I’ve been a bit distracted from writing tasks lately. I bought into the second Kingdom Death: Monster Kickstarter and received my copy of the core game a while back. It’s really quite a fun game, and given how high-quality the miniatures are I kind of wanted to paint them up nicely after I assembled them. I was pretty happy with the results of my first couple, so then I decided I wanted to give them fancy bases, instead of just flat black ones.
My KD:M miniatures are still a work in progress, but by then I’d accumulated a fair few bits and pieces and I’d seen online that some people had crafted proper versions of the game terrain that gets set up on the board. I thought that looked really cool, and kind of really wanted to enhance my own game with some. There are even some really cool 3D printed pieces. So I started expanding a bit in preparation for that.
Of course, getting into the KD:M terrain meant that I saw a lot of other miniature terrain. I’m an avid tabletop gamer and I’ve always thought miniature terrain and stuff like dungeon tiles are really cool, but I’d been away from games that would use them for so long that I’ve always thought it was a waste of time for me to do anything with it.
However, I’ve recently also gotten back into Dungeons & Dragons, and am currently running a 5th Edition game that I’m really enjoying. I have some more game ideas I’d like to get into in the future, too, so I ended up spending way too much money on tools and bits and now I’m working on buy and crafting pieces of terrain for future D&Ding.
So, yeah. I’ve been busy, just not with the sort of thing I really should be busy with.
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ANYWAY!
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I’m pretty happy with how Blackened Hearts turned out, and given the surprising amount of success and feedback it’s gotten I’ve been thinking that I might want to follow it up with another LARP scenario. I’ve got a mess of notes now for potential scenarios I could write, but I’m not completely sure what I want to actually commit the time to working on just yet. While I have a bunch of different ideas, at the moment I think I’m narrowing in on two in particular:
Ghost Hunterz
A kitschy, low-budget cable TV show crew go on-location to a building where a series of horrific murders were committed years ago. The place is rumoured to be extremely haunted, so the crew, including a supposedly psychic medium, is hoping to communicate with the spirits and film some supernatural phenomena. After little success early on, once the clock strikes midnight the doors of the building lock and the world outside the windows is enveloped in darkness, trapping them inside. The producer assumes that their ‘psychic’ is running some smoke and mirrors deal, but is all for it if it gets them some good footage. Of course, the ghosts are all-too real… and one of them is a killer.
This one has what I think is a pretty interesting central mechanic/conceit—half of the cast are unable to interact with or perceive the other half directly (because they’re ghosts). Communication between the two distinct groups is done indirectly through the use of ghostly powers. The ghost characters can wander around, interact with each other, and eavesdrop on the living freely, while living characters strictly instructed to completely ignore the ghost players’ presence, unless ghostly powers are used. An Ouija board is the primary medium, but there is also interference with recording equipment, poltergeist activity, and even possession. I’m also considering a mechanic for the ghost killer to be able to start murdering the living people (and for them to subsequently become ghost characters) but I’m not quite sure how to pace it out yet.
Glory to the Crown
A bored, low-tier noble of a magical steampunk empire has come to a mining facility, along with representatives from the powerful Church and Academy, to tour it and make a decision on whether it will be shut down now that its richest veins have all been exhausted. The tour is interrupted when workers suddenly break into an ancient sealed chamber, filled with amazing discoveries. Dangerous readings cause the resident radiologist send the whole facility into a quarantine lockdown, trapping everyone inside until help arrives.
The central mechanic/conceit of this one is that there are a number of potentially very valuable, very important objects that have been discovered, but no one has complete direct access to study them until after the quarantine is lifted. Each object has a number of properties, and each property affects the value of the item differently. The idea is that the academy and church players will try to find out what information they can, and make deals with the noble to try to obtain what they think are the most valuable items, without over-committing their resources.
The facilities’ workers have a bit more access to the discoveries, but have their own motivations and desires and may try to strike deals of their own with the church/academy. There are also secondary major plots involving an undercover agent of the rebellion who can turn the whole thing on its head if they get enough other characters to support them, and the pending decision on whether or not the facility will be closed (threatening the workers’ livelihoods).
