Friday, January 23, 2015

Discussion: Pitch Your Dream Game

On Wednesday we talked about how to pitch your game. Today I want you to put it to practice and pitch your dream game in the comments. You don't have to follow the structure I gave on Wednesday, but do try to keep it concise. This is a pitch, not a sales brochure. You have one to three sentences max.

Some of mine:

  • A world very much like our own must adapt as super powers arrive on the scene. Are these new super powered people friend, foe, or something in between, and how will the world react to the amazing things they can do?
  • The PCs live in a remote village that has suffered for weeks from cattle raids by a neighboring community. When the PCs move to investigate and retalliate for these raids they find that they're not being attacked by human beings, and that there is a lot more at stake than a couple of cows.
  • Rokugan tears itself apart when the Emperor dies before expressing which of his identical twin sons will succeed him and rule the land. The PCs must take sides as both brothers gain forces and seek to take the throne their father clearly wished for them to have.
What is yours?


  1. You and a few others wake up on the shore of a place you don't know, a landscape you don't know that fades into fog. In fact, you don't know yourself. Who were you, and who will you become as you experience and create your memories.

    A special forces team in a post modern setting, betrayed by their handlers and abandoned out country. You know the traitors at home, can you stop them? Do you care anymore?

    The world has gotten darker, you've seen it since you were born. You have skills that might make a difference, and you've chosen to act. Now see and resist what hides beyond the human realm, and what hides within humanity's darker places.

  2. The Old Ways: (For any given fantasy system.)
    In what at first appears to be the most generic 'points of light' fantasy setting imaginable, a typical band of adventurer's strikes pay dirt, a magical flying ship. Now every power in the world wants it and the truth behind their world and the gods that 'rule' it will come out. Or they will die ignorant.

    Why it's a dream to me: The big lie behind the 'normal' is something I want to get people excited to explore, to speculate about both in character and outside the game. I want my players to be asking me questions about the setting, then wondering if the answer their character knows is true, or just another layer of assumptions, distortions or outright lies. I want to end up with the players confronting NPC's with things like "Why is it the moon goddess, the death goddess and that 'dead' winter/storms goddess sound so similar?'

    Two Worlds: (For Scion)
    Take a modern world where the old gods struggle in the shadows, hidden from men. Now replace the moon with another earth, this one all to like generic fantasy and with it's own set of gods. Sixty years ago, that happened. Forty years ago, The Disaster ruined everything and the gods, all of them, have been silent ever since. But their children have to live on these two ruined worlds.

    Why it's a dream to me:
    There's a big plot lurking, but it never has to happen really. The day to day struggles of life in a ruined fantasy kingdom, on the remains of a modern world and the interactions between the two is the draw. As Scion's the players have the power to really shape things and look into what they're interested in. Maybe they want to see how the European Union is handling their fantastic immigration issues? Maybe they want to trade between worlds 'Rogue Trader' style? Perhaps they want to know what happened to the gods of both worlds? Or maybe they want to know what happened to the identical moon's of both planets. No matter where they're going, it's a nice setting to let them shape and reshape.