I receive, daily, hundreds of emails clamouring for more news about Behind Gently Smiling Jaws.*
The project has evolved. This is because I have come to a conclusion about imaginary worlds: you can make people care a great deal about what happens in an imaginary world (like Middle Earth), but you can't make people care a great deal about imaginary worlds within imaginary worlds (like, say, what happens in a series of fantasy novels written in-universe by Frodo Baggins). You might enjoy reading about them, but only in a slightly arch, academic kind of way. There is one too many levels of remove. What happens within the dream-world of a crocodile which itself inhabits an imaginary world has a similar kind of feeling to me. It is an intriguing concept but hard to get interested in as a place to run games.
The only solution is to imagine the pre- and post-apocalypse that occurs when what is inside the crocodile's head gets out into the real world.
This means a three-volume set:
- The pre-apocalypse. Beings from the crocodile's mind are manifesting themselves in the real world - or are they? The PCs belong to, or are introduced to, a hidden underworld of investigators, scholars, conspiracy theorists and paranomal enthusiasts trying to find out The Truth.
- The post-apocalypse. Flocks of billions of man-sized birds darkening the skies. Goetic demons stalking abandoned shopping malls. Armies of early hominids marching across the land in the furtherance of a holy crusade they are incapable of understanding. Ghosts of dinosaurs hunting in the ruins of deserted cities. Frog-men worshipping Chinese dragons in mountain temples. You get the drift.
- The new reality which is ushered in. The Naacals have brought the Unremembered City back into the physical realm, and have begun to use it to colonise the stars.
So, basically, something a bit like Call of Cthulhu, something a bit like Gamma World, and something a bit like Traveller, all in one slipcase.
*This sentence may not be entirely accurate.
Reve du Dragon, a french RPG where the fantasy world in which the action takes place is created & sustained by the dreams of dragons and where the ultimately dream-like nature of reality does intrude in PC lives, has been around for a long time & still has a loyal following. So I do think people can care for such worlds.
ReplyDeleteI certainly hope that even if you are moving away from the minds eye settingt hat you keep all of the desperate explorers who took residence in the crocs thought regions, the hubritic stories of all the adventurous ve'er-do-wells hanging about the misremembered dreams of the ancient croc was my favorite part of the setting (especially the guy in bird-people venice)
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, they're an integral part of the whole thing - don't worry about that.
DeleteOn the note of people clamouring for news, are there any updates to the Yoon-suin kickstarter? I have put off this comment for a while because I don't want to be a bother, but I am really love Yoon-Suin and really want more stuff for it. Along with that, again, I don't want to be a bother but is there any way I could get The Halls of the Shimmering Stars in the Deep Blue Firmament in a way that will support you?
ReplyDeleteNo updates as yet - they will be here when there are!
Delete'The Halls...' was promised to only be available to people who buy YS in print and PDF form. The offer is still available.
Wow. So the third book has the Naacals encountering aliens and the like?
ReplyDeletePossibly!
DeleteDid you not previously post that you were *specifically* trying to avoid comparisons to Lovecraft and Cthulhu with major elements of this setting? This is a disappointing new direction.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's only like Call of Cthulhu in the sense that it will be about people investigating the supernatural. There are no Lovecraftian elements other than that. If you don't like that comparison, think of it as being a bit like Unknown Armies or whatever.
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