What’s the story here?Tonight, if all goes well, I’ll be putting up the rough draft of some rules I’ve put together for a little design exercise I’ve been working on. It’s tentatively called CLIO, after the muse of history, because that’s the focus of the exercise: to tell the history of an event through the medium of the game.
Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be as high-minded as that summary threatens to be. I’m really after three objectives with it.
1) Communal design. I don’t see this as “my” project, but rather an idea that hopefully several people will want to collaborate on. Everyone’s input is important, and there’s no necessity to stay true to any particular idea other than the core experience.
2) Simple participation. I want us to make a game that’s easy to play, and one of the elements of that play is active participation. What does that mean? It means that when you play, you have to do stuff like use the mechanics and make decisions.
3) Group narrative. All the players help to build the story of the game. I’m reminded of one of my old favorites, Atlas Games’ Once Upon a Time, in which the construction of the story was the object of the game. You’ll see tonight that CLIO has a similar premise, but with a system that’s a little more complex without being more restrictive.
So, with those ideas in mind, I’ll see you tonight!
I’m lookin’ forward to seeing your rough draft. :) From my experience with game design meetings at White Wolf, it seems like design was semi-communal there too, but the Internet provides a different sort of medium. One wherein you can think on things, research and present more refined ideas. Which has both positives and negatives.
[...] project. I had a start or two, none of which panned out — I wanted something to happen with CLIO, but it didn’t really pick up any steam — but as of last week, I really hit the motherlode. [...]