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Diary Entry Three: Lots being juggled...

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John @ ICE:
Well, I’m frustrated.  I have made excellent progress on my setting, but have also been working on the campaign and continue to get bogged down with “RL” – “real life”.  That not only includes the day job, but the far more increased demands of ICE as we continue to make our push for the continued steady state of new product releases and slow creep in development of increased services. Grrrrr… 

I told my kids we would be “playing by the summer” and here it is nearly October and I can see I have a month or two to go…  Thing is, they don’t know what they are missing, so they don’t seem too perturbed.  I am, because I do!

Now I know a lot of people will be like, “Ahhh...just play!  Put a few plot thoughts down on paper, give them some basic character sheets (or none at all) and role play – chucking around some dice!”  That’s very good advice…but not for me.  I’m one of those people that needs to have a lot of background material in place before I really feel like I am ready.  I demand the suspension of disbelief and need to make sure all my plot threads, setting structure, etc. all hangs together seamlessly, and that means a lot of upfront work.  I forgot how long it takes.

Actually, lots of things are going on at the same time, so it’s not like we are making progress.  Thom and I have had several rounds of back and forth on what is now a fairly detailed outline of a very “light” system mostly derived from HARP, but with a few bells and whistles and geared towards the setting. Most of our input at ICE has been with HARP products, so we feel this is the best place to start, but we have familiarity with a wide base of RPGs and can draw upon strong aspects in other game systems to challenge current ICE game structures for state of the art mechanics. At the same time, I’m progressing on the first adventure module, sketching and outlining it, while now powering through the setting.

So, on to the setting. I talked previously about big picture stuff and some goals about what I wanted myself and the kids to get out of the experience.  There was also a lot of good advice and follow up on that.  But now I will get more specific – I thought a “real world” setting was the best place to start.  Despite the fact that they have read a number of fantasy books, Potter dominates the genre today of books aimed at young adults, and that mostly means the hero starts out in the real world not knowing he is something special…and then is introduced to a very special world/setting shortly thereafter.  I think writers are doing this as it provides a more tangible link with our hectic, gadget filled modern day and pulls the reader into this other world as kids can more easily identify with Harry Potter than say…a hobbit. Well, I think that sucks a bit, but I can’t fault it as an introductory device!

I mulled over modern age? The 50’s?  Victorian (where there would already be lots of good material to use from game systems)?  1700s?  Middle ages or even pre that?  I was really thinking the Victorian, but then I thought I would have to deal with guns (and modern world with gadgets and computers) and deal with a whole host of game rules and setting rules to make it work.  I just couldn’t get it to work in my mind.  But mostly, I felt it was a cop-out.  I think you all have helped with that.  I don’t need to baby them into it – I need to take a leap of faith that they can take a leap of faith and creativity.   After much thought, I have decided to go with a pre-Norman Britain.  I chose this due to the lack of technology not yet introduced and the very detailed courtly rules and all the other BS I would need to deal with in the high Middle Ages. But also how man had become so much more numerous and dominant over the world and its terrain, even how much more interconnected the world was becoming.  In the Dark Ages, Africa was little more than a fairy tale.  Europe and the Holy Roman Emperor were truly faraway places that had no political impact on England and meant nothing at all to the common man.  They were truly “unknown”.  There were few towns.  It was dangerous to travel between them and there were no policemen to keep you safe – there were few roads and they could hardly even be called roads.  To be a strong king, one had to generally be a great warrior (certainly always true of lesser nobles and knights). At the time, there are many kingdoms and princedoms, with all sorts of tribes battling for control of land. 

And people REALLY believed in magic, in monsters and faeries.  And that was a key link.  I knew I wanted to grab all those Celtic myths and bring the faeries strongly into play.  There is a treasure trove of beings and monsters, and massive plot opportunities with the Seelie and Unseelie Court.  Also this world provides an opportunity in both the faerie world and the real world to have “relationships” and “climb in station”. Best of all, there are a lot of materials at hand and yet the 900s are so far away from modern times, there is so much to learn that I think it will not cease to amaze and surprise.

Now, while I have focused on the mid 900s, I have been liberal in my use of persons and events from late 800s to late 900s – lots of interesting characters to draw from. I’m not going to make it perfectly historically accurate with regards to people, time and locations.  But I do want to be pretty accurate with regards to how life was lived in those days.  And it can’t be perfectly accurate, because, well it’s a game!  There will be priests and druids with powers, faeries with powers, magic and sorcery, etc. - So that all has to be woven into the tapestry of history.

jdale:

--- Quote ---and continue to get bogged down with “RL” – “real life”.
--- End quote ---

When you find a solution to this problem, let us know!

egdcltd:
Remember that pre-Norman Britain (5th century onwards) had two or three sets of myths - the Celtic, largely in Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man and Scotland (Scotland probably had Pictish too), Germanic myths in most of England from the Angles and Saxons and then Norse (some Germanic overlap) later on, certainly by the 900s.

VladD:
You say that Europe was far off from their minds, but wasn't this period where the Normans were constantly invading (pretty much Europe banging on the door) right after Alfred the Great had tried to defend England from being overtaken by the Normans and then later on Edmund the Magnificent, who slowly lost what his grand father had preserved, losing it to violent viking dynasties trying to set up in England.

markc:
  For modern era games make firearms simply illegal and not available to any PC or NPC. You can use them in the background for events and such but not for player interaction.
  Also remember the looking glass/wardrobe/ hole that can lead to other worlds or times in which things can be the same but just slightly different. So you can have tec but no guns, etc.


 Sounds very interesting and I hope it goes well.
MDC

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