Loki_42
2015-07-15, 05:24 PM
A while ago I came up with an idea for a horror game, and started writing it. After a lot of starts and stops, I have an actually playable draft, which is further than I've ever gotten on a game design project, so yay for me.
Though sharing a core with Apocalypse World, with moves triggered through the fiction, GM moves on partial successes and failures, a focus on improvised and shared story creation with no preplanned plotline, and all of that fun stuff, my game has a lot of changes. I'll go through the major ideas below:
Designed for one-shots. Long-term campaigns really don't work for this game, but that's intentional. This is designed to emulate the horror movies where maybe one person survives, if they're lucky.
To simulate that aspect of only one survivor, the advancement mechanic is linked to death. Every time a PC dies, every other one advances, gaining a move from a special Survivor playbook.
Since death is required, I tried to design the game so that players of dead characters have plenty to do, taking on partial gming responsibilities. I've seen a lot of horror rpgs devolve into players sitting around and watching the lucky players who survived finish the game, and that's no fun.
Completely diceless. Players choose when their characters fail, and failure offers the chance to succeed later.
So with all that said, I'm opening up my game to all of you, to take a look at and tell me what I'm doing right, and more importantly, what I'm doing wrong. Here's the game (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eTO0V8OCauhIqp5RQ9aZNWKdJYP7Kw1znygM8suXNjc/edit). Thank you.
Though sharing a core with Apocalypse World, with moves triggered through the fiction, GM moves on partial successes and failures, a focus on improvised and shared story creation with no preplanned plotline, and all of that fun stuff, my game has a lot of changes. I'll go through the major ideas below:
Designed for one-shots. Long-term campaigns really don't work for this game, but that's intentional. This is designed to emulate the horror movies where maybe one person survives, if they're lucky.
To simulate that aspect of only one survivor, the advancement mechanic is linked to death. Every time a PC dies, every other one advances, gaining a move from a special Survivor playbook.
Since death is required, I tried to design the game so that players of dead characters have plenty to do, taking on partial gming responsibilities. I've seen a lot of horror rpgs devolve into players sitting around and watching the lucky players who survived finish the game, and that's no fun.
Completely diceless. Players choose when their characters fail, and failure offers the chance to succeed later.
So with all that said, I'm opening up my game to all of you, to take a look at and tell me what I'm doing right, and more importantly, what I'm doing wrong. Here's the game (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eTO0V8OCauhIqp5RQ9aZNWKdJYP7Kw1znygM8suXNjc/edit). Thank you.