Do you want to play a game? Livejournal Based Contemporary Era De Profundis Game in the Making

BLOT: (14 Feb 2011 - 11:44:36 AM)

Do you want to play a game? Livejournal Based Contemporary Era De Profundis Game in the Making

I don't know if any of you have heard of De Profundis or not, but it's a different sort of Lovecraftian RPG. It provides tips and elements for an correspondence based game, or basically a game of journals and letters and such. It is diceless, collaborative, new-school, moody. To play the "full version", you actually write out hand-written letters and journal entries and share with other players (meaning if you have a half-dozen players in your troupe, they will get different elements of correspondence). Many people play the "new" version, which uses digital media. Some write out letters and then scan them into a file and email them. Others use email or Yahoo! Groups outright. Me? I'm going to get a campaign going and we're going to be using Livejournal.

Why Livejournal? Two reasons. First, it allows us to make private and friends-only entries and it allows us to have friends-lists that help to organize the game (to get into the full mood, might be best to have disparate journals and such across the Net, but I'm trying to be a little practical). Secondly, LJ is pretty good at allowing for both interacting (LJ-talk, LJ-mail, and comments) and for just reading or sitting back. So that comments aren't required

What about the campaign itself? I am going for less direct Lovecraftian (aka uncaring universe with aggressive, powerful elements) and more Laird Barron-esque (unraveling universe with quite inhuman elements). If you can get a copy of Occultation, read "The Broadsword" and "--30--". They are the spiritual heart of the campaign I am thinking about. I have bits of a campaign in mind, and will solidify those over the next two weeks. It will be set real time. If you make a post on June 5th, 2011 then the post occurs June 5th, 2011. The general gist of the campaign is that something is taking over our memories other mental icons (encounters we had, songs we love, photos we find on the net, memes we use, slogans) and are changing them and using them to edge into our reality.

Players are encouraged to create fairly rich backgrounds for their characters, to set the characters in a place and time (and it is perfectly fine if the place is where you, yourself live) and to post a mix of on-focus campaign posts ("Today, I was emailing my cousin, and I realized I couldn't remember her name. I mean, I know it is Sally...but for some reason the name 'Susan' wouldn't get out of my head. And 'Susan' that I keep picturing is weird, out of focus. A lot like my cousin but her face is longer, almost pulled tight, and her hair, the same color, feels brittle in my memory, like it was razor sharp...") and off-focus posts ("Today was pretty good, spent the day shopping..."). Essentially, seed the game world with characterization, things that others can play off of and repond to, or you can go back later and refer back to them.

There will be five or six key events that will be shared. I'll e-mail those around or somehow get them to you. These events will be extra-reality (news stories that did not really happen, basically). The rest of the game will be to take reality itself (actual news stories, actual blog posts, actual political drama, actual weather patterns, actual songs, actual photographs, etc) and to impart an increasingly dark, sinister element to it. In that light, this is not an easy campaign. When some actor dies, you might discuss a movie that he was in, or a movie that he wasn't in (that maybe never existed) and what it meant to your character. As the game world develops, add in more and more past info, using a mix of real world and made up elements. Think Creepypasta, stuff like Candle Cove, but using news stories as the base, not just children's TV. Hence why we are going to make our entries friends-only (well, not a requirement). Because when you start going on about how some hit country-western song is the reason that some shooting occurred, you probably don't want that to show up in a Google search, you know.

I will be the Gamemaster, though I plan on 90% or more being collaborative. It is not a game where things happen, generally speaking, but an attempt to get into a mood and a character's mindset and to see the real world through these eldritch-tinged glasses. As for "rules", they are not many, and roughly look like:

• The base for the game will be Livejournal. All posts made through the associated LJ account (including chats through LJ-talk and mail exchange through LJ-mail) will be considered in-character. All out of character contact should be handled through other means. Think of it as a group of people who find each other and bond over LJ but keep most everything else separate.
• You can use any photo, video, song, etc that you want to add into your character's game world. You are in fact encouraged to bring in media, newsclips, and link to blog posts.
• You should probably make your character's LJ default to friends-only or private, to save headaches. With this in mind, you'll need to follow the people playing the game (but can follow others if you wish) and have them follow you.
• When a main event is "released", it will be sent to you through out-of-character means. It is up to you what degree your character responds to them.
• Characters should respond, at least occasionally, to each other's entries, but it is not required.
• You can have a couple of back-up LJ accounts set up, if you want, to help increase the number of people "in troupe". This way there can be a couple of extra characters responding to stuff. These journals can even be active with additional posts, but the plan is to focus on a main character.

I think that's plenty for now. The campaign starts officially on March 4th or so (first Friday in March). Those who want to play can contact me and are encouraged to spend the next week or two dropping a few seed posts, getting a somewhat realistic profile set up, and so forth, so that when the campaign starts then we all have things to bounce off of.

So, anyone interested?

LABEL(s): RPG Campaigns, Lovecraftian RPG

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: February 2011