Turning Leaves campaign

Okay, I think I want to update Tuesday and Thursday with a solo rpg post on Tuesday and a wargame post on Thursday(although based on etymology, maybe Tuesday should be wargames day). I think that the idea sounds nice now but it might be a little too narrow-focus but that will be the loose skeleton for this blog. At the very least, I'm aiming for at least two updates a week.

That being said, I would like to show off what I've been working on in my spare time. However, there's not really much to show off. I'm starting up a game of Turning Leaves but I'm trying to keep it kind of generic so I can actually navigate this fantasy world. So far I have done most of the basic set-up steps. The game starts with you creating a basic map of a swath of land on the coast of an ocean. There's a big mountain and a huge forest as well as a river running through it. There are three "points of interest" initially, too. You move through seasons and years until you decide you're done playing. I found this game around the time I started watching Game of Thrones and I think the two really match up. As you play through the game, characters age, gain and lose things that they love or seek to protect and new characters and places show up, too. Initially, the year is 90 something because 90 years ago, something happened. All of these pieces are put together by you, the player, in what is basically a Lego set for writers.

Here's what I've got:

The map is formed and I will post a picture eventually.

For the cultures-

Hearts(the loosely spread group) Castots. A seafaring group(since most of their territory ended up in the watery part of the world). I'm also adding racial features of the culture but I tried to be a little bit unique here. The Castots have greenish skin but sometimes they have mutant children with gills and/or webbed hands and feet that they consider "blessed". That's as far as they are fleshed out but there's lots of room to expand and the game kind of encourages starting with a rough skeleton of what's going on and moving forward.

Diamonds(The culture that predates everyone else) Donisi. I went in a weird direction with this. The Donisi are an incredibly old race that appear as beautiful creatures to whoever view them. In essence, earthbound angels. So, to avoid causing riots, Donisi travel as covered up as possible, especially their faces. However, they are a proud bunch and their masks are usually garish and strange. I guess it's weird for a group to wear masks so that their beautiful faces don't freak people out and then make the masks really attract attention. I'm thinking they will be a caste system and the higher up the member is, the more outlandish and colorful their mask will be.

Clubs(the culture that has come a long way or individuals have come for their own reasons) The Displaced. This culture also led me to what happened 90 years ago. The displaced are people that traveled through strange portals that started appearing 90 years ago so we are in 90 AP(after portals? Might change that). Anyway, the displaced are actually a broad term for the portal people. Besides the people, I thought portals would also occasionally bring treasure and strange creatures, too. This idea gives me carte blanche to do what I want as far as what I want to show up. Initially, the portals were going to be time travelers but then I thought alternate realities would be better. I think I might need to define this a bit more because right now, it's so open-ended that it feels a little bit like cheating.

Spades(The regimented culture with large civic centers that holds the larger part of the territory) Trius. The names a little generic but they are basically people who hold three in mystic reverence as a representative of mind, body and soul and are led by a triumvirate that represent each of those aspects to the fullest. So the body leader is a big, burly fighter guy, the mind guy is a brilliant wizardy type and the soul guy is a mystical serene monk. They feel like a samurai-type of culture but I was actually thinking of medieval knights. In my notebook, they have the least lines to describe their culture but I feel like they are the most fully-formed in my mind.

That's the basic skeleton and next comes character creation, which is done by drawing cards and seeing what I end up with. I think this next step will give me a better idea of who the Displaced are as well as putting a little more meat on the bones of the other cultures. I meant to just use generic "dwarves, elves, half-orcs and humans" but this game really engenders the creative streak in a role player and encourages world-building.

I am definitely sticking with this but...I did just get a hold of the playtest documents for Owl Hoot Trail and I've got the Mythic GM emulator so I might have some solo rpg stuff going on with that, too. I want to find a group nearby or find something to recruit people with but I am just really bad with people in general and most people have weird schedules anyway so it's hard to get more than one or two people to commit. I guess we'll see what happens but I think one of my goals of this year is probably going to be to find a few people and establish a gaming group...easier said than done, though. Ah, well.

Happy gaming til next time.