I’ve been amazingly prolific over the past few evenings with the project I hinted at in the post entitled “What’s All THIS, Then?” and I’ve been having a lot of fun doing it. What began as a vague idea of my own custom-optimized roleplaying setting of swashbuckling romance, intrigue, piracy, and tricorn-hatted adventure has blossomed into a full concept.
Below are a few basic things I want to share up-front. More details will probably come later on the new Website I’m building to house the project.
- I’m doing this for me – as my own creative outlet, because it is percolating inside me and won’t stop bugging me until I’ve made it manifest in some form outside of my mind.
- This is a worldbuilding project that I plan to use for roleplaying campaigns. But I HAVE NO INTENTION of publishing, marketing, promoting, or selling this as a product. I will make this thing, then I will hopefully play it with my friends, and if it is any good then I’ll toss it into the aether for other folks to play if so desired.
- I’m proceeding on the notion that the system I’ll use for this project will be FATE. I imagine I’ll grab appropriate FATE concepts from Diaspora, Dresden Files, Starblazers, SOTC, whatever works to support the kind of cinematic swashbuckling intrigue vibe I want for this. But at this point, I’m working on color, flavor, setting, etc. And since I’m not going to try to publish this thing or sell it to anybody, I don’t feel any need to worry about focused design. I’m making a game for me and my friends to have fun with.
- I’m sort of going old-school with this project relative to my own evolving notions of rpg-setting design. What I mean is, these days I’m much more likely to socket into collaborative setting creation. I tend to avoid the sort of designs that results in what Judd calls “museum games”. Nevertheless, here I am making up what will probably be a fairly detailed setting all by myself, my own way. I can’t help you reconcile why I’d be doing this at this point, but I am. I want to, so I am.
- Because I’m not planning to publish this or promote it, I’m not going to fill up this blog or any other forum with lots of info-dumping. I will use a Website to act as a journal/wiki/gallery, but I won’t be forcing any of it down anyone’s throats. Most of the things I write from here on out will be on the project site, not here on the Monkey.
- Because I’m not planning to publish this thing, I can unapologetically and openly admit that I’m stealing a lot of ideas and concepts from several of my favorite genre sources – most particularly I’ll be stealing from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards world – and also from Joe Abercrombie’s world, and from previous rpgs like 7th Sea.
- This will be a world that bears a fairly overt evocation of Venetian carnival masks, tricorns and rapiers, alchemy, traveling theatre troupes, piracy, and the number 7.
So there.
I now have a solid working-title: Tales of the Scarlet Masque. Below is an as-yet unfinished map. The islands and main locales are done – I just need to start naming things, but that will come after some research.
Enjoy. You can see a much bigger image if you click on this one:
Are you telling yourself that you won’t be publishing this in order to take pressure off? Being inspired by outside sources, making games that you and your friends would like…those are both fine for publishing. Sometimes I get this feeling that you have absorbed the indie RPG blog-o-sphere and have come away with a list of sins rather than a list of possiblities. It vexes me.
Fairly detailed settings are awesome, there’s nothing wrong with that. Museum games are more of a GM mode rather than a way a game is presented, though some settings have a museum vibe to ‘em for sure.
Thanks for encouraging me and keeping me honest, Judd. I think there’s some truth to your insight about me focusing on “don’t” when it comes to how I absorb indie design chatter. But mostly I think I just want to take pressure off, yeah. Because even though in my head I realize I’m really only putting the pressure on myself – it isn’t really coming from external sources – Still, doing this project this way makes me feel free and fun, while the head-trip I put myself through with VAM just feels like work mostly these days. That feeling is largely of my own making, I admit, but it is still there. I have shared way to much and harped too much and promised too much with VAM.
This Scarlet Masque thing is fun and exciting. If it stops being that way, I’ll stop working on it, and disappoint no one, ’cause there are no expectations.
Did I miss the link for the project site or did you not post it yet?
JJ
Nope, I haven’t posted it yet. It’s still in dev. I’ll make it public when it’s worth looking at.
Such a tease!
Can’t wait to see it.
JJ
I’m ready.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler´s last blog ..Travel Bloggers Exchange 2010 in NYC
I’m finishing up a 2nd edition of the map with locality names, and writing up an overview of the cosmological and cultural underpinnings – all of which depend a whole lot on the number 7. Once that’s done, I’ll post them and share the link.
Dude, you had me at “Venetian carnival masks”.
Ditto.
[...] one of the seven mask-deities I’m planning to create to go along with the world of The Scarlet Masque. In the setting, she is the maiden of inspiration, creativity, craft, and ingenuity. She is the the [...]