Into The Oort: Start

Some time ago I was convinced that I wanted to run a game called Dogs In The Oort Cloud. I had this idea that there was something attractive about religious peacekeepers in a far future solar system, on the edge of interstellar space, going from asteroid to asteroid, helping to solve problems and mete out justice.

(There's a whole other post that I want to write some day soon about why DitV is such an attractive proposition for me, that for the faults I find in the game's mechanics I actually found it to be one of the best campaigns that I've had the pleasure of being able to run. But another day!)

Time and life intervened. Apart from one shots I've not run a game for ages, but I keep reading, keep noodling ideas, keep on talking nonsense with David over on A Gaming Podcast About Nothing. And then towards the end of last year Paolo Greco posts a link to a new thing he is publishing by some guy called Chris. The price is right, so I buy the pdf. I flick through it for ten minutes and email Paolo asking if I can upgrade to get the print version.

Into The Odd is fantastic for many reasons: the setting is imaginative and heavily themed (implicitly), but not described through page after page of flavour text. Everything about the setting you get from the various tables. Chargen can be done in a minute, and the mechanics for various resolutions are easy for beginners and familiar for more experienced hands. It's a game that anyone could be a party of playing.

And precisely because the game is so clear, so simple in mechanics, it popped into my head that it could be perfect for combining with my idea of the Oort Cloud as a setting. Gone are the religious peacekeepers (for now, although they're in the background as one possible group in the Oort Cloud) and hello to adventurers and explorers, traders and tyrants, anyone and everyone existing thousands of years from now at the edge of everything.

This has been my creative playground for the last few months; tables and setting things are coming together, and I took a step to start sharing some work-in-progress tables for various elements. I'm a big believer in tables as a useful aid or prompt for setting generation (inspiration providers), so while some of them have been difficult to put together so far, they've always been there for a clear reason for having them.

This is the first in a series of who-knows how many posts. It's a long time since I've posted on this blog (although until fairly recently I was doing a good job of maintaining a work blog) and I hope to update a few times per week as I talk about where Into The Oort is going - ultimately, I'm aiming at publishing it - but that's a little way off yet.

Thankfully not 50,000 astronomical units though.

PRISM/AGENT

PRISM/AGENT is a hack of GHOST/ECHO that I am working on which is inspired by Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. It has been rolling around in my head for a while now to create something "complete" - something that is done and I can play it and move on. Not just to have ideas in my brain all the time with no escape. I think PRISM/AGENT (which is a name-in-progress) is the first way to defuse that creative bomb which, if it explodes, will make me bitter and annoyed and sulky.

I love GHOST/ECHO. I think I've said that before on here. It's just beautiful. Two pages, some inspirations, some simple mechanics that create rich stories. PRISM/AGENT is an ugly little runt, built out of the best bits of other things, but hopefully it will be playable. I see it one way in my head, and others might play it totally differently.

Core ideas are that PCs are agents with colour codenames, as the Captains in Spectrum are; agents have been freed/released/rescued from aliens/others, but as a result have gained Influences (equivalent to Channeling the Ghost Field move in G/E). These Influences are based on the powers that the Mysterons show in Captain Scarlet, but that's it: the agents can use these powers, but if they lose control of them something bad happens. Basic moves are similar/identical to G/E, which of course are based in part on moves in Apocalypse World I think. The Listening For Echoes move is translated to trying to uncover the intention of the Others (Obscurons?) - and if you fail at that then something bad happens (the Others become aware of you, or you face some kind of mental assault).

But here's what occurs and which I am excited about: PRISM/AGENT has the possibility to be really neat in that you can take the basic premise and transplant it to so many different locations and time periods. A retro-future like Captain Scarlet? Check. A 1920s gangster backdrop with Others/Invaders? Check. Straight pulp heroes? Check. This was something that GHOST/ECHO did beautifully - you don't need lots of stuff in order to play it, and to play it in so many different ways.

Anyways! PRISM/AGENT - or something similarly (or not) named. Coming soon. Playtesting over G+ maybe by the end of April, or in person in Liverpool (Liverpool Game Nerds Assemble!). Comments and questions very welcome!