Tuesday, January 11, 2005

[RPG] Astral: stop me if I get 2 freaky

Had a burst of inspiration (or maybe Red Bull) to do some research for this ‘Astral’ RPG. The hook for this game is that you play someone who discovers they can travel outside of their body. Not sure what the Situation or Setting for this will be, but that’s what the research is for. And the big discovery so far: there are MANY books on this stuff in the library.

Fear (and the need to conquer it) seems to be the common denominator so far. So maybe I need to set up a set of characteristics, like Courage vs Common Sense, Body vs Soul, and Inner vs Outer (‘cos apparently another form of astral travel is either into the outer world or your own mind). Think I’d like to rip off Ralph Mazza’s Robots & Rapiers system for this game; it has a nice simplicity about it.

Anyway, these books are filled with great ideas: time distortion (viewing events before they happen), spirit armour, lower astral beings, getting lost, meeting other versions of yourself. It’s really rich territory for a game, methinks.

Oooh, and I think I want a failed roll to cause an effect like this. IOW, failure advances (or at least complicates) the game.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of RPG resources as well, though they tend to be in the context of existing games. The one that immediately springs to mind for me is "The Golden Dawn", a sourcebook for playing Call of Cthuhlu in the 1890s, focusing on Crowley and Co. I've got it, but like many of my roleplaying purchases, haven't managed to finish reading it - instead, it sits there, regarding me malevolently. :)

hix said...

Svend, if that be you then I'd like to have a browse through 'The Golden Dawn' sometime (maybe after I've finished with 'Continuum'). Cheers for the reference though.