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quote:An old, staid, black-and white news broadcast. “The government has as of yet released no statement bar evacuation warnings on the enigmatic explosions that rippled across the Western coast, but—oh my God. Oh God. Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed an extraordinary and horrifying set of photographs that were allegedly taken six hours ago by an oceanologist off the capitol cape. You should be seeing them now—"  What is After Kaiju? After Kaiju is a rules-light cinematic storytelling game of massive monsters, political machinations, and the spiderweb of stories people tell about them as generations pass. Each story is built on reality, ideals, and the stories that came before, and each story reflects or changes the world and humanity according to its agenda. The game takes a broad, mostly bird’s-eye view as we collectively explore the world and play the public and institutions within it rather than acting as individual characters. It explores how the out-of-this-world disaster of a kaiju attack and the institutional responses have consequences far into the future, and how the history people write is both less and more than a perfectly dispassionate recounting of facts. How do you play it? After Kaiju is a turn-based game for 3-5 players. Aside from setup and a short coda, most of the game takes place in a cycle between collectively exploring a story in detail (phase 1: Explore) and individually creating a new story linked to, within, or inspired by the first one (phase 2: Explain). Then time moves on, the world changes (sometimes because of the influence of the stories we make and sometimes not) and we pick one of the stories we made to explore in detail in the next go around the cycle. In the first cycle, phase 1 tells the story of the kaiju attack and its consequences, and phase 2 tells the stories people make in the aftermath. Where we go from there is anyone’s guess. At the start of the game we play through the setup phase, Research, where we define humanity and the kaiju. In the Explore phase, we take turns to add details to a map or ask a question that each other player answers, before each making a skeleton of a story; in the Explain phase we ask questions about and impose details on each other’s story skeletons, before each retelling these fleshed-out stories. Then we each pick a change to make in the world and how that alters the way humanity sees itself. Finally, we vote on which story from the current cycle we should take collective ownership of and explore in the next cycle, and so on and so on until we decide to end the game. When that happens, we go to the final phase, Coda, and frame humanity’s final state upon the arrival of a new kaiju. All players will receive a full run-through of the current WIP rules. As this is a WIP, the game may not run entirely smoothly, but some significant problems have already been dealt with following feedback from the last playtests (and if you have any suggestions or run into any problems while playing, let me know). We’ll be using miro (with a shared account) for making the map. What expectations should I have? After Kaiju is part map-game, part timeline-game – it’s a little bit like The Quiet Year and a little bit like Microscope. The players don’t necessarily play characters in themselves, but put together a map and timeline where shared characters take action. Here are some more specific points:
How do I sign up? Join this discord server (you're welcome to join even if you don't play, it's a server for rules-light/story-games in general). There’ll be a channel for each game we start, and it’s where I’ll provide a link to the full rules summary and invite info for the platform we’ll use to play the game. Post here with some music and/or pictures that get across the sort of mood you’re after. After a couple of days we'll start setup. If there are more than 3-5 people (including me) then we'll split into groups of 3-5 as best we can, ideally with one game playing out in PBP and another live by text on discord, with me playing in each group. - You can find my published games here: https://speak-the-sky.itch.io/ and here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/15183/Speak-the-Sky UnCO3 fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 20:15
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:56 |
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The last playtest was fun, so I'm down for more. I think it'd be cool if we could go for something mechanical this time, but I'm not super picky. Somewhat like Pacific Rim, but the bots are the enemy: 
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Sep 16, 2019 18:49
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Up for this. Some music for the mood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MJd0RTOW1Y Something a bit melancholic. Playing it earnest.
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Sep 16, 2019 19:38
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Posting interest and a few images. The Hymn of Acxiom, The Hymn to Breaking-Strain, Mist of a Different Dimension, Parade. Thinking a lot about pop culture in the wake of kaiju.   This one's an anime OP (Paranoia Agent), but the visuals matter as much as the lyrics / song.
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Sep 16, 2019 20:11
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I love giant monsters
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Sep 19, 2019 15:13
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:56 |
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Okay, I'm closing recruitment here with the following players:
I'll be in both games, which means we'll have 2 games of 4 players. Right now there's one issue to resolve before splitting off: what are your preferences for PbP and live (text) discord (either all in one go or a session per Cycle or Phase)? I'd like to do one game of each, if possible, but I'm fine to play both as PbP. UnCO3 fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 16:19
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