Partition City Work and Miscellaneous Thoughts (Patreon)

I just wrote my first Wayfinder game in who-knows-how-long. Well, really I re-wrote it, as I first ran it in 2014, and am finally revisiting it for some future project. The game is called Partition City, and is about a city that during the day is a solarpunk utopia, and at night becomes a surreal cyberpunk dreamscape. It's all my favorite parts of cyberpunk - the neon, the violence, the sketchiness - without the boring noir nonsense and brooded white cisness that permeates the genre. The game was historically important for me in exploring my transness, as the way the dreamers wear masks reflect my own desire to enter into a new dreamworld, where I can experiment and be anyone. 

Some of my favorite game mechanics I've ever developed come from that game. Character sheets are all based around rumors - you have 3 to 5 rumors that tell you what random other people have said about you, and you use that to build who you are and inform you. Rumors might be telling the truth, or be complete nonsense. Rumors also exist physically in game, and it's possible to have that information acquired and used against you. 

“Lady Cassiopeia is a dangerous master. She will smile and compliment you and stroke your hair and hold your hand and ask you how you’ve been, and for a moment you might even believe she cares about you. Then you slip up, and that’s all it takes is one mistake, and she flies into hysterics. I forgot to call her “my lady” once, and she poured tea on my face. I still have the scars. She doesn’t care if you’re competent or not, all she care about is that you kiss her ass.”

--- Overheard inside the Heavenly Waters REM club

Lady Cassiopeia, the head of the Venatici Prefecture, has one of my favorite game mechanics. If she wants you to do something, all she has to say is "Your Lady Says..." and you'll do it for her. If someone gets in your way, all you in turn have to say is "Our Lady Says..." and they will help you in that. It's a memetic hypnosis spell. Other cool spells include "A little birdie told me..." which instructs you to pass on a rumor to anyone you talk to, and "The Final Gun" (which has been changed to The Dragon's Eye, due to worries around guns at the site we're using for the game), which will kill anyone who's name you speak, regardless of where they are. The game deals heavily in news spreading and information getting passed along, and the ways that can get mangled and complex. 

Solomon Updates

One of the reasons I've been so busy is that The Last Days of Solomon are in full swing. We're going through all sorts of crazy nonsense, as alliances are forged and then broken, and new factions emerge. The game is zooming in on the halfway mark, and already things are going up in flames (although the queen is still alive). One of my favorite developments is that one of the players has stumbled upon the realm of the Deep Dwellers, which are all sorts of strange creatures that hide from the sun, with unique and unexpected mechanics. It's an exciting system, and I'm already developing some new tools with Abe for future iterations. It's a long way to go from the Kickstarter, but hopefully within a year or so we can release it as a beautiful butterfly upon the world.