriptive vignettes in game fiction, too. A weapons list which has text centred around pictures would be another kind of thing i'd do, instead of trying to match up guns with names (same with monster books–the text for Swan-belcher ends up next to the Illo for Fey Dainty Princess a lot, much to my confusion). Such a book might be a bit too similar to Everway's predicable problem – how do you interpret the pictures for everyone? On the other hand, having constant visual/textual pseudo-narratives gives concrete examples of everything in play, and is muchly cool – the info presented from in-setting sources in Orpheus is an excellent example of this. I'm essentially imagining a thick comic book with rules texts, and very experiemental panel designs. Pulled off well, it would force the readers to construct the setting and game in their own minds as much as literally presented in the book – but making all of those constructs mesh with everyone in the group would be hard. It's... rules-lite fluff.

Modularity in PDFs could be increased, though–i like the option of a white wolf ST being able to save parts IIa, III and IVb/c of a book and giving them to a player as a handout or file, which has information on chosen splat, the power lists of that splat, basic rules and maybe some extra pertinent setting infos. Aside from having a box set filled with tiny books, though, i can't imagine how to do this in a strictly paper way. Splat Tarot cards would be really cool, though (and make nifty metaprops in LARPS).