Chuubo's...Marvelous...What?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So I've stumbled across Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine and understand that it's sort of a Studio Ghibli RPG but...I just don't GET it, I think...I get that instead of creating a character of your own, you play one of the established quirky characters in the setting, and I think that's interesting but...what do you DO in this game? :smallconfused:

[Yuki Akuma]

No, you make your own character. I mean, you can play one of the established characters if you want to, but most people seem to prefer making their own characters.

As for what you do... that depends on the genre you're going for? If it's a Pastoral game you're probably going to do normal things like hanging out with your friends and getting ready for festivals and such. If it's a Techno game you'll be reacting to all the weird and wonderful magical things in the setting and being over-the-top and dramatic. If it's the Road of Trials you'll be going on dramatic quests and being beaten down and standing back up again. Et cetera.

You do whatever you'd do in any RPG, really.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Ah, so there’s different STYLES of story supported by the game. I can see how each type can correspond to a different Studio Ghibli film.

Pastoral games probably feel a lot like My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki’s Delivery Service, Techno is more like Howl’s Moving Castle, while Road of Trials is more Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, would that be a correct assessment?

TV Tropes REALLY doesn’t do a good job explaining this game. :smallannoyed:

[Yuki Akuma]

Ah, so there’s different STYLES of story supported by the game. I can see how each type can correspond to a different Studio Ghibli film.

Pastoral games probably feel a lot like My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki’s Delivery Service, Techno is more like Howl’s Moving Castle, while Road of Trials is more Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, would that be a correct assessment?

TV Tropes REALLY doesn’t do a good job explaining this game. :smallannoyed:

I haven't seen enough Ghibli films to really apply a genre to each, and sometimes a story will switch Chuubo-genres at certain points (no real story is the Road of Trials for the entire thing)...

And yes, TV Tropes doesn't do a good job explaining the game. It does an okayish job explaining the setting at least.

People call it the "Studio Ghibli RPG" because it focuses a lot on your characters and their interactions with other people and the world around them. It's very slice-of-lifey and "the world is just awesome"y, like Ghibli films are.

[Airk]

It's not REALLY a "Studio Ghibli RPG" - there are some clear influences there, but it's both broader and weirder than that, overall.

Chuubo's is a "generic" game in the TRUEST sense of the word - when you build a character, you also define what will give them "XP" on their "arc". So instead of traditional games (even those that bill themselves as "generic") where you get your XP/points/whatever by doing some combination of What the GM wants you to do/showing up/killing stuff, in Chuubo's, you can literally have a Quest, which will give you "XP" (I'm putting in quotes here because I don't remember the correct term, but XP is close enough) that is, say "Fix up my grandfather's old house." and you can define some of the scenes and actions that will move you through that quest.

But it doesn't HAVE to be pastoral slice of life either. You could just as easily use it to portray a godlike martial artist whose quest is to hunt and kill the man who murdered his master. Or whatever. The game is SUPER BROAD.

So yeah, there are some sort of...tonal similarities with Studio Ghibli films, but I feel like representing the game as a "Studio Ghibli RPG" is both overselling and underselling the game.

[Friv]

Ah, Chuubo's. As probably GitP's resident "biggest Chuubo's fanboy", let's see if I can give you a summary of the game from a mechanical perspective:

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine is a game of narrative resource management, in a literal sense. It is perhaps the crunchiest narrative-focused game currently on the market, which uses magical realism as a framework to tell stories about growing up, finding your place in the world, or working through a particularly difficult time in your life.

In many ways, Chuubo's is a narrative mirror to D&D. You have a character Arc (which is a Class) which determines your powers, and as you gain XP you 'level-up' your Arc and get new powers. However, rather than being an in-character explanation of your skills, your Arc is a meta-narrative explanation of the story that you are a part of, and you gain XP by seeking out and accomplishing a variety of story beats (known as "quest triggers") within the particular story that you want to tell. Within that, you accomplish tasks by using a limited pool of resources to dictate to the GM how productive and cool actions you take are. If you do not spend resources, the GM has full authority to narrate the results of your actions however they like. Your resources can include simple things like "good at chess" or "Kind", or Arc-based powers such as "Can take any burden from another character once per chapter and then withstand that burden forever", or "can literally wish for anything once a week and it will happen, with a little emotional map to decide whether it happens in a useful or difficult way".
.
The GM's job, primarily, is to act as a narrator / referee, ensuring that the various individual storylines that players have picked successfully inter-mingle into a coherent overall story, and to adjudicate situations in which two players spend narrative resources on opposing story beats.

In much the same way that many RPGs have signature characters that people can choose to pick up, Chuubo's has a set of twelve or fifteen "main characters", who will potentially be major NPCs in the default setting. What TVTropes is discussing is the campaign book connected to the game, "The Glass-Maker's Dragon", which provides character sheets and storylines for eight of these characters, including the titular Chuubo.

*EDIT*

If you would like an in-character example of the sort of combination of whimsy and tragedy that the writing of Chuubo's evokes, I would suggest the free PDF: So You've Starting Existing (http://imago.hitherby.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/So-Youve-Started-Existing.pdf), which was written by the Chuubo's author as a bit of marketing for the game.

[tensai_oni]

Friv already said everything I wanted to do, so instead I'll just give a general warning against treating tvtropes as any kind of authority. It's good to read for fun but don't expect its information to be accurate, or even sometimes factually real.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

*EDIT*

If you would like an in-character example of the sort of combination of whimsy and tragedy that the writing of Chuubo's evokes, I would suggest the free PDF: So You've Starting Existing (http://imago.hitherby.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/So-Youve-Started-Existing.pdf), which was written by the Chuubo's author as a bit of marketing for the game.
See, it's THIS stuff that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. So the sun's...dead? But there's a new one that's both in the sky and a possible player character because of time paradoxes? And the world consists of only a single settlement surrounded by a vortex of rainbow colored energy? What exactly am I looking at here?! :smalleek:

I had this same problem with Exalted. :smallannoyed:

[Lord Raziere]

See, it's THIS stuff that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. So the sun's...dead? But there's a new one that's both in the sky and a possible player character because of time paradoxes? And the world consists of only a single settlement surrounded by a vortex of rainbow colored energy? What exactly am I looking at here?! :smalleek:

I had this same problem with Exalted. :smallannoyed:

I can explain it to you, but then I'll have to start talking ancient philosophical concepts of how the universe works and how people interpret them in the modern day. a path of madness to be sure. are you okay with this, or not and think that such an explanation will only confuse you even further?

[Drascin]

See, it's THIS stuff that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. So the sun's...dead? But there's a new one that's both in the sky and a possible player character because of time paradoxes? And the world consists of only a single settlement surrounded by a vortex of rainbow colored energy? What exactly am I looking at here?! :smalleek:

I had this same problem with Exalted. :smallannoyed:

Important thing to keep in mind. When Jenna Moran writes a setting, she is never writing it for the simulationists. She's very much a concept writer that bases her stuff in mythology rather than Sandersonian A->B chains. If you try to think of the setting as a planet ruled by gamey physics like people do for, say, Toril, you're going to get a headache.

So yes. The Sun died. This stuff happens sometimes, in stories. The new Sun is Jade Irinka. Who, yes, is both in the sky and a highschool student. Far as Town is concerned, these two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[The_Snark]

If you would like an in-character example of the sort of combination of whimsy and tragedy that the writing of Chuubo's evokes, I would suggest the free PDF: So You've Starting Existing (http://imago.hitherby.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/So-Youve-Started-Existing.pdf), which was written by the Chuubo's author as a bit of marketing for the game.

While entertaining, I'm not sure this serves as a good introduction to the game; it's a little too in-character, which is maybe good for conveying mood but not good for explaining to new people. I would instead recommend this example of play (http://imago.hitherby.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Example-of-Play-Chuubos-Marvelous-Wish-Granting-Engine-from-the-Kickstarter-Previews.pdf). It might still be a bit confusing, but if you want to know what the game looks like in play? This is how the author imagined it, for whatever that's worth.

[Yuki Akuma]

See, it's THIS stuff that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. So the sun's...dead? But there's a new one that's both in the sky and a possible player character because of time paradoxes? And the world consists of only a single settlement surrounded by a vortex of rainbow colored energy? What exactly am I looking at here?! :smalleek:

I had this same problem with Exalted. :smallannoyed:

This is a setting where essential aspects of nature are incarnated as gods. The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy shot the incarnation of the Sun (who was an angel named Jade Irinka), and her death caused the Sun to go out, because the Sun was her and she was the Sun.

Then... something happened to put a new Sun in the sky. Mad science was involved. The new Sun is the child of the previous one, Jasper Irinka, who might also be an angel but given she's also the child of the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy her exact taxonomy is a bit confusing. And, yes, she is both wandering around Town as a human-ish-looking girl and hovering up in the sky bringing life-giving warmth and light. She's a god. Who are you to say she can't be in two places at once?

Incidentally, the death of the Sun essentially caused (most of) the world to end, although it seems to have been somewhat retroactive.

[Arbane]

See, it's THIS stuff that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. So the sun's...dead? But there's a new one that's both in the sky and a possible player character because of time paradoxes? And the world consists of only a single settlement surrounded by a vortex of rainbow colored energy? What exactly am I looking at here?! :smalleek:

I had this same problem with Exalted. :smallannoyed:

That's possibly not a coincidence - Jenna Moran (formerly Borgstrom), author of Chuubo's, also wrote some of the weirder stuff in Exalted: the Fair Folk, the Sidereals, the Yozis and their component souls... She also wrote Nobilis, which I believe Chuubo's is an 'unofficial' sequel to.

There's a running joke on RPGnet that her works are mechanically elegant, evocative... and REALLY hard to understand well enough to actually PLAY. Those who have mastered that art are said to have learned "Borgstromancy".

[Nifft]

At its heart, Chuubo's is a fairly simple game.

The trouble is that to get to that heart, you need to wade through a vast sea of tantalizing and confusing flavor text, which is really quite delicious, and this next flavor will knock y-- no, continue wading. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the pretty flashing lights that might or might not be in the sky.


As an aside, has anyone run a Chuubo-ized Welcome to Nightvale, or similar?

[CN the Logos]

Saw this thread, and since it hasn’t passed the 45th day mark I figured I’d post here rather than start a new Chuubo’s thread. I’m trying to start a one-on-one-game for myself and my wife in a couple of weeks, and separating the actual rules from the morass of narrative in the book is the biggest reason we haven’t started playing already. This summary (https://samhaine.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/chuubos-rules-summary/) is helpful, but doesn’t go into the action types much. So I'm posting here in case anyone has any advice on running The Glass-Maker’s Dragon for one PC. In particular, she wants to play as Leonardo, which I think is going to change the campaign’s genre without competing PCs to take story focus off of him occasionally; we also want to include Chuubo, Entropy II, and Jasper as major NPCs, maybe Seizhi as well since he's Chuubo's Frankensteinian creation best friend. Any advice from people who’ve actually played the game, be it one-on-one or in a group, would be welcome.


No, you make your own character. I mean, you can play one of the established characters if you want to, but most people seem to prefer making their own characters.

[..]

You do whatever you'd do in any RPG, really.

Huh. Most of the forums, etc… I’ve looked at tend to discuss the game with the pregen characters in mind. Which is fine by me; the pregens are, with a few exceptions, pretty neat, and the suggested story arcs for them are interesting even if I feel like the author should give me some suggestions for combining multiple characters’ stories into one narrative. As is, The Glass-Maker’s Dragon reads to me like multiple, unconnected plots all happening at the same time in the same world, to characters who know each other but aren’t necessarily in the same place at the same time doing things that relate to each other. I’m not sure how well that would work in a game with multiple PCs.

This isn't something that's going to affect me personally, since I'm planning on just playing one-on-one with my wife as the sole PC. But in a larger group, if Leonardo’s player has him brooding in a Byronic fashion doing research on the shore of Big Lake, and the scene changes to Entropy II cruising on his motorcycle while thinking about how totally awesome it will be to be able to wash his hands, what is Leonardo’s player supposed to do? Catch up on their reading? Check their work email? Grab some nachos? Ars Magica had players make auxiliary PCs for this sort of thing, but CMWGE doesn’t mention anything like that. And if you’ve got five PCs that each have their own separate stories with separate supporting characters and antagonists, how is the HG supposed to juggle that? Having a timeline of the campaign itself that shows which events happen and which NPCs show up in which order (assuming all PC roles are filled) would be handy. I'm fine with changing things up, and in fact one of the cool things I noticed as I was reading The Glass-Maker’s Dragon was that even if you adhere as close to the default setting and character options as possible, changing the “main” character changes the genre: Chuubo is a wacky, idiot hero type who goes on amusing slice of life adventures (or a cosmic horror protagonist in a story where You Are The Eldritch Abominations, whichever), Leonardo is a tsundere mad scientist with gothic seasoning to taste, Seizhi is clearly a Promethean: the Created character no matter what the other PCs are doing, etc… But if I spend money on a campaign book, it's because I’d at least like something defined that I can deviate from.

My kvetching aside, The Glass-Maker’s Dragon is already good, I really want to run it, and the system it was written for seems flexible enough to do pretty much anything (provided that the anything in question doesn’t need a detailed, tactical combat system). I just wish it were better organized. :smalltongue: Once again, any relevant advice would be appreciated.

[Friv]

So, I can write up a slightly more in-depth thing later, and probably will provided I get the time, but a short answer - I did run Glass-Maker's Dragon, and the stories interweave better than you might think! (Or at least, they do with Chuubo, Seizhi, Natalie and Leonardo as your four PCs.)

Basically, on a certain level the HG's job in a multi-player game is to run conservation of scenes and characters to ensure that everyone's stories interact and weave together. So in your example, if Leonardo is down on the beach researching, maybe he notices that there's a strange occult influence emenating from Fortitude. Something is messing with the town's layout! Is it connected to the powers of the Outside? (Spoiler alert, no, it's Entropy, but now Leonardo is researching Entropy).

Meanwhile, the Angel of Fortitude is roaming the streets, when an old lady's nightmares slip out of her mind and start to wander loose. Wrestling that up would probably help purify the occult geometry of the city and clean some blood from Entropy's hands! And then the Angel and Leo converge on the nightmare, and Leo fails to realize that the Angel is Entropy (or alternately, they have a grand battle), and then things go well - or poorly - depending.

So in my game, if you look at everyone's first quests: Seizhi was trying to figure out his place in the world, which meant getting caught in a friendship tug-of-war between Chuubo and Leonardo. Leonardo was studying the Outside and its threats, which drew him to Natalie fighting a giant golden snake, which allowed her heart to thaw a little when a stranger intervened to save her, with no thought of recompense. Meanwhile, Chuubo was out trying to figure out why there was a strange witch in his dreams, which meant sneaking out of the house at night, and then he saw a giant snake being attacked and we don't know that snakes are evil just because they're giant! So he jumped in to save the snake, while Seizhi tagged along and gaped in horror...

Glass-Maker's Dragon is a little odd from a traditional perspective, because at first glance the quests are "what happens to these people", but when you start digging, there's really a ton of space for different stories to unfurl inside the bounds of the main arcs, and the order that things happen in depends partially on who finishes their quests first.

*EDIT* It is worth noting that this does require some player buy-in. If the players are determined to only do solo scenes, it is difficult to stop them. But I find that usually they're willing to interact with each other, because players like to interact with each other.

[CN the Logos]

Basically, on a certain level the HG's job in a multi-player game is to run conservation of scenes and characters to ensure that everyone's stories interact and weave together. So in your example, if Leonardo is down on the beach researching, maybe he notices that there's a strange occult influence emenating from Fortitude. Something is messing with the town's layout! Is it connected to the powers of the Outside? (Spoiler alert, no, it's Entropy, but now Leonardo is researching Entropy).

Meanwhile, the Angel of Fortitude is roaming the streets, when an old lady's nightmares slip out of her mind and start to wander loose. Wrestling that up would probably help purify the occult geometry of the city and clean some blood from Entropy's hands! And then the Angel and Leo converge on the nightmare, and Leo fails to realize that the Angel is Entropy (or alternately, they have a grand battle), and then things go well - or poorly - depending.

[...]

Glass-Maker's Dragon is a little odd from a traditional perspective, because at first glance the quests are "what happens to these people", but when you start digging, there's really a ton of space for different stories to unfurl inside the bounds of the main arcs, and the order that things happen in depends partially on who finishes their quests first.

*EDIT* It is worth noting that this does require some player buy-in. If the players are determined to only do solo scenes, it is difficult to stop them. But I find that usually they're willing to interact with each other, because players like to interact with each other.

Thanks. This is a pretty good example of the stuff I'd like to see more of in the actual rulebook. It's more detail than I would have expected from the actual book, honestly; I would have been happy with one or two sentences for each other PC for each story summarizing why they should care about the events. Just "X should care what happens here because..." would be fine, since knowing the PCs' motives makes it easier to set up motivating things for them. (This is not a passive-aggressive way of asking someone to do this for me, I am well aware that would be a substantial undertaking to take on without getting paid for it. I'm just wishlisting here).

I am limited to one-on-one games by virtue of not having a group of people who can meet at a regular time. That makes some of this easier; I don't have to worry about my wife getting bored while the other PCs do stuff, because there aren't any other PCs. If Leonardo isn't involved in whatever wacky thing Chuubo wants to do, than it just happens off screen until it become relevant. I do, however, want to involve the other main characters I mentioned in this, because she likes her character interaction as much as the next gamer. So this sort of thing is immensely helpful to me.

I mentioned it briefly in my first post, but one thing that worries interests me is how playing a solo game is going to affect the tone of events even though I'm not planning to significantly* change the setting as written. Take what might be a whimsical, light-hearted story about growing up and finding your place in the world. Put the focus primarily on the tsundere mad scientist. Suddenly we're telling a gothic story about the balance between channeling your interests productively and falling to obsession, being able to understand and admit your own feelings, facing horrors from your past, and fighting fate in an attempt to avert your horrible death... You know, when I started writing this, I was going to say that I was worried about the solo game genre-change thing. Then I remembered that my wife and I met because she was looking for someone to run a Vampire:the Masquerade game with Sabbat PCs for her. Probably not a huge issue.

I still don't want to go full grimdark though (never go full grimdark :smalltongue:).

Once again, advice on running this thing is definitely welcome.


*If sapient animals get involved, they'll be cats instead of rats, Jasper is going to begin the game as Entropy's sidekick, and Chuubo's going to be The Wishing Girl but keep the name Chuubo. It's possible that Chuubo is an incredibly masculine name in another language and I've just never heard of it, but nothing else comes up on Google when I search for the name, and my wife seems to prefer the name Chuubo for the character. Maybe a wish did it?

[Friv]

So, more from me!

Note that I have never run solo games, like, at all. It's not really my forte. But I have run a lot of Chuubo's, and I ran for Leonardo, so I feel moderately confident here.

Normally, Leonardo (and Natalia) have a problem wherein their activities are out-of-genre for their setting, and the clash between these makes up a solid part of their story. In the case of Leonardo, this is expressed via interactions with more pastoral characters, especially Chuubo or Jasper (if they're around), both of whom tend to derail his obsessions and throw a splash of emotional cold water in his face when he gets too far up himself. Rinley is almost as good at this, whereas Seizhi by himself is more likely to get swept into Leonardo's world than vice versa.

If you don't have a pastoral Main Character, but want to keep that tension in play, the way to do it is for the NPCs to invoke that heavily. Puncture Leonardo's grandioseness without sidelining his plot. Have people respond to him the way people in a quaint magical-realist world would respond to a brooding gothic prince - with a sort of amused indulgence of his weird behaviour. Let the story go gothic sometimes, and then pull it back. Encourage opportunities for Leonardo to break and use Shared Reactions and Shared Actions with major NPCs, rather than going all slice-of-life.

(Or go the other route, and just make the genre Gothic. Leonardo can do pretty well there.)

And if you want the aside on Chuubo - I did some research for a while, and I could only find a single Chuubo anywhere in fiction or the real world outside of this game. The name in question was invented by a fictional character in an anime, Ikki Tousen, that was "High School Romance of the Three Kingdoms" - and was a girl.

Her real name was Shokyo.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I don't think I've ever encountered a game where players deliberately have to pay attention to the genre of their character and how that interacts with the overall genre of the game itself.

[CN the Logos]

Wanted to reply earlier, but this past weekend was insane. I was hoping to have started our campaign by now, but taking extra time to prep is probably for the best. Let's see...


So, more from me!

Note that I have never run solo games, like, at all. It's not really my forte. But I have run a lot of Chuubo's, and I ran for Leonardo, so I feel moderately confident here.

Normally, Leonardo (and Natalia) have a problem wherein their activities are out-of-genre for their setting, and the clash between these makes up a solid part of their story. In the case of Leonardo, this is expressed via interactions with more pastoral characters, especially Chuubo or Jasper (if they're around), both of whom tend to derail his obsessions and throw a splash of emotional cold water in his face when he gets too far up himself. Rinley is almost as good at this, whereas Seizhi by himself is more likely to get swept into Leonardo's world than vice versa.

Well, the plan is to involve Jasper and Chuubo fairly heavily (also Entropy, as a mentor figure who can be a handy source of advice on dealing with THE DARKNESS WITHIN, but he's... not exactly a grounded influence), and see how Seizhi fits in as things unfold. I'll be frank, Rinley's material simultaneously reminds me of every obnoxious tagalong kid and every obnoxious trickster character I've ever had the misfortune of encountering, so I will probably not be using her. I'm not saying she couldn't be run well (maybe she plays better than she reads?), but I don't see the need to when I've got Chuubo.

I've already talked with my wife about the sort of character interactions she wants to see, and so I know things will eventually spiral into a convoluted love... quadrilateral? Maybe pentagon? Which could be resolved if Leonardo was less tsundere or Chuubo was amoral enough to wish for someone’s mind to be altered, but Leonardo gets literal magical power from his tsuntsun side, and I don’t want to run a game in the grimdark universe where Chuubo intentionally uses wishes to mind rape people. Anyway, whatever the number of sides the polygon ends up with, there should be that contrast between Leonardo's epic, Byronic struggle with destiny and the SNAFU that passes for his social life.


If you don't have a pastoral Main Character, but want to keep that tension in play, the way to do it is for the NPCs to invoke that heavily. Puncture Leonardo's grandioseness without sidelining his plot. Have people respond to him the way people in a quaint magical-realist world would respond to a brooding gothic prince - with a sort of amused indulgence of his weird behaviour. Let the story go gothic sometimes, and then pull it back. Encourage opportunities for Leonardo to break and use Shared Reactions and Shared Actions with major NPCs, rather than going all slice-of-life.

(Or go the other route, and just make the genre Gothic. Leonardo can do pretty well there.)

Making the genre Gothic is more or less what I've decided to do, except that the techno actions are also also going to be available. Call it "Technogothic" I guess, although "Kind of Like Revolutionary Girl Utena" would also be correct. This has the advantage of still letting the pastoral-type scenes happen if they feel natural, since Gothic has the same actions as Pastoral plus some additional stuff, rather than swapping the Pastoral actions for a different set. The Techno actions are mostly there because I like the idea of the player(s) being able to say "that random detail you just added? That’s obviously foreshadowing/an important discovery. You should give us more of that."

Using NPCs to create bathos when things get too grimdark is probably going to be required at least once though. Not often, because someone who picks Leonardo obviously wants to RP some angst, but if things ever reach Changeling: The Lost or Warhammer 40k levels of grimdark, something’s gone terribly wrong.

…Although I now want to see a game with the tagline: “IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF TOWN, TURNING INTO A GIANT SNAKE NEVER HELPS.”


And if you want the aside on Chuubo - I did some research for a while, and I could only find a single Chuubo anywhere in fiction or the real world outside of this game. The name in question was invented by a fictional character in an anime, Ikki Tousen, that was "High School Romance of the Three Kingdoms" - and was a girl.

Her real name was Shokyo.

Huh. ...I mean, I know I just referenced Revolutionary Girl Utena so I probably shouldn't talk, but that's a weirdly specific reference. I just figured that if it wasn't an actual name, it was meant to be something that an immortal god-snake ineptly pretending to be a human teenager would come up with as a “human” name, right after thinking of and deciding against Hugh Mann and Sue D. Nym. I mean, there’s no way someone named Chuubo could secretly be an immortal god-snake running from her failure to defend Yggdrasil from the Riders. That name requires lips to say, and snakes don’t have those: at least not good, high-quality, human lips that could introduce the person they belonged to as “Chuubo.”


I don't think I've ever encountered a game where players deliberately have to pay attention to the genre of their character and how that interacts with the overall genre of the game itself.

I’m not an authority, since I’m new to actually possibly maybe running this thing myself, but I think that’s the appeal. :smalltongue:

[CN the Logos]

Ran the first session of our campaign last night. Had a couple of false starts while explaining how actions and spending Will worked, and had to award some XP retroactively after my wife realized that she could say "This omnious dream about the dead Sun being a vampire trying to drag me underwater to eat me is obviously Foreshadowing" and get XP for that. Overall though, she seemed to enjoy it, and the plan is to continue tomorrow night.

With having to explain mechanics as we went, pausing the action repeatedly to discuss what Leonardo already knew about the setting, and having a flashback to being recruited into Entropy II's After School Club for Gifted Youngsters the SEED program,* we didn't get very far in the present day of the campaign; we ended with Leonardo realizing that he should probably go through the Archive even if his opinion of young children was "sticky and loud" and his thoughts on there being one older guy running it while surrounded by a horde of homeless children that he... fosters(?) was "not creepy at all, honest," and him leaving his lodgings to check it out. Once we've run another session or so though, would anyone be interested in a campaign write up? I'm going to take notes on what happened either way so I can maintain internal consistency, so all this affects is how readable I make them for people who aren't playing with us.


*Is there an official answer from the author regarding what SEED stands for? Or is it one of those things where we're just supposed to wonder and/or make up something? Since the plan is to have Leonardo and Entropy II do a lot of interacting, and Leonardo having been scouted as having potental is going to be important, I'd like to know, but my Google-fu has failed me so far.

[Friv]

To my knowledge, there isn't an answer yet; if the Horizon book is ever finished, the answer might be in there.

It's pretty explicitly a backronym, though - the SEED program was named that because its members were meant to be the seeds of a new universe in the event of disaster. Beyond that, who knows?

And I would enjoy a campaign writeup!

[CN the Logos]

To my knowledge, there isn't an answer yet; if the Horizon book is ever finished, the answer might be in there.

It's pretty explicitly a backronym, though - the SEED program was named that because its members were meant to be the seeds of a new universe in the event of disaster. Beyond that, who knows?

Yeah, I figured it was a backronym, but wasn't sure if we had something official that sounded better than whatever I could come up with. :smalltongue: So far the best I've got is "Selected for Eschatological Excellence Development," which doesn't really imply anything about a new world but does at least convey that the function of the program is to provide useful people in the event that the universe starts to end.


And I would enjoy a campaign writeup!

Alright then, as soon as we've got another session or so to give me something to write about, I'll make a new thread for it and link to it in this one.

[Friv]

I can give you mine: in the game that I ran, the players repeatedly asked what S.E.E.D. stood for, and eventually Entropy admitted that it didn't stand for anything; he hadn't been able to figure out a good acronym, so he just ran with it and hoped no one would ask.

[CN the Logos]

I can give you mine: in the game that I ran, the players repeatedly asked what S.E.E.D. stood for, and eventually Entropy admitted that it didn't stand for anything; he hadn't been able to figure out a good acronym, so he just ran with it and hoped no one would ask.

That was my backup plan. But then I realized I'd been presented with a rare and precious opportunity to use a derivative of the word "eschaton," and I couldn't pass that up in good conscience even if it was slightly clunky.