Two Elevator Pitches
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Spaaaaaace.
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I like both ideas, except for the amnesia part of the first idea. It’s so hard to make an amnesiac character, especially if you’re legitimately supposed to leave the PC’s past blank. (At least, it is for me - a lot of personality and motivation comes from memory and previous experiences, and exploring that is a key fun point for me.) But they both sound incredibly fun - especially if you take the gloves off in the latter one, and PC deaths are very on the table. Midnight raids, doomed runs to get information to another revolutionary cell before you succumb to your wounds, executions and desperate escapes!
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Really appreciate the comments. I’m honestly surprised which pitch is getting the greater share of interest, but that’s part of why I am reaching out for feedback. Please keep it coming!
@helvetica said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@shit-piss-love The first idea sounds appealing. Watching players collaborating on how to build and define a community sounds fulfilling
The community-building from a complete blank slate is a major piece of the puzzle for this one. I want to challenge players to self-organize and see how that forms, and then how it changes as the ongoing story opens up new opportunities. Are you comfortable with the current status quo when the stakes getting higher and the buttons they can push begin to have real consequences?
The second idea sounds like it might have a lot of headaches re: theme enforcement. I don’t have a lot of experience with players who enjoy playing oppressed characters as much as they enjoy making them.
This is one of the major risks in that concept. Especially in terms of triggering subject matter. It’s entirely possible the whole game is a giant X Card for a lot of people. Of the two, it’s certainly the more risky and asks for a lot more responsibility on the part of both staff and players.
@Testament said in Two Elevator Pitches:
And I like the second one because it’s so different in the fantasy mush genre in mushing. Also, because I like the idea of making nobles suffer. It appeals to the protester in me.
The genesis of the idea really came from being frustrated with the L&L trope of playing the upper classes as if they aren’t inherently problematic. The whole idea is to engage in a cathartic release of classist rage. Does that make a game? I don’t know.
@Pyrephox said in Two Elevator Pitches:
I like both ideas, except for the amnesia part of the first idea. It’s so hard to make an amnesiac character, especially if you’re legitimately supposed to leave the PC’s past blank. (At least, it is for me - a lot of personality and motivation comes from memory and previous experiences, and exploring that is a key fun point for me.)
That’s interesting. The idea for that game, as I have it in mind, leans heavily on the premise that PCs have absolutely no idea about their own pasts or the past of the ship. From a story perspective those are wells from which a lot of the mystery would spring. How did we get here? How long have we been asleep? How old is the ship? Where did it come from? What can it do? Who is out there?
Beyond the metaplot, this is also meant to provide a unique quirk to both individual and game-wide stories. If you come into the game as a complete blank, everything about your character is informed by live gameplay. Who you are is a product of interaction with other PCs and the story beats that you participate in. You are defined by the actions that you take rather than off-screen history.
I don’t think this particular game would work the way I want it to absent the blank slate starting position. Maybe this further explanation sparks some interest in you? Either way I appreciate the perspective.
But they both sound incredibly fun - especially if you take the gloves off in the latter one, and PC deaths are very on the table. Midnight raids, doomed runs to get information to another revolutionary cell before you succumb to your wounds, executions and desperate escapes!
This would be a very gloves-off game full of high stakes conflict where there would be a big, bold, flashing warning about not only the potential for permadeath, but an expectation to have goals regularly thwarted and treasured things destroyed. That’s absolutely crucial to depicting the inhumanity of class imbalance. It needs to be constantly, relentlessly personal.
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@shit-piss-love said in Two Elevator Pitches:
If you come into the game as a complete blank, everything about your character is informed by live gameplay. Who you are is a product of interaction with other PCs and the story beats that you participate in. You are defined by the actions that you take rather than off-screen history.
Interaction with other PCs who also have no memories. Consider how difficult it can be to sink your teeth into a new character, how long it can often take to “hook” in and find their voice. Now excise any background to lean into and…
Both The Network and HorrorMU* (and the short-lived Last One Standing and the one game that was set in space whose name I now forget) use/d amnesia, so it’s a thing that’s been pretty well play-tested - and it’s getting to be one of those “will not play amnesia again” things for me.
If there’s an option to wait a few months and wake up as a PC with at least partial memories? I’d take it and skip out on the opening RP just to avoid playing another amnesiac.
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I think both the pitches sound REAL COOL, but I also would struggle with the amnesia thing a bit. Like, I’d just have to make up an actual history to ground the character. Blank slate isn’t interesting to me; the struggle to recovery identity is. People are built from their experiences, and the process of getting into a MU* character can be really different for different players. Even partial memories would be good for grounding a character experience, and those memories could not include anything about how or why they ended up on the ship, that sort of thing.
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@Testament I’m only replying to say that HSpace is the worst.
It’s so bad it justifies repeating someone’s point.
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I personally love the idea of an amnesia game. Easy to jump into and test the waters without overcommitting. I like both ideas, but I’m just chiming in to make sure you know that not everyone hates the idea of starting out on a blank slate amnesiac!
One suggestion I might offer as a compromise, if the feedback makes you reluctant to commit to the bit: there was a short-lived AresMUSH called Last One Standing made by a pal of mine, so I’m assuming he doesn’t mind having his ideas stolen and thrown into the void. It was also an amnesia setting, in which all characters wash up on a deserted island with no recollection of how they got there. However, players were able to choose from a very limited selection of feats to allow for some leeway with that. Options included:
- Memento: You start out with a small personal keepsake from your former life, but no actual memories other than that.
- History: Instead of your memory being entirely gone, you start out with only most of it gone, and can remember bits and pieces of your former life.
- Deja Vu: Something about the island feels strangely familiar to you, and your character’s occasionally able to produce insights into their surroundings that other characters don’t have. (By DM correspondence.)
There were a few other options unrelated to past recollection, which in many cases were more practically useful and equally enticing. (There was even one which makes you repeatedly lose your memory all over again, just for people who really wanted to lean hard into it.) So not everyone chose from the above; we had a decent spread and the theme was still mainly, ‘No one knows who or where they are.’
With regards to your Lords & Ladies pitch: I don’t like L&L games, and know many others who avoid them for the same reasons. It’s hard to compete with SPACE, and I’d play either one, but I will say that your L&L inversion is exactly what would make me change my stance on L&L games. The complaint I tend to hear from others who share it is that we really just wanna play gritty peasants and underdogs, and don’t see the appeal of romanticising the stuffy upper class .
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@shit-piss-love said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Testament said in Two Elevator Pitches:
And I like the second one because it’s so different in the fantasy mush genre in mushing. Also, because I like the idea of making nobles suffer. It appeals to the protester in me.
The genesis of the idea really came from being frustrated with the L&L trope of playing the upper classes as if they aren’t inherently problematic. The whole idea is to engage in a cathartic release of classist rage. Does that make a game? I don’t know.
I pitched a similar idea on MSB a while back that got a lot of positive feedback at the time! At the very least you’d have an interested and enthusiastic playerbase hungry for something different after years of mostly-typical L&L places.
I think as long as you were able to keep the fires stoked and the lights on, you’d have a game!
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@shit-piss-love said in Two Elevator Pitches:
The genesis of the idea really came from being frustrated with the L&L trope of playing the upper classes as if they aren’t inherently problematic. The whole idea is to engage in a cathartic release of classist rage. Does that make a game? I don’t know.
Speaking only for myself, I’m too damned exhausted at the moment to do cathartic release of classist rage.
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OK, hear me out:
Amnesiac space peasants rising up against the space lords and ladies, to create a better space future.
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Spacey Rabble Rouser: “WHAT DO WE WANT?”
Spacey Crowd: “WE DON’T REMEMBER”
Spacey Rabble Rouser: “WHEN DO WE WANT IT??”
Spacey Crowd: “…NOW WE GUESS!!!” -
@Kestrel said in Two Elevator Pitches:
OK, hear me out:
Amnesiac space peasants rising up against the space lords and ladies, to create a better space future.
Bloody space revolution for some, memory exercises for others.
Little space flags for all.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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I’d like to see a mix of the ideas - maybe have two factions (or multiples) where one operates kind of like the Handmaid’s tale, why? Survival. And the others are various mini-or idealistic versions of different economic/political systems. That are being created because now it’s all about survival and people need to figure out a way to succeed and survive.
To another person’s point, some people only like playing the rebellious oppressed character, but if you just make it one small faction with some guidance for folks. Like, do not join this faction unless you are genuinely X or Y group (oppressed or oppressor) and if someone should get ‘out’, they should officially join another faction to keep that RP going, and keep that space open for those who would participate.
But, I very much prefer sci-fi to fantasy every day of the week.
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@Testament said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Kestrel said in Two Elevator Pitches:
OK, hear me out:
Amnesiac space peasants rising up against the space lords and ladies, to create a better space future.
Bloody space revolution for some, memory exercises for others.
Little space flags for all.
wait a minute, why do only the rich space people have their memories?
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@helvetica said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Testament said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Kestrel said in Two Elevator Pitches:
OK, hear me out:
Amnesiac space peasants rising up against the space lords and ladies, to create a better space future.
Bloody space revolution for some, memory exercises for others.
Little space flags for all.
wait a minute, why do only the rich space people have their memories?
Memory is DLC.
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@helvetica said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Testament said in Two Elevator Pitches:
@Kestrel said in Two Elevator Pitches:
OK, hear me out:
Amnesiac space peasants rising up against the space lords and ladies, to create a better space future.
Bloody space revolution for some, memory exercises for others.
Little space flags for all.
wait a minute, why do only the rich space people have their memories?
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@helvetica said in Two Elevator Pitches:
wait a minute, why do only the rich space people have their memories?
TO PREVENT THE REVOLUTION.
Basically why they did it to droids in Star Wars, right?
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RE: Ten Thousand Burning Suns (which I just realized shortens to 10K BS so probably the name needs work)
This is all great stuff re: amnesia blank slates. I’ve played a game that had this setup myself (Castle Marrach) and liked a lot of the effects it had on the game. I had not thought about the difficulties some might have in finding their motivation.
So to dig into that for those with this concern- What is the minimum level information you’d need as a runway to launching a character? Some ideas (including ones I’m cribbing from @Kestrel ) that I could see implementing that wouldn’t sacrifice the ludonarrative properties I want:
- Memory Fragments: A collection of pre-generated memory fragments that characters can select at CGen. Once one is chosen, it’d leave the pool. Some may have cryptic connection to the meta, history, etc. I can definitely see myself/staff tossing these into a hopper as ideas come to us.
- Emergent/Evolving Memories: To tip the hand a little bit, I had already planned for this as a significant route of storytelling. Spontaneously occurring according to some game systems, explicitly provoked by plot progression, and a few other avenues. If these came early in the character experience post-CGen, would that suffice, or do people not want to pull the trigger on a character without some of this direction? I think this may be a super important question to get to the bottom of this.
- PC Authored Memories: Could simply let people write up their own memories, with some assiduous guidelines to follow and an approval process. I like this option least but I understand that some people may simply not be interested in a character that they didn’t author themselves.
- Memory Roster: A menu of wanted memories that we’re looking to have in the game to round out the culture, for plot purposes, or otherwise. This is something I could see being a post-launch, down the road option, but my gut says not likely at launch.
Specifically, the aspects of Identity that I want to avoid characters having from the jump are those that would determine or legitimize some role in the game that a character might fill. For example I don’t want anyone with a clear past of being an Engineer, and so they “should get to work in Engineering” or whatever. Nor do I want clear ideological predispositions that might pre-empt the post-CGen experiences that would inform what relationships, alliances, or allegiances a character makes. I want all of that to come from live play.
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RE: Liberty
I definitely think the idea has some legs. I will however need to workshop it much more before it’s remotely ready as a design, given the plethora of sharp edges implied by the theme. I’m not sure which themes of oppression I’d want to include, which do I think could be or are safe for being responsibly portrayed. I have tough feelings about this as on one hand it seems dangerous to open up themes like the subjugation of indigenous peoples or slavery, and on the other, it is also frustrating to leave those stories in silence.
