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First things first, let’s be clear: Ceiling Goblin Is Watching You Fellate Grandpa.

Okay, second things next: the two of us got together the other day to talk about what we wanted to accomplish with a Shadowstories RPG. It remained proof again that we share one brain, because after ten minutes of zig-zagging concepts, we immediately hunkered down and started nesting over a basket of delicious ideas, ideas that developed into a whole cool… y’know, thing.

Now, part of our goal here at The Storyverse is to be transparent. This is in many ways an experiment, and so it behooves us to throw some of our data up on the wall so you can see what’s happening behind the Space Vomit veneer and the thrown fists of idiots… er, heroes.

So, it seems high time to discuss our “findings” (it sounds so official when we call it that, like we’re doing real work!). Sure, we could keep this stuff close to the vest, clinging to our Precious with greasy gray hands, but that implies that the ideas that we’re rocking aren’t total shitcakes. Plus, part of the ethos of this site is clearly a “freemium” one. If this RPG ever takes off, you’ll have the means to play it without paying us a dime. But, we might publish it with some Added Value, and as a result maybe make a dime or three.

Anywho. We did a flowchart. Er, shit, excuse me, a mind map. Here, for your displeasure and confusion, is that very mind map, revealed in colorful, bubbleful glory.

Yeah. I know. You can’t read it without damaging your eyes. It looks like a bunch of ants have been captured in colorful bubbles. So, feel free to clicky-clicky here; that will, I think, give you a larger, more legible version.

We came to a handful of conclusions about the possibly-potentially-could-be-forthcoming Shadowstories game. These conclusions are, like everything else on this site, subject to the winds of change and our lunatic whims. Friday of next week may come and we’ll say, fuck this bear in the ear, we’re going to do a macrame project — a panorama of ultraviolence made in colorful yarn! Yessss.

Here, then, are our conclusions. At least, the ones we can remember. I know, we have the mind map to follow, but really, we have one brain, and it’s like a sieve. You’re lucky we’re wearing underwear.

…

Wait. Shit. I’m not wearing underwear. I’ll tend to that later. Onto the slapdash conclusions!

1. Failure Is Fucking Rad

It is. It is in any game by my standards, but in Shadowstories, it’s a must. Our idiots — er, heroes — are forever screwing up. Arguably, they screw up more than they succeed. The story grows out of their failures, not their successes, and so failure needs to be not only an important part of the game, but a holy-shit-fun part, to boot. Hence, we must reward failure. Moreso, we must encourage failure. A player chooses failure, that player is rewarded. A player chooses failure that is outside his hands — putting the ramifications of said failure into the hands of another player, for instance — then the reward is greater.

2. The Characters Are Already Level 20

The characters do not begin as scrubs and work their way up. The idiots — er, heroes — are already super-powerful. A Shadowstory kicks major ass. He can clean the clocks of a whole army of clockwork badgers (see, they’re clockwork, so they have clocks – give it a minute, you’ll get it; swill it around your mouth, get the taste of it) with naught but the flat of his forehead. Headbutts, ahoy. We can’t give the feeling of superpowered hijinks if the characters are weak-kneed ratcatchers. This means that, ultimately, success needs to be easy.

3. How Do You Skill Up A Superpowered Idiot?

Answer: you don’t. Skills are silly. Do I really want to give my Shadowstory hero a Cooking Skill? Do I give a rat’s right foot that she can pick locks, or read books really fast, or seduce a Nebula Pony? I want her to be able to accomplish all these things if it’s something that the player envisions. The more Skills a character possesses, the more specialization that occurs. That’s great for an espionage game, or a broadly-painted fantasy game, but this is Shadowstories. Gonna be a lot of kicking and shooting and axe-wielding. Piloting spaceships, riding horses, insulting foes, jumping from foolish heights — stuff like that. And they should be able to accomplish all of it. The only reason a Shadowstory shouldn’t be able to accomplish such a feat would be because the player doesn’t envision that as part of the character.

4. Story Is Everything, Dipshit

(Uh, we’re the collective “dipshit,” here, in case you think we’re talking to you. It’s the Internet, and people get so angry on the Internet. So angry.) I don’t mean that conclusion as a metaphor. I mean, the Storyverse is composed of stories. This universe that you and I live in is a cobbled together pastiche of molecules and quarks and string theory. The Storyverse is a mushy fruit-and-nut ball of  narrative threads. The Shadowstories themselves are… well, stories that are pulled from their respective tales and made to police the Storyverse. They are stories that interact with stories. Everything is stories! So, what does that mean?

It means that all our rules have to work in accordance with that precept.

Even the way that we tell our tales here at the Storyverse is very much a “pass around the speaking stick.” We take the tale to a critical narrative point and then pass the ball. The game has to work like that. The players are building a story together, with their characters as the focal point for that narrative energy.

5. Character Descriptors Are Cooler Than Skills

They are. Shut up. Your Mom! Your Mom’s Vagina! Wait. What were we talking about? Oh, right. What’s cooler, that a character has the Illegal Download Skill at 72%, or that your character has the trait, “Space Trucker.” Is it more fun to have “seven dots in Digital Underwater Photography,” or is it much more super-awesomer for that character to have the trait, “Bone-Cracking Fists?” I know, this is a false dichotomy, but don’t make me say “Your Mom’s Vagina” again. Ooh, too late! Bam! You just got schooled! Dang, son!

Uhh. Anyway. So, because these character descriptors can be so awesome, and are totally wide open, they then can be our means of conflict resolution. Yes, that becomes a “when I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” scenario, but that already exists in gaming. If my character has “Bone-Cracking Fists,” and he’s confronted with a belligerent bureaucratic secretary, I-as-player must ask, how can I use my bone-cracking fists to get through the door to see the Boss? Punch out the secretary? Pull some weird Fight Club shit and start pummeling my head like a pumpkin? Or do I reserve my fists for a better moment?

6. Success Is Fucking Rad

Wait, didn’t I say that failure was rad? Yes. And so is success. Random chance can eat a dick. If a player has a trait and wants to use it, it works. That’s it. It works. No, we don’t know how well this will play at the table, but this is a story. We want the story to progress, not be hampered by meaningless failure or incremental gradiated success. You say, “I use my bone-cracking fists to punch a hole in the ceiling, and I’m going to climb up through the ceiling to get to the Boss’ office, by passing the secretary.” Great. You do it. That has consequence, though, because that’s the point of stories — conflict born as consequence. On a mechanical level, you spend a trait, you don’t get it back immediately. A story becomes boring if a trait is overused, so it goes dark for a period of time (more on that later). Plus, even out of success, consequence occurs. You just punched a hole in the ceiling. Good job. Now the guards are coming. Now you’re lost in a maze of duct-work. Now you’re subject to attacks by the chittering Scum-Bots that patrol and clean the maze of duct-work. So on, and so forth.

7. We Really Like The Word “Chits”

We do. It sounds fun. “Chits.” It’s almost naughty, like I just said “shits” in an Antonio Banderas accent. Right now, we’re thinking, no dice. No playing cards. Again, random chance isn’t what we want. We want chits. You have chits, and you can use them to bid traits, or regain early a used trait, or extend the traits of a piece of equipment. Something like that. You take failure instead of success, you can gain a chit. You let someone else describe your failure, maybe you get two chits. I dunno. I really just like saying “chits.” Never underestimate the power of us amusing ourselves.

8. Characters Begin As Thinly Veiled Ideas In Our Half-Formed Idiot Brains

In Shadowstories, that’s how we’ve always done it. The narrative is very much a game to us. Introduce a character on a lark, a whimsy, and throw all caution to the wind. Worry about the details… y’know, later. Hence, the actual game should work like that, too. See, 3:16 does something really sweet: you build your character as the game goes on. (And it’s such a good game, you’re a fool to not buy it.) We take the idea of the “character prelude,” then, and build it into the game. You come to the table with an unformed character and a largely-empty sheet (hah, “sheet” kind of also sounds like “shit” in a European accent!). You have a concept, and not much else. “I’m a Lusty Bar Wench.” “I’m a Violent Fish Merchant who is also a Giant Fish.” “I’m Hansel, from that story with the stupid sister and the mean witch.” Whatever. Your first conflict arises — “You encounter a table of Space Blob Cowboys, and you accidentally spill your drink on them” — and how you respond determines your first character trait. You punch him. You shake your boobs (or your cock, let’s not be sexist!) at them. You talk your way out of it with a silver tongue. You insult them into submission. Whatever your choice is results in your first game trait. You have a finite number of these (five, or seven, or something — playtesting will yield this number), and you continue to build traits anytime you use a new way of solving a problem until you’re at your maximum. At which point, your character is roughly sketched, which is all you need. This ain’t Shakespeare, people.

9. Traits Are Just Words, And Words Tell Stories

Thematically, this works. If conflict resolution is born of me pitting traits against conflicts (and potentially other traits), then that’s telling a part of a story. And, assuming that a trait can be anything bound to my character, then my character becomes a primary actor, a vehicle for the story to be told. And, assuming that all things can have traits — a photon repeater, a space bike, a Space Blob  Cowboy (no, really, check the mind map — they are porn miners!) — then the entire game flow is derived from taking nouns and adjectives and smashing them together in a cosmic ejaculation of conflict and consequence! Or something! Yay! Traits make a push-and-pull. Traits can be removed as part of “damage.” Negative traits can work in opposition to positive ones. Temporary traits can replace permanent ones. Traits as nouns can be built onto with adjectives. Traits are tasty treats. Say that 750 times fast, suckers!

10. Death Is Only So Interesting

Yes, in theory, it’s a primary motivator in roleplaying games. I do not want my character to die, so I act accordingly. But, really, it’s not that interesting when the protagonist dies. It’s an overused conflict, this false suspense of one’s demise. What’s more interesting are the organic conflicts that grow out of stories — rejection by a loved one, a ticking clock, a betrayal by a buddy, being kidnapped by Space Blob Cowboys and forced to work your callused hands in their vicious Porn Mines. So, death needs to be a bit more abstract. Death comes when you’re out of traits and out of chits. And it doesn’t mean that you’re literally dead (though, it can). It means that you’re out of the story. You’ve been written out. It’s an impermanent state, provided you wish it so; you simply have to be written back in. Consequence occurs. You or another player have to tell the story of how you emerge from the quietus of your character’s narrative stagnation and take some manner of consequence (a reduced trait, a lowered maximum of chits for a time, something) to get back into the tale.

…

So, that’s that for now. We have more conclusions, but I’m already at “wall of text” levels of reading, and besides, some of our conclusions are things like, “Mmm, turkey-and-apple sandwich,” or “Beer good.” So, you probably don’t need to hear all that.

We’ll be back with more thoughts when the time is right. If you have thoughts on this stuff, as usual, we’re game to hear them.

Get it?

Game?

Game to hear them?

Because it’s a post about games?

…

Shut up. Your Mom’s Vagina!

*drops mic, walks off the stage*

It feels like within Shadowstories lies a very interesting game.

Wait, did you think I was going to talk about rotting meat? Pshh. That’s a discussion for another day, when we’ve alienated all our readers and all that’s left behind is an oozing carcass! (Actually, here I’m misusing the term. Poor “gamey.” It’s so often used to mean something that smells rotten or decayed, like spoiled meat, but really, it just means that it has the odor, or taste, of a wild game meat. The misuse of the word has ruined it.)

No, I mean, an actual game.

We have a universe here comprising a million narrative threads. The invisible galactic strings that hold the Storyverse together are, in Shadowstories, plot threads from limitless stories. These threads bind the whole thing together. And that means anything can happen. You can have a planet of Greek Gods go to war with a mining colony of goblins who unearth the fossils of Aesop’s Fables. You can have relationship dramas and office comedies unfold on a distant world where the inhabitants are not people, but cryptozoological critters. (The yeti stands at the burbling watercooler and whines about how his ex-girlfriend, the Loch Ness Monster, should really be called the Loch Ness Goatsucker! Laugh track! Applause! Forced hilarity ensues!) At the center of all this, you have the Shadowstories, which represent a handful of idiots nominated to rush blindly into danger and save the inhabitants of the Storyverse from… well, themselves, mostly.

See, that’s a game, right there.

The question then becomes one of design and direction.

Will it be a pen-and-paper RPG to start? Could be. It’s certainly our background, and this has a lot of space to grow in that environment. Setting-wise, it’s nigh-infinite. Not much you can’t do. Endless worlds. Limitless tales. You want a satyr character to go on an adventure with a kung-fu space miner and an ancient Sumerian goddess? Done and done!

Of course, even there, then what?

On the one hand, you could go rules-light, and pare it down to the bare bones so you don’t necessarily even need a single gamemaster. You could say, “Fuck dice,” and play this as some kind of awesome narrative collaboration, which is certainly in the spirit of the thing.

On the other hand, you could have a lot of fun with something a bit more crunchy, something that has traits both useful and funny, something with a robust creation system for new planets and encounters and how stories can interact with (or infect) the current tale at hand…

Of course, if you wanted to take it out of the RPG arena, you could do any number of things. A forum game of people collaborating on their own tale in the Storyverse? A crazy “experience design” game that’s immersive and weird and designed to hook new readers? A $10 million dollar MMORPG set in the Storyverse? (Oh, that reminds me: does anyone have ten million dollars they could lend us? And when I say “lend,” I actually mean, “give?” No? Anybody? What if I have a gun? Does that change the equation?)

So, let me put it out to you crazy readerheads.

Let’s say that, in the future, we do a game.

What would you want to see out of a game set in a narrative universe of endless story possibilities?