Friday 22 July 2016

Odd Oracles

I'm working on two issues of A Random Encounter at the moment, and turning some ideas over in my head. I was transcribing my interview with Patrick Stuart for Issue 4, and we talked a bit about blogging and why he started, and it got me thinking about when I started blogging about games. This blog started on 21st March 2012, but on the same day I posted something on a Tumblr that I used to use, about the very first game that I GMed: In A Wicked Age.

I like In A Wicked Age: the Oracles that produce the inspiration and elements work really well, they produce a rich fantasy world at the table with no prep, and I think that playing it a few times gets you in the flow with the dice mechanics. There's a bit of AP in the post, and I was playing with Patrick and David, so it was a good game. There were also a couple of musings about the Oracle idea itself:
[Patrick] mentioned that there were “Oracle hacks” of the game, and I can understand why this would be quite cool to do. Because the set-up is so fast, straightforward and fun, it’s quite a freeing game to play. ... In my head I’m already imagining urban fantasy possibilities, superhero settings and even - dare I say it - zombie game settings…


We hacked together an Oracle or two and played some Tales From Zero Point, which was an element of a bigger space setting that we created collaboratively. I loved that the Oracle could produce a great game with no preparation. We could turn up and really tune in to make a creative story; and at the same time, I still felt that it was a bit clunky with the mechanics, and as someone running the game I wanted something to help support making NPCs and places - even just little possible story threads for the players to explore (I'm not a railroad fan).

For a little while now I've been turning over mashing an Oracle-setting-generator-thing with the Into The Odd resolution mechanics: a strip-downed game that could get people up and running quickly with no prep. Draw some cards to get character and setting inspiration from an Oracle, and while PCs roll dice to flesh out their characters, the GM can roll some dice or draw cards to flesh out the setting in an organic way. I think it's possible to do this in a reasonably small game, that provides a lot of prompts and support for the GM and the players to come up with the backdrop for a great one-shot every time they play, or which could organically create a sandbox-y story - each session being either an "episode" or just the next steps.

And now that this idea is back in my head again... I guess I have one more thing to add to the to do list... :)

No comments:

Post a Comment