Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thasmodious" data-source="post: 4883149" data-attributes="member: 63272">I agree with Mr. Wick in a lot of ways.  Any story can be boiled down to a core essence, even if what exactly that is is somewhat open to perception.For example, while I agree with Midget's post, I don't agree with his summary of LotR.  I think evil largely stands as a metaphor for any struggle of humanity (one example from the story is the encroachment of industrializiation) and is subject to perception.  To me, LotRs central theme is fellowship and the everyman.  That the smallest among us can have world-changing impact through the effort.  If I was designing a system around that, I would be reluctant to use a level based system, at least one where the power gulf between the low level characters and high characters was insurmountable (like D&D) and the little guy, the hobbit gardener, couldn't make much of an impact.  This got me thinking about what my upcoming game is about and I realized I hadn't really addressed this.  I've been working in the details, writing notes, scenes, bits of adventures, planning specifics, but I hadn't really thought about a core direction for the game.  The game is a space western set in Whedon's Verse and using Savage Worlds.  So what does it come down to, what's Firefly about, or the pulp space western genre in general?  In my view, freedom.  In the 25th century humanity is still struggling against its own nature to dominate and control (and the individual is losing and on the run).  In the galaxy far, far away it was the same struggle, freedom from the tyranny of not "evil" as a concept, but control.  Many of your pulp westerns (the spaghetti variety) were about the same thing, although Leone often explored the other perspective, that maybe freedom as a ruling principle was archaic and that the needs of the social order held over the self interest of the individual.  After all, it was man's ability to act cooperatively that led us out of the jungle and to building civilizations and advancing the human race as a whole.  Is the good guy the one who rebels against that and "does his own thing" or the one who fights to protect the ideals of civilization?So which side of the coin would I like to explore in my game?  Freedom as a moral principle against the control and order of the society at large?  Or defend peace and order against the outlaw actions of those who would disrupt society?  The first is always fun, but more standard, while the latter might have the benefit of being more interesting to explore...  As for as mechanical tools, I think Savage Worlds provides those handidly, in either direction, marking the individual heros and villains on either side of the coin as special, incorporating luck into the mechanics, etc.  Pulp mechanics have a good feel for this from either side.  "Freedom" would be represented by the ship, so could Order, when its an Alliance ship and its crew are a military/police unit, utilizing the symbol of freedom (the lone ship) to carry out their mission.  Hmm, now I need to think for awhile.</blockquote>

Verification