Thursday, February 4

"Lone Ranger"-gaming

Many comics and storys are about one main protagonist and a hostile world with enemies. Examples are Batman, the Phantom, Lone wolf and cub, Modesty Blaise, Flash Gordon and many more.

The common theme here is that the protagonist is alone. Sure, he has sometimes a sidekick (Robin, in the case of Batman, for instance), but there is a difference in power and importance. The sidekick is still the sidekick.

However, these stories don't work to well with roleplaying games, since those are (most of the time) group activities. While you of course could play a group of Batman-ish characters, that is a bit against the genre. One important aspect of the solo-hero is the focus on his persona. In a group-adventure this aspect tends to be downplayed.

So, inspired slightly by games like Annelise, Fate, Progenitor and similar, I want to set up the guidelines for a game, that may or may not be developed in the future.

  • The game is played by a group where ONE player plays the protagonist, the rest of the players takes different parts of the world/story/enemies
  • These roles shift every session, or at the most every 2-3 sessions
  • The game should be low prep. Much content should be built around the table
  • The first session should be the "origin"-session where the protagonist AND the major antagonist(s) are created.
I don't know if this is possible at all, but it's could be interesting at least from a theoretical point of view.

1 comment:

Ultramyth said...

An interesting concept. I'd like to see it further developed.