labcats | 7 Travel Throughout the World

When I reviewed Amber, I said that if I had 4 players, I'd have each be the best at one of the four stats. Erick Wujcik read an early draft of the review, and he said that he liked this idea.

When I mentioned this to Stephen Tihor, he said that if he ran an Amber game, all of the PCs, however many there were, would be best at something. The original stats from the book were irrelevant. The players would decide what was important.

mnemex and I were talking about that tonight, and he said that he'd also want players deciding what they didn't want as stats. For example, he wouldn't want to allow "I'm the best fighter." It's boring. "I'm the fastest" or "I'm the strongest" would both be fine. Similarly, no "I'm the best at magic."

I remembered one of my professors talking about the Stith Thompson index of folktale motifs, and one in particular, called, if I recall correctly, "Seven Travel Throughout the World". Basically, the hero, presuming there is a single hero, has a number of companions, each of which is the best at something, and each of the things someone is the best at comes up in some important way in the tale. If something didn't come up, well, no one would be best at it. If someone's best at it, it has to be important to the story.

So, I've got a theoretical start of a game. It has a name: Seven Travel Throughout the World. It has one or two rules. All PCs are best at something. Whatever it is has to matter to the story being told, which means that the players decide what matters and what type of story they want. So far, so good. And, people should decide what they don't like. Cool.

Dunno if mnemex or I will ever get further than this. But, it's a pleasant start.

Back to Beatrice. Lots of material to write up for her, so it's a matter of getting it all down and then editing it. Then, to pry out of our co-gms either explicit permission to break the last links between the larp background and our world or explicit protests against the same. Breaking it still lets us use the accumulated stuff we've built up, but it doesn't bind us to the baggage that comes with some of the names. And, I'm perfectly willing to tell players up front, "Here's the clef to what we've done. We filed the serial numbers off so that you can't tell us this isn't how the real world works, but knowing what we filed off may give you a bit of a guideline for costuming, roleplaying, and so on."