About two years ago I wrote the article Creating Cultures Collectively, about having the players come up with fictional facts for the part of the setting their character is from. A player who’s into it can definitely create something that’ll have a big impact on the game. I don’t necessarily mean “describing lots of small details”; that helps with verisimilitude, but verisimilitude is only one possible aspect of a fictional creation. Another one, and that’s what we see Rotem has done here, is setting tone, establishing a theme, providing a background that guides a story down specific paths. In Maseia, social roles are structured very rigidily because Rotem knows this creates friction, which leads to drama, which is what she’s after.
The GM caught up on this – Rotem and Nadav probably also talked about this – which is why he builds up on this foundation and creates a prompt. Discovering that Muna is no longer a princess wasn’t a moment of loss for Rotem, it was a trigger, pulling at a story thread that’s going in a direction that Rotem is keen on exploring. Rotem is so happy pushing forward on this, she even voluntarily takes up ‘bad’ conditions, like becoming Shaken (not that it mattered at that moment, but still, it’s an indication of willingness), because she’s in for the ride, she wants ups and downs. So that’s where we’re going!
Free RPG Day
This weekend was Free RPG Day, and we should remind you that Crystal Heart is still available for basically free, but it won’t stay this way forever (we’re gonna change it back to $20 some day soon), so better jump on this if you’re interested. If you want to repay us, note that even $1 registers as a sale, which helps in our metrics on DriveThruRPG, and leaving a review is just as good! And this is true for all small publishers, so we encourage you to pay at least $1 for every PWYW game, and always leave a review if you can.
