Adapting Silver Lines to other game forms
Had the urge to experiment with other game forms recently. I didn't really want to get into a new game, as I decided to take the week off from writing as a break. But since my summer is ending and the new semester beginning, I felt driven to take advantage of the little remaining free time. So I messed around with a game I've already written, Silver Lines, a four-hour RPG I wrote for inwaterwrit's bachelorette party. Set in 1889 in the Hawking universe, it is a mystery story for five players done purely by roleplaying; there are no formal mechanics of any kind. I experimented with putting the story in different forms.
One of them is Twine, an online program for building text adventure games. I am slowly adapting the story to the text adventure form, with one central protagonist moving through the story by choosing from among options. I'm not very far along, but I'm learning the interface slowly. It's based in a programming language, of which I know nothing, but I'm using trial and error and googling the questions I have when I run into a problem. My one concern is that it'll probably turn out to be the sort of game where you just explore all the options exhaustively, when I'd prefer the player have to use some cleverness to figure things out. But the form may not support it. I'll have to investigate further to see if the capability exists to make it so you can't just redo any old choice you make to see what you gave up.
The second form is turning it into more of a traditional theater-style larp. The challenge there was the fact that it's designed for a small party of PCs who can travel to basically any location they deem necessary, like in a tabletop game. So I redesign the mod to translate that stuff to the larp form. It will entail the GM teams taking on a number of NPCs, and making what the players experience a combination of the GM-talks-you-through-it, like in a tabletop game, and some pre-designed representations (with props and the arrangement of the "set") for the players to physically examine and interaction with. The more thought I gave it, the more I thought it would be an interesting experiment in blending the tabletop and larp form. So I bid it for Intercon, and they're debating it now. I think some people are a little thrown by how that blending will work, but I am deliberately interested in it as a test of game design, and I really like some of my ideas for physicalizing specific events.
The one thing is while I know I can run it alone, it would be really nice to have another GM. They could help with the setting up and the transitions within the space, as well as taking on certain NPC roles. Anybody who's played before, it would be great to have another person's help, so let me know.
One of them is Twine, an online program for building text adventure games. I am slowly adapting the story to the text adventure form, with one central protagonist moving through the story by choosing from among options. I'm not very far along, but I'm learning the interface slowly. It's based in a programming language, of which I know nothing, but I'm using trial and error and googling the questions I have when I run into a problem. My one concern is that it'll probably turn out to be the sort of game where you just explore all the options exhaustively, when I'd prefer the player have to use some cleverness to figure things out. But the form may not support it. I'll have to investigate further to see if the capability exists to make it so you can't just redo any old choice you make to see what you gave up.
The second form is turning it into more of a traditional theater-style larp. The challenge there was the fact that it's designed for a small party of PCs who can travel to basically any location they deem necessary, like in a tabletop game. So I redesign the mod to translate that stuff to the larp form. It will entail the GM teams taking on a number of NPCs, and making what the players experience a combination of the GM-talks-you-through-it, like in a tabletop game, and some pre-designed representations (with props and the arrangement of the "set") for the players to physically examine and interaction with. The more thought I gave it, the more I thought it would be an interesting experiment in blending the tabletop and larp form. So I bid it for Intercon, and they're debating it now. I think some people are a little thrown by how that blending will work, but I am deliberately interested in it as a test of game design, and I really like some of my ideas for physicalizing specific events.
The one thing is while I know I can run it alone, it would be really nice to have another GM. They could help with the setting up and the transitions within the space, as well as taking on certain NPC roles. Anybody who's played before, it would be great to have another person's help, so let me know.