[Welknair Update/Game Idea] Fourth Land

[Welknair]

Welknair! Y U NO GIVE US MORE INFO?

That sounds fantastically interesting.

I really want more info, just to see if I can understand the game.

... I complain about a bad test, and people's response is to be intensely curious?


Now that I've calmed down a bit, I think I overreacted. I did a second test and things went a bit better. It's important to ease players into it instead of expecting to understand an entirely new universe immediately.


Well, I'll see what I can say without giving too much away or angering the gods of copyright (I wonder if I can just copyright the idea already so I can be more open? I need to work that stuff out).

I made an entirely new universe, if you hadn't already figured that bit out. What's a "Human"? What's a "Molecule"? Gravity? Sound? Life? Death? Time?

I made my own. I rewrote EVERYTHING. I have 12 elementary energy types that define the world, inspired a little by Exalted Elemental Essence - That's actually a good story, and one I can say to help you understand without telling exactly how my stuff works.

We were arguing about a character from Keychain of Creation (The Exalted version of OotS), an Abyssal girl by the name of Secret. Abyssals don't age physically. I argued that this made no sense, since they healed over time. Healing involves the replication of cells, shortening telomeres. It is this shortening of telomeres that causes aging. I was met by something along the lines of "What is a Cell?" I was baffled. The utter refutation of everything I knew about the world... They instead explained to me that everyone was made of a combination of Wood and Earth Essence, the first giving life and the second structure. You die when your Wood runs out. This was the basics of the Energy system for Fourthland. I number my twelve energies, 1st through 12th. Guess which one causes life? Fourth. Then I have ones that cause Gravity, Light, Heat, Movement, and so on.

Player Stats? Energy scores. This is the center of my game. It is alien and weird. Yet at the same time, to me at least, it is quite beautiful. To be able to build an entire universe from so few elements is amazing. It has a complex simplicity about it, and a simple complexity.

Another interesting thing about my game: "Progressive Start". You hand blank character sheets to players, and the game has started. Right then and there. The DM/GM/Muse describes the scene, and then Players get their first bit of Fourth (XP). They continue to as the game goes on, though the rate slows down. Later, they get most of it from overcoming challenges. The point though, is that you don't wait an hour and a half to make character sheets first. It's done through the gameplay.

Yet another: Combinatory Characters. I'm making a bunch of class-y things that I don't think I can talk too much about, but you get three of them. Any combination should be valid. In this way, I can create massive numbers of potential characters off of relatively few templates. And it's an exponential growth.


Does that do it for you? My copyright-friend says he'll help me through the process this coming weekend and I should be able to say a lot more.