Well my rant yesterday spawned a little mental image, well a huge mental image really. Add to this the cities of Mortal Engines (and Ambulon from Dark Heresy) plus some James Blish by way of Gene Wolfe all smushed into an RPG idea I’d had kicking around a new idea was born. What? The normal way of things getting born is less messy? Anyway here follows some blurb and thoughts on a game. Knowing me it might never happen but enjoy.
Cities of Dirt
Once the world was blue, not brown. Once the sun was yellow not red and dying. Once the world was called Earth, now it is just Dirt.
Once man travelled the heavens fighting and dying, trading and looting. His power stretched across the Galaxy. Until the Final War and the Cleansing. When the Star Gods broke the fleets of Man banishing them crawling back to the long ruined planet of their birth. And when the ships landed the cities fell upon them. Tearing them apart in their voracious desire to feed and live.
The banishing was many years ago now, the great devouring a mere story to those who are born, toil and die in the bowels of the great Cities. Each one toiling it’s way across the dusty land of Dirt. Searching for materials to keep them working just one more day, metal, food, people and most of all water. The city dwellers know they must keep their city working, to try and scrape a living from the dusty ground is unthinkable, but they also know what they do not know. The knowledge of the deep working of the City are lost to them, if the City dies it cannot be reborn, and every day brings new trials.
So that’s the setting, the game as I envisage it is a troupe based story game. You work together to tell the story of the City, with the City being the only fixed point in the plot. You tell a series of tales that may or may not include the same characters but the main character you play is the City.
The Cities are giant moving machines, some using legs others treads and others ancient anti gravity devices or such like. They travel the dried up lands of what was once Earth looting and pillaging and fighting each other in order to survive. Occasionally a straggling space ship returns to Earth and the Cities converge upon it to feast. But this is very rare as most of the ships have long since returned. The story starts with the players deciding on the social make up and general description and layout of their ship as well as assigning it stats. The stats have two purposes, firstly they help to determine the stats of the roles players take during tales. But also they determine the threats a City will take.
I’m still thinking on how it’s going to work, but I envisage a Story comprising a series of Tales (1-3 session adventures) working up to a climax. Each Tale will have a threat value that has to be faced or the City will take some form of damage. For each Tale a player takes on a Role, this can be an established character or a new one.
More on this as I think of it.
Tags: Games
Nice.
I was about to suggest it’d be cool to follow the history of a City from foundation to eventual destruction, with characters secondary to that narrative… and then read the whole post. =)
A surprisingly good source for material on this sort of thing is Dragonmech, which has a few mecha-cities, each with their own flavor, populace and ecology.
I had a similar idea with generation based space ships. I like the concept of the City as the Core character. Plus the whole story being shared between the players. One idea I have is there is not fixed GM (Storytellerm Cat Herder, whatever) instead the position rotates with one person taking the role and shaping the Threats for each Tale.
Ideas still bubbling here, it’s how they generally seem to work in my head. I may check out Dragonmech if I have the time. Side note the ships are there for a few reasons, firstly as a potential Threat catalyst, a ship arrives and the City tries to plunder it. But also to allow for aliens and people who’s ancestors came from the ships.
I shall continue to ponder.
Another neat thing from a story pov is that there aren’t many games about specific places. Games tend to involve exploration and travel, so you rarely get to grips with the people and places that make a city *live*.
So I’d maybe borrow a leaf from Stranger Things, an unreleased variant of Trollbabe. In it, players use location tokens to slowly build up a map of their city. Similarly, you could make development of a City’s suburbs into a minigame.
True, here the City explores but in itself stays static. Up to a point. But I do like that idea.
Yoink.
Right that’s it stolen