Monday, January 7, 2019

These ideas suck

I'm depressed.

It's hard to say that, even after what has happened.

Two times I was hospitalized because I took too many pills. There wasn't a reason. Not a good one. The first time I was staring down the barrell of this college I hated, wracked with social anxiety, eating myself into oblivion. I gained 50 pounds in 18 weeks.

I was a fucking wreck.

The second time was last year. I was getting on this strong medicine for some medical issue and the doctor asked, "do you have serious dealings with depression?"

That's a weird question to ask. So I said no. I think it would have made sense to say, "one of the side effects of this pill is suicidal thoughts". But no. And I was dumb. I am dumb.

I'm saying all of this because it can be hard to know when something is disposable or not, when it comes to my own ideas/art. I feel in a slump right now and I canned three of my own projects.

Shark Island
Buckner's Place
Buckner's Dream

I'm going to tell you about them and see what I want to keep from each, if anything.

Shark Island


Kirska, the giant, fled from the world and made this place. She had a piece of Atom and locked it away, chaining herself to the door so it could never escape. Her brother (Gone) was beheaded and has been slowly dying for several thousand years. She keeps the head on the island but can never go see it, because of the door.

Gone's brain bleeds mermaids (half woman, half shark). (this is something I didn't know until now) And they spill out of the wound on his scalp and into the Sea around the island. When other people come, these mermaids turn into sharks and hunt them. It's said that each person on the island has a shark...and if you kill it, you will find something you've lost inside of its gut.

So the idea is that you ONLY come here if you have lost something and need to get it back.

Let's see if there's still something here--


  • Kirska's Sharks - "He has his sharks. Kirska has us."
  • There are these barbarians that give the players a map and tell them each challenge so the players know what they're getting into. They must complete 3 to get Kirska's Boon. 
  • There's a skull that you can draw on, and it will answer your drawing with another. So pictionary, kinda. 
  • There's a rock that you must write your name on. You then experience the deaths of all of your ancestors. Roll a dice to see if you get past this vision. If you fail you gain a gnarled scar. Either way, it's up to the player to describe what they see. They then get tattooed by Kirska's Sharks.


  • There's a rock with 3 colored mushrooms on it. Past, present, future. Each one has a roll table. So a skill check leads you to having to do another thing and gaining a possible benefit. Example:

BLUE - FUTURE
You are brought face to face with the future version of you, from an indeterminate number of years ahead. Roll a flat d20 and consult the chart.
1-8 - You see your corpse in a shallow grave, in flood plain. The water is coming. You can say one thing before it collapses on you. Awaken coughing up water and soaked. 
9-10 - It’s your funeral. There’s some people there. The other party members. You can ask one of them a single question. The coffin is a closed casket. 
11-13 - You’re on your dying breath. You can ask yourself one question, but they can only answer in three written words. 
14-16 - You’re so close to your goal. There’s some hope in your eyes. You can ask yourself 1 question.
17-19 - You’ve been able to retire but are poor and live in squalor. You can ask yourself 2 questions.
20 - You’ve fulfilled your goal and can ask yourself 3 questions.


  • Then Atom's Eye is a beholder. If you defeat it you get to put his eye in your socket. 


AFTER ALL OF THAT - I like the story of the giants, but everything else is kinda useless. The pictionary skull would be fun.

BUCKNER'S PLACE & BUCKNER'S DREAM

So the idea for these places is that one is the multi-dimensional house of a giant and the other is the everlasting dream of that giant within the house.


  • I was inspired by Howl's Moving Castle for Buckner's Place, but it's nowhere near as interesting as that. You can hang paintings on the walls and go into them, and these paintings would be unlocked after meeting requirements (Super Mario 64). 
  • There's a bedroom with a bed for each person who has ever been in Buckner's Place. It says MIA, KIA, or LIVING over each one. There are 6 people missing when you enter and they would be sprinkled throughout the paintings.
  • There's an infirmary where injured people would show up occassionaly to give plot hooks. 
  • A garden locked by a petrified statue (DS2), a library to let people research, a tower with a dragon guarding it, a dark room for artists, and the Soul Shaper. Basically it brings you back to life. Each time you come back you roll on this table, and the counter clicks up by 1. When the counter reaches certain numbers, it triggers certain events. When it reaches 10, someone comes to take one of you away permanently and add another KIA to the bedroom. 
  • I don't even like all of the entries on the resurrection table. 
  • I don't like any of it. The idea of a hubworld is really cool and interesting to me. But this is not it. It's scrapped. Forever.


BUCKNER'S DREAM

I don't like any of it.

Except Trauma--

An elongated, monster mask with twisting antelope horns. If you put it on, you take on a beast form.

Beast Form

  • You can only take damage from attacks that are suitably large: powerful spells, explosives, large groups of attackers
  • Your attacks are suitably large: can damage structures with ease, roll d20’s for damage against individual targets
  • You have 6 arms for grabbing and climbing and crushing. 
  • After 10 minutes, or when you run out of health, you revert back to your normal form and you gain a Trauma. A Trauma is personal to you, or what you’ve done in your beast form. Erase one of your personality traits and replace it with a Trauma.
  • When you have 3 Trauma, you become a beast for good.


Everything else can go.

Okay, so, looking at it now, I feel good that I scrapped these ideas. They aren't going to help me. They're all just other people's ideas.


2 comments:

  1. I liked blue future. Not sure how I'd use it.

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    Replies
    1. I used it in the session before last and the player was able to ask future-them the three questions.

      It was fun to answer the questions and use them as foreshadowing but also as a way to deliver rumors. If a player wants something, you can lay out some cool ways in which they could possibly accomplish those things.

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