Games I'd Run part II

[jeregenest]

Back at the end of 2004 I said one of the games I’d play in was a game about the nature of storytelling:

In the Beginning there was the Word A story within a story within a story game, in the spirit of the Arabian Knights but set during a Mabinigion era (why, because I crave some Welsh craziness). The players are all scheming bard/druids working to change reality through their stories. Everyone would have a bard and then a character in each story and there would be mechanics to handle the webs between story-worlds.

I still would play in a game like this in a heartbeat, but I’ve also been thinking of the version of this I’d run.

Fin de siecle Paris, the players are artistes, philosophers, the literati in that climate of sophistication, escapism, extreme aestheticism, world-weariness, and fashionable despair. Play would be on two levels, the first would be the interaction of the players, the second the interaction of their art. This is me so I’d throw in proper elements of occult because I can’t help myself.

Game would be structured on 19th century French Grand Opera. At the start of play we’d lay out the entire structure of the game by giving the order of the Opera. Each session would be thematically linked to the opera.

• Giacomo Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil, 1831)


• Berlioz, Les Troyens (two parts)




• La Prise de Troie (The Capture of Troy)


• Les Troyens à Carthage (The Trojans at Carthage)




• Jacques Offenbach, Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld


• Giacomo Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil)


• Faust (1859) by Charles Gounod


• Georges Bizet, Carmen


• Giacomo Meyerbeer, L'Africaine (The African Woman)


• Berlioz, La damnation de Faust

Comments

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a Shadows-in-the-Fog/Age-of-Paranoia type game.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

?

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

You don't think? Do the art on the level of Mission Play, maybe?

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK. I can totally see that actually. I was thinking more literally, like "what does fin-de-siecle Parisian opera have to do with MI-6 and the NSA?"* (I'm amazed you didn't get that from my first eloquent comment.)




* Come to think of it though, maybe they ARE connected! (ominous music: Dum-dum-DUM....)

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

You have new icons. They are apparently organs.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

MAN TRUE

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I could totally run the Paris Opera/Espionage game. When you visiting?

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

Man, the original idea sounded like a lot of fun. This one sounds equally fascinating, but I suspect it would require a lot more off-screen research on the parts of the players? Or maybe that's just because I'm more persoanlly familiar with the welsh legends than french opera.

Either way - I really think they're solid ideas.

[foxtown.livejournal.com]

Neat idea. I like the creativity of it, but I am concerned with differing levels of player knowledge.

How accessible would this be for those that are not heavily read in these areas?