EPTEarly Saturday morning, I was sitting in the ER waiting for a few hours. While nearly delusional from a lack of sleep, I stumbled upon a NYTimes article on AmberMUSH, a game that "honed the skill of writers." It's a neat article, check it out. (Also, kudos to the Times on their really great gaming coverage lately). The article reminded me of a hobby of mine in the late 90s when I was about 11: e-feds (fantasy wrestling), a roleplaying game that let a young me write and write with a specific goal in mind. The short of it: a player had a wrestler character they created from scratch. Each week, the player was assigned a match with another wrestler. The player would submit role-plays. The best role-player would win their match as colorfully shown by the e-fed writers every week. Over the course of years, with a ton of character development and history, it became a pretty immersive experience.
Sitting in the ER, I realized that the e-fed RPG format has a lot to offer. I haven't been interested in wrestling in a decade but the idea of a RPG driven by players' imagination and writing ability (rather than dice rolling and strict rules) was very attractive. Politics (broadly defined, the struggle for power) immediately came to mind as an interesting route to take. Over the past 48 hours, I've been thinking about the game's possibilities and researching similar games such as Slobbovia, e-feds and diplomacy. I've come up with a basic outline of the game. While I still have to decide on and write down a significant number of details, I think I've got enough to toss the idea out there and see what you guys think.
Truth to Power
Truth to Power (TTP) is a political RPG in which a character’s potential is limited only by the imagination of the player. You can mold the world to your will.
Inspired by role-playing games such as Diplomacy, Slobbovia and fantasy wrestling, TTP places the player in a world populated by Machiavellian monsters in which the stakes are nothing less than the future of the human race.
Instead of dice rolling, the game is driven chiefly by a player’s storytelling ability. A consistently good storyteller gains face, power and prestige. Characters are forged by imagination, whether they are blood-sucking politicians, schizophrenic preachers or sexually frustrated pirates. You create your character’s life, complete with a back story and forward-looking ambitions. You decide on your strengths and weaknesses. You take action and the world is shaped by your every move. Your character’s future depends on your ability to write a good creative story. TTP is about writing, reading and immersing yourself in a world where power is yours for the taking.
In TTP, a character is able to work his way from anonymous nobody to the highest peaks of power. From character creation on, the player’s fate lies squarely in his hands.
Every week, a new turn begins. For each turn, a character is given an agenda depending on his unique position in the world. The agenda will colorfully describe current events such as an upcoming election, the settlement of a new frontier, the breakout of war or the outbreak of disease.
The agenda informs the player’s position in the world but does not dictate it. Working from the agenda, a player submits role-plays (creative writing stories also called ‘press’) and, through them, chooses his character’s next steps in the world. A player may describe his character’s attempts to win popular support for the election with speeches and campaigning. Alternatively, a player can hire an assassin, bribe an official, plant a story in the media or do anything he can imagine. Anything goes. The better the writing and role-playing, the better chance a character has to succeed, to rise toward power (nearly) unimaginable.
I encourage you to read about the world, think of a character, write your heart out, recruit friends to support you and strive for power in the world of TTP. This entire universe depends on your imagination and drive. We’re waiting for you.
This is a sort of press release-style introduction I wrote just to lay things out in a relatively simple way.
I would take on the role of god, acting as referee and a guiding hand for the world. Your character's success in the world would be determined chiefly by quality of role-playing, your ability to produce at least one good story on a weekly basis. Although this is unavoidably subjective on a week to week basis, effort and talent will be rewarded in the long term.
As more and more 'press' is written, the world will become further fleshed out until it is as a rather detailed living thing. Press is not limited to writing - images, audio, video and whatever else you can imagine is valid.
As a side note, I know that one problem this style of game faces is that it becomes too detailed so as to intimidate new players. I will work to ensure that the world stays dynamic, that entry into the world is as easy as possible, that a player doesn't have to read a text book's worth of old role-playing before jumping in. A functional wiki will help this task immensely.
What made this style of game easy for e-feds is that wrestling has a simple format. Every week, a wrestler has a match. The ultimate goal is the world championship. A wrestling federation is a self-contained entity. Obviously, a entire world of politics will be a bit more daunting but hey, I'm not 11. I will use the agenda as previously stated to set the tone for the week and give players something like a match to prepare for. However, players here will have much more freedom in the way they deal with their agenda and are limited by their imagination and some fidelity to realism (probably no magic and dragons here, for now!). It's a modern world but beyond that, go wild. Economics, social issues, diplomacy, a violent volcanic eruption devastating a big city and destroying your theater district while your biggest supporters are gays and liberals ... go ahead, imagine anything.
Winning this style of game means different things to different people. While some players aim for supreme power (becoming ruler of the world, for instance), others seek to inject chaos (through crime, revolts, etc) while others simply want to write the best story they can. You can take any path you want and as long as the game is fun and entertaining for you, me and the players in general, it's all good. Plus this will make you a better writer (you've got to write a million words of bad prose before you write anything good!) so have at it.
As far as the actual world itself, I'm still working on it. The world I'm favoring right now is a blank slate, a continent or continents that have yet to be settled and would be by the first generation of players. The world will be illustrated as best I can or, if I can recruit some help, it'll be done by people with real talent for illustration. As the game develops, each country (or kingdom or town or whatever) would fill the map. Later generations of players would work within the political framework established by the first players.
OK. Obviously there's going to be more done for this to become an actual thing but this seems like a start, a decent sketch of the idea. What do you think?
PS if this sort of thing already exists, please direct me there so I can play!
