A world where you can evolve
I’ve released two games this year, the longest one only about 20 pages. I had to design them in time to print for a convention. The Festival of the Hidden Moon was already finished, but I hadn’t had the impetus to send it out into the world. It was finished for almost a year before anyone would see it. This City Must Burn was an idea I had brewing for about six months or so, and was something big and grand that become something tight and intimate with the pressure of a deadline. Which was good! Otherwise I would have taken forever to finish it, and in waiting I would have lost the moment.
But both games left me wanting something bigger; the first was a one-shot, and the second a kind of “mini-campaign” of 2-5 sessions. When I look at my own time playing games, so much of it goes towards campaigns that last a year or more. I’m trying to pull back from these investments, but there’s something so enjoyable about sticking with a character that long, and certainly there’s a measureable market for the genre.
So I’ve been considering what my “long-form play” game would be. If I made a game that encouraged campaigns and characters that unlock more abilities and “level up” as you play, how would it be different?
These are the ideas that started The Things We Become.
Playing to change and grow
I think, personally, a big draw of campaign-play is the characters you grow close to. But I often see a wasted opportunity: the characters become stronger, gaining new abilities and talents, but are rarely made to go through lasting, tangible changes.
The Things We Become is about adventurers who explore a wild and dangerous land, encountering strange beasts, spirits, and environments. In turn, the things they find change them as they slowly become something unrecognizable. I have long been focused on mechanics that change your character’s personality and beliefs as you play, and I found the idea of mirroring that with a changing physiology compelling. It’s hardly original, but it’s something new for me.
Some inspirations:
Princess Mononoke, the story of a man forever changed by his encounters with the gods, and the struggle for humanity to live in peace with nature.
The solarpunk genre, and its hope for a livable apocalypse.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and the enjoyment that comes from job trees and discovering dozens of strange new roles and abilities.
Dream Askew, and the feeling of being an outsider.
In a nutshell, The Things We Become is a GM-less game of mystery and exploration with tons of expandable character options that will slowly transform your character, inside and out, over the course of the game. You’ll play the protectors of a small community in a distant future where nature has become strange and alien. You play to find out what you will become, and to find out where this new version of you belongs.
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A long-term GM-less campaign
One of the challenges of this project is that I’d like to create a system that supports longer campaigns and continuing play without relying on a game master or a pre-written adventure.
The rules will do their usual thing, adding risk to your actions and adventures and handing out consequences and dramatic twists. But the rules will also help you start and end a scene, flow from one moment to the next, and determine who decides what the twist is. They’ll help you chart a course and record the journey. They’ll help you find connections, tie things together, and introduce new themes and concepts.
Development is in the earliest, tenderest stages. I’m often a little hesitant to talk too much about a project during this phase, as many projects start out strong but fail to evolve into something, only to be reused later in another work. This might be one of those projects. But whatever happens, I’m sure these ideas will find there way into a release of some kind.
A hint at what’s to come
While nothing is final, I’ll show you one of the moves I’m working on at the moment as a little teaser that evokes the tension and vulnerability at the heart of the game’s most dramatic moments.
Let’s assume all typos are intentional.